Ahoy

[posted by Callimachus]

This kind of writing is why Captain's Quarters so often ranks as the favorite blog by a conservative among bloggers who are not conservatives:

I'm a little surprised by [Peggy] Noonan with this piece. I see nothing all that unusual with the way the Bush administration has attacked its critics over immigration. If she was to honestly look at the last six years, she will see that this is the normal mode of operation for the White House -- to always stay on the attack. In fact, they've followed the James Carville model from their first days in the White House.

What's the difference? They've not had to answer substantial conservative criticism very often. When they have, though, they've been consistent. When the Right objected to the poor choice of Harriet Miers as a Supreme Court nominee, they were accused of being sexist. When the Dubai Ports deal came to light -- which the administration failed to properly support -- they accused critics of bigotry and xenophobia. Those same accusations have arisen from Bush himself in this debate, with his accusation that opponents of the compromise bill "do not want what's right for America".

Welcome to the hardball of the Bush administration. We loved it when they used it on Democrats and the war, and it seems just a little hypocritical to start whining about it now that we're getting a taste of it ourselves.

Except the more thoughtful ones, with historical perspectives longer than an election cycle, didn't really love it at all.

[The Noonan piece in reference is this one].