VFR on Roberts in 2005—Part V

On September 14, 2005, I analyzed the John Roberts nomination fight in terms of one of VFR’s continuing themes of the Bush years: how the left, by attacking milquetoast “conservatives” as extreme right-wingers, convince the adrenaline-rich, brain-poor mainstream conservatives that the milquetoast types really are right wingers and thus worthy of their allegiance and support.

Who is really winning?

The L-dotters are infuriated over the Democrats’ even-more-despicable-then-usual behavior yesterday in the questioning of John Roberts, and happy over the ease with which Roberts, who is clearly a bright if insubstantial fellow, showed up the Dems as the dumbbells they are. But Roberts’s conservative defenders don’t realize that the joke is on them. The more the left attacks the non-conservative Roberts as though he were a right-winger, the more the conservatives embrace this non-conservative as a conservative champion. It doesn’t matter that Roberts worked for homosexual rights; it doesn’t matter that he regards Roe v. Wade, the most outrageous Supreme Court decision of modern times, as untouchable precedent. The fact that the brainless left sees him as a right-winger convinces the brainless right that he is one. The right thinks it’s winning the battle, because Roberts is outwitting the loopy left; but it’s the loopy left that is winning the war, since, by their very extremism, they continue to move conservatives (without the conservatives realizing it) ever further to the left.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 29, 2012 03:26 PM | Send