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The Conservative Blog Wasteland
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
I had a couple of ideas when I started this blog. One was to use a theoretical and historical prism to analyze political events. It's up to the reader to decide how well I've accomplished that task. But another aim was to rebut conservative arguments, particularly on right-wing (or at least anti-Kerry) blogs. I haven't been permitted to do much of that, because they really haven't had much to say.
Let me give you some examples of their most recent posts. My comments are in parentheses.
Kaus: Kerry is a flip-flopper because he has criticized the No Child Left Behind Act. (Of course, what he has criticized is the lack of funding and its implementation, not the idea itself)
Pardon My English: The 9/11 commission didn't blame Bush. (With half Republicans, did you really think they would? And did you notice that the Iraq stuff has been delayed until after November?) The writer then goes on to claim the Clinton Admin punted on terrorism (while in reality a good part of the 2nd term was focused on it) and then attempts to explain why they punted (when he hasn't even proved point one). Apparently Clinton hates the military and intelligence. (Interesting, given the thoroughgoing reform of the military during the 90's.)
Another writer on that blog claimed that Kerry "lied" in his speech about strengthening our relationship with our allies in that "only people who aren't on our side are theones who want to see us fail." (Is he talking about the War on Terror or Iraq? Because if so both points are incorrect, if you read public statements by european governments. And does "our side" refer to George Bush or the U.S.? Because if the former is the case, then he's right, they do hate Bush and want to see him fail.)
Finally, Andrew Sullivan spends a lot of time just commenting on other people's posts or put up the "email of the day." The last time he wrote was to criticize the Kerry speech as too long, arrogant, condescending. He thought the joke about being born in the west wing of the hospital was the comment of a "jerk." (Was he aware that this was a JOKE. And Laurence O'Donnell made a good point about the length of the Kerry speech- it was designed to be broken up into sound bites. Makes sense, and explains the same scattered character of Clinton's speeches.)
So as you can see, there is a scattershot and fairly weak criticism of Kerry coming out of the right. And this is pretty much par for the course. So I will continue my vain search for a conservative opponent worthy of the name. (Now THAT is an arrogant comment, Mr. Sullivan!)
