Lamont's Destruction
Martin Peretz is an old-fashioned liberal of the best kind. No, that doesn't mean I agree with him on a wide range of issues but I certainly agree with
Opinion Journal op-ed. The best way to describe Peretz' op-ed is to say that he powerfully berates Ned Lamont as a simpleton who has no business even being mentioned in the same breath as Joe Lieberman. Here's a sample of Peretz' stinging assault:
Posted Monday, August 7, 2006 3:34 AM
July 2006 Posts
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Now Mr. Lamont's views are also not camouflaged. They are just simpleminded. Here, for instance, is his take on what should be done about Iran's nuclear-weapons venture: "We should work diplomatically and aggressively to give them reasons why they don't need to build a bomb, to give them incentives. We have to engage in very aggressive diplomacy. I'd like to bring in allies when we can. I'd like to use carrots as well as sticks to see if we can change the nature of the debate." Oh, I see. He thinks the problem is that they do not understand, and so we should explain things to them, and then they will do the right thing.Mr. Lamont is a simpleton in political terms. His grasp of issues is insulting to Connecticut's voters. It's insulting that each of the Democratic presidential hopefuls have declared that they won't support Lieberman if he loses. Jean Francois Kerry won't even endorse him in the primary. Simply put, that's shameful behavior. If any of them had a spine, they'd speak up for Lieberman and tell the Nutroots gang where to get off. Instead, they've cowered in their corners, too afraid to challenge the idiots that are quickly destroying the Democratic Party.
It is a fortunate world that Mr. Lamont lives in, but it is not the real one. Anyway, this sort of plying is precisely what has been going on for years, and to no good effect. Mr. Lamont continues that "Lieberman is the one who keeps talking about keeping the military option on the table." And what is so plainly wrong with that? Would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be more agreeable if he thought that we had disposed of the military option in favor of more country club behavior?Mr. Peretz nails it by saying that Mr. Lamont doesn't live in the real world. Mr. Lamont is an idiot if he thinks that we should ever take the military option off the table when dealing with hostile, terrorist-supporting nations. Doing that isn't just stupid; it's dangerous.
Mr. Lamont's view is that there are very few antagonists whom we cannot mollify or conciliate. Let's call this process by its correct name: appeasement. The Greenwich entrepreneur might call it "incentivization." Mr. Lieberman's view is that there are actually enemies who, intoxicated by millennial delusions, are not open to rational and reciprocal arbitration. Why should they be? After all, they inhabit a universe of inevitability, rather like Nazis and communists, but with a religious overgloss. Such armed doctrines, in Mr. Lieberman's view, need to be confronted and overwhelmed.Mr. Lamont is the delusional candidate in this race. He's saying all the things that the Nutroots (dia)Tribe demands of its minions. Mr. Lamont's is a world that knows no evil, save Republicans. Mr. Lamont's is a world that also doesn't have the same colored sky as the world that people connected with reality have.
As I say, we have been here before. Ned Lamont is Karl Rove's dream come true. If he, and others of his stripe, carry the day, the Democratic party will lose the future, and deservedly.
Posted Monday, August 7, 2006 3:34 AM
July 2006 Posts
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