Actually, it shouldn't be a surprise. Krystol is so extremely right-wing that if he is driving down the road and needs to go left, he will drive one block past his turn, turn right, go a block and turn right again, then get back to the street he wants and turns right again so that he he going the direction he needs to be going without ever being seen turning "Left." Anything to avoid even making the appearance of turning what he considers "Left."
Read what Krystol said:
Every Democratic presidential nominee is going to the DailyKos convention. That’s the left-wing blogger who was not respectable three or four years ago. The Howard Dean kind of sponsor. Now the whole party is going to pay court to him [Kos]and to left wing blogs. Not a single one is going to the Democratic Leadership Council meeting in a couple of weeks.Let's look at Krystol's idiocy. First, since when is Marcos Moulitsas not respectable? The guy is a lawyer who has created an excellent political publishing outlet that is regularly allowing Democrats and Progressives to counter the idiocies and propaganda out of the American ultra-Right Wing propagandists like Krystol's News corporation-owned (Yeah, Rupert Murdoch owns Krystol) The Weekly Standard.
Oh, wait. Not respectable to who? Crooks don't like cops. Krystol doesn't like being exposed as the hack he is. Marcos is a threat to Krystol's hackery.
Second, Krystol describes the actions of the Democratic candidates as "going to pay court to him." This is a typical fantasy of a right-wing hierarchical Monarchist. Of course the socially insulated Krystol would compare the motives of the Democratic candidates to those of people he understands. His statement shows that he does not understand democracy - or that he doesn't want to appear that he understands them, since his audience is made up largely of right-wing authoritarians.
Finally, Krystol decries the fact that none of the Democratic candidates are attending a meeting of the nearly defunct Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Since the DLC suffers from the same anti-democratic and morally deficient attitudes as the conservative Republican Party, it is obvious that one like Krystol who is out of touch with reality in much the same way as the DLC would see snubbing them as bad news. In that view, Krystol is correct. Where he is wrong is who it is bad news for. The DLC is suffering for supporting the same discredited policies as the conservative right-wingers have.
Like a good conservative, Krystol is fighting a sad last ditch battle to defend his lost cause. It is rare even for him, however, to make a statement like this that so clearly demonstrates what a disaster the conservative movement has become. The conservatives have done more damage to America, the American Constitution, and the American democracy than their great ally Osama bin Laden could ever have hoped. In doing so, they have essentially destroyed the Republican Party for at least a generation.
Krystol and his master, Rupert Murddoch, have at the same time totally discredited the American news media with everyone. Granted, the conservatives previously considered it discredited - but it was the intrusion of News Corporation with FOX News and the Weekly Standard which has induced the rest of the the declining mass media to attempt to adapt to right-wing views. The result has been a collapse of the appearance of any form of objective media. [Whether it ever was objective is another issue. Whatever - even the image is gone now.]
All of this has been accompanied by a massive centralization of big business. Such a centralization can result in greater efficiency of production, but it is also accompanied by monopoly pricing and monopoly or oligopoly control of industries, excessive interference in government by business interests and a declining middle class. Greater efficiency in production and the growth of big business is routinely accompanied by a reduction in business innovation and adaptability, since such business changes threaten the economic value of "sunk costs." Sunk costs are those already spent to produce products. This is a danger to businesses of any size, but only large businesses have the financial and political power to fight off and delay economic innovation. This has been a major reason for the re consolidation of the Baby Bells into the new AT&T, and the refusal to upgrade broadband technology and access is an example. Guess why a number of states have passed laws making it illegal for cities to provide free wireless broadband. Such moves to provide an infrastructure service to the public costs big telephone in revenue. The fantasy being sold to the public and legislatures that somehow toll roads are cheaper for the public than having the government build, maintain and operate them out of tax money is another such big business scam to get greater revenue. The effort to privatize Social Security is another such big-business revenue grab. If you really think you will get better service and pay less money from big business, then you must really love the American health care lack-of-system.
The classic example of big business defending sunk costs was the refusal by the large retailers such as Gillette to adopt stainless steel razors during the 1950's. The technology was well-known after WW II, but carbon steel razors were only good for two or three shaves. Stainless steel razors could be used ten or more times each. The loss in revenue for big businesses if stainless steel was used would be quite large, and all the production factories would have to be rebuilt. It took a British company, Sword, to introduce the clearly better - and lower cost - product in America in the 1960's.
The American automotive manufacturers have suffered from a similar refusal to adopt new technology, and both they and the Oil Companies are even yet fighting against alternative fuel sources. The fight at the is time is more political than economic.
The bad economic effects of conservative control of government are only now beginning to be seen. They will get worse. (See The American Housing market and the coming financial disaster.)
Bill Krystol and his conservatives are the face of this set of conservative scams and money grabs. The many idiocies Krystol stated in his short statement above are just a few of the ways the wheels are coming off for the conservatives. He is smart enough to see that the wheels are headed south on him, and he is realizing that nothing he says or does can change the public awareness of the greed, corruption and total failure he represents.
He is right to be unhinged. He is drowning. Time to throw him an anchor.
Addendum 2:50PM CDT
Steve Benen atTPM points out the blather from Bill Krystol and his stalking buddy, the right-wing extremist Bill O'Reilly. Both are demanding that Democratic politicians distance themselves from people the right-wing consider left-wing extremists.
Quite beyond the fact that the people the right-wingers like Krystol and O'Reilly object to are, in fact, severe centrist moderates, the right-wingers will not take their own medicine. If right-wing politicians were to distance themselves from the really nasty right-wing extremists, then Bill O'Reilly himself would be out of a job, as would the foul-mouthed Ann Coulter and the drug-crazed criminal Rush Limbaugh.
The following brown-shirts are all people who Bush has associated with publicly:
* Sean Hannity ("[M]aking sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the [House] speaker" is "worth ... dying for")
* Neal Boortz (Islam is a "deadly virus")
* Laura Ingraham (Sens. Biden and Boxer are "on the side of" Kim Jong-Il)
* Mike Gallagher (Gore and Hitler "brilliantly put together side by side" in campaign video) [He later called on the government to "round up" several left-leaning voices, including Keith Olbermann, label them "traitors," and have them sent to "detention camps."]
Krystol and O'Lyelly are both such right-wing radicals that they wouldn't recognize a centrist if they saw one. Both are right-wing propagandists and Pubic Relations flacks, and neither has any respect for the workings of the U.S. Constitution.
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