Man of What Now?

Evidently, any post nonironically entitled “Joe Lieberman, Man of Integrity” is self-refuting. (Integrity? Like voting for cloture so that the horrendous bankruptcy bill would pass, and then casting a meaningless vote against it to fool particularly gullible rubes?) But it should be noted that Whittman does not understand what “McCarthyism” means. A “McCarthyite” attack would be “Joe Lieberman was a guest of honor at the National Review‘s 50th anniversary gala, therefore he opposes civil rights.” But nobody’s making that argument; most people know that Lieberman contemporaneously supported civil rights, partly because he brings it up when he’s correctly accused of being a Republican kiss-ass almost as much as Roger L. Simon. The argument, rather, is that no Democratic Senator of any integrity would attend the anniversary dinner of a magazine whose strong defense of apartheid was merely one example of it consistently opposing all progressive change in this country. Having a Democratic Senator sit at the head table is part of the whitewash of the NR’s record, to just pretend that “respectable” American conservatism’s support for segregation never happened. (It should be noted that the editorial cited by Atrios was likely written by Buckley himself, and he certainly made similar arguments in Up From Liberalism.) Whenever you hear Sean Hannity talk about the (liberal) Republicans (who the National Review hated) who voted for the Civil Rights Act, that’s what’s going on: “conservatives have really always been liberals.” No supporter of civil rights with a shred of “integrity” would be anywhere near an anniversary dinner for the National Review, and Whittman’s attempt to obfuscate what’s going on here by invoking McCarthy is just risible.

The funniest part, though, has to be Whittman using the fact that Buckley lent crucial support to Lieberman’s first Senate campaign as part of a defense of Lieberman. Wow, I can’t imagine why progressive Democrats regard the DLC with such skepticism…

…Steve has more.