The Proud Duck

Thoughts on policy, history, faith, baseball when I get around to it, waterfowl, and life in general by a junior attorney who'd much rather have Jonah Goldberg's job. Or possibly Darin Erstad's.

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Monday, June 27, 2005
 
Again, I'm behind the curve.

I sent this to Senator Harry Reid the other day, on the subject of his weeping and wailing and gnashing his teeth over the fact that Karl Rove remarked, while discussing the moveon.org/Michael Moore-style Left, that a certain species of liberal was less disposed to an aggressive response to terrorism:

"I understand you are upset at remarks by Karl Rove suggesting that "liberals",after the attacks of September 11, 2001, tended to favor less aggressivemeasures in response than conservatives.

As a broad generalization, I don't see how anyone could argue with that. I remember the liberal partners and staff of my former law firm being very much opposed to a military response to those attacks. On the other hand, not a single conservative of my acquaintance wanted anything other than the full Sherman-through-Georgia treatment not only for the terrorists proper, but for anyone who gave them an ounce of aid and comfort. Obviously, not all liberals, and certainly not all Democrats -- not all of whom are liberals, even now -- were of the Phil Donohue "let's reach out" mindset. If you weren't -- don't worry. Karl wasn't talking about you.

I do find it a little hard to take that you should demand Rove's resignation sosoon after you tried to spin the furor over Senator Durbin's outrageouscomparison of military interrogations at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, the Communistgulag, and Pol Pot as some kind of right-wing conspiracy. I find it disturbing that the Democrats' leader in the Senate can't see his way clear to give Mr.Durbin the Trent Lotting he deserves, even after his weaseling apology. (If Itried his apologizing style on my wife -- "Words can be misused ... IF you took offense" -- I'd be sleeping on the couch for a week.)

Propagandizing for the enemy is, apparently, something to ignore -- but making acommonplace general observation about genuine differences between the degrees to which liberals and conservatives favor the use of military force is grounds for firing someone. I expect partisan leaders to be partisan; that's your job. Itjust bores me when they're quite as obvious about it as you have been, and when their selective outrage is as forced as yours. Get rid of Dick Durbin, Howard Dean -- and for that matter, yourself, for calling President Bush a liar without backing it up as a gentleman would -- and then perhaps we'll talk about raising the tone of civility in Washington. I'll be donating to your opponent in the next election."
1 comments

1 Comments:

Ha! HTML illiterate me finally figured out how to get the comment tag to show up.

By Blogger Thomas, at 10:34 AM  

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