Sid's Id - Blumenthal on the Clintons [Andrew Sullivan ain't no conservative, folks]

The New York Observer via andrewsullivan.com ^ | May 15, 2003 | Andrew Sullivan

[hchutch]

Excellent points. This sort of thing ought to be considered and kept in mind. It's not a pleasant thought at times, but I'd say that the whole Monicagate DID work out for the best of the country. I have to agreee with your assessment of the situation.

[MEG33]

I agree...

[MHGinTN]

But he was gunning for a President who sat on top of a Tulip bubble economy. Great analogy! Such are the reason I read every post you make that I find! [BTW, didn't Floriad arise from the Tulip Bulb bull market'?]

I'm with you, Gore's ascension would have doomed this nation. Personally, I don't believe the Jones lawsuit should have been allowed to go forward during a sitting predient's term in office ... civil cases should be put off until the term ends. Now a criminal case (which is what the Jones case turned into, after the morass was allowed to proceed), well, that's a different worm to turn. SinkEmperor was impeached for something that surfaced during an ill-advised lawsuit, when he should have been impeached and hanged for the treachery he and his criminal enterprise perpetrated during their rule over America. There's a certain culpability for the Pubbies in that, somewhere.

[hchutch]

The only thing you can possibly blame them for is overestimating Bill Clinton's ability to have shame. It was a blind spot that every one of the House managers and Ken Starr had, IMHO. Then again, it showed that many of the right had honor and decency to be ashamed of such actions.

Didn't George Bush Sr. denounce a Republican with a KKK past? Look how the Dems handled their former Klansman.

[MHGinTN]

Uh, you will have to prove this crap if you're gonna spew it out here in my FR home! ... homosexuality is acknowledged as occurring, often genetically, throughout human history. Helms There is a very rare hormonal malady that tends to manifest with effeminate males or masculine females, but it is far from 'often', perhaps as much as 1 in a million live births if CDC stats are to be relied upon.

I'm sorry to be the one to let you in on this 'secret', but homosexuality is a chosen behavior, not a genetic manifestation to be equated with race as a means to minority status. Even effeminate males are known to choose heterosexuality for their sexual 'expression'.

[SlickWillard]

No, no, no. You don't understand. Sullivan is half-right here. Some of our people were nuts... People never run Presidents out of town during good times. But it is the great saving grace of conservatism that we recognize when our people go overboard, and most conservatives recognize that we were outwitted manfully... I'm glad Ken Starr failed in his quest. Had he succeeded, Clinton would have resigned. Al Gore would have become President sometime in 1999, giving him enough time to "unify the country" and assemble his campaign team with all the powers of the Presidency at his disposal... No, it is best that history took the course that it did.

Equality before the law is the founding and guiding principle of the Republican Party. It's why we came into being, why we fought the Civil War, why we altered the constitution [No state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws], and, of all of our qualities, it is the one most quintessentially antithetical to democrats [and their "democracy," also known as the rule of the mob].

W. J. Blythe-Clinton perjured himself before a federal district court judge, then perjured himself before another federal judge, and her grand jury. As we speak, he should be in jail [although, in all honesty, perjury should still be a capital offense, and he should have been hanged]. Equality before the law was dealt a terrible, perhaps mortal blow when Blythe-Clinton was allowed to skate.

Your Machiavellian-Clausewitzian realpolitik is, quite frankly, Clintonian in nature.

[Reverend Bob]

Except for the two sentences you highlighted this is a brilliant article. It spectacularly skewers both Sid and his fellow Clinton apologists. They're compared to Leni Riefenstahl, their love of Clinton equated to some form of religious ecstasy. No one has captured the essence of these people as accurately as Sullivan has here.

As to those two sentences: While I disagree with Sullivan, I do understand his point. The obsession of many of my fellow Clinton opponents was not always pretty. There were several friends who I found myself largely avoiding because their obsessions with Clinton were such that they could think (and talk) of nothing else. Worse, this knee-jerk single-mindedness often led to errors of political and legal judgement. Clinton and his allies played these tendencies to their advantage. As the Clinton haters became louder and more strident, Middle America walked away in disgust. It's sad, but it's also true, and Sullivan captures that attitude in those two sentences.

The good news is that the shoe is on the other foot now. The anti-Bush people (including my ex) have made themselves so ridiculous in their stridency and hate that they have become completely marginalized. No one pays attention to them and, when they do, the result is usually the opposite of what they intend. There's a good object lesson here: hate and unrestrained anger never advance an agenda, however just that agenda may otherwise be.

[MEG33]

Well said.

[irish_links]

"...It's not a pleasant thought at times, but I'd say that the whole Monicagate DID work out for the best (for) the country...."

