This is weird.
As it becomes ever more clear that the GOP is going to get shipwrecked in 2008, Greater Wingnuttia is gasping for oxygen. The wingnut tide is ebbing, and certain of the larger fish in that crazy sea are wondering where the hell to swim next, because a lot of the rich, easy feeding grounds look like they're about to dry up. And so... upon whose deck are they desperately flopping?
Hillary Clinton's.
That's the real subtext of that ridiculous David Brooks column the other day, the one that irritated Greenwald so much. Brooks is pretending that Teh Netroots are cray-zee, and all Serious and Sober People know this, and hence all good Democrats are going to vote for Hillary because she is the most war-supporting Democrat out there, and all good cornfed Americans just love the war.
Bullshit. This obviously flies in the face of all polling. My theory on why Hillary is leading in the primary polls is the one that has the advantage of simplicity: She has name recognition and a shitload of money, and she's not George W. Bush. She's the most obvious Democratic alternative to Bush. Hate a Bush? Vote for a Clinton! It's simplistic, but simple answers are often correct. Democratic voters (and, I suspect, the nation as a whole) want to reject a Bush, and one very easy way to do that is to vote for a Clinton.
The Brooksian anti-Netroots thing is motivated by a snivelling Grima Wormtongue-like desire to suck up to the perceived New Power by dissing a potential rival. (Brooks has no principles -- he's too stupid to have those. He has an instinct for survival and petty advancement and knows the rules of a ridiculous, shallow media world very well. Read more than one of his columns if you don't believe this.) Aha! he is saying. I know the flattering answer, the one Which Shows My Wisdom! My Speaker's Fee Is Justified! Huzzah!
Bizarre as it may seem, one of the key questions of the next few years may well be whether or not Hillary Clinton feels she owes more to David Brooks or The Netroots. (Only one of these has a strategy for influencing the actual nuts and bolts party machinery, so I'm actually cautious about being cynical here -- a rare first.)
Of course, the simple fact is that Americans hate this war and want it to end. And on top of that, Iraq will never magically sprout ponies, no matter how many pundits botch lyrics to popular musicals.
So, here's what we have, and I don't think I'm wrong. We have a situation where a GOP president is about to drag his party into ignominious defeat, and all the well-compensated pundits in the world are prepared to... attribute this staggering debacle to an imaginary sympathy on the part of the electorate for exactly the policies the people just totally repudiated.
The fact that this may all be done to benefit the kind of people who spent the 1990s making up bizarre shit about the woman they are about to suck up to... well, it's ironic. Just shoot me in the face, will you, sorry?