Senator First to Fall in Fiscally-Rightward Trend

As TalkingPointsMemo noted last week, poor Bob Bennett, who failed yesterday to get the GOP’s nomination for a reelection run for senator from Utah, is often fiscally conservative. But often isn’t good enough anymore, especially under current fiscal circumstances — which were brought about by people thinking an occasional nod to fiscal sobriety is enough to provide cover on that issue, before turning to others like flag-burning or gay sex. One down, then, and about 534 to go.

(Get rid of them all and we might yet avoid becoming Greece, proof that a rich tradition of culture and philosophy will not save you if you thoughtlessly adopt a massive public sector amidst all your culturizing and philosophizing. Econ will not be denied, and at the end of the day you can’t eat statues, no matter how parasitic you are.)

Encouragingly, and to some of us unsurprisingly, it appears that despite years of experts telling us that moderation sells better than principle, consistency in fact breeds activist enthusiasm and hypocrisy breeds outrage — a glimmer of hope for people who suspect that only principled laissez-faire policies can rescue us.

And you can catch one last release tomorrow night of the (less fancy) online-only version of the show that’s tracking this struggle like no other, Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano on Fox Business Network, the full-scale, weekly, one-hour cable version of which I’ll be a writer/producer for, with the premiere likely in the next few weeks (details to come when official).

Like Glenn Beck (whose door I now face from about twelve feet away, right near a photocopier that constantly makes noises like a cappuccino machine), I owe you a history lesson before indulging any radical-seeming present-day political enthusiasms, though, so later this week, if all goes as planned, my Book Selection of the Month — the first of four about the Victorians, who built our world.