When the only good Republican, it seems, is a dead one...

When Jon Chait published his long piece on the netroots in The New Republic earlier this year, many bloggers seemed outraged by his suggestion that there was pressure in the netroot "movement" to put partisan advantage before ideas or intellectual inquiry. Nonsense, they said, the netroots are about winning not ideology. And that's fair enough. Nothing wrong with it in fact. But it is a limitation on the movement nonetheless.

But perhaps Chait has a point. After all, here's Matt Yglesias, universally (and correctly) hailed as one of the brightest, most free-thinking liberal bloggers (and now making his nest at The Atlantic), blogging from a Center for American Progress conference on "America in the World" here in DC:                            

"I totally understand the need to provide a patina of bipartisanship, but it strikes me as a big mistake for the American Progress / Century Foundation event to feature Gordon Smith [a Republican from Oregon] as a speaker. When someone like Chuck Hagel plays this role you say to yourself "he's from Nebraska, you've got to take what you can get." But Smith's from Oregon, he's got an eminently winnable seat. The last thing progressives need to be doing is helping him bolster his moderate credentials"

Well that's fine too. But isn't it also possible Senator Smith was invited because someone at CAP thought he might have something interesting to say. (Granted, that's a feeling my congenital cynicism leads me to suspect is likely to have been disappointed, but still...)

So, yes, winning is important and I agree that some of the desire to see more bipartisanship in Washington is the worst sort of back-slapping nonsense, but the point still stands: in this instance at least Matt would seem to be putting winning and ideology ahead of anything that might be considered, well, the stance of the independent blogger or journalist. Again, that's fine and fair enough. But it's still I think, as I say, a limitation.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein also weighs in. To wit:

You could argue that having Gordon Smith attend your progressive foreign policy event made sense if his rhetorical apostasies were actually resulting in him offering his vote on various progressive foreign policy priorities. But that's not happening with any regularity . Instead, he's offering some criticisms of the war and support on occasional amendments in return for an accelerating reputation as a brave, independent, truth-teller -- exactly the sort of thing that will get him reelected in 2008. And by giving him marquee speaker slots at progressive conferences, his branding effort is strengthened, and replacing him with a more committed ally of progressive foreign policy approaches becomes ever less likely.

And so it was that the Center for American Progress (founder J Podesta Esq) became yet another enabler of prolonged Republican hegemony and terrible foreign policy mistakes. Just like that rabble at The New Republic.

Comments

[PETE]

the only good republican is a dead one..lets start building cemetaries for the assholes, maybe next to bonzo and bush when he's long gone and were still paying for his damages to this country..next century..peace...pete...