Scooter is All Politics.

It is my view that at this point even George W. Bush knows he has nothing left to lose. This explains his completely predictable decision to commute Scooter Libby’s sentence as sufficiently as anyone really needs. With his approval ratings closing in on Richard Nixon circa July ’74, (and that was BEFORE his Libby decision), the Bush of July ’07 is playing strictly for the gang that brung him to the dance. Namely, his rigid, self-blindered conservative core and the only people who will dab at heir eyes when he departs D.C. in ’09.

With that in mind, I encourage any and all interested to read this succinct explanation of the “poor Scooter” mindset by Scott Horton of Harper’s magazine . The idea that the neo-con movement reveres the notion of the ends justifying any means is by now fairly well-accepted and I think understood by every rational observer.

What continues to fascinate me is how the pro-Libby forces, which includes (for your media context) the 1000 or so talk radio stations flogging the same rhetorical strategies 24/7 from coast-to-coast without a moment’s contradiction, sold the argument that Libby was the victim of a political vendetta.

Horton grabs a quote from Orin Kerr who asks:

“The Scooter Libby case has triggered some very weird commentary around the blogosphere; perhaps the weirdest claim is that the case against Libby was “purely political.” I find this argument seriously bizarre. As I understand it, Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as “overwhelming” and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate. And yet the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.

“I find this claim bizarre. I’m open to arguments that parts of the case against Libby were unfair. But for the case to have been purely political, doesn’t that require the involvement of someone who was not a Bush political appointee? Who are the political opponents who brought the case? Is the idea that Fitzgerald is secretly a Democratic party operative? That Judge Walton is a double agent? Or is the idea that Fitzgerald and Walton were hypnotized by “the Mainstream Media” like Raymond Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate? Seriously, I don’t get it.”

But in terms if understanding a very fundamental rhetorical stratagem routinely — if not incessantly — employed by right-wing talk radio, (a redundancy, that one), Horton drops in this bit:

“Back in my earlier life, I invested many years defending democracy and human rights advocates in the former Soviet Union (and in this effort, I had strong support from prominent Neocons, many of whom remain my friends today). I remember one afternoon sitting with Elena Bonner, the doyenne of the movement, in her apartment on Moscow’s Chkalova Street, turning over the case of a poor refusenik who was being persecuted by the KGB. And Bonner lectured me: “You need to remember one tactic of the totalitarian mindset, a tactic that belongs to the basic training of KGB cadres. They frequently accuse their victim of doing exactly what they, in fact, are doing. Why? It has a double utility. It forces the victim to use his meager resources defending himself from false challenges. But more importantly, it deflects attention from their own scheming and plotting.”

This is how we get the regularly-repeated concepts of “class warfare” where liberal support of minority and populist causes is always a “class” attack on … the wealthy and white, and the horror of “activist judges” where only liberal members of the bench interpret laws according to THEIR personal philosophies … while conservatives judges never make judgments that advance their view of how the world ought to work.

Or … in the latest absurdity repeated ad nauseum, how the Fairness Doctrine, which used to require equal time for countervailing arguments on the PUBLIC AIRWAVES is … censorship. (The Doctrine was a device to PROHIBIT de facto censorship.)

Anyway, enjoy the rest of your Independence Day break.