This would be laughable, were it not so very tragic. Ben Smith:
The president-elect tonight is having dinner with some ideological adversaries: four of the most widely-read conservative columnists.
He’s dining at the Chevy Chase home of Washington Post columnist George Will with the Post’s Charles Krauthammer and the New York Times’s David Brooks and William Kristol. All three wrote, at times, both kind and scathing things about Obama, though Kristol in particular pushed sharp attack lines against him in the waning days of the race.
So, he collects four fairly widely read people, all of which are labeled by the left as ‘conservatives’, and yet the majority of them demonstrably have been spending the last several years, each tilting center-left, and it’s supposed to be this great sign that Obama is making great bipartisan effort?
Sorry, no sale.
George Will is, as I’ve stated here several times, utterly useless. The last twenty years or so of George Will are the result of him spending far too much time in Washington surrounded by people who were anything but conservative. Truth to tell, Will’s conservatism left him when Reagan left the White House. He’s been on a leftward glidepath ever since. Too bad his editors haven’t figured that part out yet. Or, perhaps they have known; After all, it’s always handy to have someone around with the conservative label, so that you can show them the mainstream media is ‘fair’, when you invite such a person to sit on panels, or to dinner parties.
Brooks is worse than useless, being conservative in name only. There are no conservatives of which I am aware who consider him to be anywhere on the conservative food chain. He certainly is no source of conservative wisdom. Callling Brooks conservative is a trick that is usually performed by people who want somebody with a conservative label to round out some panel or other. He’s about as conservative as Caroline Kennedy is qualified. The reason the New York Times keeps him around? They can play like they’re ‘balanced’. Forget that his actual output isn’t conservative. So long as the label gets waved around, he’s still useful to the leftist Times.
Then there’s Kristol… has anyone ever noted I very seldom cite him? Matter of fact, who does cite the man when they’re not laughing at him? That’s because the last time he came up with a worthwhile quote was during Bush 41. Since then, he shows every sign of being co-opted. He’s been on a parallel glidepath with Will to the left, these last two decades… only thing is, he was already left of Will at the off.
The farthest right Obama got here was Doctor Krauthammer, ( Who, long term readers will know, I have a small ocean of respect for). I wonder in the end how much sway he had over the rest of them. Indeed; I wonder, myself, why he would willingly allow himself to become involved in such an obvious ploy.
In terms of the ability to cut to the heart of the issue, there is nobody on the planet that can hold a candle to Doctor Krauthammer. Yet, if Mr. Obama came out of the dinner meeting swayed back to sanity, by the strength of the doctor’s arguments, particularly given those arguments and positions were undoubtedly diluted by the rest of them, I would consider it nothing short of miraculous. Trust me; it didn’t happen.
In the end, this was a nice for show, a nice attempt at a ploy to sate the right, who has an ever- increasingly better bead on him, but that’s as far as it goes. Then again, that’s exactly the kind of move that you would expect from somebody who spends most of his time managing his own spectacle. All show, no substance.
