Sane conservatives!
They're out there. They really are out there, somewhere. And they seem to be regaining their voice. Here's one, Rod Dreher (thanks to Sullivan):
Watching the school-speech insanity blow up on the right, a friend who has been deeply involved for decades at the top of Republican politics, e-mailed to say that she was done. The conservative movement is hurtling off a cliff – and she was bailing out.And concludes:
Where can those who wish to think and debate clearly about a serious politics of the right go? The degenerate form of populism now dominant on the right loves to praise "freedom" – but it has no use for freedom of thought, or thinking much at all. In turn, increasing numbers of thoughtful conservatives have no use for it.
Though what their options are right now seems a bit dim to me. The Republican Party? The Democrats? Non-involvement or a third party?
I think they are stuck with the Repubs, which means a long tough slog to regain the levers of power.
oh, well.
.
Labels: death doom and destruction, political dirt, politics, Republicans
posted by Clemens @ 12:58 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Yeah, Beck is insane, but reading things like this makes me wonder why Dreher and similar authors (a) don't point instead to sane conservative authors, of which there are quite a few, and (b) don't point out that this same stuff occurred on the left, in greater depth, during the Bush years.
For example, although Van Jones got the worst of it, Howard Dean entertained on national TV the truther conspiracy as a theory that should be looked at, which might help explain why something like 1/3 of registered Democrats believed it as of 1 or 2 years ago.
And rough, offensive language regarding conservatives and right-leaning politicians is par for the course in left-leaning circles. The only reason they don't consider it offensive is because they consider it "normal".
Example: a liberal officemate of mine was complaining that some Republicans labeled people like him as "unpatriotic". I pointed out that, similarly, some Democrats label Republicans as uncaring about children. (Jack Kemp, before he died.) My officemate's response was, "Well, if the shoe fits…"
My point isn't to whitewash one side, merely to say that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
I don't agree with your initial observation. That is the conclusion I hold having watched it all as you did. There is something new and disturbing here. No amount of piling up examples will convince you of that nor me of your point. At least not as you have presented it here.
Here's the whole Dean quote which seems to have originally been on radio, the Diane Rehm show on NPR.
"I don't know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I've heard so far, which is nothing more than a theory, I can't—think it can't be proved, is that he [Buch] was warned ahead of time [about 9/11] by the Saudis. Now, who knows what the real situation is, but the trouble is that by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and then eventually they get repeated as fact. So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the clear, the key information that needs to go to the Kean commission."
It is a sloppy way to make whatever point he is making, but insofar as he is saying that there is a theory that the president had been warned about 9/11 it is at worst a half truth. Members of the intelligence community had been telling the administration that there was a high liklihood of a major terrorist attack soon. The admin ignored this and was less than forthcoming about it.
that much has been documented. Not sure about the stuff about the Saudis - probably nonsense. That is the way I see what Dean is ineptly trying to say.
Even if I were to stipulate that you have the facts right it is still a remarkably weak argument. It is from the sandbox theory of politics: Tommy hit me! Well Johnny hit me first. Unless I am vested in thinking of the "left" as somehow "my side" the only fair response is "So?" It seems to start the discussion with a statement to the effect that the Right is no better than the Left and that the Right is content to take the Left's bad behavior as a role model. It that is your stance I will be happy to second it.
You are right though about the sane conservatives - but can't they speak for themselves? I can tick off a few from fuzzy memory: Kathleen Parker, Dreher, David Frum, David Gergon, David Brooks, Bruce Bartlett, perhaps Gerson. You could probably expand the list somewhat. I would include Sullivan though he is such a Brit style Burkean he has no point of contact with the American right as far as I can see.
They all seem to have one thing in common. They have all said pretty much the same thing as Dreher. They seem to be genuinely worried, even scared, of something happening within the conservative movement.
For some reason it doesn't seem to bother you. But it bothers me.
It seems to start the discussion with a statement to the effect that the Right is no better than the Left and that the Right is content to take the Left's bad behavior as a role model. It that is your stance I will be happy to second it.
Sort of. My stance is actually that the insane Right is no worse than the insane left, while the "sane" right is far less accomodating of the fringe than the "sane" left.
Returning to the Dean example, you didn't see much fretting on the left about what the Chair of the Democratic Party said, even though it's much more common among the Democratic party than the birther movement is among Republicans.
If you disagree, point to all the hand-wringing comparable to what Dreher, Frum, et al. are doing? My point is that the fact that "sane" Right is wringing its hands is a good sign, and the fact that the "sane" Left did not wring its hands, but fanned the flames, is a bad sign.
I'd agree that the Bush administration knew a terrorist attack of some sort was in the works. But the idea that they knew in advance the day, time, and place, and did nothing even though they had aciotable intelligence—precisely the contention of the "truther" crowd—is on a completely different scale. What precisely should they have done? As I recall, the most damning charges were made by Richard Clarke, but even he copmlained that it was a matter of failing to pursue a certain strategy (which the Clinton administration had also held back on), not of failing to act on clear, specific intelligence.
But let's move to another example. Over the last week and a half, the Left—not the fringe Left, but nearly the entire Left—has been worked up over the "overwhelming" majority of opposition to the president's health care proposals being due to racism. To indicate how this is mainstream and not fringe, the word I quote comes from an ex-President who is generally revered on the Left. Even "sane" Democrats, exemplified by Washington Post columnists Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne, spend their time not hand-wringing but trying to find a way to justify what the man said. Contrast that to Dreher, Frum, or for that matter NRO's blistering editorial against the birthers.
Actually Jack, I'd really have to disagree with you on this. What you are calling a "truther conspiracy" is simple fact -- the Bush administration actually ended daily meetings that other presidents had insisted on to asses terrorist threats and share information between departments. They failed to take the threat of terrorism seriously before 9/11. This is based not on some fringe group, but on the words of long-serving government experts like Richard Clarke. Unless you are going to redefine the fringe left to include someone who worked as a terrorism expert for Ronald Regan and the first Bush administration, your attempt to equate "truthers" with "birthers" just doesn't work.
Maire, what you are describing is distinctly different from what Howard Dean said. If you and Clemens seriously want to state that what Dean says is at worst a "half truth", but Dean is nevertheless a complete liar.
Even the president found it distasteful enough to dismiss Van Jones on account of this, and I credit him for it.
Post a Comment
<< Home