The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol caused a bit of a stir over the weekend when he appeared on Fox News (where else?) and attacked Democratic presidential candidates for agreeing to appear at the YearlyKos convention.
“Every Democratic presidential nominee is going to the DailyKos convention,” Kristol said. “That’s the left-wing blogger who was not respectable three or four years ago. The Howard Dean kind of sponsor. Now the whole party is going to pay court to him and to left wing blogs.”
Now, this is wrong in a variety of ways, which we discussed yesterday. Today, however, the Weekly Standard’s Sonny Bunch referenced an intemperate comment Markos made in 2004 — for which he apologized — to justify Kristol’s attack. “The Daily Kos, Think Progress, and a host of other lefty blogs seem to be shocked that someone might question the respectability of Markos Moulitsas,” Bunch wrote, adding, “Is that the kind of thing respectable people say?”
There are at least two problems with this. First, YearlyKos is not a big gathering to celebrate Markos personally; it’s a conference of bloggers, blog readers, and progressive activists. Whether Markos said something offensive in a blog post three years ago has nothing to do with Democratic candidates talking to a very large community of politically-engaged people. As Bunch describes it, Kristol was making this intentionally personal, going after candidates because they’ll be in the same room as someone who offended Kristol with a post in 2004. That’s a pretty weak argument.
Second, if the test for credibility boils down to the kind of things “respectable people say,” Kristol is throwing stones in a glass house.
Matt at TP collected some of Kristol’s greatest hits.
– “It is insane for this country to be obsessing … about a small prisoner abuse scandal,” referring to Abu Ghraib. [5/16/2004]
– “Cheney’s statement” that Ned Lamont’s primary victory helps al Qaeda “is indisputably correct.” [6/13/2006]
– “The voters in Florida, I guess, who elected him” are responsible for former Rep. Mark Foley’s illicit sexual behavior. “Maybe they should have known better.” [10/3/06]
– Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is “sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858″ in appeasing slave owners. [2/10/07]
– Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) saying the war is lost “is much more disgraceful than anything Trent Lott said” about the country being better off if it had maintained racist segregation policies. [4/22/07]
With this in mind, would it be equally fair to admonish Republican presidential hopefuls who appear with Kristol?