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I have been watching Scarborough's show much more often lately, and have even come to enjoy the contrast of seeing him right after Olbermann. I am a bit leary of his seeking to put his past support of the president in terms that are more benign than they really were, however:
When he says, "At the same time, I believed then, and I still believe now, that what we did in Iraq was worth trying," I hear: Well, our little forays into setting up governments is worth the lives of all those people, and has an honorable history stretching back to Manila where it cost about 100,000 Filipinos their lives.
When he says: "I suppose the biggest criticism, really, should be leveled at Donald Rumsfeld for trying to win the war on the cheap, like Tom Friedman and others have been saying," I hear: Yet I failed to denounce those who labeled such writers as traitors, and dismissed such criticism as being the usual crap from the liberal media.
When he says: "You want [Bush] asking tough questions of aides who actually disagree with him," I hear: We were tired of poll-driven presidencies and wanted someone who would act decisively, unilaterally if need by, to get the job done.
And when he says: "If you talk to people [in Washington], they'll all tell you basically the same thing, that the president is a man who's not only politically incurious, but is also a leader who does not like dissent, and I think that's very dangerous," I hear: Yes, the president is an idiot, in the way that any person is an idiot who does not heed the advice of experts, wastes others' money, bears responsibility for senseless loss of life, makes enemies of friends seemingly for sport, and insists that others toe his line simply because he has told them to do so.
Now that the cat is out of the bag and conservatives are saying publicly what conservatives have been saying privately, I guess it's finally alright to be critical of the president without having your patriotism and loyalty questioned. I bet that it won't be too long until conservatives begin adapting the old McCarthy era condemnation of being "premature anti-Fascist" into something equally accusatory.
