Many on Right Give Up Goal of Clinton's Ouster nytimes.com
Better let them know the tide is turning, friend.
Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said his magazine would certainly continue pressing Congress to impeach the president -- but then he mocked the improbability of his own position. "Some of us are hanging tough in our obdurate blindness to the political reality," Kristol said, with a grim laugh. "I'm like one of these Japanese soldiers after World War II. It's 1949 and I'm on some island not knowing the war is over." . . .
Kristol said there is a split between conservatives who want to go through the motions of impeachment as quickly as possible and those who intend to fight to the last, no matter the consequences.
But even some in that latter group seem a little weary. William Bennett, author of "The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals" (Free Press), sounded uncharacteristically humbled by the mystery of how it is that most Americans remain relatively undisturbed by Clinton's transgressions.
"I may have been wrong," in thinking that the public would eventually react, or would hold future presidential candidates to a higher moral standard as a result of the Clinton scandals, said Bennett, who was nursing a bad cold and sounded downright dejected.
"I'm not sure enough people care," he said. "For the first time in my adult life, I'm not in sync. I don't get it. What about all these conferences I've been invited to? I mean, values, schmalues. I don't get it."
Poor Bennett, Carville's book has moved past his on the NYT bestseller list. There's a time to preach, and a time to move on to the next battle. Word is, hearings wrap up next Friday or Saturday. One final quote from an unlikely source:
Even among those conservatives who do not seem to have lost heart entirely, there have been at least incremental acknowledgments that Clinton may well survive. Speaking specifically about the Travelgate and Filegate investigations, the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told one caller to his radio show recently that "It makes me sad to hear you" clinging to the hope that those matters might still bring Clinton down. Limbaugh urged the caller more than once to "move on."
Rush's lines are always open, Bill. I'm sure he'd be happy to hear the tide is turning. |
