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Dear Thad McCotter: Did you say that?

"Did you say that?" we twittered Illinois Michigan Congressman and transcendent presidential candidate Thad McCotter (above) a moment ago, wounded that our constitutional-conservative hero — he of the Red Eye, Seize Freedom silver tongue — had reportedly said something so profoundly shtupid:

"We cannot unite America if we divide the movement," McCotter warned. "Consequently, the time has come for the Tea party to grow up and the Republican Party to wake up and come together to serve and save this great nation."

Time to grow up? From our venerable roost here on the Medicare side of the henhouse we lashed out with wounded pride:

Many teapartiers, long in the tooth of life are spring chickens in the world of politics. Please don't ask us to "grow up." Thank you.

Thank you, Congressman McCotter, for getting it:

When Col. West is called a RINO, politically they must mature or all is lost; and GOP must wake up & realize validity of Tea Party concerns.

YAH. As we twittered back:

I totally adore Col. West. He is a shining star in the firmament on high.

We're pretty sure it's going to be okay. Our sis says we have a heart too soon made glad. But isn't that the essence of the American Dream?

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: We loved this from Frank in the comments at The Hill:

It's the tea party that is causing the republican party to grow up and revitalize.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Thad McCotter: "This is not a nostalgic 'anti-colonial uprising' from within"

"Your Cairo statement rings true. Am I right here," we twittered Rep. Thad McCotter this afternoon, linking our own tweet (above), a layman's take on the ongoing Middle East turmoil based upon keeping our virtual ear to the ground in the last period of time:

This is what's really happening. Muslim Brotherhood poised to co-opt restless populations thoughout Middle East.

"Yes, you are right," McCotter direct-messaged back. We're inclined to take the Michigan Congressman's well-considered assessments seriously. Any politician who can hold his own on Greg Gutfeld's transcendent, "take no prisoners" Red Eye on Fox in the wee hours is top salesman in the global marketplace of ideas. A few excerpts from McCotter's "Statement on Egyptian Crisis: America Must Stand with Her Ally Egypt" — a counterpoint to the standard-issue "let my people go" narrative spin that seems to be dominating the airwaves — and then, as might be expected, a few thoughts of our own. Here's our Thad:

The Egyptian demonstrations are not the equivalent of Iran's 2009 Green Revolution. The Egyptian demonstrations are the reprise of Iran's 1979 radical revolution.

Thus, America must stand with her ally Egypt to preserve an imperfect government capable of reform; and prevent a tyrannical government capable of harm …

Though many will be tempted to superficially interpret the Egyptian demonstrations as an uprising for populist democracy, they must recall how such similar initial views of the 1979 Iranian Revolution were belied by the mullahs' radical jackbooted murderers, who remain bent upon grasping regional hegemony and nuclear weaponry … 

This is not a nostalgic 'anti-colonial uprising' from within, of all places, the land of Nassar.  Right now, freedom's radicalized enemies are subverting Egypt and our other allies.

"MuslimBrotherhood ethos = Exact opposite of USA: 'rid Arab lands of non-believers' vs 'give me your huddled masses yearn'g to breathe free,'" we twittered this afternoon.

John Bolton's on the same wavelength. Cubachi explains:

Ambassador John Bolton is putting cold water to this growing sense among the media that this is a “pro-democracy movement.” This is a nation that has not seen democracy in centuries …

This is a protest percolated by the Muslim Brotherhood. As Big Peace revealed on its blog, What Do the Egyptian Crowds Want? Caliphate Dreams and Strict Sharia.

Googling our own posts on the subject of radicalized enemies from within, an über theme of our blog, we stumbled upon "Thad McCotter and the wicked wisp of a woman's hair," a post from May of last year that says it all:

Whatever role Nazi propaganda may have played in fanning the fires of ancient tribal hatreds, all utopian ideologies that feed on hatred and fear of "the other" — whether that "other" be women, Tea Partiers [!] or the Jewish people — are doomed to failure because they deny human nature. Thad McCotter expressed the idea most brilliantly in a CPAC showstopper last February …

Men who would fit women's world to their mind by forcing the veil upon us are in reality attempting a futile veiling of their own fearful human nature. Is it too much of a stretch to posit a similar psychological projection at work in the savage attempts of political elites — who know better than we what is best for us — to silence dissent?

Where will it all lead? Only time will tell. One intriguing possiblitiy:

The fixer in the shadows who may emerge as Egypt's leader.

