Bob Dole doesn't like two-faced weasels

By Rick Morris

Let's get this straight right away. Scott McClellan was perhaps the worst White House spokesman of the last century. His bumbling, buffoonish hemming and hawing from the podium day after day set a new standard for public ineptitude. Babies crying for their soiled diapers to be changed thought this clown was helpless and pathetic.

But, America being America, he's been able to cash in on his complete inability to fulfill even minor professional standards in the performance of his job.

All of the so-called "revelations" in his book fall into what might be called, in deference to family-friendly standards, "No S, Sherlock territory." Yes, this administration made a decision to get us into war without an imminent threat and played the Dean Smith Four Corners Offense for almost four years prior to the surge in the desert of Mesopotamia while we lost untold blood, treasure and deterrence capacity. Yes, the federal response to Katrina was putrid and down to the almost impossibly low standard of the hopelessly feeble and corrupt state and local governments.

However, McClellan shows himself to be completely gutless in his inability to walk away from this job believing that the president was in the wrong. In this way, Bob Dole is justified in his outrage that this piddling little turd was able to profit from his two-faced behavior.

As a RINO par excellence, McClellan whines and sobs about the Bush Administration's reluctance to "govern from the center," conveniently ignoring all of the left-wing sellouts of the past eight years (big spending, sacrificing poor kids to the alter of Big Labor in the voucher-free No Child Left Behind abomination, trying to put a moderate establishment weenie on the Supreme Court before conservatives howled, etc.) because they don't fit his narrative.

Who can blame him for trying to change the subject, though, especially when he knows that know-nothing jerks like OlbyLoon are going to give him a pass for all of his historical revisionism? The fact is that Scott McClellan was the personification of this administration's failure to live up to any kind of potential whatsoever. As I've stated previously, I voted third-party in the 2000 presidential election out of conviction that the Republican Party had erred tremendously in opting to sublimate its interests to those of the Bush Dynasty. But I did root for the Bush team to succeed in the first term, and saw signs after 9/11 that they just might prove me wrong after all and be up to the job. Sadly, they were not, and by the time the 2004 election rolled around I was pulling the lever in that direction solely out of abject fear of the prospect of radical pacifist, Jimmy Carter's Second Term John Kerry (although an argument could certainly be made that since Kerry would also have been an abject failure these past four years that the country might be better off right now had he won since we'd be poised to expressly repudiate his vision instead of being about to embrace it potentially in the form of Barack Obama -- but that's a different story for a different time).

The disillusionment that I felt with the Bush Administration during McClellan's tenure at the podium originated with their policies and follow-through, or lack thereof, but deepened substantially at their complete lack of competence in allowing this no-talent hack to stumble inarticulately day after day in front of the brutal jackals of the press. Not only could this crew not carry out policies in a capable manner, they could not communicate even a basic vision with any polish whatsoever. As a writer, that offended me greatly.

So to sum up: Scott McClellan didn't demonstrate the Bush Administration's incompetence through the contentions in his book that came out this past week. He demonstrated it by keeping his job for three years.

Romney hypocrites: sit down and shut up!

By Rick Morris

With the whiff of desperation in the air, the followers of Objectively Unfit Mitt (click here for 50 great reasons to vote against Romney) are insulting the intelligence of every voter on the right by proclaiming the superior purity of their hearts and they are also quite busy demeaning everyone opposed to their hollow hero as a squish or tool of the media or worse.

Well, I've had about all I can take from these posers and it's time to hang them with their own words.

Let's be quite unambiguous about this: the betrayers on the right who have thrown in with Mitt Romney's attempt to dupe the American people and are now daring to present themselves as "more conservative than thou" have transgressed against conservative policy way more than I ever have in my voting record or support of candidates -- and that's true of countless other citizens as well.

Because of space consideration, I'm going to limit this to one apiece, but here are several reasons that the leading opinion-shapers on the right who are trying to shove Mittens down our throats have PREVIOUSLY proven that they are not to be trusted.

