Friday, March 17, 2006
Oh Ye of Little Faith
I rarely actually laugh at loud when I surf the net, but this one is a winner.
I know there’s no crime in being a conservative newsperson, though there should be, but let’s drop the pretense with Tweety Bird. Chris Matthews is bought and paid for. He has a long, sad history of just lovin’ the worst president in American history. You don’t do that when you’re a democratic or an independent. You also don’t give speeches to venture capitalists when you’re really a democrat, unless you are a member of a 5% minority.
And the usual stuff floating around on the internet: Is the GOP really going to run on security this November?
You make me laugh, GOP. How does that tailspin feel? Getting’ a little queasy?
Speaking of tailspin, David Brooks is swimming into dangerous territory, criticizing the handling of the war.
Driftglass will write a far more vicious and worthy rebuttal of Brooks in general, but observe closely the methodology of the GOP apologist. Greg Mitchell has a decent critique here.
Brooks, you vile political whore. So the war was a great idea, but Don Rumsfeld screwed it up?
Only conservatives could remind us endlessly that Drinky is the commander-in-chief and somehow, simultaneously, say that Don Rumsfeld is ultimately responsible for a failed war.
See how the pattern I so recently described plays out yet again? The three steps to being a conservative apologist:
- Admit responsibility for as little as possible, furiously minimizing the situation
- Throw a subordinate under the bus
- Hire a replacement and continue doing the exact same thing you were before
BoBo, I agree that Don Rumsfeld really screwed up. But all of us in the reality-based community also remembers that Drinky is the commander-in-chief, the guy who agreed with Rummy on everything and backed his every play, the guy who whipped Colin Powell into shape to conform to the neocon line.
Because no matter how furiously you try to ignore it, you can’t change the fact that it takes an incompetent person to appoint an incompetent person. And no matter how much you wish we could all go in the wayback machine to replay this war, we will never know if 300,000 more troops would have made a difference. It didn’t in Vietnam. Or maybe it might have in Iraq, but it would also have led to 4,000 more casualties and 300 billion more dollars spent because it costs that much in blood and treasure to keep a force that size suppressing an insurgency.
We’ll never know, Brooksie. What we do know beyond all doubt is that your boys screwed us into a war that is an unmitigated disaster, and you cheered them the whole way.
Right now journalists like BoBo should be on their knees begging for forgiveness in abject shame, but that, of course, isn’t going to happen. BoBo has no shame. He has an agenda.
His agenda is the same as every other corporatist’s: staunch the bleeding. Divert blame. Minimize what has happened. Make a superficial change, and continue on with business as usual.
Case in point, Dirk Kempthorne. New face, same agenda.
BoBo doesn’t want to admit what many others in the conservative party, like Bill Kristol, have tacitly acknowledged: Bush is incompetent. He’s also a rank criminal, but they aren’t willing to go that far. But if BoBo even acknowledges that Drinky is incompetent, he’ll have to acknowledge that replacing Don Rumsfeld won’t solve to problem. There’s no real use in replacing the help when the guy calling the shots is unfit.
But BoBo is one of those mainstream conservatives that, sadly, are common in the press with the likes of Chris Matthews and Anderson Cooper providing commentary on the daily news. BoBo knows how to do the GOP version of damage control:
- Minimize (the war is good, it was just poorly executed)
- Throw subordinate under the bus (bye bye Rumsfeld)
- Continue as before.
These snake oil salesman still think that they can get out of this with a Reagan-era housecleaning like what happened after the Iran-Contra Affair.
Poor, poor BoBo. We passed that point long ago. Though it was an amazing feat to rehabilitate a president who financed terrorists in a foreign country in blatant defiance of the U.S. and international law, Reagan didn’t sink his country into a disastrous war. Reagan didn’t spy on Americans with the NSA. Reagan didn’t doctor intelligence to get his country into said war. And Reagan, at least, was charismatic.
So conservatives are beginning to jump ship, but for all the wrong reasons, as I have written before. Peggy Noonan is disturbed not by torture and war but instead by spending. Ditto Andrew Sullivan.
Where we you the past six years, of ye of little faith? From whence does this newfound disillusionment come?
Did this moral rejects honestly look at Drinky lying his ass off about every budget he ever proposed and think, “He’s lying to everybody, sure, but he’ll eventually veto spending bills, request less money, etc.” Is their majority so profoundly demented that they think that blatant liars will stay true to their “principles?”
Nay, gentle reader. Reagan detonated the budget too, albeit with help from his democratic congress. He requested every dollar his congress appropriated and neglected to veto fat spending bills when they crossed his desk. Democrats had a majority, true, but not one strong enough to overcome a veto on the kind of party-line vote republicans have been ruling this country with for six years.
Even if the GOP really was all about fiscal conservativism would Drinky have been a good president if he had just balanced the budget? Apparently so, according to Sullivan and Noonan.
It’s too late to jump ship now, you criminals. Back to the cage with ye, Beasts!
I normally don’t comment on the most obnoxious crap from the right, but take a look. Check this one out. Ipso Loquitor, my friends. These aren’t unhinged militia members blogging from a bunker in Montana: TownHall and Newsmax are major forums for right-of-center commentary. Or how about this one from Powerline, Blog of the Year not so long ago in Time’s estimation.
Of course, it is not only lawful to reveal illegal government programs, it is the duty of all involved. But Scott isn’t concerned with the legality of the program, a blithe comfort that is not shared by his betters.
Nevertheless, you get the idea. There are those in congress and among the masses who are firmly convinced that dissent is criminal, at least when a republican is the president. Some honestly are stupid, but those who are actually informed are simply paid for. Scott knows better. So do the rest.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 12:03 AM 
