Category: The Dish

The Esoteric NIE Spin

Well, you heard Hadley, but some of these guys are Straussians, so the real neocon spin is relayed by Cliff May:

This assessment was strongly influenced by two hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials who oversaw it, both former State officials who fought tooth and nail against Bush WMD policies, especially Iran.

That’s how Ledeen and NPod will see it, methinks.

Huckabee, Obama, “Right” and “Left”

Huckabeestephaniekuykendalgetty

Frank Rich is right to note that Obama is a far more formidable candidate in a general election than Hillary Clinton; and that the old-guard GOP elite is desperately hoping to run against her next year. The remarkable flip-side to this is the respect for Obama on the right of center – and burgeoning support among Independents:

Despite the thuggish name-calling of a few right-wing die-hards (e.g., Rush Limbaugh mocking “Barack Hussein Odumbo”), the dirty secret of a number of conservatives is that they are disarmed by Mr. Obama even though they know his record is more liberal than Mrs. Clinton’s.

The drumbeat of approval has been remarkably steady. Last year Mark McKinnon, a top adviser to both the 2000 and 2004 Bush campaigns, admiringly called Mr. Obama “a walking, talking hope machine” who “may reshape American politics.” Andrew Ferguson devoted pages in The Weekly Standard to raving about “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama’s memoir, before dismissing its political sequel, “The Audacity of Hope.” Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, keeps trying to write anti-Obama articles but they’re so mild that they never really contradict his judgment of a year ago that the senator from Illinois “is the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement.” Even Tom Tancredo, the most virulent immigration demagogue of the G.O.P. presidential field, has spoken warmly of Mr. Obama.

The key is that the old red-blue, right-left boomer paradigm is fading; Obama offers exhausted Republicans a way out: a Democrat they can vote for. Many do not actually like the party they have become, and want to move forward into a less nasty, cramped and vicious direction. That’s why Huckabee is rising too.

What do they have in common? Huckabee is a conservative whose character appeals to liberals; Obama is a liberal whose temperament appeals to conservatives. Both represent a deep desire to get past the hideous, nasty polarization of the last few years. Obama doesn’t despise conservatives the way Clinton does. Huckabee doesn’t repel Democrats the way Giuliani and Romney do.

How about an Obama-Huckabee general election? It could happen. It’s what this country wants: "Goodbye To All That."

Obamascottmorgangetty

(Photos: Huckabee by Stephanie Kuykendal/AFP/Getty. Obama by Scott Morgan/Getty.)

The Unraveling Of Rudy

"He didn’t want anybody to know what he was doing. That’s the truth. I don’t care about his personal life – it’s not shocking to me that he wanted to visit his girlfriend. The part that’s disturbing to me is that my organization or any government organization could be used to conceal from the public how their money was being spent… At first, I thought it was humorous. I just couldn’t believe anybody would do this. After that, I was sort of sick about it," – Brendan Sexton, who chaired the NYC Procurement Policy Board in 2000. (Hat tip: Steve Benen.)

When Did Lopez Know?

In her latest post to address the concerns about her unintentionally publishing fabrications by W. Thomas Smith Jr, National Review Online’s Kathryn-Jean Lopez writes, rather broadly:

And for the record: Questions were brought to my attention in November and we addressed them in November.

So they were raised November 29 and she addressed them November 30? Or November 1 and November 30? Since the fact in question – an alleged swarm of 5,000 Hezbollah militia members – is not that hard to rebut, I assume it came late in the month. But Mitchell Prothero emailed me to say that this was brought to Lopez’s attention "more than six weeks ago." I guess this can be cleared up by a few stored emails – and the difference between, say, four weeks ago and six weeks ago is not that big a deal. But it sure isn’t an "immediate" response as some bloggers, i.e. Michelle Malkin, have asserted in NRO’s defense. So when exactly was Lopez first informed of the accusations; and did she post a retraction only after Tom Edsall called to ask about the matter? Meanwhile:

We are taking a look at the Smith archive and will give you a full assessment in the coming days because we owe that to our readers.

Developing … If you’ve been having a life this weekend, the following posts can catch you up on the story that has snowballed over the weekend: here’s a summary of the first piece of news; here’s Edsall’s follow-up; here’s Prothero’s email.

“They knew his work was crap more than 6 weeks ago” II

Mitchell Prothero, a Beirut photo-journalist, says here that Kathryn-Jean Lopez was informed of the inaccuracies in W. Thomas Smith Jr’s "reporting" from Lebanon more than six weeks ago and did nothing about it. Greenwald now has the same account from Prothero and Chris Allbritton. The late-Friday Lopez and Smith posts therefore occurred

only once a reporter began calling around to ask about the brewing scandal. Such foot-dragging behavior in the face of outright fabrications published by their magazine is the opposite of a forthright and honest retraction.

Indeed, as someone might say. Unlike Beauchamp, who was never employed paid as a blogger by TNR, W. Thomas Smith Jr still writes a blog for NRO.