Yes, but only because in its defense of Clinton the Left exposed itself to be the opportunistic bunch of career-minded, power-hungry boot lickers that we know them to be. Sullivan is right about the Starr investigation. It was exhorbitantly expensive exercise in investigating trivia while ignoring what might have actually been impeachable offenses: the litany of abuses of power by the Clintons against dissidents, large and small.

I think that Starr recognized that delving into things like the FBI Files, targeted IRS harassment of conservative institutions, the Clintons' use of PI's to harass dangerous people (Willey, Jones, et al) and the rank politicization of government functions for the partisan political benefit of the Democrat Party were just too hot to handle. There were simply too many skeletons in closets on both sides of the aisle to get into that dirty laundry. So he spent $50 million determining whether WJC cheated on his wife and lied about it in a third rate sexual harassment trial.

A waste of time and money and really an embarassment to us all who took it seriously.

Monicagate did help elect GWB in 2000. But let's not kid ourselves about its legal merits.

[Maigret]

the Gollum-like David Brock

My favorite line of the whole article!

[Helms]

Uh, you will have to prove this crap if you're going to spew it out here in my FR home! Otherwise this is not a sexuality or religious forum. While I respect your opinions, beliefs, etc. kindly respect mine. Again, there is a bigger war afoot and it isn't about sexuality.

Again, the train has left the station and if you care to disregard it, then minority political status will be the Republican future.

[Helms]

Uh, you will have to prove this crap if you're going to spew it out here in my FR home!

hey, hey, hey, hey, my home as well as yours. I know of no "secrets", I will tell you no lies.

Otherwise this is not a sexuality or religious forum. While I respect your opinions, beliefs, etc. kindly respect mine. Again, there is a bigger war afoot and it isn't about sexuality.

Again, the train has left the station and if you care to disregard it, then minority political status will be the Republican future.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Thanks for the post. Sullivan is always a good read.

Sid had been cozying up to Bill and Hillary for years. It was clear well before the 1991 campaign that he had decided that Mr. Clinton was the best shot the Democrats had; and at The New Republic, he set about doing all he could to help.

There are those who wonder if Clinton was hand-picked by the international left to run for president. They cite Hillary's early involvement with the left in college and with Clinton's mysterious pilgrimage to Russia and eastern Europe after he was booted from Oxford. Does this early involvement with good commie soldier Sid Bloomie add a little credence to that argument?

[MHGinTN]

Prove your specious assertion that ... homosexuality is acknowledged as occurring, often genetically, throughout human history. Note the underlined lickspittle you tried to foist.

You think you can toss out such an inane assertion and then have people step aside to 'agree to disagree' with such? Prove that piece of homo-apologist crap, or withdraw the idiocy! You have some train there, apologist. You can leave the station and get the over the cliff at your whim, but don't expect others to join your 'train' based on your false assertions. You come across as a RINO, not a Pubby, with such garbage phrases.

[Cicero]

Regretably, with Sullivan sodomy trumps conservatism. He is very intelligent, he gets in some great licks against Sid Blumenthal, but in the end he just doesn't understand the basic conservative principle that a free society requires morality and self-discipline. If you don't discipline yourself, then sooner or later someone will come along and do it for you, and then freedom is lost.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Should the Republican Party open its tent so wide that we allow in Communists?
Of course not, since Communism is radically opposed to the market economics the Republican Party stands for?
Why then should the Republicans welcome in sodomites who oppose the traditional values the Republican Party stands for.

Your straw man is burning. Communist would have no interest in the Republican Party so your hypothesis is moot. That is, unless they intended to enter it through stealth in order to eventually transform it. In that case you would not know they were Communists.

As far as the Sodomites, they are going to vote for someone so why not for our values rather than the left's? Must all Republicans be as pure as Caesar's wife? I'll bet there are many differences among freepers but we share enough common values to interact and support each other in those values. There are probably even (shudder) Sodomites among us.

[wideawake]

That is, unless they intended to enter it through stealth in order to eventually transform it.

Precisely, aside from the stealth.

Stealth isn't necessary - they announce their intention to make the Republican Party a sodomy-friendly organization.

Why do the Log Cabin Republicans exist as an organzied gay pressure group within the Republican Party? Because they want to maintain traditional family values?

No.

Because they want the Republican Party and the Democrat Party to both be irrevocably committed to their world view.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Again, there is a bigger war afoot and it isn't about sexuality.

If you don't think that homosexuals are waging war against tradition conservative values, then you have your head in the sand. (ps. I have some gays friends, too)

[nutmeg]

read later bump

[SerpentDove]