Looking over the list of guests for tomorrow's Sunday morning shows, we see that CBS's "Face the Nation" will feature two guests: David Axelrod from the White House and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.It comes just two weeks after Gingrich was a featured guest on NBC's "Meet the Press." He was the featured guest on "Fox News Sunday" just two weeks before that.
This isn't quite as annoying as having Liz Cheney live on the cable networks, but it's getting there.
Atrios asked a couple of weeks ago, "[Y]ou know, disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has precisely zero power but his every pronouncement is treated as Incredibly Important News. Any journalists want to explain why?"
That need not be a rhetorical question.
I suspect "Face the Nation" wants to hear from Gingrich about the Sotomayor nomination, since Gingrich led the way in smearing the judge, and then kinda-sorta-but-not-really backpedaled this week on the use of the word "racist."
But here's a little secret: whether Gingrich respects or loathes Sotomayor is of no consequence. He doesn't have a vote in the Senate, and more importantly, he doesn't have any real influence in the Senate, either.
In our reality, Gingrich was forced from office in disgrace more than a decade ago. His limited power comes by way of the media, which keeps putting him on national television.
Eric Boehlert's recent take on this -- before Newt had an op-ed published in the Washington Post and before his "Meet the Press" appearance had even been announced -- still rings true:
[A]s often happens when I read breaking, this-is-what-Newt-said dispatches, I couldn't help thinking, "Who cares what Newt Gingrich thinks?" And I don't mean that in the partisan sense. I mean it in the journalistic sense: How do Gingrich's daily pronouncements about the fundamental dishonesty of Democrats (Newt's favorite phrase) translate into news? Why does the press, 10 years after Gingrich was forced out of office, still treat his every partisan utterance as a newsworthy occurrence? In other words, why does the press still treat him like he's speaker of the House? It's unprecedented."
I'm still waiting to see the media frenzy surrounding the latest pronouncements from Jim Wright and Tom Foley. Remind me, when was the last time either of them were invited onto a Sunday morning show?
Think Progress: Gingrich: Americans ‘surrounded by paganism.’
On Friday, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Oliver North visited Rock Church in Hampton Roads, Virginia to give a three-hour long lecture on “Rediscovering God in America.” The speakers warned the audience about the “continuing availability of abortion, the spread of gay rights, and attempts to remove religion from American public life and school history books.” The Virginia-Pilot reported that Gingrich argued that, while Christianity is the foundation of American citizenship, Americans are experiencing a period where they are being “surrounded by paganism”:
GINGRICH: I am not a citizen of the world. I am a citizen of the United States because only in the United States does citizenship start with our creator. [...] I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history. We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism.
Huckabee also equated America’s victory against the British in the Revolutionary War with the right-wing’s success in the Proposition 8 fight in California as being miracles “from God’s hand.”
- Benen adds: BRING ON THE PAGANS...
Now we're talking. It's one thing to lament feeling surrounded by liberalism, but to feel surrounded by paganism is to kick it old school. Really old school.
Back in December, a religious right activist insisted that "today's liberalism is really just ... a philosophy rooted in ancient pagan traditions." But the piece was published in WorldNetDaily, where it didn't have much of an impact.
Having Newt Gingrich talk about it raises the stakes. After all, the media keeps telling us how important he is.
I'd actually like to see this catch on with other leaders on the right. Nothing helps demonstrate the relevance of conservatism in the 21st century like high-profile complaints about pagans.
Benen: CLASS ACT, ALL THE WAY....
On Friday, publius -- Hilzoy's Obsidian Wings co-blogger and someone I've known for several years -- had a blog post criticizing something National Review's Ed Whelan wrote. As blog criticisms go, the piece was acerbic but hardly outrageous -- Whelan made an observation about judges pondering policy outcomes, and publius referenced a Volokh item that took issue with Whelan's assumptions.
Whelan, publius said, is "a smart guy with outstanding legal credentials," adding, "He just enjoys playing the role of know-nothing demagogue." The same post referenced a quote from Anonymous Liberal, describing Whelan as "essentially a legal hitman."
Yesterday, Whelan decided to help prove the point.
So there you have it -- I've been officially outed by Ed Whelan. I would never have done that to my harshest critic in a million years, but oh well.
And to be clear -- the proximate cause was that Whelan got mad that I criticized him in a blog post. More specifically, he's mad that Eugene Volokh made him look rather silly -- and he's lashing out at me for pointing that out, and publishing my name.
Even by the standards of conservative bloggers, this is surprisingly cheap, petty, and unnecessary.
In email correspondence between the two, publius, who has guest-blogged for me here at Political Animal, explained to Whelan that he uses a pseudonym for "private, family, and professional" reasons. Whelan published his name anyway, because he could. In an email to publius, he asked, "Now who's the hitman"?
Under the circumstances, the rhetorical question seems rather ironic.
Whelan's feelings of frustration are not surprising. There have been a number of bloggers, including publius, who've challenged his arguments of late, and at times exposed Whelan's errors of fact and judgment. For someone with Whelan's background -- former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, former Supreme Court clerk, successful attorney -- that must be exasperating.
But to respond in such a childish and cruel way makes Whelan look far worse than any critique from publius could have.
