Chambers and Hiss

Maybe the conservative "movement" really is over. This week, the Democrats found their own Whitaker Chambers in Scott McClellan and their own Alger Hiss in Hillary Clinton, offering a convenient bookend to an era that began with the GOP ruthlessly attacking anti-American ideologues and ended with the GOP ruthlessly becoming anti-American ideologues.

I understand the liberal desire to bash "Scottie" for his belated awakening about the Bushatistas after years of (unconvincing) hatchet work. But really, is that any way for a big tent party to behave? How about some hospitality? We want more guys to write books like that after all, and his timing certainly could have been much worse than in the midst of an election. Arianna Huffington may be getting snippy about it, but it wasn't that long ago that she too was wielding the ax on the other side.

And I certainly hope that, with today's decision on MI and FL delegations--and Harold Ickes's last shameful whine--Hillary's demagogic run is now over. Her arguments for taking ALL of Michigan's delegates never made a damn bit of sense, as if she should reap an electoral windfall for her courageous decision to break the pre-existing DNC rules her people helped craft and her own gentleman's agreement to discount that uncontested "contest"--once it became her only hope to stay in a race she had already lost several times over. She's been working for the McCain campaign for quite some time now, trying to poison the well and ensure an Obama defeat by feigning indignation at the "stolen" elections and disenfranchised voters. That's the real backdrop for the popular overreaction to her RFK comments. We've been humoring a lot of repellent behavior from her lately and it just didn't take that much more heat in her kitchen for the pot to bubble over.