At the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria notes the long-time silence of “principled conservatives” regarding decades of Republican thuggery in the name of power. Zakaria seems to take particular pleasure in skewering Robert Kagan, whom I skewered earlier for his tardy recognition of Republican sins. Sure, Trump is terrible, says Fareed, but how and why is he that much worse than, you know, Sarah Palin?
“Palin knew next to nothing about national or international public policy, but she almost celebrated that ignorance, playing to the anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism of parts of the conservative base. Instead of pointing out that knowledge and expertise are actually things to admire and acquire, not mock, conservative intellectuals expressed admiration. Robert Kagan, a distinguished writer and a contributing columnist to The Post, declared: ‘I don’t take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world. I’m not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palin’s experience.’“
Zakaria continues
“It is courageous of dozens of Republican foreign policy leaders now to sign an open letter condemning Trump publicly and refusing to support his candidacy. But over the past decade, I can recall conversations with some of these individuals in which they refused to accept that there was any problem within the Republican Party, attributing such criticism to media bias.”
However, Fareed doesn’t go the final mile (and he should have) to point out that one of the greatest worries of these “leaders” is that Trump’s mere candidacy is exposing the compulsive interventionism of both the Bush and Obama years to explicit criticism, forcing these same “leaders” to explain why their policies wasted thousands of American lives and trillions of American dollars in making the Middle East less safe and more unstable than before. In criticizing Trump, they are seeking to ward off criticism of themselves, criticism that they richly deserve.
