“Let me refer you to everything I’ve said in the past.”

From Ron Silver.

Since 2001 it has become apparent to me that many people are indeed afraid. It has also become apparent to me that the people who are most afraid are behaving hypocritically and cowardly. I do not make these assertions lightly. It

Rich Lowry:

I believed, with a lot of other conservatives, that the Clintons were really good at destroying people. Judging from the last three weeks, they are really bad at destroying people. Maybe all those people they destroyed in the 1990’s were just easily destroyed? This is very disorienting…

I think that there are several factors here. First, when they were successfully destroying people, they had political power, either as Arkansas governor, or as co-president. I don’t think that being an ex-President and senator give them as much clout or ability to hurt their enemies. Also, most people weren’t aware of their record in that regard in the 80s and 90s. Now, it’s their most famous feature. Now, when they attempt to smear someone (as they did with Obama), the press calls them on it, instead of simply being stenographers for the smear. Of course, it helps a lot that the people they’re trying to destroy are fellow Democrats, so even those in the media who want to help them are conflicted in a way they wouldn’t be in the general election.

And, finally, I think that a lot of their former allies and toadies are tired of them, had enough, and starting to turn on them (watch this trend accelerate once people decide that she’s not “inevitable” and they don’t have to worry about being on the wrong end of the wrath of another president Clinton). Without the help of all these others, they are more powerless as well.

Plus, is Hillary Ed Muskie?

Jonah Goldberg:

The basic problem liberals have a hard time grasping: Murray is a soaked-to-the-bone libertarian. He doesn’t think the government is qualified or entitled to do much of anything. But whenever liberals hear conservatives or libertarians talk about race they automatically leap to images of Nazism or Fascism when virtually all serious or mainstream rightwing thinkers endorse, at most, benign neglect AKA colorblindness. You can take exception to such arguments, even passionate exception, but it is outrageous to suggest that Murray or Bill Bennett (remember his Freakonomics hypothetical?) or pretty much any other conservative or libertarian worthy of the label wants to use state power to oppress or eliminate minorities. It is a slanderous projection of liberal biases onto conservatives and it has been with us since the days when Herbert Spencer was demonized for being a radical liberal.

This is the same mindless jumping to conclusions that causes some people to call me a Republican, or “right winger” or “conservative,” or “neo-con.”

By the way, Jonah’s new book looks pretty interesting.

I love the cover.

From Mike Potemra:

To the readers..who have written me about how I should be worried about the (in the words of one) “extremely strange” and “Scientology-level strange” beliefs of Mormons, here’s my response: In my own faith, we believe that the cause of all evil was a single mistake by human beings many millennia ago

The more I learn about Huckabee, the less appealing he becomes:

Huckabee doesn

Well, actually, replace “sincere” with disingenuous. Nonetheless, this is one of the reasons that, if I were a Republican, I’d be voting for Fred Thompson.

And I should add that I don’t actually agree with the Cuba embargo, but it’s not a huge issue for me either way.

And speaking of Huckabee, one can see why the Dems would think him the most beatable candidate. I pretty much agree with everything here. I can’t stand Huckabee, either. My nightmare is a Hillary!/Huckabee choice.

Oh, one more comment. I was listening to Dennis Miller this morning in the car on the way to the dentists, and they said “Hey, he misspoke about Mormons thinking that Jesus and the devil were brothers. He meant to say Jews.”

Lee Harris points out the fatal flaw in the argument of the “non-interventionists“:

We may agree with Ron Paul that our interventionist policy in the Middle East has led to unintended negative consequences, including even 9/11, but this admission offers us absolutely no insight into what unintended consequences his preferred policy of non-intervention would have exposed us to. It is simply a myth to believe that only interventionism yields unintended consequence, since doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be different from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.

Lee Harris points out the fatal flaw in the argument of the “non-interventionists“:

We may agree with Ron Paul that our interventionist policy in the Middle East has led to unintended negative consequences, including even 9/11, but this admission offers us absolutely no insight into what unintended consequences his preferred policy of non-intervention would have exposed us to. It is simply a myth to believe that only interventionism yields unintended consequence, since doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be different from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.

Lee Harris points out the fatal flaw in the argument of the “non-interventionists“:

We may agree with Ron Paul that our interventionist policy in the Middle East has led to unintended negative consequences, including even 9/11, but this admission offers us absolutely no insight into what unintended consequences his preferred policy of non-intervention would have exposed us to. It is simply a myth to believe that only interventionism yields unintended consequence, since doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be different from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.