Thursday, November 21, 2002

Broken Clocks: Here's a good point from the left on war talk. I don't often find myself praising Joe Conason, but he's right that conservative dissenters on Iraq aren't subject to the same vitriol as southpaw dissenters. The payoff:
Perhaps the most prominent conservative dissenter is Robert Novak, dark prince of the hard right, who voices serious misgivings about the war so many of his fellow conservatives are so eager to begin … Yet he enjoys complete immunity, for a simple, cynical reason. "War" is a political weapon that Republicans have been using against Democrats since Karl Rove openly declared this strategy last winter.
Of course, Conason ignores the larger point, namely that GOP dissenters like Novak are staking out their windward positions based on conviction. (They stand to gain little from dissent; and Novak would surely rather die than shill for the Dems.) On the other hand, many Democrats are just as "openly" approaching the war issue with a moist finger in the breeze.

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