If I was a progressive blogger I would be humiliated to be on this list of Carney defenders over Benghazi:
[Jay Carney] had The New Republic’s Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as “nonsense.” He had Slate’s David Weigel, along with The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog, debunking any claim that the new email was a “smoking gun.” Media Matters for America labeled Benghazi a “hoax.” Salon wrote that the GOP had a “demented Benghazi disease.” Daily Kos featured the headline: “Here’s Why the GOP Is Fired Up About Benghazi—and Here’s Why They’re Wrong.” The Huffington Post offered “Three Reasons Why Reviving Benghazi Is Stupid—for the GOP.”
It’s been a familiar pattern since President Obama took office in 2009: When critics attack, the White House can count on a posse of progressive writers to ride to its rescue.
…for two reasons. One, pretty much everybody on that list is doing his or her (generally his*) best to at least look like they don’t jump when the White House says ‘frog.’ Second, and related: being on that list is kind of awkward when people bring up progressive hot issues like drone policy and rendition and Keystone and single-payer and all the rest. I understand that you need to be good soldiers and everything, but it’s been established fact for the last seventy years or so that good soldiers are not only permitted, but expected to not follow a wicked order. If you really and truly think that, say, adding 875 miles of pipeline really is a horrible sin, but you keep silent about that for the sake of political access… well. I have neither the training nor the vocation to counsel others on the effects that mortal sins can have on their souls.
Moe Lane
*It’s very much a white man’s game, Lefty blogging is. At least, at the top levels. The other, ah, 99% of ’em are largely there for show.