Republicans push and push and push until some larger force makes them stop.

Interesting analysis of the smearing of Al Gore. The Republicans push and push and push and the larger force needed to make them stop fails to show up. It's hard to imagine this process not repeating itself in the upcoming weeks as we "debate" our role in Iraq.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh090507.shtml

NOTHING TO LOOK AT, KEEP MOVING ALONG! Nothing to look at, some leaders will say, much as they’ve said all along: // link // print // previous // next //

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2007

THE PERFECT EXAMPLE: For the perfect example of what we discuss below, see this classic post by Reed Hundt. Two obvious questions come to mind. We’ll obsess a bit more on the morrow.

NOTHING TO LOOK AT, KEEP MOVING ALONG: On the front page of this morning’s Post, we get a reminder of why the GOP may keep the White House next year.

Dan Eggen does the reporting; he discusses Jack Goldsmith’s new book about the way the Cheney office “pushed relentlessly to expand the powers of the executive branch” after 9/11. At one point, Eggen quotes David Addington, Cheney’s current chief of staff:

EGGEN (9/5/07): "We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop," Addington said at one point, according to Goldsmith.

We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop. That is precisely what modern liberals won’t do, as we see, once again, in early laconic reactions to Evgenia Peretz’s new piece in Vanity Fair.

In her piece, Peretz describes the press coverage of Campaign 2000—the coverage which sent George Bush to the White House and thereby destroyed the world as we knew it. Several months ago, we spoke with Peretz, while she was working on her report; we think we told her you can’t really do justice to this story at the length of a magazine report. That remains true, but Peretz has done a superlative job—and for the first time, the Gore family and Gore campaign staffers discuss the press coverage, on the record. If we liberals were the types of people who pushed and pushed and pushed until some larger force made us stop, we would see the deep utility in Peretz’s piece, especially with Campaign 08 upon us. But modern career liberals aren’t much like that. For two years, we kept our mouths deliciously shut while the events described in this piece were occurring. Today, we pooh-pooh Peretz’s work in the predictable manner.

Consider Kevin Drum, one of our favorite analysts (except, semi-often, when it comes to press issues). Kevin gives Peretz a “pretty good” review. But we don’t know why he thinks this:

DRUM (9/4/07): It's a pretty good piece. It covers fairly familiar ground for most blog readers, I think, but does a nice job of summarizing Campaign 2000 for magazine readers who haven't heard all this stuff before. It's worth revisiting.

Does Peretz’s article cover “fairly familiar ground for most blog readers?” For ourselves, we’re constantly stunned by the ignorance of liberal posters and commenters when it comes to these issues; if the maddening Huffington Post could only be searched, we could give you an intriguing example from late last week. But for a taste of the way the liberal half lives, consider how Huffington poster Amitai Etzioni ended a know-nothing piece in July.

more...

fight like crazy using every trick in the book.

The democrats whine and stomp their feet and say "we're doing the best we can, it's not our fault. We don't have the votes."

Not the aides, the big shots. The lesson they learned was that they could get away with it, all they needed was to gain the White House, by any means, then it was all war, signing statements and imperial presidency.

This analysis was made by someone on another board, and I have to agree. Regardless whether Democrats gain the White House in 2008, unless there is some years of jail time for actual players in this debacle, especially with the media set up the way it is now, we're in for more of this, if not in a few years, in several years. And it won't stop until it's clear that serious penalties can ensue, causing a deterrent effect.