Not sure how the Frum/Novak and Gaffney/Norquist disputes are related. The first is just a contemporary rehash of the 80's era paleo/neocon debates inside the movement.
The second is new, both in that the notion that Arab-Americans constitute a powerful domestic force worth courting is a recent development, and because the replacement of the Chinese bogeyman with the Wahhabi one is a post-9/11 turn. As for who's wrong in this one, I suspect both are, at least somewhat, but I have little sympathy for either.
Gaffney is a vicious buffoon whose "center" is little more than a fax machine and a mailing list, devoted to vilifying whoever happens to be designated as the ideological or political "enemy of the day" and to serving the corporate interests of his funders (large aerospace and defense contractors, primarily). I don't think serious types take him seriously, and in fact, in my book taking him seriously would knock someone off the list of being a serious type...<g> that's not to say, of course--as I always feel obliged to add--that on any particular issue he may not be correct, just that if he is, it's by some kind of curious happenstance rather than anything else...
tb@idon'tliketheguy,youmighthaveguessed.com |
