Let’s pause for a moment to take stock of the political landscape as it related to the Plame scandal. Dems on the Hill are expressing outrage and demanding hearings, the White House press corps is berating the press secretary during daily briefings, there are front-page articles running in the major dailies, Karl Rove is a prime suspect, and Joseph Wilson’s credibility is the only thing Republicans want to talk about.
July 2005? No, July 2003.
I’ve been going over a lot of two-year-old information this week, reviewing old articles looking for quotes and various details, and the amusing thing is that this entire mess has a certain Groundhog Day-quality to it. Nearly everything we’ve seen the past week or so we also saw two years ago, with a couple of notable exceptions.
First, now there’s ample evidence that Rove was responsible for exposing Plame. Two years ago, we had widespread speculation about Rove’s involvement, but we now have proof to help solidify what everyone seems to have believed all along.
Second, there’s been a dramatic change in tone and conduct on the far-right. As Kevin Drum noted, recent revelations about the scandal have “united the right in wingnuttery yet again.”
Looking around the blogosphere, I see that the right is now engaged in tossing out vast amounts of highly coordinated chaff on points that were debated to death and wrapped up nearly two years ago. Was Valerie Plame really a covert agent? That was a hot topic for a week or two back in 2003, but the answer turned out to be clearly yes. Was dropping her name to Novak just a casual slip of the tongue? No. It was plainly part of a concerted effort to spin the press. […]
What’s more, back in 2003 there was at least a small group of conservatives who were outraged by the whole thing. Even Glenn Reynolds managed to restrain his disingenuousness to a claim that Plamegate was “too complicated” for him. But today, now that an actual name has been named, conservative outrage seems to have vanished.
I would add that the outrage vanished and was promptly replaced by hysterical attacks on the left, Wilson, Plame, reporters, MoveOn.org, Howard Dean, and anyone else that comes to mind.
I still remember the devastating post from Dan Drezner two years ago, in which he described the Plame scandal as the kind of thing that “could cause me to switch parties.”
“What was done here was thuggish, malevolent, illegal, and immoral. Whoever peddled this story to Novak and others, in outing Plame, violated the law and put the lives of Plame’s overseas contacts at risk. Compared to this, all of Clinton’s peccadilloes look like a mildly diverting scene from an Oscar Wilde production. If Rove or other high-ranking White House officials did what’s alleged, then they’ve earned the wrath of God. Or, since God is probably busy, the media firestorm that will undoubtedly erupt.”
These were the words of a self-identified Republican who worked for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. I was heartened to believe, albeit briefly, that in this controversy, the right would be principled enough to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem. Indeed, not long after Drezner’s post, even then-Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie was saying the right things.
Gillespie was asked by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Tuesday evening whether the potential crime involved was worse than Watergate. “You know, yeah, I suppose in terms of the real-world implications of it,” Gillespie said. “It’s not just politics. It’s people’s lives.”
When it came to a scandal of this magnitude, I thought at the time, even Republicans would have the decency to condemn the wrongdoing here.
That was two years ago. Now, Fox News wants to give Karl Rove “a medal” because Plame deserved to be outed. The Wall Street Journal believes Rove is a victim and “the real whistleblower in this whole sorry.” Newt Gingrich and Ken Mehlman are going on national television and literally making things up as part of an “aggressive defense.” Right-wing blogs are unhinged with bizarre attacks and unintelligible defenses.
Once again, it appears fact, culpability, and responsibility are inconvenient, even antiquated, notions for today’s Republicans. The scandal surrounding Rove is merely a cattle call for conservatives to start lashing out wildly in every direction, hoping to confuse just enough people to get through until the next scandal pops up.
Attack, lie, smear, destroy. Nothing else seems to matter to these people. I was foolish to believe it doesn’t have to be this way.