Wednesday July 19, 2006
COME BACK, IDIOTS! Strange days indeed on the "Kill 'em all, let Mom sort my socks" Right.
Billy Kristol is going "Vrrrrow, Vrrrrow, rat-tat-tat-tat" and dive-bombing his shampoo and conditioner bottles in the tub; Roger L. Simon is telling the terrified Lebanese citizens to take their bombing like men -- "Starbucks can come later, if you really think you need it" (?!? -- RE); and this guy cheerfully compares the new Mideast war to a plucky little sailor (Israel) beating the shit out a Marine (Hezbollah) -- with (one must assume) Beirut's civilians in the role of unfortunate bystanders to the brawl who are struck by the Marine's flying teeth, which for some reason are filled with high explosives. It's getting so George Fucking Will sounds almost sane.
My favorite so far is Hugh Hewitt, who asks why some conservatives have started to get cold feet about Bush's foreign policy, which Hewitt finds divinely inspired. (Hewitt calls such refuseniks "180s.") Of course he doesn't wait for input, as he is perfectly capable of answering the question himself:
In attempting to tell us what drives Bush, [Jonathan] Chait is in fact revealing what it is that drives the former supporters of the war turned defeatists and the increasingly frenzied denouncers from respectable perches like the big papers, the Council, and the weeklies: They feel disdained.
[Gregory] Djerejian , [Andrew] Sullivan, and Chait... Each wears their exclusion on their sleeve, and their bitterness is bubbling up with every column or post.
I think the disdain they feel is more imagined than real. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc haven't really got time to worry about the left behind and now embittered former supporters of the war.
Here one might ask: what kind of access and attention were these guys receiving before that has since been withheld, causing their illusion of being disdained? Did I miss Condi Rice whirling Djerejian across the dance floor in NeoCon People? Has Sullivan ever needed more peer approval than the occasional drunken midnight phone call from Christopher Hitchens doubtless still provides?
Of course not. This is pure slander, of the sort that straight-up GOP operatives like Hewitt are using more than ever, in this their degenerate phase, to warn waverers away from the path of open rebellion.
I cannot respect this, but on the theory that all God's creatures deserve respect of some sort, I can give it up for Hewitt's nerve in playing the game even further out, and suggesting a concrete plan of action for making the apostates feel the love once again:
Hand holding may, however, be necessary. It would be good if Karl Rove considered some way to at least address various members of this set.
It is summer. Set the interns to finding the 180s, and have them over to the Indian Treaty Room. Hear them out. Have the president drop by for a face-to-face...
Make sure the retired generals -- all of them, not just the vocal critics -- are in the room, and the Beinarts, Wills, Djejerians. Keep the numbers relatively small, and hold a few of them if necessary.
The stakes are too high to allow such divisions to grow unaddressed. Even if some are too far gone into opposition to be recalled, some will wake up.
What's most interesting about this plan is that, while it suggests that the dissenters be put in the same room with Bush and his crew, and thus "addressed," it does not admit any possibility that the Bush people will take any suggestions at all from their former, passionate supporters.
Hewitt seems to think all the President has to do is meet-and-greet these lost lambs, and a significant number of them will rescind their objections and get back in for the Big Win.
Were I one of these former saps, I'd have to wonder if Hewitt had always felt this much contempt for my intelligence -- even in the days when he was patting my back.