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.
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