"The GOP Is Dying Off. Literally."

Slavers Politico.

Yes, older people tend to be conservative, and older people tend to die.

And yet, everybody's always getting older, tending more toward conservatism, and, yes, eventually, dying. So the more conservative party is always dying, but it's also always receiving new entrants, as the once-young become old.

Now's a good time to roll out the old Churchill/not-really-Churchill quote: "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart.  If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."

"I ought to be the pin-up of the criminal defense bar."

Said Justice Scalia, asked whether he's properly described as a conservative: "That depends on what you mean by conservative. I ought to be the pin-up of the criminal defense bar."

It's not the first time he's said that, and the idea of producing an image of Scalia as a pinup has already been thought of and has already been dismissed in "Why Lawyers Shouldn�t Use Photoshop."

"David Hockney has a fag in one hand, a mug of tea in the other, fish and chips and mushy peas in front of him, and he is surrounded by his own work."

"... Hockney is such a militant smoker you sense he sparks up even when he doesn�t fancy one, just to piss people off. His father, Kenneth, was just as militant in his non-smoking. 'I have now outlived him. I am nearly 78.� He puffs and grins.... He waves his cigarette at me. 'Do you smoke?' he asks, as if challenging me to a duel. I find myself apologising for having stopped, and he looks at me with a disappointment bordering on contempt � though he seems slightly pacified when I ask for a whisky. 'Bohemia was against the suburbs, and now the suburbs have taken over,' he says. 'I mean, the anti-smoking thing is all anti-bohemia. Bohemia is gone now. When people say, well wasn�t it amazing saying you were gay in 1960, I point out, well, I lived in bohemia, and bohemia is a tolerant place. You can�t have a smoke-free bohemia. You can�t have a drug-free bohemia. You can�t have a drink-free bohemia. Now they�re all worried about their fucking curtains, sniffing curtains for tobacco and stuff like that.' Does he think gay life has become more conservative in recent years? 'Yes. I suppose it�s that they want to be ordinary � they want to fit in. Well, I didn�t care about that. I didn�t care about fitting in. Everywhere is so conservative.'"

A tiny snippet of "David Hockney: �'Just because I�m cheeky, doesn�t mean I�m not serious'/At 77, and with two new exhibitions, David Hockney is more prolific and outspoken than ever. He tells us why he stopped painting after the death of his assistant � and why, despite a 9pm bedtime, he�s still a rebel at heart."

"This Boy Wonder Is Building the Conservative MoveOn.org in an Illinois Garage."

"Republican donors are counting on the 21-year-old to energize voters."

�He impressed me with his capacity to lead, intelligence, and love for America,� [multimillionaire investor Foster] Friess says. �I instantly knew I wanted to support him.�

He = some kid named Charlie Kirk.

"A conservative � he�s one who holds things together."

"He shouldn�t fight all progressive movements, but he should be the balance wheel to hold the movement to where it won�t get out of hand."

"The Destruction of the Wisconsin Supreme Court," by Lincoln Caplan.

In The New Yorker. I thought you should know.

When addressing a case like the John Doe inquiry, with the election of a controversial governor and now an undeclared Presidential candidate at its core, the Wisconsin Supreme Court should be seen as above the fray, beyond price, and wholly independent. Instead, contrary to the ideal that John Roberts described in [Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar], all of the Wisconsin justices look a lot like politicians, in particular the conservatives, who came to the bench with the support of powerful and aggressive political groups. Those justices� integrity is compromised, as plainly as if they had personally solicited every dollar that helped elect them � and that helped drag the standing of their court so low.

All judges look like politicians, especially the conservatives. And all New Yorker writers who write about judges look like politicians, especially when they write about conservatives.

ADDED: Amusingly, The New Yorker points me to a March 5, 2012 article titled: "The Storm/Did a governor�s anti-union crusade backfire?" The answer, it turned out, was: no.

"Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge..."

"... because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it�or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance must be rational and must be kept separate from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs."

Wrote F.A. Hayek in "Why I Am Not a Conservative," quoted by Jonathan Adler at The Volokh conspiracy in a post titled "What does it take to convince libertarians and conservatives that climate change is a problem?"

"For your master's degree: Name 5 conservative professors at UW-Madison."

Says David Blaska, linking to "The Closing of the Campus Mind" at The Weekly Standard.

I see that, in the comments, a couple people name me and that Larry Kaufmann says: "I'm not sure Ann Althouse qualifies." I agree with Larry. There's no way the University of Wisconsin deserves credit for having "conservatives" by having me. I support abortion rights and gay rights (and have for the entire 30 years I've been on campus). I've never denounced affirmative action. I've written articles in the feminist genre. What is supposed to be conservative about me other than that I have a blog where I take conservative arguments seriously and put them up for discussion and don't kick out the right wingers in the comments but only needle them with questions? To count me as a UW conservative would be to further acknowledge the dominance of the left: I irk them, so I must be what they don't like.

"One of the benefits of having been right-of-center in college was that my political and philosophical views were constantly challenged."

"There was no 'safe space' � and I was better for it. I often felt that I received a better education than many of my peers precisely because I was not able to hold unchallenged assumptions or adopt unquestioned premises."

How much can Romney help Rubio?

WaPo reports:

Sen. Marco Rubio has been cultivating a relationship with Mitt Romney and his intimates, landing some of the 2012 Republican nominee�s top advisers and donors and persistently courting others as he readies an expected 2016 presidential campaign.

In a crowded field of contenders, the imprimatur of Romney could help clear Rubio�s path into the top tier. Since Romney announced in January that he would not run for the White House again, he and Rubio have had at least two lengthy phone calls in which Romney encouraged and mentored the 43-year-old Florida senator about the political landscape, according to a Romney associate.

Rubio and Romney have built a warm and trusting rapport, in contrast to the frostiness that exists between Romney and the two current GOP front-runners, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. When Romney said in January that it was time to turn to the �next generation of Republican leaders,� it was widely interpreted as a swipe at Bush and a boost to a fresher face, such as Rubio.

What's the evidence of frostiness toward Walker?
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