Moran, acaben, WWIV, RonK - one last time

I posted this as a reply to RonK Seattle. But I think the opportunity to get satisfaction may have passed, and this has some things I wanted to say generally so I'm posting it here. This is my last diary entry on the Hon. Jim Moran.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thank you for replying, RonK, and I will apologize at least to the DailyKos community for my uncharacteristicly choleric outburst. I will not apologize to you, because I dispute every point you make here and, FWIW, feel wronged by your ill-considered rating. I gather I am not alone in disliking you. Several points:

Moran is my Congressman, and, I take it, not yours. Given that, I am no fan of his - his ethical challenges are quite well known (though coals to Newscastle in this Congress) and I generally see him as part of the sorry Northeastern Corridor "Enron Democrats" that William Greider described so well recently in The Nation. At any rate, this is not a dilettantish interest on my part.

My "Unpaid(?) Political Announcement" term was an annoyed jape at acaben's insulting smarminess and obviously not a serious accusation. Even so scabrous a debater as you must have known that secretly, and your feigned outrage is unconvincing.

As I made clear, my primary issue here with acaben is that he has annoyed me - and others - with his smarmy, unargued dismissal of Moran, always followed excitedly by something like "fortunately VA8 Democrats now have Andy Rosenberg to vote for!!" I've met Mr. Rosenberg, and he does seem presentable but I'd like to know more about why exactly Moran should be dumped for him, and be told about it in something other than a car salesman-like pitch.

If you read the original thread, you would see that Paleo raised the AIPAC issue, for which I commended him but was happy to see acaben asserting that Rosenberg has accepted no PAC money. If true, it speaks well of him and I will be happy to look further into his campaign. Nevertheless, it is disingenuous - transparently and offensively so - to pretend that Moran's Iraq remarks last year are not the occasion for this primary challenge. That was said openly in VA Democratic circles within days of the Washington Post story that got this out. Rosenberg's Likudish position re Israel/palestine was remarked by another commenter as well.

Your impassioned defense of this annoying person is remarkable, if misplaced, but I believe much greatar issues are raised by the attempt, PAC money or no, to punish Moran for his characteristically clumsy speaking of the unspeakable. Any honest person who has followed this Iraq travesty closely knows that Karl Rove came up with this now in order to, among other things, split the Democrats fatally as Vietnam did in 1968. I happen to believe that the hoary chasm between foreign and domestic policy has closed tightly and we can no longer pretend that it doesn't matter what we collectively do in other nations. I also, as I made clear in another comment, have friends on both sides - again, this is not a dilettantish matter for me - and specifically recognize the emotional pressures applied to American Jews, as Leon Wieseltier described in the TNR article I mentioned. You might have addressed these issues rather than defending someone who doesn't deserve it from something that I didn't in fact do to him.