The real miracle of the Phase 2 conservative movement (after Reagan and since Newt) is that the conservatives have been an amazing collection of raging assholes (DeLay, Malkin, Bush, Cheney, Krauthammer, Lott, Santorum, O'Reilly), attacking honest people often with to supporting facts, insinuating dishonesty and criminality where none exists, and most importantly, playing McCarthyite "patriot" and "you're with us or against us" games with the lives, reputations and careers.
Yet all the while they have been able to position people who stand up to their lies, greed and incivility as "shrill" or "obstructive" or "engaged in class warfare." And the media, out of fear (in some cases) and in direct complicity (in the case of Fox and Murdoch), have refused to note the hypocrisy of the methodology of attack-first-and-then-accuse-the-attackees-of-being-defensive.
So what Bazelon is pointing to here is the new go-along-to-get-along paradigm: people try to portray themselves as likeable and reasonable by going along with Republican initiatives, from the utterly foolish and criminal Iraq War, to the tax cuts that impoverish the majority of us for the benefit of a few, to the nomination of Federalist Society members, who have always been extremists, to the federal bench at all levels.
Sadly, it always makes news when a person who should know better endorses the Devil's work. So one can also suspect that some of these people who go along to get along can find it easier to find themselves in print, and so perhaps in addition to being foolish, they also have impure intentions. But it doesn't matter the motives: what matters is that in going along to get along, they betray the priniciples that they told themselves and their friends (and students and readers) that they hold most important. There is no excuse for that.
Folks, this is war, War upon the middle class, and war upon democracy, and war upon American interests (in favor of the Saudis, the multinationals, and the elites of China and India). And those that go along to get along, no matter their liberal credentials (Peter Beinert) to their centrist good sense (Colin Powell), to their solid intellectual credentials (the fools that endorsed Roberts), when you support your oppressor, the best that can be said for you is that you committed a crime while suffering battered wife syndrome.
And as the Roberts court will tell you sooner or later, being a victim does not excuse you from being held accountable for your crime, and certainly does not entitle you to a remedy.
