"Conservative Pundits Bailing by the Bus Load"

[Hissyspit]

Here is another one of SusanG's great diaries at DailyKos. She takes the temperature of right-wing pundits at NRO's 'The Corner' and says lately all kind of cracks in their facade of ideological homogeneity are appearing as a result of the battering from, um, the truth:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/21/124310/445

Conservative Pundits Bailing by the Busload
by SusanG
Sun Aug 21st, 2005 at 11:16:28 PDT
(From the diaries. 2,000 allies and counting dead, all for an Islamic republic in Iraq. Reality is starting to smack the elitist conservative pundits in the face -- kos)

Whenever I want to get a quick snapshot of conservative talking points, I take a quick - and I mean quick - run around the block at NRO's The Corner.

And people, it doesn't look pretty for Bush today. On this single August Sunday morning, we already can mark up one outright defection and one very, very doubting - and questioning - former Kool-Aid drinker.

First, the defection. Andy McCarthy declared today:

For what it's worth, this is where I get off the bus.

...even if I suspended disbelief for a moment and agreed that the democracy project is a worthy casus belli, I am as certain as I am that I am breathing that the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm's way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace. {Emphasis is McCarthy's.}

And Jonathan Adler quotes a bailing Professor Bainbridge, who starkly states:

"It's time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent." Adler goes squishy and mumbles: "While I am not sure I agree with his analysis, he raises questions that conservatives should address."

MORE AT LINK - ENJOY

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Perhaps medication in their earlier lives.... (not the kind that

they selfmedicated with) would have given us a "different" group of minds making decisions at the top.... time machine anyone???

[Autonomy]

2. It only took them 2+1/2 years to figure this out

Thems consurvitivs is gettin smater.

[Extend a Hand]

3. oh that's worth

a smile (even if they are damm slow learners)

:D

[dchill]

4. The right gets it right! (For once)

...the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm's way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace. - Andy McCarthy

That's as good a line as I've heard anywhere. A mantra for the left, even.

*edit for attribution

[fishnfla]

8. and the irony is: it may be a mantra for the right?

From Camp Qualls in Crawford:

"if I have to sacrifice my whole family for the sake of our country and world, other countries that want freedom, I'll do that" Mr Qualls, who visited Camp Casey to remove his son's cross from Arlington west. He has another son enlisting

I read that and figured, there's a lone voice in the freeper wilderness to be sure.

His hyperbole seems to contradict McCarthy's POV.

I dont think you can enforce Democracy by the barrel of a gun, it has to come from within.

[dchill]

16. Again, he's not just drinking Kool-Aid,

he's smoking crack. Iraqis are NOT getting freedom, they're getting theocracy - the Islamic kind. Here we get the old-fashioned telefundagelical kind. There they use guns and bombs, here we use cooperative corporate media lying whores.

[UDenver20]

12. And unlike us...

They are staking a claim that is clearly different and unique from *....

and standing by it....

how nice it must be...

[blondeatlast]

14. When McCarthy gets a concept right, he nails it, as he did there.

It's a shame he WON'T see the light. I really don't understand him; his political philosophy seems far more in tune with moderate left than the point he writes from.

[hootinholler]

5. Hmmm. Criminal Incompetence?

No, I argue the GOP is very competent at being criminal. Or, wait a minute, maybe the reason we know anything at all is evidence of their incompetence as a criminal.

So confused, but this is good news, No? At least we've agreed the word criminal applies.

-Hoot

[flpoljunkie]

6. Jonathan Adler says it well..."criminally incompetent." I would add the

word--"premeditated" criminal incompetence.

[dchill]

15. Well, there's "criminally incompetent" -

and then there's just plain "criminal" - we would do well to remember the difference; there's plenty of both to go around, but the "premeditated" is what got us to where we are today. Adler is still a con and he's softening the blow even in his honest criticism.

Anyone who still believes Bush/Cheney or believes in this mind-bogglingly ill-conceived illegal invasion is not just drinking the Kool-Aid - they're smoking crack - meaning it's stronger and much more addictive.

[flpoljunkie]

7. Guess who Weldon took the chart to in the White House, 2 weeks after 9/11?

Stephen Hadley, Condi's assistant--the same Stephen Hadley who took responsibility for the 16 words Bush used in the infamous SOTU speech in January, 2003, when he made the case for pre-emptive war in Iraq.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

REP. CURT WELDON (R) PENNSYLVANIA: Well, I think the magazines are all over the place. The facts are the facts....I was brought a chart that showed Al Qaeda cells two weeks after 9/11. I didn't study the chart. I didn't go through it and analyze all of the details. I was more interested in getting it right down to the White House...

Weldon was on Hannity and Colmes and being interview by the creepy Rich Lowry. This is from the transcript from your link to NRO's The Corner blog and the following below from a Washington Post article:

The furor over Atta began earlier this summer with a little-noticed paragraph in Weldon's book, "Countdown to Terror," which focuses on the claims of an Iranian informant that the CIA has deemed a fabricator. Weldon writes that during a meeting with Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, he presented a chart "developed in 1999" by the Able Danger program that "diagrammed the affiliations of al Qaeda and showed Mohammed Atta and the infamous Brooklyn Cell."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801751.html

[flpoljunkie]

17. Follow-up today in WaPo: Kean asking White House to come clean on Hadley

Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the now-disbanded Sept. 11 commission, called on the Bush administration yesterday to provide more information about what it knows regarding Able Danger and the Atta allegations.

Kean focused specifically on an assertion in Weldon's book about Stephen J. Hadley, then deputy director of the National Security Council. Weldon wrote that shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, he gave Hadley a 1999 Able Danger chart that "diagrammed the affiliations of al Qaeda and showed Mohammed Atta and the infamous Brooklyn Cell." Weldon repeated the allegation last week.

"At some point, somebody has to say this is true or this is not true," Kean said. "He's supposed to have a list of names of terrorists in his possession. He either does or he doesn't. . . . It's a very significant question."

The NSC press office has repeatedly declined to comment, referring questions to the Pentagon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/22/AR2005082201299.html

[Hissyspit]

9. kick-apoo joy juice

[tanyev]

10. The wheels on the bus are coming off, off, off.

[rasputin1952]

11. It took them long enough to realize they had been duped....Most of us

knew it ten minutes after the USSC put this jerk in the Drivers Seat.

Now, bush has his own self appointed supporters that have become his critics breathing down his neck...It should never have gone this far withoiut these people knowing how screwed up bush is....but I guess I will have to savor the knowledge that we were right from the beginning, and only by being crushed under the bush cabal, did others learn they can make huge mistakes.

[blondeatlast]

13. Perhaps they are up to the challenge of not having the Heritage Foundation

Press Room do their jobs for them.

Regardless, I welcome their personal dawn.