The GOP's Loyalty Fetish: Great read!

[kaygore]

The GOP's Loyalty Fetish
Paul Waldman
February 22, 2006


Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America. His next book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn From Conservative Success, will be released in the spring by John Wiley & Sons.

The winding down of L’Affaire Birdshot left me wondering: Just who do you have to shoot around here to get conservatives to stop standing by you, anyway?

In a scene straight out of China’s Cultural Revolution, Harry Whittington stepped before the cameras to express his sympathy for the suffering he had caused Dick Cheney by getting in the way of Cheney’s gun—looking, as he apparently did, like a 6-foot-tall quail clad in blaze orange. "My family and I are deeply sorry for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with,” he said.

<snip>

But it’s a little hard to believe that Dick Cheney is consumed by regret. As the Daily Show’s Rob Corddry put it, “While the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face.”

Perhaps Cheney will now be in line for the Medal of Freedom for his itchy trigger finger, just as Tommy Franks, Paul Bremer and George “Slam Dunk” Tenet received theirs for the bungling of the Iraq war and occupation. In today’s political world, dominated as it is by stand-by-your-man conservatives, there are few sins that will get one banished from the field of battle. Indeed, Cheney could probably strangle a puppy at the next State of the Union and still be defended on the right. All manner of misdeeds can be forgiven, as long as one rule is followed: keep firing away at liberals and Democrats, and you’re all right with us.

Other examples aren’t hard to find. Consider Dick Morris. When his political consulting career flamed out after it was revealed he let a prostitute listen in on his phone conversations with the president in between toe-sucking sessions, he knew just what to do: become a professional Hillary-hater. No matter what was in his past, he’d be embraced by the right, with a New York Post column and a regular gig on Fox News the inevitable rewards.

<snip> Read the rest at

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/02/22/the_gops_loyalty_fetish.php

[Double T]

1. Failed beings can always resurrect their careers as long as they.........

are willing to sell their souls and preach the hatred doctrine of the NEOCON right. Many of the Fox News crew are perfect examples.