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P.J. · Guest

Karl Rove offends liberals

Brent Bozell
June 29, 2005
http://www.townhall.com

Karl Rove proved a very salient point last week in his speech to the
Conservative Party of New York. The media's reflexes still work. After
most in the "news" media spent a week steadfastly ignoring Sen.
Richard Durbin's (D-Ill.) hideous statement comparing U.S. detainees
to the killing fields of Pol Pot, Rove said liberals were weak on
terrorism, and zoom! Rove's remarks rocketed to the front page and
with that, the top of the political buzz.

The New York Times set the table by quoting only a few sentences in
which Rove explained that conservatives saw Sept. 11 and knew it was
time for war, while liberals saw it as an occasion for indictments and
therapy and an opportunity to understand our attackers. Liberal
politicians like Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton were outraged.
And so were the liberal media.

The bottom line is this: Durbin was ignored because the media agree
our Guantanamo detainee practices are savage and dictatorial. Rove was
highlighted because those same journalists vehemently disagree with
the notion that liberals had the wrong response to Sept. 11. The
media's standard of newsworthiness is explicitly a double standard,
unmissably ideological and liberal.

Let's grant the offended liberals the point that the vast majority of
us wanted to join the Congress in singing "God Bless America" after
the attacks. It's also true that a vast majority of Democrats voted to
authorize war in Afghanistan. Only one Senate Democrat and about 65
House Democrats voted against the terrorism-fighting Patriot Act. But
those votes took place within the first six weeks after Sept. 11.
Would any liberal political adviser of sound mind advise voting
against those at that time? Do those six weeks get to last forever in
defining what liberalism has prescribed for a war on terror?

In turn, liberals must grant the point that Rove was singling out
liberals, specifically the MoveOn.org folks and Michael Moore and
Howard Dean, not Democrats in general. The extent to which Sen.
Clinton and the other offended Democrats have endorsed and promoted,
or at least refused to criticize MoveOn and Michael Moore and Howard
Dean is the extent to which they are not allowed to take offense at
Karl Rove's remarks.

Liberals should also be defined by how they viewed the attacks after
the initial shock and national unity wore off. Six days after Sept. 11
on ABC, "comedian" Bill Maher said the terrorists weren't cowards like
we were, "lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away." Ten days
after the attacks, an ABC special featured historian Richard Rhodes
proclaiming that "These acts didn't come out of nowhere. People are
suffering in the world, seeing their children die of preventable
disease and of malnutrition." Within two weeks, ABC had banned its
reporters from wearing of flag pins on television and "Nightline" had
already turned predictably to sending a reporter into a Berkeley
classroom as the majority of the class agreed that violence only
breeds more violence.

That doesn't mean fuzzy liberal talking points shouldn't have been on
the news. It does mean that liberalism was already on public display
in its emphasis on avoiding war and defeating our mortal enemies by
empathetic negotiation and foreign aid packages.

Karl Rove, therefore, was correct in his assessment. Still,
Newsweek's Washington Bureau Chief, Daniel Klaidman warned that Rove
is trying to create "the sort of Republican fantasy of a liberal." But
these views of liberalism are not fantasies. They are a reality etched
in the historical record. These liberals constitute a large part of
the Democratic base and have defined this party. Just as they have
defined the liberal media.

Add this question: How precisely did supposedly hawkish President
Clinton fight his war on terror, if he waged one? Indicting Osama bin
Laden in Manhattan hardly stopped Americans from dying at the hands of
Al Qaeda terrorists in our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania or aboard
the U.S.S. Cole. He lobbed a few cruise missiles, timed precisely to
distract attention from his testimony in the Monica Lewinsky case, and
then stopped as quickly as he started. This means Mrs. Clinton should
think twice before taking offense at indictment quips.

It's also fascinating to see what the liberal-media summation of the
Rove speech left out. Rove cited a pundit who declared liberalism is
in great risk of becoming irrelevant, of "getting defined, as
conservatism once was, entirely in negative terms." That pundit is
Paul Starr, editor of the liberal American Prospect magazine. Try
finding any mention of Paul Starr in all the anti-Rove hubbub.

Rove and Starr don't agree on much, but they agree that the mantle of
idealism and optimism and activism is moving to the right, while the
mantle of cynicism and pessimism and defensiveness shifts left.
Cynical, pessimistic and on the defensive. Come to think of it, that's
also a great description of the liberal media flailing against
Republican control of Washington.

Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a Townhall.com
member group.

©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

E Bet Anthony · Guest

bob wrote:

ElaineJ · Guest

P.J. wrote:

bob · Guest

P.J. wrote:

DustyMars · Guest

In article <3ifptsFjdhj4U1@individual.net>, poeticjustice@opinion.com
says...

bob · Guest

ElaineJ wrote:

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