Rebel Without A Clue

So I'm watching The Daily Show just now, and I'm trying to wrap my mind around all the internal contradictions that embodied this fine evening in the guest chair by Fred Barnes. Barnes is the former McLaughlin Group lackey who hosts a Faux News kneepad-fest called Beltway Boys. (Yeah, I know, I don't think it sounds homoerotic either. Nosiree, not one bit. Why not just call it Brokeback Beltway and have done with it?)

Anyway, Barnes has been allowed on to pimp his moronic hagiography about Bush, incredibly called Rebel In Chief. Now, let's think about this for a second. We have a man here (Barnes) who is so button-down, he makes George Fwill look like Wavy Gravy. He hosts a thoroughly establishment show with a fellow traveler (Mort Kondracke) who, amazingly, is even more uptight. These motherfuckers have to spray WD40 on their ankles in the morning, just so they can screw their socks on.

So Fred Barnes knows about as much about "rebellion" as Ken Mehlman knows about pussy. Indeed, Barnes knows so little about it, he's actually written a treatise about a consummate government insider, who has spent his life posing as an outsider, to the point where Bush has actually deluded himself (and apparently Barnes) into believing it.

One more time for the cheap seats: George W. Bush is not a Washington outsider. Never has been; he was born having a US senator grandfather, and a father who was quickly using his connections to get his own congressional career started in Texas. His mother's grandfather was a US president (Franklin Pierce). Doesn't get much more inside-the-halls-of-power than that.

Yet Barnes, to hear him describe it to an incredulous Jon Stewart, has woven a tapestry of these debunked canards and tired tropes. Bush is a "different" kind of conservative; he's a "different" kind of Republican. Well sure, if by "different" he doesn't hew to the traditional conservative/Republican principles of merit, skill, competence, and thrift.

Most offensively, Barnes glossed over how bad 2005 was for Dear Leader, because all these awful truths started showing their ugly faces. In the midst of pooh-poohing the slight poll declines (to, um, the mid-30's in December), he charaterized Hurricane Katrina as a "bump". You know, old ladies dying of exposure in the streets because FEMA's being run by a cronyist moron, and the president's fucking around in San Diego with his git-tar? That's just a rough patch there. Nothin' to see here, folks, just good ol' fashioned maverick preznitin'.

Yeah, maybe Bush is a rebel after all. Just not the good kind. Enjoy your wingnut welfare, Fred. Hope ya choke on it.