Oh NO! He's CRASHING!

Now that's a blogger's post if I've ever seen one. Great job, Joe!

More like this, please. What the repuglican party and its operatives need is constant ridicule from public spaces. Then maybe, just maybe, they'll start to understand that they are ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculing repuglicans, here's Yglesias: Do Political Science Departments Ignore Conservatism?

Go Joe!
I've criticized you recently (but that's what great about forums like this- we can debate people we respect or otherwise might agree with [or at times with whom we have little common ground], and receive criticism in return…) but this is the Joe I like.

The only thing that will convince the GOP that the tide has turned against them is another election loss. And even then I'm not so sure. I could see some moderate GOP candidates winning in some races, causing Bill Kristol et all to draw all the wrong conclusions.

Nice post Joe, except that you forgot what Kristol is actually best known for over the past 20 years: being categorically, catastrophically wrong about everything he writes about. A Kristol article about the crash of President Obama is excellent news- for President Obama.

Say, why no Swamp posts about the recent revelations of Lord Cheney's manipulating the CIA-Congress relationship?

"This is, of course, lazy hackery. And wishful thinking."

That's been the entire content of Kristol's work for as long as I've been aware of it.
How he got to be considered a "neoconservative wise man", I was never able to understand.

"How he got to be considered a neoconservative wise man, I was never able to understand."

He is considered a wise man from the same crowd who still insist that Sarah Palin is some sort of political genius.

I agree anon76, but there is a corollary to Kristol being fantastically wrong whenever he opens his mouth that he is also famous for.
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Kristol is perhaps the most classic example of failing upwards. I mean by 2006, everyone on the planet knew or should have known how fantastically stupid Kristol is. TIME Magazine saw that as some reason to hire him.
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After his FAIL grew to be even too much for TIME (a huge step for a magazine that has endorsed FAIL by Jeffrey Rosen as recently as a month ago), Kristol was enthusiastically hired by Pinch Sultzberger (btw a man that has leaned on the crutch of brain damaging nepotism almost as much as Kristol) for the New York Times.
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In a flurry of blatantly poor journalism, Kristol set a modern day NYT's record for most corrections attached to an opinion column in less than a year. Even this amount of FAIL was to much for Pinch, and he had to let his childhood buddy walk.
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Seeing this pattern of epic FAIL, the Washington Post figured they would hire Kristol to balance out the other blatantly dishonest and FAIL-filled commentary of George Will and the Krauthammer (who is also a TIME alumni).

It's refreshing to know that if Joe ever feels writer's block coming on, he can can always pick up a Kristol or Krauthammer column and have some instant-hackery to respond to.

Way to go Joe. It's about time somebody put Bill Kristol in the public stocks of public opinion and threw rotten tomatoes at his head for being consistently wrong in his personal quest to amass partisan power at the expense of the health and the wealth of the nation. Kristol, who should still be cowering in a corner somewhere, overcome by the shame of his near traitorous act of almost foisting the intolerably inept, empty vessel of Palin on a nation and a public still reeling from the effects of the idiocy in the last white house, is instead still carrying the banner for a triumphant defeat of the best president history, timing, lady luck and good fortune could muster so he could be replaced by the quitter from Wasilla at time still to be determined down the road -- Shame on you Bill! But I promise if you'll just be quiet from now on you can still earn the thanks of a grateful nation.

Joe, give us your take on what is going on at with the C STREET BAND?

So did the size of government, relative or otherwise, peak in 1980? If we all "turned away from big government libralism" in 1980 then obviously the trend has been a shrinking government until 2008. Reagan and Bush and Bush made sure of that didn't they? Didn't they satisfy our hunger for no taxes, no services, and no central control?

Oh, that's right, Clinton signed for a school lunch program and ruined all the savings from the wars.

But the hyperbolic squirming on the right remains a vastly entertaining show...

Maybe for some, but I'd like to see less of it validated in our media and/or seriously considered in our public discourse.

Good post Joe.

