Quaint Notions 2004

The Globe’s Peter Canellos and Newsweek’s George Will are both of the opinion that whoever wins this fall the real losers will be the neocons.

If John Kerry wins the Feiths and Wolfowitzs of the current admin will be scattered like chaff in the wind.
If Bush should win the young Czar will somehow take a hint and purge royal household of his inept and scheming advisors.
Since Canellos and Will presuppose an eternal conservative ascendancy, any unwary reader of their columnry might be inclined to go back to sleep content that a dipshit like Doug Feith will no longer be standing the watch come Wednesday November third.
This is exactly the sort of comforting bilge nervous Roman Senators told themselves about Gaius Caligula….”HE was okay…its those freedman around him Longinus and the like…they are leading The Emperor astray!”
Mid level Bolsheviks told themselves the same thing in Stalin’s day…”Josef is okay it is that Beria character who is guilty of all the repression!”.

Persons who are afraid on some level can easily lapse into this kind of dangerous rationalization.

To think anything else is to question the now unshakable primacy of George Bush Jr. and La Famiglia Arbusto within the conservative movement.
So it is better all around to go on believing that the whole neocon apparat will somehow be dumped in the very near future.
But indeed why should any of them be dumped?
The President still has a conspicuous faith in their abilities…and he is know for loyalty after a fashion to his courtiers.
The Senate and House are in Republican hands and have demonstrated a pronounced inability to defy the President in any way.
Critical voices within the GOP are either marginalized (McCain) or carefully co-opted (Guiliani)…can we really expect any of these men to set off a civil war within the GOP?

Certainly not after a successful Presidential election….

No sirree if you think these guys have been flopping over on their backs for Bush to date…wait til he is re-elected…they will fall over themselves to get in good with the President.
No one will raise their voice against Wolfowitz or Cheney…and if they did Bush would simply ignore them. That is what GWB does best, he ignores good advice like a champ.

Therefore the capacity of the GOP to administer advice and correction to George Bush Jr, is negligible…and will only grow moreso.

Therefore if Will and Canellos truly want the neocons to be cast down from their high positions they’d best endorse Kerry…who on party grounds alone can be depended upon to pink slip the whole sorry lot.
But waiting for George Bush Jr. to come to his senses is a fool’s errand…but then this is the American punditariat we are talking about.