It’s interesting to me that the only way you can have credibility as an opponent of modern McCarthyism is to have spent years engaging in a frivolous and destructive witch hunt against a Democratic president or editing a frivolous and destructive weekly magazine. I say this with all due respect to Andrew Sullivan and Ken Starr, whose public opposition to Cheneyism I commend.
But if it weren’t for the Lewinsky case and Sully’s fifth column episode, these guys would just be shrill hippies, the same as you and me.
dmsilev
There’s only one chair? I thought there was a whole endowed school.
-dms
Zifnab25
This is a debate between serious and sophisticated adults. If you want to discuss politics, go do it at the kids table. Until you’ve voted Republican, you simply aren’t a serious person.
John Arbuthnot Fisher
If you had told me in 1998 that Ken Starr would be considered in any respect a “reasonable” Republican in 2010, I would have thought you were effing crazy. It’s amazing to remember that we used to fight about what we were going to do with our unlimited silicon dollars.
It’s also amazing that people like Ken Starr and Newt Gingrich have any relevance, period. It’s not like anyone is calling up Jim Wright or Tom Foley or Dick Gephardt to see what they think about anything.
Robin G
Ken Starr can say all he wants, he’s still a douche. He always was a douche, and he always will be a douche.
Bill E Pilgrim
Only Starr could go to China.
Sort of thing. I guess.
Everyone is criticizing this one, it’s just that those two, especially Starr, make the Beltwingers sit up and take notice.
Now if we can get some other right wing icon to criticize Starr the same way, we’re in business. A round robin.
beltane
The Cheneys are held in such high esteem by our whorish and power-worshiping media that only another hero of the right has a chance of getting through to them. I’m afraid they’ve stopped listening to Sully years ago, but as persecutor-in-chief to the Clenis, Ken Starr will always get the attention of these beltway douchebags.
williamc
I was trying to explain this to one of my friends last night about David Brooks.
The only reason that anyone in the MSM takes him seriously when he praises the President now is that he spent the entire last decade being a twit-in-love with GWB and cheerleading every idiotic thing those bastards did.
Its like they only care about pundit’s opinions if they are conservatives who occasionally deviate from the standard line of crazy.
rootless-e
at every stage of the putsch, some will become squeamish.
The Grand Panjandrum
And the only way to have credibility among the modern day McCarthyites is to go all Eric Massa on their asses. Stay tuned he’s on Glenn Beck tonight for the full 5 pm hour. Can’t wait to see how this lights up Memeorandum tomorrow morning.
NobodySpecial
Um, no.
That’s like saying Colin Powell is now a good guy. They are not good guys by any stretch of any imagination. They’ve merely hit their personal level of upchuck on outright evil.
DougJ
@NobodySpecial:
I don’t mean that they would actually be hippies, just that they would be treated as such. I thought the word “shrill” gave that away.
NobodySpecial
@DougJ:
On this blog? ‘Shrill’ has a different meaning.
Darkmoth
@williamc:
This.
If we could somehow convince Krauthammer to write as a Progressive, he’d single-handedly change the face of political reporting. We’d have the CNN asking “but isn’t income inequity the NUMBER ONE problem in America?”.
Fuck it, everyone has a price. Where are Soro’s billions when you need them??
Ash Can
@The Grand Panjandrum: Massa’s going to be on Beck’s show? How many international agreements on nonproliferation of weapons-grade insanity is that going to contravene?
demo woman
@Ash Can: Are you going to volunteer to listen? Since Doug campaigned for him, maybe he will live blog the episode.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Darkmoth:
I’d like Soros to set-up a dummy corp that hires Frank Luntz to do research on an exclusive, non-compete contract. I’m so sick of this scumbag poll-testing shit like “death panels” and then feeding it to assholes on the right.
