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August 12, 2004
From Conservative to Liberal in Three Paragraphs
Rush Limbaugh, commenting on John Kerry's troubles with his flip-flops on Iraq, began reading this column from Steve Chapman. At first he announced that Chapman was a liberal in the Kerry camp. Then he started reading.
John Kerry is a man of great personal courage, which served him well as a naval officer in the Vietnam War. But the man who takes the inaugural oath next January won't be asked to lead a bayonet charge. A more vital quality in a president is moral courage. And trying to detect evidence of that attribute in Kerry is like expecting Mikhail Baryshnikov to show up at the county fair.
"I'm not so sure he is a liberal now," quoth the Doctor of Democracy. He came to this conclusion because, of course, only a conservative would criticize Kerry for a lack of "moral courage." Then he continued reading.
The latest proof that Kerry's backbone is made of goose down was his statement that even if he had known what he knows now about Iraq's imaginary weapons of mass destruction
"Oh, he's starting to sound like a liberal now," added El Rushbo.
and mythical partnership with Al Qaeda
"Yeah, he's definitely a liberal."
he still would have voted for the resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," he said.
The Iraq war is shaping up to be the greatest American foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. It has killed nearly 1,000 American soldiers and wounded more than 6,000, while tying down 140,000 troops whose numbers are inadequate for the challenge. Its price tag has reached $150 billion, with more costs to come.
Now Rush had definite proof that Chapman is a liberal. Only a left-winger would dare to criticize Bush's war to this extent. Conveniently, he skipped over the next sentence with some comment that it was just more antiwar stuff:
The war and occupation have alienated our friends, inflamed anti-Americanism in the Arab world and diverted us from the war on Al Qaeda.
In the Republican/Democrat world of Limbaugh and his ilk, there are only good conservatives who support the war and bad liberals who oppose it. If Rush had bothered to look at Chapman's archives, he would have discovered that Chapman is anything but a liberal. If anything, he qualifies as a libertarian or perhaps a very conservative conservative. He used to be carried on TownHall.com, for example, which bills itself as a "conservative news and information" site. (One wonders if he wasn't dropped from the site after February 3, 2003, because of his constant criticism of the Bush administration with regard to both domestic and foreign policy.) However, looking at Chapman's full range of columns wouldn't do. The syllogism is: (a) Only liberals oppose the war; (b) Chapman opposes the war; therefore, (c) Chapman is a liberal. It's very convenient but, unfortunately for the neocons, not true in the least.
(Update: Here's the link to the transcript of Rush's comments. Scroll down slightly more than halfway to read it. I didn't have Limbaugh's exact words in my original entry, but the essence was there.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at August 12, 2004 01:36 PM