Kristol-nacht

For the third time, Bill Kristol's Monday morning New York Times column has prompted me to comment, so I've decided this weekly diary entry-critique is just going to have to become a regular feature of OpEdNews. I realize it's like shooting fish in a barrel, and if it was any day but Monday, I probably wouldn't bother. But it serves as a good warm-up for the week, gets the juices flowing, kind of like jumping jacks.

So what do you think of my title for it? Is that offensive? You never know when you get into the Nazi stuff.

Actually, I was a little worried about this one. For the first 10 of his 12-paragraph piece, Kristol was actually making a little bit of sense. He saw the weekend's Democratic capture of former GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert's House seat for the ominous sign that it is, and he predicted that despite the bitter primary fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the presidential contest, Democrats will eventually unite behind their nominee. Republican rule has been that bad.

He even suggested Republican nominee John McCain might be wise to abandon some elements of his party's pro-plutocrat, free market orthodoxy and throw some bones to the middle class. A "Sam's Club" agenda, he called it (and lo, how the "middle class" has fallen).

Sure, there were the usual cheap shots, like saying the Democrats were advocating a "precipitous" withdrawal from Iraq -- as if any withdrawal after five disastrous years could be described as "precipitous." But that's small stuff by right-wing pundit standards, the kind of minor infraction that makes you say, if you're an NBA referee, "Play on."

But he started going off the rails when he began discussing potential running mates for McCain, first suggesting former Democrat Joe Lieberman (making him the first two-time loser of a VP candidate), and then Iraq war generals David Petraeus (maybe) or Raymond Odierno (who?).

And then, like Kathy Bates in the movie Misery, going from "a little strange but pleasant" to "eyes-popping-out crazy," he lets loose with this howler:

I shouldn't be saying anything. On the infinitesimal chance that McCain might actually follow this advice, it would kill two birds with one stone. It would doom McCain's campaign to one of the most crushing defeats in American history, and it would get Thomas off the Supreme Court.

But wait a minute. Other than casting every single vote with the Court's leading admirer of Benito Mussolini -- Antonin Scalia -- Thomas is most famous for never ever asking a question from the bench, and for never authoring a significant opinion. He might properly be dubbed The Silent Minority, and yet Kristol calls him "the most impressive conservative in American public life."

Maybe he's finally on to something.