Darkmoth
@beltane:
It’s not esteem as much as fear, I think. I will never forget when Mika Brzezinski mildly criticized Cheney, only to recieve a box of cupcakes the next day – from the Cheneys – because she had been “a little cranky”. Pretending to be unaware of the mortal insult she just recieved on national TV, Mika dug in.
The Cheneys are always ready to go to war, with anyone, at any time. They’re very good at it – anyone remember Lynn Cheney completely dominating Blitzer? I think to a certain degree this makes the MSM treat them with kid gloves.
Darkmoth
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Perfect.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I just love it when asshats like Starr and Sullivan have their Lee Atwater “come to jeebus” moment.
I’m not christian so I don’t automatically forgive transgressions such as theirs. People and people like them are a main reason why our politics are the way the are RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
Both could get run over by a truck tomorrow and I wouldn’t shed a tear for either of them. I’ll take my chances with karmic payback for that sentiment.
Ash Can
@demo woman:
I’d love to, but I’ve already made plans to bury myself neck-deep in the back yard and have the neighbor repeatedly run over my head on his riding mower.
Dollared
Doug,
Great post. This is the flip side of Lanny Davis saying anything Lanny Davis says. He once worked for the Clintons, so anything he says is newsworthy because it undermines everything they stand for.
In the NY-DC corridor, it’s man bites dog or it’s nuthin’. 24/7.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@rootless-e:
Direct, concise, on-target.
I like your style.
MattF
I think a piece of the explanation is that both Sullivan and Starr (more or less unintentionally, in both cases) slipped out of the winger echo chamber. They thought they were in the real world, it turned out they weren’t. Ooopsie.
I agree, it’s not a point in their favor that they were once deeply deluded, and I agree that their multi-step recovery has a ways to go… but still, that spade really is a fucking shovel, and the more people who recognize that, the better.
Bob L
You ever get the feeling Cheney is deliberate trying to go down in history as the most evilest American politician ever? So far he’s managed to make McCarthy and Nixon come across as saints. I really have problems thinking of a bigger dick than Cheney in US history.
kay
Liz Cheney and William Kristol are cowards. They don’t even have the spine to stick with a disgusting attack.
They’re both weaseling out of responsibility for this, and blatantly lying about their intent.
I wasn’t sure she was a liar, but I am now. Just like daddy.
ChrisB
@Bob L: I’d nominate Andrew Jackson.
Mumphrey
I don’t know if anybody else saw this today, but there was a truly loathesome piece of shit in the Washington Post this morning that a slimy little shit named Marc Thiessen wrote, telling us that what Cheney and Kristol are doing isn’t McCarthyism. He made the point that we’d want to know if mob lawyers were prosecuting gangsters for the Justice Department, and then said that having lawyers who once represented terrorist suspects working at the Justice Department was the same thing. It made me seethe to read that. I mean, when he said “mob lawyers”, he was clearly implying the kind of crooked lawyer who’s bought by the mob, and only works for the mob. These lawyers Cheney, et al., are smearing are lawyers who might have represented some terrorist suspects, but they aren’t on al qaeda’s payroll. Some, I believe, were appointed to represent these people. Another difference is that while “mob lawyers” represent defendants who, in most cases, prosecutors have been investigating for years, and against whom they have mounds of evidence and good cases, a lot of these “terrorists” weren’t even terrorists. Some were just guys who pissed off a neighbor or somebody, who then turned them in to the U.S. army as “terrorists” as revenge. I mean, the Supreme Court of the U.S. has ordered some of these “terrorists” set free, for fuck’s sake. It isn’t often that I feel like I’d like to beat somebody to death with a baseball bat, but this Thiessen creep really brought out some unhealthy and antisocial urges in me. Eugene Robinson had a piece on the same page, tearing his “argument” down, but I’d really rather have watched Robinson kick Thiessen in the balls until he (Thiessen) died. I don’t like feeling this way; this is just another reason I hate these neoconservative sociopathic sadists. And, of course the Washington Post, which was once a good newspaper, gave this shit space to write this evil, quasi-fascist screed.