Business as Usual

Craig insists that Karl Rove wasn't calling liberals "traitors", and he goes so far as to provide an excerpt from Rove's speech and points out that the word "traitor" appears nowhere and falls back on that good old canard, "He's just questioning their judgement!"

Well, as much as I respect Craig, this is colossal nonsense.

Allow me to scroll down the text of Rove's speech to the really noxious part:

Let me put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts to the region the words of Senator Durbin, certainly putting America's men and women in uniform in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.

He doesn't refer to "judgement" there. Rove specifically uses the word "motives". Read that last sentence again:

No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.

He's saying not only that Senator Durbin, and liberals like him, are putting American soldiers in greater danger, but that they want this to happen. He's not saying that liberals do dumb things that make things worse; he's openly saying that liberals want American soldiers to die. That's not "questioning liberals judgement", that's an open accusation of treasonous behavior. It's an odious and disgusting thing for him to say; it's odious and disgusting that this man says these things under the rubric of speaking for the President of the United States. And it's odious and disgusting that so many are jumping up to cheer for this man as he does it.

And no, it's not "faux-outrage" that I'm expressing. I do not think that Senator Durbin said one thing that needed apologizing for, and I am outraged by what Rove said.

And if we're really going to sit around pretending that "He didn't call you traitors, he just questioned your judgment", I hope we're not going to forget about a political climate that put this book on the bestseller list, and that I've little doubt that the crowd jumping up and down in glee over Rove's remarks have all read that book and cheered its authors odious claims, too.