Sully Has Hisself a Little Snit

And also indulges in Dowd-esque cutesey name-calling ("Frumpy gets Grumpy") while doing so.

I enjoyed this bit on David Frum's "partisanship":

Oh, I forgot. All that matters is Republican partisanship. Whatever their record. Whatever they stand for. Whoever their opponents are.

This is Sullivan's big selling point. That he's an (hah!) "independent." Other folks who are not "independent" are not to be trusted.

Well, this claim falls three different ways:

1) No one's truly "independent." Everyone has different priorities and different preferences. Those prirorities will compell them towards one party or no party, but none of us are "independent" from our own worldview.

2) It is unclear why someone who is (claimed to be) "independent" has a better claim on the truth than someone else. We all know that "independents" like to stroke their egos about how free-thinking they are, but in many cases they're either uninformed, confused, or as knee-jerk on the issues as the worst sort of ideologue-- it's just happenstance that their ideological impulses send their knees jerking to two or three different parties.

So, Sullivan's left and right knees jerk in different directions, because no "Eagle" party represents his preferred mix of socialism, libertinism, and hawkish (but loopy and naive) foreign policy. On the other hand, one party happens to fit the jerks of my own knees, most of the time.

Am I therefore less trustworthy or objective that Sullivan?

In addition, no one can miss the fact that Sullivan's allegedly independently-jerking knees have lately both been jerking to the left in perfect unison...

3) ... which is to say, Sullivan isn't an independent, and he hasn't been for quite some time. He's a Democratic partisan, pure and simple, and he became one when the Massachusetts SJC forced gay marriage on an unwilling state. Once he was tantalized by the possibility of similarly forcing his dream on an unwilling nation, he has been a hardcore Democrat supporter.

...

The whole insult of calling "partisanship" on David Frum is laughable coming from Sullivan. For what is "partisanship"? It is the willingness to bend fact or principle or long-held conviction in the interests of supporting one party.

Is this a joke?

Has Sullivan read his own site lately? What has he been doing for the past seven months, other than slowly but unmistakenly walking back previous statements and principles so as to better comport himself with his newly-adopted political party?

Oh, I forgot. All that matters is gay marriage. Whatever their record. Whatever they stand for. Whoever their opponents are.

MORE: Il Padrino points out this "Quote of the Day," followed by Sully the Shilly's (see, I can do Dowdy name-calling too) commentary:

LQUOTE OF THE DAY: "As few as five people in black robes can look at a particular issue and determine for the rest of us, insinuate for the rest of us that they are speaking as the majority will. They are not." - Rep. John Hostettler, the Republican who authored the bill that would strip federal courts of the right to consider the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. But, of course, it could also be said about the five Supreme Court Justices who made George W. Bush the president of the United States. The Republicans love courts when they reach the right decision; they just despise them when they don't.

Not only does he seem to be endorsing the "Selected, not Elected" claims of the Wackadoo Left, but he's also speaking in babytalk. Liberals love saying just that: Republicans love the courts when they come to decisions we agree with, and we don't love them when they don't.

Ummm, forgive me, asshole: As opposed to whom, precisely? Please find me liberals who both love the court's liberal judicial activism and also loved the court's decision in Bush v. Gore.

And let's have Sullivan's take on court decisions that don't force gay marriage on unwilling states. Does he "love" those decisions?

This is full-fledged knee-jerk hack mode, guys. Not only is this ludicrously dumb partisan hackery, but you can find precisely this dumb level of partisan hackery on any chat-site you visit.

You don't need to click on Sullivan's site, nor pay him $100K for bandwidth, for this non-elevated level of political analysis. You can get just this sort of idiocy from an unwashed "peace" protestor on the street.

Or even this sign-holding philosopher.

Note: Sullivan has edited his original headline from "Frumpy Gets Grumpy" to simply "Grumpy." But the former was the original.

posted by Ace at 04:04 PM

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