^ Rick Santorum, who courts an image of the purest of the pure right-wingers, is a complete phony who colluded with Dubya and the D.C. power brokers to save Arlen Spector's worthless RINO hyde in the '04 primary.

^ Rush Limbaugh bashed Pat Buchanan and other challengers to Bob Dole in '96 and H.W.'s boy in '00 in faithful, unquestioning service to the Washington Republican Establishment he now amusingly claims to have always opposed.

^ Hugh Hewitt -- ah, how do you limit yourself to just one of his intellectually dishonest bon mots -- OK, here we go -- he, the self-professed arch-nemesis of all things "MSM," took to the New York Times editorial page to whimper about how the conservative movement had lost its moorings by depriving America of That Future Hall of Fame Supreme Court Justice, Harriet Miers.

^ I lied, here's another one about "El Rushbo": he took an elitist stand disregarding the wishes of the American people regarding the Dubai ports fiasco.

^ Michelle Malkin played the fool during Hurricane Katrina by assuming that just because state and local authorities, under the control of Democrats were incompetent (they were) that the Feds, controlled by Dubya Who Can Do No Wrong were competent (they were not): "Contrary to the usual Bush-deranged kvetching, the president is on the job."

^ Sean Hannity, whose Bush-era sniveling sycophancy is second to none, praised the PRE-SURGE state of affairs in the Middle East in his customary slavish terms in 2004.

^ Mark Levin, maybe the most holier-than-thou basher of anti-Romney Republicans, was so big a pro-Bush sellout that he tried to drag down the Gipper by using him as cover for George W's misadventures.

As has been documented previously on this esteemed blog, Fred Thompson was The One True Hope of The Right in this election cycle and the above members of Mendacious Mitt's Choir failed to "mount up and ride to the sound of the guns" when they legitimately had a chance to stand up for the future of this country. To them, and the other nauseating "opinion leaders" on the right who want to lead us down the primrose path as they demonstrably have before:

Sit down and shut up.

Pat Robertson's 30 pieces of silver

By Rick Morris

Pat Buchanan's forecast that Rudy Giuliani would try to bridge his differences with social conservatives by buying them off with militarism is paying off -- witness his endorsement by Pat Robertson, one of the big poohbahs of the Social Issues Right since the 1980s. Apparently the willingness to bomb Iran on the drop of a dime transcends every other difference that is supposed to exist between Robertson and the thrice-married drag queen.

Robertson's sellout of the pro-life and traditional marriage community is shameful but not unexpected. For all the rhetoric about leaders of the "far right" in this country, most of them have proven to be phonies and sellouts who want a place at the table far more than they want the advancement of their principles. The best example of all comes from the leadup to the 1996 Republican presidential race, when Bill Clinton was at a low ebb and several candidates with a legitimate conservative pedigree were entering the fray: Buchanan, Phil Gramm, Steve Forbes and Alan Keyes among others. So who did Ralph Reed and other alleged "radical right" potentates line up behind? Good old Mr. Establishment Bob Dole.

For those who have appointed themselves as the leaders and guardians of right-wing thought, viability always trumps every other principle, including integrity and idealism. On the same day Robertson shamed himself by traipsing hat-in-hand to the anti-life frontrunner in the presidential race, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback was putting a period at the end of his campaign by endorsing fellow Senator John McCain. Brownback's effort was doomed when leaders of the so-called "Religious Right" refused to rally to the side of the most consistently pro-life candidate ever to run for president. He wasn't "viable" enough in the polls for them -- in the winter of 2006-07, mind you, when the Howard Dean precedent of 2003 proved that a longshot had plenty of time to catch on -- and they abandoned him to be willfully misled by politicians they know will let them down if elected.

The blogs and message machine on the Left always bemoans the alleged all-powerful influence of the leaders of the "Religious Right." This country should be so lucky. They're a bunch of whimpering, toothless sellouts just like so many other influence-chasers in D.C.