George Will on John McCain
Until he ridiculously supported impeachment of Clinton and the Iraq War, George Will was my favorite conservative because he could always give such a well reasoned argument for his position. Check out how he skewers McCain for his erractic behavior and lack of knowledge around the financial crisis.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR200809...
- Stephen Rockwell's blog
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George Will v McCain; Kathleen Parker v Palin
Two days ago, the conservative columnist Kathleen Parker called upon Palin to "bow out", to "do it for your country". The column is at The National Review Online: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDZiMDhjYTU1NmI5Y2MwZjg2MWNiMWMyYTU... and is titled "Palin Problem" - "She's out of her league"
Parker, a run of the mill mildly acerbic right winger whose opinions I read in my local newspaper for their diagnostic value, but have never taken very seriously, accurately nails Sarah Palin's weaknesses. And Parker had loved her at first. On Palin's ascension, Parker had written a rather gleeful column about Rednecks vs. Elites. To her credit, she acknowledged that those labels are caricatures with only a partial relationship to reality -- though with enough reality to matter. And to her credit, she wrote near the end, "A little less smugness on the Left and little less righteousness on the Right would be refreshing about now."
Her column has had some play on Olbermann and Maddow, with a lot of comments on the web. A sign of collapsing confidence on the right? Now if Biden can figure out exactly the right tone to take with her.... and give her some space to talk herself into incoherence...
As for George Will, it's good to see him talking some sense again. Like Steve, I used to like to read his columns. I'd use him to sharpen my understanding of conservatives' talking points and to sharpen my own against theirs. But I found that after he was seduced into the Reagan inner circle, he began to lose his bearings. What had been a coherent conservatism, with a reasoned style of presentation, became ideological claptrap. Too bad. I had felt some connection with him. The house where he grew up was across the street from us on W. Hill Street in Champaign IL. It was about the first thing I saw every morning for more than 25 years, and I liked the way the light played across its surfaces.
One column is nice, but not enough. He's still terribly smug and condescending about "liberals". On TV, his persona is Eastern Intellectual Snob. They've taken Hill Street out of that boy. Poor Georgie.
Bill