Defending Newt And D'Souza

It's classic Jonah Goldberg: defending the red team by changing the subject to similar pop-psychology stuff done by people on the blue team. But it's an interesting discussion. For the record, I find Jonah's idea that Newt Gingrich is "intellectually dazzling" preposterous, and his notion that D'Souza's inflammatory broad brush is "meticulous" just ludicrous.

I also think he blithely ignores the real context and purpose of the D'Souza piece - demonizing Obama by conflating him with America's enemies, describing a centrist Democrat as a radical commie not by analyzing what he has done but by what may have been in his father's mind, delegitimizing him as somehow un-American because he grew up in Hawaii. However silly it is to reduce Bush to a victim of a daddy-complex (although he is a rare president who succeeded his father in the job), it has none of the explosive and racist undertones of D'Souza's polemic.

That matters; and the elite Republican toleration of populist bigotry and fear is a betrayal of serious, responsible conservatism.

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