Hunting with John Thune

As Jared Loughner awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed
in his bed into a gigantic insect. To learn more, go to Kafka, or better yet, Dostoyevsky’s
“The Undergroud Man.” It cannot be explained on Dr. Phil’s couch without moral treason
to the living and the dead.

When CPAC meets in early February it should consider this to be the zero vortex
from which things end and begin again. Politics and culture, as in Einstein’s theory
of time and space, must either expand or contract. They can’t stand still. And this
tragic incident brought to center again she who will not go away, Sarah Palin. But
there are other things for CPAC 2011 to consider: problems that challenge our existence:
a $202 trillion debt, the Red Army, the end of the world.

“Let’s get real,” Laurence Kotlikoff wrote last summer for Bloomberg. “The U.S.
is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its
bills.” Kotlikoff, a professor at Boston University, says that based on the Congressional
Budget Office’s data, he calculates a gargantuan fiscal gap of $202 trillion, more
than 15 times the official debt.

StockSage, the market analyst, reports that Marc Faber of the Gloom, Boom and Doom
report says “there is potential for geopolitical tensions between China and India
as they compete for natural resources (oil, water).” Faber pointed out that China
and India share the Brahmaputra River. Faber might have noticed that at the 60^th-year
celebration of the People’s Republic, Chinese President Hu Jintao was wearing a
Mao suit. Will China now press ahead with a stronger regional and national profile?
Will the Red Army rise to power?

The world is said to end this December. So says ancient Mayan prophecy. Prophecy
does not end things, but the sudden widespread belief in eschatological visions
of doom does suggest a failure of the collective will. Hemingway’s “The Sun Also
Rises” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” were both published in 1925
or thereabouts. They were icons of helplessness and impotence: portents of impending
doom, wildly popular in their day and still relevant today. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”
was published in 1925 and 1926. Stocks crashed in 1929.

But Sarah Palin, that is really the big issue in 2011. Because whatever doesn’t
kill her makes her stronger.

Sarah Palin has, with Ron Paul, Judge Andrew Napolitano and Texas Gov. Rick Perry,
built a new cultural and political zeitgeist in the last two years. Sen. John Thune
of South Dakota, a potential presidential candidate in 2012, is a perfect fit for
it. Thune will speak at CPAC 2011.

Last year at CPAC a clear division emerged among conservatives. Liberty-minded conservatives
dominated in numbers and set the tone for the event. In CPAC’s important straw poll,
Ron Paul won with35 percent while the standard-bearer of traditional Republicans,
Mitt Romney, took only 25 percent. As CBS reported Friday that its new poll found
that 77 percent of Americans want to cut spending and just 9 percent call for raising
taxes, the new themes are having an impact.

Thune represents a new force in America politics and a new generation. Here in the
New Hampshire woods acrimony runs long, deep and bitter: “I’d rather go hunting
with Dick Cheney than ride in a car with Ted Kennedy” can be seen daily on bumper
stickers.

Time to turn the corner. Time to turn to the new generation.

I’d rather go hunting with John Thune.