Michael Tomasky over at The American Prospect sums up in a sentence what I've been thinking regarding Karl Rove's apologists.
But in the meantime, it’s a pathetic thing to watch supposedly respectable conservative intellectuals act like they’re running for the editorship of Pravda in 1921.
Tomasky mentions the primates over at National Review Online. He's right that this crew has been among the worst of the apologists. Worst because The National Review is supposed to be a serious magazine. More serious than Fox News, and certainly more serious than websites like those run by Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Powerline, etc. But I guess this is what happens when you turn the keys over to adolescents like Jonah Goldberg and Rich Lowry.
Posted by mike at July 19, 2005 04:44 PMWell, you didn't make this one easy. I am accustomed now to there not being an actual arguement or consideration of facts, but the extra step of having no link to the article makes it pretty difficult to know what the charge is.
Point one: in the past I have pointed out that it takes guts for liberals to blithly throw around charges like gulag (given their clear history of defending or denying the gulags while they were in operation). Let's add Pravda to the list.
I found the article. Cool. Tomasky points out that Rove was interested in discrediting Joseph Wilson. Stunning. A political party operative interested in discrediting a member of the other party. My God, will Washington survive?
Skipping ahead to Mike's point: Tomasky is shocked, shocked that no Republicans have acknowledged that Rove's conversation may have been problematic. A totally fair point. How many Democrats have acknowledged that the conversation may have been innocuous?
He then expresses disappointment that the folks at National Review have "turn[ed] somersaults trying to prove that Cooper’s language may have meant this and not that". Good point. We shouldn't look at the possibility that there are differing interpretations of what something meant.
But what is the substance of NRs apologetics? Who knows? Not Tomasky, not Tolles. To look at what is actually being argued is, of course, not the point. One only needs outrage that the evil Karl Rove is being defended.
Posted by: Max Power on July 20, 2005 06:56 PM