Picking on Kristol is like plucking an overripe, low-hanging conservative fruit.

ha ha Fata$$ Joe Klein panders to the libtard posters here and gains much praise. Liberals are so out of touch. You guys look like fools. No wander why Fox news kicks the liberal MSM's ass.

I know this is a radical suggestion, but perhaps the time is ripe to start dissociating the marketing terms "conservative" and "liberal" from the respective Republican and Democratic party lines, since on many issues (such as foreign policy) those terms do not accurately describe the party positions?

Wow. Seems like most of you have mistaken Klein's hyper defensiveness for insight. I guess as long as the right people attack Klein he'll keep writing what you consider to be good posts. That it took Klein all these years to figure out what the Right was all about says it all, but he'll never admit error outright. Go ahead, ask Joe if he was in favor of the Iraq invasion.

I was going to post all of Klein's ridiculous statements vis-a-vis FISA and wiretapping and alternate them w/ what we've learned about Bush's illegal wiretapping over the week, but Swampland isn't worth the effort.

Bill Kristol predicts Obama is crashing and Sarah Palin is making a shrewd political move. 'nuff said.

@cincinnatus,

Actually you needn't go all the way back to the FISA debate to find examples of JK going off the rails.
He's on record as thinking that holding torturers accountable for torture will interfere with the creativity and flexibility that the CIA requires going forward in this dangerous age.

That doesn't mean we can't enjoy the show when he gets into it with those who are even further off the rails.

Great article Joe!! Just to get a balanced view I listen and sometimes read the articles by Bill Kristol. More recently the articles concerning Palin's resignation. After listening to him or reading his articles I truly struggle to understand what planet he is from that only he can discern certain information from the Republican babble that's being placed in the media lately. I can only assume they are speaking in "tongues" and only the select few can understand it. I sure can't.

Lastly, whether or not the outrageous attacks on President Obama are warranted or not..the real debate should focus on the Republicans taking responsibility for the mess that we are in, both in Iraq, and at home. In just 8 years they have managed to destroy this country! I would like to see them debate the merits of what they have done and take responsibility before moving on to attack the Democrats and President Obama who have been left to clean up the mess.

Dear Mr. Kristol:

Thank you for Sarah “Tough It Out to the End” Palin; talk about sarahdipity for everyone. Flowers enclosed. Anything else that you can do to help split the social / fiscal conservative coalition – their world views are NOT the same – please go for it. I have your back; I love you, man.

Sincerely,
decon

(he might take this seriously? ha!)

I like Joe Klein a lot, but I find myself cringing at how many of his Swampland posts are predicated on other people writing about him. Surely all the important debates we need his mind on don't center on comments people have made about his work.

Funny. I just read this anecdote about little Billy Kristol this past weekend:

"The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.

"With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.' "

Some people skate through life on greased bearings, don't they?

Source (link) CAMPOS: To the manner born -- By Paul Campos, Rocky Mountain News (end link)

"I know this is a radical suggestion, but perhaps the time is ripe to start dissociating the marketing terms "conservative" and "liberal" from the respective Republican and Democratic party lines, since on many issues (such as foreign policy) those terms do not accurately describe the party positions?"
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Not radical at all, and probably warranted. Of course it is not in the interest of either political party on the whole. It would only benefit a majority if speaking of non-direct political citizens and long term intellectual growth of the nation. Based on our history and propensity for embracing relative ignorance, I don't expect to see such a dissociation happening anytime soon.
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If there is any fortune at all to come from our current plight(s) it is that our technology has put oh so much more of our foolishness on display for the 30 and under generations to observe and be disgusted by. The only question is whether the pampering, distractions, and relative ease of life that same technology provides will be enough to render them complacent when their 40's come about and the true weight of the world is on their shoulders.
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We shall soon see as the baby-boomers become inevitably irrelevant by the force of time, what our nation and world shall evolve into within the massively globalized and communication connected 2010's.

[...] the Swampland, Joe Klein writes about Bill Kristol in much the same tone as a exterminator writes about silverfish.  Schadenfreude is a dish best [...]