General Omar Suleiman is already one of the world's most powerful spy chiefs. And in time, says David Blair, he could well be Hosni Mubarak's successor as leader of Egypt.

Finally, for a little comic relief, THE Robert Fisk rises from the dead to offer his half-cent's worth on what it might all mean:

How this elderly apparatchik [Suleiman] might be expected to deal with the anger and joy of liberation of 80 million Egyptians is beyond imagination. When I told the demonstrators on the tank around me the news of Suleiman's appointment, they burst into laughter. 

Update: Instalanche!

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Et tu, Thad McCotter?

"The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him." Thoreau's words resonate with irony in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Above, a "dragonfly tries to clean itself as it is stuck to marsh grass covered in oil" on the gulf coast of Louisiana. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

"ET TU, Thad McCotter?" we twittered our favorite Congressman (R-MI 11th) this morning, seeking to understand the thinking behind his embrace of HR 3936, a bill sponsored by Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) and Patrick Tiberi (R-Ohio) that is getting a lot of bad press:

Americans for Limited Government (ALG) has sent a letter to 9 House Republicans urging that they withdraw their support from legislation providing a taxpayer bailout of labor-union-run pension funds …

“We are asking that each Representative remove his or her cosponsorship of this blatant handout to unions, which are now asking the American people to bail them out of their own mismanagement of pensions,” Wilson said, adding that “Compensating poor investment strategies, like those pursued by the multi-employer pension plans, only incentives further underfunding of these plans” …

Citing the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by labor bosses to support Obama, the Democratic majority, and the 9 House Republicans (see attachments below), Wilson decried unions’ “audacity to try to cash in on their political investment by foisting these unfunded liabilities accumulated under their watch onto the backs of taxpayers, who are struggling to fund their own retirements.”

Rep McCotter sent along this video of himself holding forth in the House of Representatives in defense of HR 3936:

What it does is good government. It allows employers the space they need to make sure they meet the pension obligations that they have for their workers. It is not a government bailout. Taxpayer funds are not involved, unless, of course, these institutions, these unions and their pension plans fail.

It is a wonderful idea by my colleague Pat Tiberi (Another of the 9 Repubs to whom the ALG letter was sent), it is endorsed by many, many business groups, and I would hope that over the course of the coming hours the truth will out. Again, you can't always believe what you see on TV.

It was the "unless, of course" part that gave us pause. The House bill is apparently similar to one introduced last week by Senator Casey, described by the National Right to Work Committee as a "taxpayer-funded union pension bailout":

Legislation introduced last week could shift costs of union pension plans to taxpayers in an attempt to stave off organized labor’s pension funding crisis. Senator Bob Casey, Pennsylvania Democrat, introduced the so-called Create Jobs & Save Benefits Act of 2010 to address the funding problems faced by union-administered multi-employer pension plans by shifting the burden to the taxpayers. Casey said his bill would cost the taxpayers $8 to $10 billion.

According to a FoxBusiness report and bloggers who are following the story, the tab could run much higher:

If passed, the bill could put another $165 billion in liabilities on the shoulders of American taxpayers …

As FOX Business Network’s Gerri Willis reported Monday, these pensions are in bad shape; as of 2006, well before the market dropped and recession began, only 6% of these funds were doing well.

Although right now taxpayers could possibly be on the hook for $165 billion, the liability could essentially be unlimited because these pensions have to be paid out until the workers die. It’s hard to say at the moment what the chances are that the bill will pass. A hearing is scheduled Thursday, which will give the public a sense of where political leaders sit on the topic, said Willis.

Professor Reynolds was not amused:

WHILE AMERICANS’ 401(K) PLANS SHRINK, Congress wants to bail out unions’ overgenerous and underfunded pension plans.

Our man Dan Riehl had the scoop on deep background way back in early March. His "Big Labor, Obama And Dems Have Big Plan$ For You" is a must-read to get up to speed. It includes interviews with Brett McMahon of the Associated Building Contractors and Katie Packer of the Workforce Fairness Institute. A lot to digest. If you're reading this, Dan, please feel free to join the conversation.

Related: USA Today's "Private pay shrinks to historic lows as gov't payouts rise" and John Fund's "Tea Parties vs. Unions in November."

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Thad McCotter: The Time Greg Gutfeld Ate Reagan's Chicken at Bob Tyrrell's House

"The political libido of a liberal is utterly unrestrained. It's the political libido of a nymphomaniac, at times the political libido of a sex offender, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. told a giddy Greg Gutfeld & Co. on Red Eye in the wee hours this morning, explaining with customary brio the premise of his new book, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery:

"… whereas the political libido of a conservative is much more restrained, almost gentlemanly and ladylike, and that's the problem. They need to learn a little bit about activism in politics."

