Bingeing and Purging
by digby
I know the chatterers are all atwitter at the prospect of Democratic voters “purging” a Senator who doesn’t represent their views by voting against him in an election. Many seem particularly upset at what they perceive as a doctrinaire leftist demand for ideological purity and a rigid view about the Iraq war.
The Heritage Foundation has never been known as an intellectually adventurous place. For decades, its policy briefs and studies have closely tracked Republican talking points. So did the opinions of the think tank’s senior foreign policy analyst, John Hulsman. In his Washington Times op-eds and Fox News appearances, he cheerfully whacked Howard Dean, John Kerry, the French, and other enemies of the cause.
But all these years of fidelity to the conservative cause couldn’t spare Hulsman from suffering the wrath of his comrades. On July 7, his boss, Kim Holmes, sent a note to the Heritage staff wishing Hulsman “the very best in his continuing career.” No one at Heritage was fooled by Holmes’s euphemistic send-off–least of all Hulsman. “After getting fired,” he says, “I was a walking corpse.”
Following Holmes’s lead, the official line from Heritage is that Hulsman left his $90,000-a-year job of his own volition. Indeed, two Heritage spokespeople initially denied to me that Hulsman was shown the door. When I pressed them, both then told me that the think tank doesn’t discuss its “human resources policies.” The reasons for Hulsman’s departure, however, are perfectly evident. “At Heritage,” says Chris Preble of the Cato Institute, “anything that smacks of criticism of Bush will not be tolerated.” And, as the Iraq war faltered, Hulsman grew increasingly bold in criticizing the administration’s foreign policy in essays and conversations with reporters. In September, he will co-publish a book with the New American Foundation’s Anatol Lieven titled Ethical Realism, a scathing indictment of the neoconservative worldview. With his firing, Hulsman joins Bruce Bartlett, the economist who was dismissed from a right-wing think tank for his criticisms of Bush, in the ranks of the conservative purged.
And in the coming months, their ranks will likely grow even larger. Conservative recriminations over Iraq are igniting all across Washington, with opponents of the war loudly assaulting its leading champions (see Francis Fukuyama v. Charles Krauthammer and George Will v. William Kristol.) But what the Hulsman incident reveals is that the war’s supporters aren’t about to passively absorb criticism and issue public apologies. They are going to fight back against their critics–and an ugly debate will become much uglier.
[…]
“If the midterms go badly, the civil war in the GOP starts the day after,” Hulsman says. “The neocons and Kristol will say that Bush is incompetent and the neocons are not to blame.” Maybe then it’ll be Hulsman who leads the next purge.
Oh my goodness, it sounds like this whole “war” thing might just be a little bit more politically complicated than Cokie and her pals are letting on, doesn’t it? And here I thought this was all about George Mcgovern and the summer of love. What gives?
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