Like Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich has failed to make it onto the Virginia primary ballot. Gingrich’s Pennsylvanian carpet-bagging attempt to project his prejudices onto the South obviously has no traction among Southerners themselves.
The Virginia primary is now the thing most needful: a straight fight between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. With no Democratic contest, everyone should be registered as a Republican in this cycle, in order to ensure the nomination of Paul, with his opposition to bailouts, to wars, and to the erosion of constitutional checks and balances, and thus in order to force Obama to see him and raise on those issues.
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Thus speaks the voice only one ear away from Ed Miliband.
ReplyDeleteWhen Gisela Stuart called for the re-election of Bush and when Denis MacShane endorsed Sarkozy, both key Blair allies, it only went and proved that the Henry Jackson Society and the Euston Manifesto Group were wicked neocon entryists. This and other ex-Labour blogs called for whip withdrawals and full blown expulsions of this "party within the party".
But the man who has ridiculously set himself up as the voice of the people Blue Labour was designed to reach, and who is even more ridiculously being taken at face value on that, says that the Republican Party should nominate Ron Paul. To push Obama even further into isolationism and anti-capitalism with no truly liberal candidate on the ballot paper.
I want my party back. At least I am still in it, not that that seems to matter anymore.
I am interested in hearing your views on the Sarum rite & other ancient alternatives to the standard Latin Mass. Do you support them all, or do you feel it is better to concentrate on supporting more Latin Mass so that it takes over from Novus Ordo in time.
ReplyDeleteAnything already 500 years old at the time of the Council of Trent has always been free to be celebrated whenever anyone wanted to do it, and very solemn "showcase" celebrations of things like the Sarum, Bragan Mozarabic and Ambrosian Rites might be no bad thing from time to time.
ReplyDeleteThe Tridentine Rite should also only ever be done like that. If you are going to do it, then do it properly.
Even Fr Aidan Nichols OP dismisses as 'nostlagie de boue' what he calls "those younger priests so sunk in nostalgia as to admire even the slovenliness of Anglo-Hibernian celebration" on the eve of Vatican II. The horror stories about people who never arrived before the Offertory and always left as soon as the priest had received Communion, about people going out for cigarettes, and so on, are simply too routine to ignore.
The Low Mass was never designed for Sunday, parochial use, and never suited it. The problem with the Modern Rite in practice arise out of the historically and ecclesiologically illiterate assumption of the Low Mass's normativity. They are problems carried over from the Old Rite as celebrated almost everywhere in this and many other countries before the Council.
Anyone waiting for the Old Rite to supplant the New is on a hiding to nothing. That is never going to happen. Those seminarians and young priests who think that it will just need a dose of pastoral reality, which they will of course receive soon enough. The Old Rite has now been set entirely free, and that is a good thing, but it is proving no more popular than it was before. There are no more celebrations of it than ever, and no more people at those celebrations than ever. The idea that it will ever come back in most parishes is laughable. But that is just as well. If it were done in most parishes, then it would be done badly in most parishes. As it used to be when it was. Remaining a niche interest, an acquired taste, is its only hope.
Now, on topic, please.
Thank you David. You have spoken so frankly on this issue, & have done so on request.
ReplyDeleteOn topic, I would say that perhaps the rules of the primary in Virgina aren't very fair if they prevent a contest where all the front runners are involved.
The front runners identified by whom? Not a vote has been cast.
ReplyDeleteFrom memory, Virginia requires at least 10,000 signatures including at least 400 from each of the state's Congressional Districts, of which there are currently 11. And all those collecting them have to be registered voters in the state.
Eminently sensible. Everywhere should adopt something like that.
The front runners as identified by polls. I don't support them, but if ballot access is preventing candidates who will be getting more than 5% support in nearby states getting on the ballot than I would suggest maybe review is in order.
ReplyDeleteHaving seen some state US ballot access law, I must say that our £500 & a dozen signatures in order to run for parliament seems pretty decent.
I have always been inclined to replace the deposit with the requirement of nomination by five per cent of registered voters in the constituency, although that might be waived if the candidate had been selected by submitting a party's shortlist of two to a run-off ballot of all such voters.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, I would encourage other states to adopt more rigorous requirements, if a change had to be made. I intend to do a post on primary arrangements quite soon. I have one particular idea which I think would make a great deal of difference.