Replies

LBKQ congratulated me for winning the prize on yesterday's Sunday Talk Show thread. I have adapted my post from there and am reposting it here, as I am even more steamed at Bill Kristol today than I was yesterday.

----------------------

As many of you know, I have been aggravated at Bill Kristol for some time. Bill Kristol has been busy around DC sabotaging Republicans since 1988. This is my full anti-Kristol rant.

Back when Kristol wrote his snarky column about the China Plane Incident, in early 2001, I decided to find out more about him. Here is what I learned.

When the first Bush Administration was being formed in early 1989, Kristol could not get hired by the White House. He managed to get a position as a domestic policy advisor in Dan Quayle's office. For mysterious reasons (which I believe but cannot prove were due to Kristol's machinations) Quayle's chief of staff resigned. Kristol got the job.

It was Kristol who insisted that Quayle put the "Murphy Brown" reference in that speech (making Quayle look like a moron). It was Kristol who urged Quauyle to make a speech attacking then-President Bush about some foreign policy elements. Quayle was encouraged by Kristol to "be his own man" at the exact time that the 1992 campaign was gearing up.

James Baker would not allow Kristol in on campaign strategy meetings, because of Kristol's propensity to leak to the press. In his biography, "Standing Firm," Quayle says that Kristol was disliked by Baker because Kristol intimidated him with his intellect.

(At this point I must interject that the first time I read Quayle's book, I didn't know all o the players. Anyone who thinks Kristol intimidated Baker should not ever consider running for public office again. I also think, reading about the wonderfulness of Bill Kristol in Quayle's book, that Kristol ghost-wrote it.)

Anyway, Kristol's weaseling and general incompetence contributed to disarray in the first Bush Administration.

Now, let's move forward to more recent history. Remember back when the current President Bush was considering running? Guess who was opposed? That's right...Bill Kristol. He was so adamant that Bush couldn't win that he urged Republicans to unite behind someone who could win easily.....Colin Powell!

Powell, the very same person that Kristol excoriated for four years? Why, yes indeed, the very same! It was only after Powell made it very plain that he wouldn't run that Kristol got on the McCain bandwagon.

Kristol spent most of the 2000 campaign (after McCain was defeated) trashing the Bush campaign. The President's speeches weren't good enough, he wasn't tough enough, etc. etc. During the Florida recount, he was pretty much consistently pessimistic.

There was a small window during the transition when Kristol was fairly positive. That would be the time when he thought he might get hired by the White House, I guess.

By early spring, it was obvious he wasn't going to get a job, so when the China Plane Incident happened and Powell (remember, Kristol thought he was a good choice for president) negotiated the release of the crew, which 90% of the country thought a good thing, Kristol wrote a column called "Our Profound National Humiliation." That column caused a nine-days wonder here on FR, in which many McCainiacs attacked the President because he didn't nuke China or something equally bizarre.

After things calmed down, Jeffords defected. Who was the person who had the scoop that Jeffords defected? Kristol!

I heard his interview with Brit Hume. He was absolutely gleeful that he had this news. He said he had been learning from sources that the defection was imminent.

Well, who were his sources? Only Daschle and Jeffords knew, plus one senator who was an intermediary. I therefore concluded the source was Jeffords. So Kristol knew Jeffords was going to defect, and made no effort to warn the White House.

In addition, after Jeffords jumped ship, it turned out that he was convinced that the White House was going to kill the dairy subsidy. Who told Jeffords that, because the White House said they had had no such intention, and couldn't figure out where he got the idea.

Well, when I remembered the evil grin Kristol had when he told Brit about his "scoop," I decided that the source had been Kristol, who could easily convince a dim bulb like Jeffords that he was an "insider." I think Kristol engineered that defection by telling Jeffords that the White House was going to kill the dairy subsidy, and I will remain convinced of it until my dying day.

Now, here we are again with Kristol. It's not enough to disagree with the President. He has to go on NBC and ask for the nominee to withdraw her name. This doesn't have anything to do with principle; it has to do with sticking it to the President one more time.

Oh...and one other thing. E. Emmett Tyrell described Kristol as "the kind of guy who likes to sit in his study sipping on a brandy and wearing a smoking jacket...even though he doesn't smoke."

After viewing Kristol's glee at all the trouble the President is having (he was all over TV pontificating yesterday) I have nothing but contempt for him.

The above information (with the exception of the conclusions I drew about the Jefford's defection) comes from news articles, Dan Quayle's book, and Bill Kristol's on-air personal statements.