You Know You Never Will . . . And The Goodbye Makes The Journey Harder Still

Comments

1. Comment says:

   2009/09/12 at 9:03 pm

   re Sid Blumenthal – we were never fans of Bill Clinton, but were surprised by the brilliance and lit-level quality of Blumenthal’s book “Clinton Wars” – His son shares his intelligence

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2. Dr Leo Strauss says:

   2009/09/11 at 9:15 pm

   We’ve been flattered that Sid Blumenthal enjoyed this site since its beginning . He and a few in the netroots were among the first to recognize and then take a stand against the earlier regime’s larger historical dangers.

   With the Wilson’s the universe may be re-establishing the space-time balance thrown awry by Ambassador Wilson’s unquenchable thirst for publicity and undeserved gravtias. The price we pay for all of that – Tim Russert, his wife, the torrential name dropping, etc. is a rube summoned from an imploding state. To give karmic harmony this Joe Wilson must blurt out a crude-ism against a demonstrably self-possessed leader with undeniable smarts before a national audience. Kind of a ‘balance of the Force’ without all the merchandizing tie-ins?

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3. Comment says:

   2009/09/11 at 4:39 pm

   Leo, what’s up with guys named Joe Wilson? First the Ambassador , now the buffoon from SC.

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4. inquire says:

   2009/09/11 at 12:10 pm

   Leaving aside the infuriating self-promotion of this interview, Blumenthal echoes many themes the good Dr. has been proclaiming for some time – even using the same ‘movement’ nomenclature.

   Out of power, the Republican Party relies on its grassroots. It has no leadership. It also has—and so—and we’re seeing that at town halls. We’re seeing the Republican Party with, you know, no brakes, completely out of control, relying on the movement that controls it. And, you know, it’s a very ugly spectacle.

   The problem is, it has no capacity for bipartisanship. Everyone knows—well, it’s clear from reading my book, Republican Gomorrah, that—you know, and the picture that I provide of the Republican Party, through my, you know, research on it and my reporting on it, that they’re not going to compromise on healthcare. And so, the idea that, you know, producing a bipartisan healthcare bill is going to be a better bill is a delusion. They won’t produce a bill at all. And Barack Obama’s tendency towards bipartisanship, I think, disregards the lessons of my book and will essentially damage the Democrats and especially the progressive agenda, because the people who I describe in my book, the movement I describe, knows that any government solution to the common personal crises that are happening every day in America—and a lot of them are related to healthcare problems—will mean the death of the empire of James Dobson and his allies.

   He speaks earlier of Dobson and child psychology, the sado-masochism of his doctrine, what Blumenthal misses entirely, however, is the kinship between the beating of the child and embracing them in their tears is not dissimilar to methods of breaking that employed in torture – I believe the technical term is learned helplessness. He also, at least in this interview, doesn’t stress sufficiently, what you have rightly warned about – that attempting to placate or compromise is bad for the Democrats, but is also a dire risk to democracy.

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