Enter stage right the ladies and gentlemen that take tea:

I like the Tea Party movement …They love freedom, they love limited government, and they're my kind of people.

'Wonder what kind of political libido Mr. Tyrrell would attribute to us Tea Partiers. Hmmm. When it comes to core conservative principles — fiscal responsibility, limited government, free markets — we take no prisoners. But we're partial to persuasion and the power of the ballot box. Brute force isn't our thing, despite the best efforts of Rules-for-Radicals types with the "political libido of a sex offender" like SEIU President and Obama BFF Andy Stern to project their own modus operandi onto us:

We're trying to use the power of persuasion, and if that doesn't work, we're going to use the persuasion of power.

The hangover in the book's title refers to the last several years of the Bush Administration, when Republican politicians spent money "like drunken sailors, and I mean no offense to drunken sailors." The author expanded on the topic in a Washington Times column a few weeks back:

The Bush years witnessed the arrival of the conservative hustler. Sometimes the hustlers were crooks, such as Jack Abramoff. Other times they were the intellectual opportunists who thought they could advance in the kultursmog by tut-tutting established members of the conservative movement. I have in mind such reformed conservatives as the Davidians, David Brooks and David Frum(p).

The Davidians are members in good standing of the effete old guard we call the Northeast Corridor Conservatives, flogged here from time to time. As we wrote in "Freedom Vigil: The keyboard is my pitchfork" recently:

We aren't taking marching orders from inside the Beltway anymore — if we ever did. They're working for us, not the other way around, and if they still don't get it, we're going to make sure they do come November. That's the real story, but the Pauline-Kael bubblers, including Northeast Corridor "Conservatives" like David Frum, lately of AEI, are stuck in the amber of their echo chamber of addiction to power and contempt for extraordinary Americans.

Tyrrell's prescription, from the Red Eye interview, is a breath of fresh air:

In the book I'm talking about the conservatives who snipe at each other, the conservatives who are opportunistic, and those people, they're just doing it to advance themselves, whereas we do have a model of conservatives who've had a productive give and take that in my opinion is kind of a template for the future for conservatives, and that is the way Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh relate to each other. That's the way conservatives should relate to each other. A good-natured give and take. You don't always have to agree, but take an interest in each other, and don't diminish each other.

A final important point from the Washington Times article:

Talk radio, cable talk shows, the Internet, the established conservative think tanks and the magazines of the conservative movement are all flourishing and summoning compelling personalities armed with the tried-and-true ideas of the conservative movement.

The new breed of tried-and-true types is answering the summons. Independent Scott Brown's "surprise" victory restoring the "Kennedy Seat" to the people January 19 was famously the first shot heard. Now a small army of intelligent, articulate, authentically conservative candidates is on the march. We encourage our readers to support the candidates of their choice. We're putting our money and mouth behind three whose victories would, like Brown's win, restore currently stuffed seats to the people:

Sean Bielat for MA District 4 Barney Frank Seat. "Boston Tea Party Fallout: Retire Barney Frank?"

Tim Burns for PA District 12 the late John Murtha Seat. Sisu posts on Tim Burns.

Chuck DeVore for CA District 6 Barbara Boxer Seat. Check out Devore's answer to Sarah Palin's endorsement of primary rival Carly Fiorina.

Term limits by other means. Click on the links to read about the candidates and contribute, and may the best man win.

Note. As President of the Chelsea-by-the-Sea Thad McCotter Fan Club, we are, of course supporting the Michican District 11 incumbent's re-election bid. His twittering leaves all others' in the dust. This from last night:

One for the roadhog: AmSpec -The Time Greg Gutfeld Ate Reagan's Chicken at Bob Tyrrell's House

If we hadn't already fallen hard for Thad when we first set eyes on him on Red Eye just after Valentine's Day, this little rant from something calling itself "Mad At Thad" would have done the trick:

Thad McCotter has became a darling of the extreme right in recent weeks. Whether it be his participation in the Plymouth Township Tea Party or his consistent stops on Fox News, Thad McCotter is aligning himself with the most extreme elements of the Republican Party. He has aligned himself with supply-side, trickle-down economics even as their disastrous effects come to light. He joined a protest that saw venomous hate speech against the President, and, indeed, the whole government of the United States.

