Sure, Neocon. You explained all about guileless Paula Jones and her simple litigators, and the subtle distinction between hating Clinton and despising him. Your positions are all so well thought out and articulate. I liked the bit about Dan Quayle saying stupid things because he was tired. No doubt from the day's round of golf. As long as Bill Kristol was pulling the strings in the background, President Quayle would be cool, right? You're tireless, of course, plenty of posts in the middle of the night. I used to be derided for the occasional late night post by your civil buddies here, but you're different.
I appreciate your little lecture on truth and fairness. Like, Paula Jones's "truth" versus the Arkansas troopers "truth" planted with Brock. All in search of a larger "truth" of course. Also your nice explanation of the platonic ideal of lying for "statescraft", as in Iran-contra, versus lying about ugly little personal matters.
I'm glad you've found such a convivial home among the hateful lifers here. For political purposes, though, you might contemplate the following press clip. I'm not much interested in arguing politics here anymore, I think you hateful lifers are doing more to help the Democratic party than I could ever do.
AMONG THE CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS there is no bafflement like the bafflement over the failure of the American people to rally to the cause of impeachment. John Doolittle, a California Congressman who has both his car and his office desk festooned with bumper stickers that read, "Impeach Clinton for the Children," said: "I feel good about impeaching the President, and I would happily do it tomor-row. How the rest of the country can not feel good about it is truly beyond me." Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, advances the al-most metaphysical argument that ordinary cit-izens, unlike Congressional Republicans, sim-ply can not own up to their own true feelings on the subject. "People don't want to admit that the man they voted for President is so deeply flawed because that says something about themselves," Luntz said.
A number of moderate Republicans pointed out that many of their party brethren loathe the President so passionately that they simply cannot conceive that people of good will could feel otherwise. Given their own scorn, they cannot admit that most Americans disagree with them without feeling contempt for the people themselves, an emotion very few politicians permit themselves to express. Tom DeLay, the Republican majority whip and the leader of the party's Clinton-hating faction, insisted in a speech before the House that impeachment was a matter of "relativism versus absolute truth." Given the choice, Americans, it turned out, preferred a tolerant and forgiving relativism.
Some version of this understanding has now in fact become patent to many Republicans. Vin Weber, a former Congressman and Reagan-era optimist who along with Gingrich proclaimed the coming of a new "conservative opportunity society," said, "The image that our party is de-fined by a hectoring moralism is as dangerous to us as it is on the left if they're defined by a pandering permissiveness."
But it's also true that impeachment did not provoke a new tone of hectoring moralism from an essentially secular party; it brought to the fore passions that have been bubbling at least since the "revolution" of 1994 and perhaps since the election of Clinton two years before. Newt Gingrich stoked those passions and was finally, in the classic revolutionary denouement, consumed by them.
From the Sunday Times, just more media spin of course. Anyway, as I said, I'm happy to see you guys preaching all Clinton hatred, all the time. Only 20 months to convince the 2/3 that we're all stupid, and you're not! |
