If you've followed Pat Buchanan over the past few years, you know he's been against the Iraq War from the start, an old-fashioned "conservative" disdainful of foreign adventures. The neocons, predictably, don't like him, so now Buchanan describes Bill Kristol snarling the praises of John Kerry:
Ranking his political preferences, Kristol added, "I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan....If you read the last few issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives."
Yes, it does. But as John Kerry backs partial birth abortion, quotas, raising taxes, homosexual unions, liberals on the Supreme Court and has a voting record to the left of Teddy Kennedy, how can Kristol prefer him to other conservatives? Answer: War and Israel.
Like Kristol, Kerry wants more U.S. troops sent to Iraq where they can advance the neocons' project for empire. And at a fund-raiser in Juno Beach, Fla., Kerry declared eternal fealty to Israel: "I have a 100 percent record - not a 99, a 100 percent record - of sustaining the special relationship and friendship that we have with Israel."
Kristol's warning that the neocons could break with the Right and go to Kerry is an admission of what many conservatives have long argued. To neocons, Israel comes first, second, and third, conservative principles be damned.
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=2371
The ironies are a bit thick, huh? Kristol goes on to recommend that W "fire" both Powell (too dovish) and Rumsfeld (won't up the Iraq troop levels--unlike new neocon darling KERRY, who will). Kristol has no problem tossing out the Republican bathwater, so long as Dem hawks let him keep the Iraqi (tar)baby. Buchanan can't help being impressed with the completeness of the neocons' opporunism, since Powell and especially Rummy have been longtime heroes/fellow travelers with the neocons.
This is why peaceniks like me have long held a special fury toward the "liberal hawk" wing of the Dems--Biden, Feinstein, Hillary, Lieberman, Kerry, etc.
My question is, what will the Dem hawks do when the likes of Kristol, Perle and Krauthammer start serenading them? Lieberman will doubtless throw a few roses from his balcony, but will Kerry hurl some rotten eggs their way? Or will he attempt to form a consensus with these respected opinion-makers?
One thing's for sure: Kerry won't tell them to go to hell and take their policies with them, since he's plenty keen on most of their policies. He just wants more UN votes and fewer forged documents.