Category: The Dish

More photographic embarrassment?

"[T]he fact is that Lieberman is one of the most, perhaps the most, pro-Bush Democrats in Washington, in one of the most liberal states, and he only lost by a whisker. I don’t think other Democrats are going to look at Lieberman and say "there but for the grace of God go I." ‚ÄîJon Chait, TNR.

Jason Zengerle reads the tea-leaves. Juicy exit poll data here.
 

For one Democratic reader, this primary was the last straw:

You ask if anyone is crying over Lieberman’s defeat. I am not crying, but I am leaving the Democratic Party. Here’s why:

1) Unlike your intimation, he has been critical of the war’s implementation. Has he been brashly partisan? No. Has he suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome? No. The Dems now think he is no longer qualified to be in the party that he almost brought to 2000 presidential victory.

2) He is for Dems like me socially tolerant and liberal while actively pro-defense. Now the Dems are going to retreat into a repeat of Vietnam — pull the troops out, let a massacre happen in Iraq, and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. The party no longer speaks for Dems like me who want a strong defense abroad with a dose of libertarianism in social issues at home.

3) The Dems chose (again) to run a wealthy scion who can self-finance. I thought the Republicans were the party of privilege, wealth, and exclusion. Apparently, running a wealthy WASP heir against a working-class Jewish guy is OK as long it is in the Dems primary. Pathetic.

4) Lieberman did NOT say criticism of the president was unpatriotic. He meant that the constant partisan bickering, smears, etc. were eroding the president’s standing and that is dangerous. It started under Clinton by the Republicans, but the Dems have gotten pretty good at it, too.

The Dems as a party have chosen to reject someone who works across the aisle. Lieberman is not perfect; no one is. But this was a vote by Dems and the party for more partisan rancor.

Here’s a broadside against the current National Review, from the perspective of one who remembers the old days of Buckley conservatism ‚Äî a place where conversation was as common as lecturing, where questions were as welcome as answers, where idiosyncrasy and intellectual curiosity were treasures, not threats to some smelly series of orthodoxies. Money quote:

[F]or all his gifts of insight and expression, not to mention his hierarchical dominance, Bill [Buckley] was always factually hungry and intellectually humble. He rarely imposed his view at the outset of discussion, preferring to hear from others before refining and declaring his own position. In the dialectic of the magazine, he rarely advanced thesis or counterposed antithesis. His natural mode was synthesis. That is, while he may have been uncomfortable watching James Burnham and Frank Meyer batter each other — and their showdowns in my own staff days could turn into draining Borg-McEnroe five-setters — he was happy to learn from them.

As the dinners evolved, then, they were rarely the occasion for issuing encyclicals in matters of conservative faith and almost always a convocation of the likeminded in pursuit of fresh doctrine. [My italics]

The author ‚Äî a longtime NR alum and board member ‚Äî opposed the Iraq war on the grounds of insufficient evidence of WMDs. I didn’t. I was part of the groupthink problem back then and too susceptible, in the wake of 9/11, to putting skepticism aside. Which brings to mind another sentence in the piece:

From time to time I have reminded NR editors that conservatism means that it’s never too late to say you’re sorry.

Sorry again. But the war against Islamist terror is real. And saying sorry for past misjudgments doesn’t mean denying the real danger that still exists, or being excused from coming up with new ideas and strategies for victory.

(My own contribution to the debate about the meaning of conservatism can be pre-ordered here.)

Give Max Boot points for persisting in coming up with new strategies and ideas. Heaven knows we need some kind of drastically less ambitious but not disastrous damage control.

No, I don’t have a crystal ball, but Dick Morris just predicted a Lieberman renaissance. That can’t be good. All we need is a Johnny Apple profile, and Joe’s burnt toast. I do agree with Morris, though, that Gore’s chances of the nomination just increased – because his spineless former veep candidate just lost. The ironies deepen.

It will be tempting to believe that Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut primary means something profound about the future of the war or the future of the Democrats. It may indeed mark a turning point in the public’s patience with the president’s war-management, but we’ll have to wait till November to confirm that more generally. The primary defeat wasn’t a rout, after all. And Lieberman, even among Democrats, was a special case. Hawkish Democrats, like Clinton, have managed to maintain support for the war against Islamist terror, while criticizing the president’s staggering ineptness. Lieberman seemed unable to do this. He appeared more interested in becoming Rumsfeld’s successor than in getting re-elected in blue-state Connecticut. And it’s worth recalling: many Republicans have been more critical of the Bush administration’s war decisions than Lieberman. Lieberman is to George Will’s and Bill Buckley’s and Chuck Hagel’s and Bill Kristol’s right on this. His position that any criticism of a president is inappropriate in wartime is also simply Hewittian in its proneness. At least that’s my instant response to his political demise as a Democrat. I’m not crying any tears. Do you know anyone who is?

(Photo: Bob Falcetti/Getty.)

Ann Coulter calls Al Gore "a total fag" on MSNBC. What do you think the impact would be if she called a public figure a "nigger" or a "kike"? So why the double standard?

"Saint Mel. That’s what he is in the eyes of millions of Americans. But for some, he‚Äôs Satan. Leon Wieseltier, the big fan of the Catholic-bashing writer Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, labels the movie a ‘sacred snuff film.’ Ex-Catholics like Maureen Dowd not only mistake the sacred for the profane, they think the film engenders intolerance when, in fact, the intolerance has come almost exclusively from the movie‚Äôs most vociferous critics.
But this is good — the pus has come to the surface. Now we can get on with the real debate: should the culture continue its celebration of self-indulgence or repair to a culture of restraint? If the latter is to be achieved, believing Christians, Jews and Muslims will have to join together to defeat those whose concept of liberty is pure libertinism.
Already, left-wing censors in Hollywood are out to get Mel. They think they can stop him. But it’s too late for the blacklisters to win. Nothing can stop the public from rallying around Saint Mel," Catholic League president, Bill Donahue, February 26, 2004. Saint Mel.