While I found Sunday’s Live Debate episode of The West Wing disappointing for the reasons mentioned yesterday, I find the character that the writers have created in Senator Arnold Vinick intriguing. He’s a pro-choice, fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republican and not ashamed to say it. He’s stood up to the evangelical wing of the party and lived to talk about it. And he actually seems to have have a chance to be President.
Its fiction, of course, but Russell Roberts at Cafe Hayek argues that Vinick/Alda is precisely the kind of candidate we need. As Robert’s points out, the writers have essentially created the closest thing to a libertarian Republican that America has seen on the national stage since Jack Kemp retired from politics.
He wasn’t a “compassionate conservative.” And he wasn’t a heartless monster. He was about as Jeffersonian as you could imagine. Whoever gets the Republican nomination the next time around ought to hire whoever wrote Alda’s lines. It would be even nicer to have a candidate to choose from who actually believed those lines as well.
What he said.
Linked with Stuck on Stupid and TMH’s Bacon Bits and Basil’s Blog
