Is Powerline approaching its own Peggy Noonan moment?

While the general raison d’etre of Powerline has been proximity to the powerful (it isn’t called “Power-line” for nothing), its specific raison d’etre has been the care and protection of President Bush. On the rare occasions when the three neocon attorneys who author the site have disagreed with their man, as in the case of the recent immigration bill, they’ve done so in a restrained and regretful way. But now get this. Concerning a speech the Decider gave Monday on the Israeli-Palestinian process, Scott of Powerline writes:

Heavy on the subjunctive (advising various parties what they “should” do), the speech is a farrago of nonsense, wishful thinking, counterfactual assertions, and policy contradicted by previous commitments made by Bush himself (“[u]nder the roadmap, Palestinians must undertake an immediate cessation of armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all official Palestinian institutions must end incitement against Israel”). I leave it to others smarter than I to explicate the deep meaning of this disappointing speech.

I’ve been reading the Powerline guys since they became famous for exposing the phony CBS Evening News story about Bush and the Texas Air National Guard a few years ago. I have a sense of the language that they use, of how far they will permit themselves to go, and most of all of their desire to guard the president and their relationship with him. For these devotees of Bush to describe a speech of his as a “farrago of nonsense” represents a shocking breakdown of that relationship.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 16, 2007 10:23 PM | Send