Christopher Buckley Locates the Great White GOP Hope: Joe Scarborough

I like Christopher Buckley. Although his writing tends toward a pompous, florid style, he's talented. While that's all well and good, I also must confess that I enjoyed Thank You For Smoking. On the Daily Beast, Buckley pins his hope on the face of the GOP's renaissance: the host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Joe Scarborough. Scarborough, according to Buckley, Can Save the GOP. Of course, Buckley cannot write this in the National Review, the magazine his father founded, after supporting Barack Obama's candidacy last fall. Further proof that conservatives can handle dissent and they're the party of the big tent. Or, as Michael Steele prefers, the party of the hat.

How did Buckley arrive at the conclusion that Scarborough is the GOP's Great White Hope? He read his book and stopped on Morning Joe and presto! Buckley's piece examines Scarborough's new book, The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise, and the scion of intellectual conservatism finds that he's what the GOP needs: a realistic, fiscal conservative. He refers to Scarborough as a Reagan lite, but Reagan's neo-liberal approach to spending and explosive deficits while slashing taxes and erasing regulation helped get us into this mess. We're living with the legacy of Reagan's deleterious policies and an imitator of Reagan isn't what the country requires to restore fiscal solvency.

Regardless, Scarborough can be likable, smug, telegenic, and empty-headed. I question whether he'd surrender his MSNBC perch and if he could force the Republican Party to reckon with its ghosts in a meaningful way. The legacy of the Reagan tax cuts fostered a vast disparity in wealth whereas a sizable majority of Americans gained a minor amount and a sizable minority gained a disproportionate amount. And if Scarborough's serious on erasing the budget, he would admit that tax increases are necessary and spending on GOP cash cows, see defense, must decline. Can he do that, possibly from his spot behind the camera on MSNBC. I have my doubts whether he could muster the courage and honesty to repeat those comments on the campaign trail.

Also on the Daily Beast, Mark McKinnon opines on the Republicans of the Future.