Salon: Noonan Got Socked by Schiavo Mess

[BurtWorm]

Peggy Noonan's Schiavo mess

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html


A key element of Noonan’s strategy, besides the fact that it would please the GOP’s pro-life base, was her insistence that the maneuver was completely risk-free because there was "just about no one" on the other side to oppose Republicans -- nobody who supported Michael Schiavo, the “disaffected husband.” No one, that is, accept for "the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he's drawn to his side." According to Noonan, "Politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o." Better yet: "Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you." In other words, a lay-up for Republicans.

What a difference a week makes. With Congress and President Bush following Noonan’s advice almost to the letter -- issuing novel subpoenas, crafting last-minute legislation and trying to set all sorts of legal precedence -- polls indicate that the vast majority of Americans are in fact "mad" at Congress and Bush for intervening. They’ve sided with the "strange-o," the allegedly "disaffected husband," and not with Noonan’s army of "serious people." How bad is it for Republicans? According to Wednesday’s CBS poll, job approval ratings for both the Republican Congress as well as Bush hit new lows this week.

So, in this week’s column does Noonan concede her errors, acknowledge she misread the mood of the country and apologize to Republican leaders for her monumentally wrong-headed political strategy? No. First, she rearranges the facts of the Schiavo legal battle to her liking. For instance, Noonan insists Terri’s "husband, and only her husband," said she would not want to live on life support. That’s simply not true. And either Noonan has not bothered to read the court records, or she’s comfortable ignoring adjudicated facts. Then Noonan launches into vicious personal attacks against anyone who disagrees with her radical, pro-life minority agenda. (Noonan may be stridently pro-life, but don’t bother looking for binders full of her anti-death penalty columns. They do not exist.) She belittles her opponents' "bizarre passion" for death and warns they are paving "the low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz."


The surreal part is that the targets of Noonan’s acid barbs (i.e. the "unstable," "unhinged," "red-fanged and ravenous" tube-pullers) include a majority of self-described "conservative Republicans" and "white evangelicals." According to the CBS and ABC polls, strong majorities in both of those groups agree that Congress and Bush were wrong to intervene in the Schiavo case. On this issue, Noonan has swum so far out of the mainstream that she can no longer see the Republican base.

-- Eric Boehlert

[paineinthearse]

1. Peggy Noonan bio

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/bio.html





Peggy Noonan


Peggy Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. She is also a contributing editor of Time magazine and Good Housekeeping, a member of the board of the Manhattan Institute and author, most recently, of "A Heart, A Cross, And A Flag: America Today," (Wall Street Journal Books), a collection of her OpinionJournal essays. Ms. Noonan was special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. In 1988 she was chief speechwriter for Vice President George Bush as he ran for the presidency. Her first book, "What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era," was published in 1990. She is also author of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" (1994), "On Speaking Well" (1998), and "The Case Against Hillary Clinton" (2000) and "When Character Was King" (2001).

Before entering the Reagan White House, she was a producer at CBS News in New York, where she wrote and produced Dan Rather's daily radio commentary. She also wrote television news specials for CBS News. In 1978 and 1979 she was an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University. Ms. Noonan lives in New York.

[harrison]

2. I have sporadically read Ms. Noonan's columns over the

years. I just read her bio. All I can say is that it only reinforces my own experience: meritocracy doesn't exist. She worked for CBS. She worked for Reagan. She taught at NYU. Now, she does opinions for the WSJ. Based on her work, how did she get these gigs?

I see no great originality in her writing, nor do I glean great insight from her opinions.

In short, what is all the fuss about this woman?

There is no there, there.

[damntexdem]

3. Well, maybe she can't see the Republican base, but they still are ...

base, that is.

[paineinthearse]

4. See related Nashua Advocate editorial

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3352977#