The “other McCain” unsurprisingly doesn’t care for critics of CPAC or movement conservatism. They’re bringing everybody down, and if it’s one thing we know about movement conservatives it is that they must remain chipper and optimistic about their own fortunes. McCain:

But the disgruntled few remain disgruntled, spreading demoralization, despair and defeatism where confidence and good cheer might otherwise flourish.

If they can’t be winners, they don’t want you to win either.

Yes, if it weren’t for Rod Dreher et al., conservatism would be advancing in all directions and crushing all that stood in its way. There are no problems or lacunae in “the message,” everything is fine and the comeback is just a matter of time. Whatever you do, definitely do not make any judgments about conservative celebrities, and if it all possible just suspend critical thinking all together. Self-congratulation and cheerfulness are always the best remedies for failure. I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere. Of course, it does remind me of the old line in Chesterton’s Orthodoxy where he reports that a publisher said to him of someone else, “That man will get on; he believes in himself,” to which Chesterton replied (and this is worth quoting in full):

Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

Now if we could just get their doctors to stop demoralizing them, all would be well.

P.S. The follow-up in the rest of the passage is also worth quoting:

He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. “Yes, there are,” I retorted, “and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself [bold mine-DL].

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