The conservative movement has no principles

Over and over and over again I've heard from the noise machine that the Scooter Libby case was nothing but a partisan political witchhunt. Orin Kerr obliterates that lie

The Scooter Libby case has triggered some very weird commentary around the blogosphere; perhaps the weirdest claim is that the case against Libby was "purely political."

I find this argument seriously bizarre. As I understand it, Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as "overwhelming" and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate. And yet the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.

I find this claim bizarre. I'm open to arguments that parts of the case against Libby were unfair. But for the case to have been purely political, doesn't that require the involvement of someone who was not a Bush political appointee? Who are the political opponents who brought the case? Is the idea that Fitzgerald is secretly a Democratic party operative? That Judge Walton is a double agent? Or is the idea that Fitzgerald and Walton were hypnotized by "the Mainstream Media" like Raymond Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate? Seriously, I don't get it.

What Kerr doesn't get is it's slash and burn for the conservative movement. Ann Coulter does the same thing in Godless, she smears and character assasinates the Bush appointed judge who ruled against intelligent design in the Dover case, saying that he was only interested in celebrity and what not.

As I mentioned in my previous two posts on Neal Boortz, they are authoritarians who do not live in the same reality that we live in, a reality made up of ambiguities and shades of grey. You are either with them or against them. Comey and Fitzgerald and Walton didn't give blind allegiance to the conservative movement and thus the charges were "purely political" and all three have been excommunicated from the movement. They are now "liberal" enemies of the Bush administration, joining the ranks of Andrew Sullivan, Bruce Fein, Paul O'Neal, Bruce Bartlett, Rob Dreher, Bob Barr, Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, William Odom, etc.

And yet these are the same members of the conservative movement that spent millions of dollars and 6 years on a purely partisan witchhunt to remove the democratically elected Bill Clinton from office. And they will do it again. That I guarantee.

If a Democrat is elected in'08 they are going to make it very difficult for him/her to govern. They will be issuing the wildest conspiracies possible (which the mainstream media will parrot) and right-wing billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife will poor money into attempts to bring down the presidency (as he did with the Arkansas project) in coordination with the efforts of the totalitarian minded Christian dominionists that have captured the Republican Party from the bottom up.

In the years ahead, we are going to need to see a political re-alignment where the terms conservative/liberal/Republican/Democrat become obsolete. The proper frame for the division in the nation will be those who believe in democracy and the rule of law versus those who do not.