THOSE MARGINAL REPUBLICANS….Matt Yglesias says Bill Kristol is full of shit. Matt bases this on the same paragraph that I also picked out as crap when I first read his latest article in the Weekly Standard:
Parts of the Republican party, and of the conservative movement, fell into a similar trap in the late 1990s, hating Bill Clinton more than Slobodan Milosevic. But this wing of the GOP and conservatism lost in an intra-party and intra-movement struggle, and has now been marginalized?Pat Buchanan is no longer a Republican, and his magazine these days makes common cause with Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal.
Pat Buchanan has been a marginal figure in the Republican party (and out of it) for more than decade. The foaming-at-the-mouth Clinton haters, on the other hand, are still with us, and worse than ever. I mean, Kristol does occasionally read best-selling authors Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, and Sean Hannity, doesn’t he? And surely he sometimes listens to talk show superstars Rush Limbaugh, Oliver North, and Michael Savage. And he’s heard of the Heritage Foundation and the Scaife Foundation, right?
Oh, and did I mention Tom DeLay and Dan Burton? No? Consider them mentioned.
Kristol actually has a point to make about the dangers of falling so deeply into wild-eyed hatred mode that it actually hurts your cause. But when he implies that Clinton hatred ? and rabid hatred of liberals in general ? was purged from the Republican party when Pat Buchanan left ? well, it is to laugh.
UPDATE: Several months ago Max Sawicky recommended that anytime a liberal criticizes a liberal, we should do penance by criticizing at least four conservatives. So, since I spent the weekend preaching moderation, I’m going to make up for it and concentrate on red meat for the rest of the day. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
