Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

You might wonder why they care so much — [Al] Gore, after all, is obviously not going to run for president, and even some conservatives now concede that global warming is real. The answer is that Gore's triumph is a measure of George W. Bush’s disrepute.

Indeed, in the political culture, Gore's role is as a negative indicator of the president’s standing. For all the talk of a "new Al Gore," there’s nothing new about the man. His public reputation is almost entirely a function of Bush’s. . . .

The defensiveness of Gore's critics comes because he is the ultimate rebuke to Bush. Gore, obviously, is the great historic counter-factual, the man who would have been president if Florida had a functioning ballot system. More than that, he is the anti-Bush. He is intellectual and introverted, while Bush is simplistic and backslapping.

-- JONATHAN CHAIT

I have never heard [Republican president aspirant Alan] Keyes speak in person, although I have heard him on many television appearances, usually in shoutfests on cable news. Until tonight, I have never experienced the powerful oratory of a man who may well be the modern master of the form. Watching Keyes dominate the stage and thunder, whisper, muse, and cajole his message to the CLC's convocation felt like being transported back decades, perhaps even a century, to when public oration determined the measure of the public man.

Keyes' oration, however, felt troubling and at times even dangerous. It's not that I didn't agree with the basic message of his speech, which was that America has lost its thread to the core and genesis of liberty. . . .

Devils and traitors populate Keyes' world to a degree not known by most rational people. In the real world, however, Keyes' targets are human beings with foibles and faults not unlike our own. And this is the difference between real political debate and dishonest demagoguery. In demonizing his opponents, Keyes makes it impossible to actually debate policy. These men are not demons, but people with positions that differ from Keyes -- and Keyes essentially runs away from the debate by calling them devils and scaring his audience into visceral reactions rather than inspiring reasoned and rational thought.

-- ED MORRISSEY

"It’s just stunning to me," one veteran Republican strategist told me this week, "that after seven years of Republicans complaining that the president won’t use his veto, [the White House and Republican Congressional leaders] choose their big showdown to be over children’s health care. Good Lord, it probably polls at 80 percent!"

Added the GOP insider: "If we had been talking about cutting spending and waste in government for years, we could oppose SCHIP. But now we are finally going to get religion on spending?"

So what advice would this Republican give his party's Members of Congress? "If I were in a swing district, I'd vote to override. There’s no way I'd take a bullet on this."

-- STUART ROTHENBERG

Being a conservative means never saying you're sorry for what other conservatives do. It means justifying the means if you support the ends, whether that involves ruining people's lives and reputations, invading people’s privacy, violating people’s constitutional rights or torturing them. It means seeing anyone who is not with you 100% as an enemy and seeing every issue as black and white. It means doing whatever is necessary to defeat the enemy even if you sometimes have to violate your own principles to do it and seem like a hypocrite. Being a conservative means scoring political points by going after easy enemies and racking up victories instead of wasting a lot of time with the much harder job of persuading people with the rightness of your cause. It means doing it to them before they do it to us. It means seeing everyone opposed to us, even a 12-year-old boy, as "fair game." Yes, I am very proud to be a conservative.

-- JON SWIFT

Cartoon by Signe Wilkinson/Philadelphia Daily News