Ditch The Cheez-Its, Captain Ed

I seldom go after individual bloggers for a couple of reasons: I certainly cannot claim any kind of high ground myself as a tiny amoeba in a very big pond. Besides which, what one blogger out of millions says is seldom consequential.

I'm making an exception today in the case of Captain Ed Morrissey for another couple of reasons:

He was one of the saner and more forthright right-of-center bloggers back when he ran the late lamented Captain's Quarters, but since moving over to Hot Air has pretty much resorted to sitting on the couch and stuffing his face with Cheez-Its (as in empty calories) at a time when what remains of the Republican Party needs a diet of strong medicine like the kind that David Frum, among a very few other loyalist pundits, has the guts to administer.

Make that three reasons: I like Captain Ed a lot, have appeared on his radio show and cannot believe that he is content with phoning it in in lieu of crafting the edgy and incisive posts I read at Captain's Quarters.

Captain Ed's post yesterday on Republicans trying to wish away Dick Cheney is a case in point.

He equivocates from the jump, writing that "It's hard to blame either side. Dick Cheney mostly kept his own counsel while serving as George Bush's VP, but now he's free to talk -- and to make sure that history gets his role correct. Part of that will be pushing back against Obama and his assignment of blame onto the Bush administration for the various ills he faces now as an executive as a means to redirect criticism."

But rather than parsing Cheney's role -- which a huge majority of the voting public and many Republicans correctly perceive as damaging to country and party -- Captain Ed defaults to "Obama's budget-busting plans for federal expansion."

He adds: "Until Republicans start speaking loudly and rationally, they're leaving a vacuum for Cheney and others to fill - and that's not Cheney's fault, or the media."

Maybe so, Captain Ed, but it is your fault when you too are disinterested in speaking loudly and rationally despite having a very big soapbox, write posts tailored to scratch the tummies of your readers and radio guests and burn extraordinary amounts of bandwith day in and day out with empty-calorie posts obsessing on Obama's teleprompter missteps and other inconsequential gaffes.

Put down the Cheez-Its, Ed. Your party needs a strong voice, not another namby-pamby apologist.