In recent months, more and more, the National Review has faced the difficult (for them) task of realizing that the Bush Administration is incompetent and reckless. The difficulty for Republicans and Wingnuts is The National Review and its founder, William F. Buckley, are the beginnings of the Modern Conservative Movement. Buckley's book "God and Man at Yale" and his founding of National Review were truly trailblazing, even though we disagree with most of what he posited.
So when Bill Buckley writes that the Plame Leak is a very serious matter and now, more ominously for Republicans, that Iraq is lost, Republican shills and Wingnuts, and indeed, the Media, are put in a very difficult place. Because if Bill Buckley can state the obvious, they paint themselves as fools and/or knaves if they ignore it.
I have written a fair amount about what I call the New McCarthyism - the labeling of dissent as a lack of patriotism or worse. I wrote about Fred Hiatt, the Editor of the WaPo editorial page:
Cementing his place as a Bush media lackey of the first order, Fred Hiatt, the Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Post, reaches a new low - stooping to the New McCarthyism:
. . . Congress . . . pours most of its Iraq-related energy into allegations of manipulated intelligence before the war. "Those aren't irrelevant questions," says Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). "But the more they dominate the public debate, the harder it is to sustain public support for the war."
What Lieberman doesn't say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush's war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy -- to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.
Many of them understand that dwindling public support could force the United States into a self-defeating position, and that defeat in Iraq would be disastrous for the United States as well as for Mahdi and his countrymen. But the taste of political blood as Bush weakens, combined with their embarrassment at having supported the war in the first place, seems to override that understanding.
This is one of the most despicable things ever written in the Media. It disgraces WaPo that it was published by their Editorial Editor Hiatt. Oh by the way, this also explains why Lieberman will be opposed strenuously and why no qiuarter shall be given him. I wonder if he and Buckley still get along?
But it is EXACTLY this New McCarthyism that has driven truth and honesty from political discourse. It has made us shrill. The truth stares us in the face and we are to pretend it does not exist. Well, Bill Buckley said "Enough." As has some of the other elements of National Review. I discuss this on the flip.
Andrew McCarthy (The NR writer and attorney, not the Molly Ringwald co-star) is getting the dangerous habit of telling the truth. He posts today an
e-mail from a "insightful friend":
Bush put this war in terms of good and evil; right and wrong; "you're with us or with the terrorists;" and then that amazing Second Inaugural "the calling of our time." And good people want to believe in all this; and then they see a blithe (at best) attitude toward bringing an autocracy to our shores to run our ports--an autocracy that has never had democracy and seems nowhere near it; an autocracy that is one click better than Saudi Arabia on human and political rights (earns a 6 out of 7 possible worst from Freedom House; Saudi Arabia is 7; US is 1); and doesn't recognize the first and (aside from what we call Iraq) the only democracy in the Middle East (Israel). Good and right hearted people get confused by this, then, from an administration that has led them in war for all the foregoing assertions. They are right to be confused. Yes, sure, we're told UAE has been fine the past three years; but it hasn't been "fine." Regardless, what about the previous 30 years? Pakistan is an ally of some three or four years too, would people for ONE MOMENT tolerate Pakistan running our ports with the understanding that the Coast Guard and the rest of the DHS apparatus runs security nevertheless? And Pakistan is far more the democracy than UAE to boot!
McCarthy snipes at his colleague K. Lo's cite of Condi Rice's nonsense:
K-Lo, maybe the Secretary of State should make sure the memo gets circulated throughout her own Department before she starts giving advice to the media:
Secretary of State Rice: "I don't think we do the Iraqi people any good, or really that we are fair to them, in continually raising the specter that they might fall into civil war[.]"
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad: "Everything that needs to be done must be done to avoid a civil war, and I think they are keenly aware of the danger." (NYTimes)
McCarthy taking on shill Byron York:
I'm also constrained to observe that during the Lewinsky controversy, we looked with disdain on these hyper-technical legal maneuvers (like Clinton's risible attempts to create new evidentiary privileges) whose unabashed purpose was to derail the prosecution. Back then, we used to say the important public interest was to resolve whether public officials had lied and obstructed justice. Now, such maneuvers somehow seem worthy, and we are apt to find the prosecutor, rather than the defendant, to be stonewalling (as in Byron's column of yesterday, which, with due respect, is based on an elementary legal error which I hope to have more to say about today). I guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored.
And the clown Mark Levin, a despicable piece of scum, proves McCarthy right in subsequent posts.
The great divide on the Right has begun. Those with self respect and honor. And those who do not. How they are lining up is not surprising. The Limbaugh and Liars stand together. The smarter and more honorable ones separate.
The more interesting question is how much longer for the Media shills to realize the train is leaving the station? Any shred of dignity to save? In Nantucket and Georgetown, the places the Russerts, et al. care about, they are at a nadir - and it drives THEIR anger at us. We have exposed them brutally.
But what will they do?