Tag Archives: Bill Kristol

Kristol’s Still in Love

The Weekly Standard’s smarmy Bill Kristol, who shoulders much of the shame and blame for vaulting Sarah Palin onto the national stage after he met her during his magazine’s Alaskan cruise and fell head over heels, is encouraging Palin to run for Senate.

Really, this guy is one baby step above Anthony Weiner in letting his weiner make decisions for him.

I can’t imagine she will.  Neither the McCain campaign nor the press properly vetted her during the ’08 campaign, but this time around, closets would open and skeletons would come crashing down.

Right Wing Tries to Kill Hagel by Saying He’s Dead

“He who hesitates is lost”  — and the delay of the Armed Services Committee vote on Chuck Hagel for DoD has created a vacuum that the right-wing is rushing to fill with anti-Hagel venom.

The right is trying to put the Hagel nomination in trouble by claiming that it already is in trouble.  You kill him by pronouncing him already dead.

Tom Ricks, at Foreign Policy, says it’s now “50-50” that Hagel will withdraw.  He illustrates his post with a slice of bread, half of which has been toasted.  Going all Nate Silver, he writes “Bottom line:  Every business day that the Senate Armed Services Committee doesn’t vote to send the nomination to the full Senate, I think the likelihood of Hagel becoming defense secretary declines by about 2 percent.”

At Breitbart, Ben Shapiro, relying on “Senate sources,” i.e., Tea Partier Ted Cruz (R-Texas),  tries to link Hagel to a group called “Friends of Hamas,” which sounds like a Daily Show joke.  Shapiro claims White House Associate Communications Director Eric Schultz hung up on him when he called to ask.

The neo-cons at American Future Fund (Bill Kristol and friends) are running an anti-Hagel on the Sunday talks shows this weekend.  If the vote had happened on Thursday as scheduled, they wouldn’t have had another weekend to grind up Chuck, but Carl Levin gave them this gift.  The gift of time is invaluable when you’re trying to stop a nomination.

Over at National Review, Andrew Stiles has a long post called “What’s Hagel Hiding?” where, based on anonymous sources, he proclaims the nomination in trouble:

“GOP Senate aides say they are not sure why Levin decided to postpone the vote, but suspect that Hagel’s nomination could be in jeopardy.  ‘The only plausible reason they delayed the vote is because they didn’t have enough votes to confirm him,’ an aide close to the committee told National Review Online.  Some Republicans are said to be considering a hold on Hagel’s nomination….

“Now, there is reason to believe Hagel could be in trouble.”

“Multiple sources raised the possibility that the materials Republicans are seeking contain ‘explosive details’ that could prove devastating Hagel’s prospects for confirmation.  Some Hagel opponents strongly suspect he has delivered speeches at events hosted by organizations most Americans would find ‘unsavory.'”

Also at National Review, Andrew McCarthy asks, “Is Hagel Toast?” and tries to link Hagel to the National Iranian American Council, which lobbies for the Iranian government.

Jennifer Rubin, who writes for the Washington Post, but confuses it with the Jerusalem Post, gleefully says this is a “critical” weekend for the nomination she opposes, gets all conspiratorial about Levin, and starts writing Hagel’s obituary:

“Or it might be that Levin, with or without encouragement from the White House, is letting this nominee hang out there for maybe just one more shoe to drop, thus ridding everyone (especially our troops) of Hagel’s stewardship of the military at a particularly challenging time.

“It does seem the weekend is critical.  We will see how vigorously (or not) the White House defends Hagel on the Sunday shows; whether any more Republicans publicly announce their opposition or any Democrats show weakness; and, finally, what documents, if any, Hagel coughs up.  The weekend also gives the White House, if so inclined, to come up with a Plan B — a qualified, competent nominee who won’t scare the living daylights out of the Senate.”

 

Busted!

The NYT has an excellent article* pulling back the curtain on the supposed liberal, gay-rights group “Use Your Mandate” that is running ads against Chuck Hagel’s nomination for Secretary of Defense purportedly from the left.

But the Times traces its ad buying back to Smart Media, a GOP company that does work for, wait for it, the Emergency Committee for Israel, Bill Kristol’s neo-con group that has gone after Hagel not just professionally, but personally, by smearing him as an anti-Semite.

Smart Media also has done work for John McCain, who has refused to back his supposed “friend” Hagel.  Other clients include Christine “I’m Am Not a Witch” O’Donnell, and Jon Huntsman, Jr.  The Times couldn’t find any liberal groups or politicians Smart Media has represented in the past.

I hope Dem Senators put this pathetic, tacky sleaze on the record at the Hagel hearings.

* “Secret Donors Finance Fight Against Hagel,” Jim Rutenberg

 

 

When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?

