pundits

This morning's George Will column has convinced me that this guy is like some beat-up pitcher who ought to be sent to the showers.

He tells us "All shall not be lost"  Why? http://townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2008/11/02/all_shall_not_be_lost

Because--in a banal rehash of antiseptic voting statistics that read like a rejected first draft of Michael Barone's Almanac of American Politics --we got our butt handed to us worse in 1964 and 1974. 

Jeez, maybe we won't see another Great Society or another Cambodian killing fields. And Mr. Will's column fails to answer a rather obvious question: why not?

I don't expect a honest commentator to blindly salute every dumb thing the party he is more closely aligned with does. I applaud the exposure of the corrupt and the correction of the misguided. But, hell, George Will is up in the press box rooting against his team for sport. 

If "All is not lost", well, elitist once-upon-a-time "conservative" journalists like George Will and Peggy Noonan are part of the reason it may well be "lost".

Will's last columm, a trite putdown of Sarah Palin's alleged inadequacies as a constitutional scholar, offered little insight to the voter except to see inside the mind of Will as someone eager to prove his own intellectual superiority.  You see, George Will is the "real conservative" while Govenor Palin is the "faux conservative"  http://townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2008/10/30/the_downfall_of_faux_conservatism

The reason I'm so ripped about this is at the same time former law professor Barack Obama was found to have endorsed a theory of constitutional jurisprudence radical in its very concept--the use of the courts to redistribute wealth.  Not a word of complaint from Mr. Will about something you'd think he'd care about. George Will would rather frag his own troops than critique the opposition.

No, Mr. Will, you are a faux intellectual, a man who cares deeply about the punctuality of trains but cares not where they are going.  I'm no man of the mind, but dammit, if I want to go to Grand Central I'm not getting on even the nicest and fastest train to New Haven.    But like the rest of your ilk, you'd rather go in the wrong direction in style.

George Will has proven himself to be shallow, petty and used up. He's an empty suit behind the bow tie. Once he brought his A-game to his columm, now he is a tired old knuckleballer trying to fool people with junk pitches.

So, go on with your writing. Maybe Moneyball needs a sequel.  Stick to baseball, George. Free agents switching teams are more commonly accepted in that sport.

Ross Douthat smartly reviews the unfolding civil war in the conservative pundit-sphere over Sarah Palin, and tries to call a truce of sorts:

In such circumstances, what's the best course of action - denouncing the rats, or trying to figure out why the hell the ship is sinking? Even if Brooks and Noonan and Buckley and Dreher and Kathleen Parker and David Frum and Heather Mac Donald and Bruce Bartlett and George Will and on and on - note the ideological diversity in the ranks of conservatives who aren't Helping The Team these days - are all just snobs and careerists who quit or cavil or cover their asses when the going gets tough and their "seat at the table" is threatened, an American conservative movement that consists entirely of those pundits with the rock-hard testicular fortitude required to never take sides against the family seems like a pretty small tent at this point. And if I were Hanson or Levin or Steyn I'd be devoting a little less time to ritual denunciations of heretics and RINOs, and at least a little more time to figuring out how to build the sort of ship that will make the rats of the DC/NY corridor want to scramble back on board, however much it makes you sick to have them back. Who knows? It might just be the sort of ship that swing-state voters will want to climb on board as well.

I'm with Ross on the fact that we have bigger fish to fry than pundit-on-pundit action right now. But once the post-election recriminations begin, and when someone starts to bury Palin with blind NYT quotes, I'll stand firmly in the Palin camp. And here's why.

Ross underestimates the deep way in which movement conservatives have felt betrayed by their own establishment -- with which the likes of Brooks, Kristol (Update: a reader reminds me that Kristol is solidly in the Palin camp), Will et al are aligned -- and  never more so than in the last four weeks.

We have seen a situation yesterday in which the Republican Secretary of the Treasury acted as a handmaiden to socialism. I am not given to hyperbolic language, and I use the phrase not to pass judgment on the necessity of what happened, but the forced nationalization of banks is socialism by any grade school definition.

In this charged environment, there is almost irressistible movement-conservative temptation to raise the figurative middle finger to anyone or anything associated with establishment Republicanism -- one which gave us runaway spending, a $700 billion bailout that preceeded an 18% stock market swoon, and bank nationalization. And not entirely without cause.

Now, zoom back in on the Palin situation. In the midst of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, conservative establishment pundits appear to blame John McCain's inability to seal the deal not on the misfortune of being the candidate of the in-party of his thin track record on economic matters or his jarring response to the crisis, but on a hockey mom from Alaska. Who just happens to be part of the grassroots conservative / outsider / Mark Levin circle. Who, from a conservative point of view, happens to be the one bit of relief we've gotten from this crap sandwich of a political environment that's been going on for three years now. Who, in a movement and a party bereft of fresh faces, seemed to represent a rising new guard.

Can you see why they we are angry?

Never mind that the political case for Palin decisively hurting the ticket is thin at best.

Never mind that when Palin actually mattered, McCain was ahead.

Never mind that Palin seems to be the only one willing to go on the attack (and I'm not one who believes slash and burn is called for right now, btw).

Then there is the media.

In what universe do Sarah Palin's gaffes matter, and Joe Biden's 20 years of gaffes get ignored? In what universe does Sarah Palin get called unqualified, and this prompts absolutely zero scrutiny and commentary on Barack Obama's resume, especially amongst conservative pundits bashing Palin. Is it because Obama shares their alma mater? (As an Ivy League grad, I'm not one to launch anti-elitist cracks, but this one happens to be true.)

Even if one concedes that these are not entirely apples-to-apples comparisons, it's willful blindness to suggest that Sarah Palin hasn't been given the short end of the stick in entirely relevant experience comparisons with Obama and in temperament comparisons with Biden. Biden has a longstanding reputation as a less-than-Presidential hothead who's used racially-tinged code language to describe his running mate -- and not a peep from the media and our conservative emissaries to the Times editorial board. 

Now can you understand the frustration?

Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham aren't defending the campaign to the hilt because they are McCain people, or even McCain/Palin people. It is because they are Palin people. They believe Palin is the only smart move McCain has made. And events since since Palin faded from the spotlight haven't exactly disproven their point.