Align at will.

Crossposted at Liberty Pundits.

Thad McCotter and the wicked wisp of a woman's hair

   

Michelangelo's Mother of Christ from "Pieta" (left) and "Slinky Knits" two-piece hijab, from our May 2004 post "Life imitates art," wherein we quoted Amir Taheri: "In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic [of Iran], announced that 'scientific research had shown that women’s hair emitted rays that drove men insane' … the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings."

"Morally rancid," says our fave US Rep,Thad McCotter (MI-11) on Fox & Friends this morning talking about the UN's recent election — with a straight face — of the Islamic Republic of Iran to something called the Commission on the Status of Women. Foreign Policy had a great write-up:

Last week just as a senior Iranian cleric declared that women's un-Islamic garb — meaning a wisp of hair showing — is the root of men's immorality and the cause of earthquakes, the regime moved to secure a seat on the UN's Commission for the Status of Women …

The Iranian government by contrast has taken every conceivable step to deter women's progress and institute a regressive regime against gender equality.

We guess it depends upon what your definition of "gender equality" is.

 

The veil should be a choice, not an imposition. Above, Tiny chooses to conceal herself in the shadows amongst the lilacs out front, able to see without being seen as she defends her turf against the intruder.

But back to that wicked wisp of a woman's hair that sets Imamic men to trembling and the planet Earth to shaking. As we wrote years ago in "The woman made me do it, Lord," one of our earliest blogposts, "Is that all it really comes down to?  A man's fear of his own feelings towards women?" A need to control oneself by controlling others? And from a related post, "Life imitates art" (top images and caption):

Remarkable how the misogynist fantasies of a couple of dystopic guys like Mussa Sadr Al-Sadr and Ayman Zawahiri can infect entire generations of muslim youngsters in much the same way that Nazi and marxist ideologies infected everyday folk in the last century.

It looks like we may have been onto something back then in sensing a connection between the psychological dynamics of European and Middle-Eastern ideologies of mass destruction. This from a UK Telegraph review last week, "Roots of Islamic fundamentalism lie in Nazi propaganda for Arab world, book claims":

"The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would have been over long ago were it not for the uncompromising, religiously inspired hatred of the Jews that was articulated and given assistance by Nazi propagandists and continued after the war by Islamists of various sorts," said Jeffrey Herf, a history professor at the University of Maryland …

Islamic fundamentalism, like European totalitarianism in the 20th century, was and is a mixture of very old and very modern elements …

The Nazis relied on radio broadcasts — translated into Arabic — to sow propaganda because of high illiteracy in the Arab world at the time. Although radio ownership was small, it was commonplace for cafes and bazaars to draw large crowds to listen to broadcasts.

Whatever role Nazi propaganda may have played in fanning the fires of ancient tribal hatreds, all utopian ideologies that feed on hatred and fear of "the other" — whether that "other" be women, Tea Partiers [!] or the Jewish people — are doomed to failure because they deny human nature. Thad McCotter expressed the idea most brilliantly in a CPAC showstopper last February:

Now the question is, what is the state of the [Tea Party] movement, even post the election of Senator Brown?

I would argue it is strong, it is healthy. I would argue that we remain philosophical, not ideological because as those who've read Russell Kirk understand, conservatism is the negation of ideology. We fit our mind to the world, not the world to our mind.

Men who would fit women's world to their mind by forcing the veil upon us are in reality attempting a futile veiling of their own fearful human nature. Is it too much of a stretch to posit a similar psychological projection at work in the savage attempts of political elites — who know better than we what is best for us — to silence dissent?

Crossposted at Liberty Pundits.

Are tea parties like sex?

"Thaddeus McCotter … notes that Hope & Change has degenerated into Tax & Hate. We’ve never heard him sound quite so serious," Hate the Media captions the above video of Michigan Rep's latest floor speech.

"It is clear the most dangerous special interest is big government, and president Obama is its lobbyist," our favorite Congressman, Thad McCotter (R,MI) declared in floor remarks yesterday:

This arrogant administration and its enablers have defied the American people and bipartisan opposition in Congress to unilaterally jam through a trillion-dollar takeover of health care. Why? For so many Americans the answer is that this President and his Democratic Congress think they are smarter than you, want to run your life and want to make government your ruler, not your servant …

Jonah Goldberg (left) and Glenn Reynolds were flaying the same topic from a slightly different perspective today in a lively Instavision PJTV discussion about "Tea Parties, Populism and Why Some Conservatives Identify More With Liberals." Here's Jonah on the Tea Parties:

I personally think, with all the caveats there are some kooks in every movement, I think on the whole this is an incredibly healthy, important movement for democracy that is in many ways sort of the antibody response to an attempt to sort of turn this into a European-style social welfare state.

