Forum Overview :: Motherfucking News :: Not precisely, as far as I know

[quote name="Reichsminister Doktor Goebbels"]O'Rourke tends to be ideologically consistent, not so much party-bound, and especially less bound to the political fortunes of individual candidates. Limbaugh had to "carry the water" for candidates he didn't like because part of his role is to drive electoral politics. So Limbaugh actually had to go on the radio touting Joe Peckerwood for state senate in Tennessee, and wave the Republican flag, even though he knew the guy was not faithful to whatever metric Limbaugh uses to evalutate candidates. O'Rourke doesn't. There is praise and criticism of Republicans in his work, most of it framed around their adherence or lack thereof to the kind of small government/individual liberty principles that used to be the stamp of the Republican party. When he says he voted for Bush "because he's a Republican," he's saying that even if the president is a turd, he's preferable to the alternative, when viewed in light of O'Rourke's ideology. I know that's all a little windy. In a poll by the libertarian magazine <i>Reason</i>, when asked about his votes, he said: [quote] 2004 vote: George W. Bush, because I don't want Johnnie Cochran on the Supreme Court. 2000 vote: George W. Bush. (I always vote Republican because Republicans have fewer ideas. Although, in the case of George W., not fewer enough.) Most embarrassing vote: A 1968 write-in for "Chairman Meow," my girlfriend's cat. It seemed very funny at the time. As I mentioned, this was 1968.[/quote]In <i>Peace Kills</i> from 2004, O'Rourke follows a chapter mocking the April, 2002, Palestinian Solidarity March in D.C.: [quote]Not that I disagreed with everything said by the people who opposed the war with Iraq. As a casus belli, weapons of mass destruction did seem like a pair of pants cut to the size of North Korea and into which Iraq was being stuff. And claims that Saddam Hussein was cooperating with Osama bin Laden smelled of something found on the Internet late at night along with proof that the Jews and the Rotary Club control the World Bank. What President Bush should have said was "Here's a man who's been murdering everyone he could get his hands on for twenty-five years. We don't need a reason."[/quote]And in the classic work you mentioned, he said "I'm a real Republican, unlike some current presidents of the United States I could name." Obviously it was in reference to the wrong Bush, but the same criticism could certainly leveled, <i>a fortiori</i>.[/quote]