Gone, gone gone. E. J. Dionne, Peggy Noonan, John Fund, Thomas Sowell, Charles Krauthammer, Mona Charen, NRO, etc, etc, etc

One of the most interesting aspects of this has been the strange way that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been treating the issue. They have not endorsed a course of action for Lott, though they criticized him. Instead, we were treated to an analysis of Democrat hypocrisy, which is of course pervasive. And Rush was quite concerned that Trent Lott’s raising the white flag (oops, isn’t that what he did??) would energize the Demos to look for the next target. Also a legitimate concern. But way beside the point, given the precision and clarity of Lott’s offensive remarks. It make you wonder: were Sean and Rush wainting to see if it would blow over, or did they think their importance as spokesmen for mainstream conservatism mandated that they wait, lest they fuel the liberal media fire, or were they doing it for ratings (the Arbitron book closed yesterday), or what?

We know what the Democrats will do. But that is precisely the point for many of us on the conservative side of the blogosphere. We know what they will do and that’s why we are no longer — or maybe never were — Democrats. The tactical considerations of this seem petty compared to what Lott said. (Thought here’s a dirty little secret: most of us thought Lott to be ineffective or worse, making it impossible to even attempt the intellectual exercise of ginning up some rationale for his staying Senate Majority Leader). The teflon look, country club manner, so of a piece with the gauzy Southern romanticism (which is the best spin you could put on Lott), and soooooo un-internet. John Podhoretz’s paean to the blogosphere makes great reading and inspires the thought that the p-to-p blogosphere is to Matt Drudge as Yahoo! is to the web.

My little title above was most effectively used by Michelle Malkin, who observes pointedly how Lott’s hollow moral center spells troubles for the conservative agenda: “My fellow conservatives, if you weren’t already convinced that the Mississippi senator was a gutless, ineffective, self-preservationist sap before his remarks at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party last week, this pandering to the race Mafiosi in the aftermath of his comments seals the deal.”

Kudos to Josh Marshall. Andrew Sullivan, too.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 13th, 2002 at 8:23 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.