Over at NRO, Jonah Goldberg has a nice column about the so-called centerists in the Senate who supported the porkapalooza "stimulus" bill. His reflections put me in mind of an old saying from Texas made popular by Jim Hightower.
Now I never cared much for Hightower’s "populist" aka socialist politics. But he had this right: "The only thing you find in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead skunks." Fits Specter to a tee, don’t you think?
Sorry, but Hightower's quip was 'white lines and dead armadillos.'
I think Spector would suggest that the skunk was killed by a single car that first struck conoly in the shoulder.
Goldberg (whom I like) is simply perpetuating the myth that the GOP is "conservative" or on the right. Fact is, they are simply slightly more pragmatic liberals who would have spent 600 billion (on slightly different pork) if they were in power.
The GOP leadership and the Bush administration campaigned for Specter (over the conservative Pat Toomey) in 04. Fact is they planned and expected this outcome.
Can we please stop pretending on these sorts of things?
I think Thomas Frank beat Lucianne's boy to the punch (against the centrists). Jonah needs to go back to talking about stained dresses.
I was living in Austin Texas when Hightower made that remark - I believe it was yeller lines and dead armadillos. Of courses the yeller is Texan for yellow.