And Prof. Reynolds in reply:

It's funny, because my wife had a blogpost where somebody had called Rush Limbaugh toxic, and her response was, "He's not a toxin, he's an antibody."

Actually the framers thought this … it was just taken for granted back then, and quite awhile after the framing of the Constitution that, you know, if the government went too far, the people would just rise up as a body. It would be kind of an organic thing. It wouldn't even require any leaders. That's just what the people would do … Now we're seeing it again.

The Tea-Party-as-antibody metaphor called to mind the thesis of Reynolds' provocatively-titled and prescient 1995 essay "Is democracy like sex?" wherein he proposed that "Some of the characteristics of democracy that are often postulated as shortcomings may actually be strengths":

To explore this idea, I have chosen as an analogy or metaphor another widely criticized and misunderstood institution — sex. In short, some discoveries resulting from the application of complexity theory to the question of evolutionary fitness among biological systems have important implications for our discussion of the fitness of the body politic …

The well-known changes in government introduced since the New Deal era have substantially undermined the protections against special interest dominance contained in the Constitution . . . First is the substantial expansion of federal authority brought about by the Supreme Court's broad reading of the Commerce Clause in Wickard v. Filburn. From James Madison's notion of a federal government whose powers are "few and defined," the Wickard case brought us to the proposition that there are few, if any, limits to congressional power … [the limits to those powers are about to be tested by lawsuits filed by 14 states challenging Obamacare's requirement that those without health insurance must obtain it or face fines].

Enter, stage right, the Tea Partiers. "I think the Tea Party movement is an almost entirely healthy thing," continues the Professor:

And I think it's funny that for my whole lifetime, people have been saying "Why aren't ordinary Americans more interested in politics?" and the minute they do get interested in politics, everybody is basically saying "Why are all those ordinary Americans out there. Shouldn't they just listen to their betters?" And listen to their betters is a lot of the tone I've gotten, and not just from David Brooks, but from a fair number of sort of higher-level conservative intellectual types.

That would be the Northeast Corridor fuddy-duddy community who never "got" Sarah Palin or us Tea Partiers. The latest CBS poll shows 62% of Americans want the GOP to fight Obamacare.

The last word goes to our comrade-in-arms Amy Kane (above showing off Michael Graham's new book, which contains one of her Tea Party photos ), a fellow New Englander who, like us, was "not accustomed to demonstrating, protesting, or even politely begging to differ in mixed political company" when we both attended the Essex County Tea Party and Rally in Newburyport last March, where we met for the first time. We've come a long way in a year — for us, using our social-networking skills to disintermediate the powers that be via the internet and help send Scott Brown to Washington. For Amy, she's on the case working to send her own Rep, Pelosi/SEIU puppet Carol Shea-Porter, packing come November. From Amy's latest blogpost, "That's no angry mob, that's me holding Michael Graham's new book":

When I drove around my state with a camera on April 15th last year, it was essentially with this purpose in mind: to make friends with influential, witty, intelligent conservatives like Michael Graham …

Michael's book is dedicated to the millions of Americans who showed up at tea parties and townhalls across America during the "Revolution of '09." He writes:

"The politicians never knew what hit 'em. In fact, they still don't. That's why I wrote this book."

Update: "Thad does it again," marvels Bird Dog at Maggie's, with a link:

McCotter talks just like a Maggie's Farmer. Government is a special interest.

Special notice. This year's Essex County Tea Party Rally will be held on Sunday, March 28, from 12 to 2 p.m. at Atkinson Common Park, Newburyport. Meet at 3-road intersection. Contact Paul Breau @ [email protected] for details.

Read my lips: No more Bush. Jeb disses Sarah.

"I mean, I don't know what her deal is. My belief is in 2010 and 2012, public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity," Northeast Corridor Conservative Jeb Bush gratuitously dissed Sarah Palin and thereby all her fans in a Newsmax interview this afta. As far as we're concerned, he's toast. Besides. We're more interested in truly intellectually curious politicians. Thaddeus McCotter is the only one who comes to mind.