“He has a chance at his confirmation hearing to show that he is not what he appears to be, which is frankly an anti-Semite. It’s not just being anti-Israel. He’s got a problem with what he calls ‘the Jews,’ the Jewish lobby. I think if  If he can’t satisfy people that he is not in fact bigoted against Jews, he certainly should not be confirmed…. ”

Elliott Abrams attacking Chuck Hagel on NPR

I really think this whole thing is going to backfire, especially on that moron Bill Kristol, who is responsible for the B. S. at ChuckHagel.com.

 

Whose Side Is Bill Kristol On?

Instead of worrying about whether Huma Abedin secretly supports the Muslim Brotherhood, maybe the GOP should start considering whether Bill Kristol is a secret Dem, out to sabotage their election chances.

From  “GOP again turns to Bill Kristol ball,” Dylan Byers, Politico:

“Once again, Bill Kristol gets his way — and once again, watch out.

“For two consecutive presidential cycles now, the founding editor of the Weekly Standard has successfully led the conservative media drumbeat for a bold vice presidential pick: In 2008, he fervently supported and promoted Sarah Palin for months before the country even knew her name. In 2012, he urged Mitt Romney to ‘go for the gold’ with Paul Ryan.

“Kristol’s support for Palin was longstanding as well.  Indeed, in June 2008 he announced on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that ‘McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, on the ticket’ — two months before McCain did just that.  Using the same language he would use to encourage Romney four years later, Kristol told Fox host Chris Wallace that McCain should, ‘Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin.'”

Kristol seems unable to distinguish gold from lead.  Maybe Glenn Beck could help him.

Bill Kristol Should Be Barred from Veepstakes, Forever

Neocon Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard is one of those most responsible for bringing us Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate.

Now, although he’s for Mitt, he’s urging President Obama to dump Biden for Hillary.  He says that would help Obama.  Why would he want to help Obama?  Oh, that’s right, he wouldn’t.

Kristol Poops On Mitt’s Windshield

From “The Man Who Likes Mandates,” William Kristol, The Weekly Standard:

“If our current problems lent themselves to technocratic and managerial fixes, Romney could be a reasonably compelling candidate.  But they don’t.

“Indeed, what Republican primary voters sense is that a technocratic and managerial mindset could prove an obstacle to coming to grips with the situation we face.  If the problem is a liberty-encroaching unlimited government, we don’t need that government to run more efficiently.  If the problem is a suffocating nanny state, we don’t need better organization of the nannies.  If we have an opportunity to revitalize citizenship, we need leaders who view us not as clients to be managed or consumers to be served, but as self-governing citizens who would fare better without an overbearing and overweening government. If we are sick of being managed by liberal technocrats, we’re not going to be thrilled merely to replace their rule with that of moderately conservative technocrats.

“Mitt Romney likes mandates.  Conservatives — especially in light of Obamacare — don’t.  Conservatives like liberty.”  Emphasis added.

 

Still Fighting the 2008 Election

As McCain and Palin rail against the HBO movie Game Change and Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace and various campaign alum who say it’s accurate, but don’t have the guts to go on the record, lo and behold, memos from the fall of 2008 suddenly fall into Politico‘s lap like ripe fruit (“MCain Aide Memo:  Shield Schmidt,” by Maggie Haberman).

These memos, from just before the election, are focused on preventing Schmidt, McCain’s senior strategist, from taking the hit for the loss and lay out a media strategy to get DC insiders to defend him and his reputation.  The memos were from a McCain senior adviser, Brian Jones, who worked at Mercury Public Affairs (MPA) to two MPA executives.  Schmidt also worked for MPA.

“A week out from the election, named and unnamed sources of the political punditry are beginning to pin some of the blame for McCain’s likely defeat on Steve Schmidt.  … [A] well organized and coordinated effort is needed to defend Steve’s good reputation.  … It is critical this defense be smart and soft….  We cannot be seen coordinating a pre-election defense effort.  That being said, I believe we should in the course of natural conversations with friendly reporters begin to provide positive messaging — off the record.”

There is more about getting out a not-Schmidt’s-fault spin from friends with “our message points” and about booking Schmidt himself for interviews.

Schmidt told Politico he was unaware of these memos or efforts, but clearly the intent of the leak is to make him seem self-serving and focused on saving his own tush even before the ballots were cast.

I believe that Game Change places too much blame for Palin on Schmidt and not enough on campaign manager Rick Davis.  Then there were the GOP Great Mentioners who had been pushing Palin for over a year — folks like Dick Morris, Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, older guys seduced by her looks and flirtatiousness when they met her in Alaska.

But in defense of the McCain campaign, I think it’s reasonable to assume that any one of our fifty governors has a certain level of very basic knowledge — what the Federal Reserve is; why there is a North Korea and a South Korea; that the Prime Minister runs Great Britain, not the Queen.  While the meetings with Palin before she was announced were obviously not inquisitive enough, I don’t think they could have imagined her staggering level of ignorance.