In a post last night, A.L., noting the "Hannity-esque" partisanship of Whelan's recent efforts, added, "...I think that's why he's so thin-skinned. Getting called out on your hackery is tough if you're someone who takes pride in your intelligence. It's embarrassing. So Whelan reacted by lashing out and 'outing' one of his most thoughtful and persistent critics. It's school-yard bully kind of stuff. An act of extreme insecurity."
- Anonymous Liberal: Ed Whelan Completes His Descent into Hackery
I've been debating all day whether or not to respond to this act of astounding immaturity and intellectual cowardice. On the one hand, this "outing" hits pretty close to home. In addition to being a long time reader and admirer of Publius' writing, it was my post (quoted by Publius) that seems to have gotten under Whelan's skin and caused him to lash out. On the other hand, writing about this only draws more attention to it, which is the last thing I want to do. In light of the fact that Publius has himself now written a post about this, though, I feel more comfortable addressing the subject here.
To quickly recap, I wrote a short post about Whelan a few weeks ago that described his basic M.O.:This is Whelan's role in the conservative world, his niche. He's the guy Republicans look to when they need to discredit a Democratic legal or judicial nominee. He pores over their record, finds some trivial fact that, when distorted and taken totally out of context, makes that person look like some sort of extremist. Whelan knows this is what he's doing. It's willful. He's essentially a legal hitman, someone who provides the "expert" opinion that the right wing echo chamber then uses as the basis of its attack campaign.
Andrew Sullivan linked to the post at the time, which prompted Whelan to write a sputtering, angry retort. Clearly the guy is very thin-skinned. Meanwhile, in a much more thoughtful series of posts, Publius (who has been blogging at Obsidian Wings for years) has been systematically dismantling a number of Whelan's rather ridiculous attacks on various Obama nominees, Harold Koh in particular. Then, in a post yesterday, Publius highlighted a rather scathing critique of Whelan's latest attack on Sonia Sotomayor by conservative legal blogger Eugene Volokh. Publius ended the post by quoting from my post about Whelan (the passage where I called him a "legal hitman").
Whelan responded by publishing Publius' real identity on the National Review website and sending him an email saying "now who's the hitman, you coward and idiot."
Um, it's still you, Ed, but thanks for proving it.
It's really difficult to put into words just how despicable and childish this behavior is. This is a man who was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General. He's currently the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. And he's acting like a six-year-old.
In his post outing Publius, Whelan claims that he is doing the world a service by "exposing an irresponsible anonymous blogger." The entire tone of the post, however, is petty and childish. It's clear that Whelan's only motive is getting back at someone who was critical of him. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine someone who less fits the stereotype of a mud-slinging anonymous blogger than Publius, whose posts are invariably professorial in content and tone. Indeed, if you compare Publius' posts to those that Whelan churns out daily at the National Review, the contrast is rather stark.
Whelan is unquestionably a brilliant man. He graduated near the top of his class at Harvard Law School, was a Supreme Court clerk, and has had a successful career as an attorney. Which is why the jarringly hackish nature of his political writing is so striking. If you go to Bench Memos, the blog he writes at the National Review, and scan down through the posts, you'll see no hint whatsoever of the legal mind we all know that Whelan possesses. Instead, you'll see a series of dumbed-down partisan attacks written by someone who is functioning as a partisan advocate, not as a commentator. Take, for example, the post that drew the attention of Eugene Volokh. In that post, Whelan tries to take a joke Judge Sotomayor once told and turn it into some sort of indictment of her judicial philosophy. Not only is the post utterly clownish in its premise, but Whelan's entire critique is based on the notion that Supreme Court justices shouldn't be pondering the "policy implications" of their decisions, a suggestion that Volokh quickly dismantles. But here's the thing. Whelan was a Supreme Court clerk. He knows that this is a stupid point. He knows all of the justices on the Court, including the conservative ones, explicitly grapple with the policy implications of their decisions in virtually every case. But his goal here is not to provide actual insight into anything. His goal, as always, is to provide political fodder to Republicans. That's what he does.
Another good example is his very next post, where he focuses on a recent statement Sotomayor made (no context provided) where she said she doesn't "know what liberal means." He then attempts to play gotcha by pointing to a 1983 New York Times article which quotes then D.A. Sotomayor as saying "[n]o matter how liberal I am, I’m still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.” Whelan goes on to explain the earth-shattering significance of two out-of-context statements made a quarter of a century apart that don't really contradict each other anyway. The post then descends into an attack on liberal judges generally. It reads like a Jeff Foxworthy routine ("you know you're a liberal judge if . . . ").
This kind of stuff is Hannity-esque on the political hackery scale. But Whelan knows this. He's too smart not to. And I think that's why he's so thin-skinned. Getting called out on your hackery is tough if you're someone who takes pride in your intelligence. It's embarrassing. So Whelan reacted by lashing out and "outing" one of his most thoughtful and persistent critics. It's school-yard bully kind of stuff. An act of extreme insecurity.
The reality is that if you don't think your work product can withstand the scrutiny of a few anonymous bloggers, than you have no business publishing it. And if your ego can't withstand being criticized by people who write under pseudonyms, then you're far too insecure to be blogging for a living.But since I doubt Whelan is going anywhere anytime soon, I'm sure we can all look forward to reading about why every judge or lawyer Obama appoints during the next four (or eight) years is, for various reasons, unfit for the job.
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