Thad McCotter: The problem with a government takeover of health care is not the GOP

"Will the Republicans Post their Health Plan … And When?" is memeorandum's top story, linking to a who-me? suggestion on the part of the White House that the GOP has published no plan for Thursday's "bipartisan" meeting on the subject. We guess the President's people aren't following our favorite Congressman, Thaddeus McCotter (R, MI) on Twitter. Just a couple of hours ago "Young Thad" twittered this link to the House GOP Health Care Reform Bill via his own FaceBook page. The tweet:

The problem with a government takeover of health care is not the GOP. It is the American people do not want it. http://fb.me/KuebKP29D.

First a couple of paragraphs from the White House complaint, and then a few excerpts from the GOP.gov plan:

The President believes strongly that Thursday’s bipartisan meeting on health insurance reform will be most productive if both sides come to the table with a unified plan to start discussion – and if the public has the opportunity to inspect those proposals up close before the meeting happens.

That’s why yesterday [Monday, February 22, giving us 2-3 days to read and digest -ed] the White House posted online the President’s proposal for bridging the differences between the Senate- and House-passed health insurance reform bills.

What you can’t do just yet is read about the Republicans’ consensus plan – because so far they haven’t announced what proposal they’ll be bringing to the table … As we said today, we’ll be happy to post the Republican plan on our website once they indicate to us which one we should post.

Well, we don't know what they mean by "which one we should post," but the House GOP HC plan twittered by Congressman MCotter, "Common-Sense health care reforms our nation can afford," sounds pretty good to us. [Update: Not to mention that it's been online since November!] It includes a summary, full text, "Ten Reasons to Support" and a side-by-side policy comparison with the Pelosi bill. From the intro:

Americans want a step-by-step, common-sense approach to health care reform, not Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s costly, 1,990-page government takeover of our nation’s health care system. Republicans’ alternative solution focuses on lowering health care premiums for families and small businesses, increasing access to affordable, high-quality care, and promoting healthier lifestyles – without adding to the crushing debt Washington has placed on our children and grandchildren.

Key elements include lowering premiums, ending junk lawsuits, encouraging innovative state programs and allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines. Click here to read the whole thing.

Update: New post by Congressman McCotter just posted at Red State: "The Crisis of Consent: Republicans Must NOT Abet Obama's ShamWoW! Summit."

Thad McCotter: We fit our mind to the world, not the world to our mind.

"Congressman, does this make marriage more or less appealing? More marriages where you toss the 'I'll be faithful' vow?" Greg Gutfeld teased an impassive, pink-tied Thaddeus McCotter on Red Eye a couple of weeks back. The MIchigan Congressman's answer nonplussed the assembled guests of Fox News's fast-moving NSFW wee-hour gabfest.

"Love is a very ephemeral, it is a very delicate flower, and you never know when it's going to bloom, not," deadpan comic/philosopher king Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter shocked Greg Gutfeld's bleeding-edge irregulars on Red Eye the other night with an unexpectedly thoughtful and drawn-out answer to the host's toss-away question about celebrity marriage vows in Fox News's wee-hour theater of the absurd. The topic was what possible effects dropping the fidelity vow might have on marriage. McCotter expostulated:

And so I would think when you go into this, you go into it with your eyes open, and you take the person as they are, and you try to go from there …

In many ways we've become a generation or a nation that has traded romance for relationships, and this goes down the way where this is some scientific equilibrium you can keep between two people, and that's not how human beings work. And I think that the removal of that type of vow is an indication that somehow you have less than realistic expectations about [whether] human beings, sentient beings with hearts and with dreams and aspirations, can bond together or not."

McCotter's like that. Stands out in a crowd. He has a quiet, almost introspective way of public speaking that makes listeners lean in to hear what he has to say, the total opposite of the hand-pumping, in-your-face Mayor-Shinn-like bombast of old-fashioned rhetoricians like President Obama. Take McCotter's CPAC speech yesterday, where he expressed the same idea about our effanineffable human nature — those "sentient beings with hearts and with dreams and aspirations" — in a larger context:

Now the question is, what is the state of the movement, even post the election of Senator Brown?

I would argue it is strong, it is healthy. I would argue that we remain philosophical, not ideological because as those who've read Russell Kirk understand, conservatism is the negation of ideology. We fit our mind to the world, not the world to our mind.

It's the tragic view of human nature vs the utopian, the very foundation of this Shining City Upon a Hill, flogged here early and often.

Update: Maggie's links:

Our favorite Congressman, Thad McCotter, on love and sex.

See also the Congressman's interview at Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, with thanks to Yehudit in the comments.