The editors of the Washington Post hit Chas Freeman so hard it could take dozens of anti-Virginia-Republican columns to make up for it.
Here’s how the editors referred to Freeman:
. . . looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration’s National Intelligence Council . . . suffered from an extreme case of clientitis . . . his statement was a grotesque libel . . . Crackpot tirades such as his . . .
I’ve been following the Post for a long time – I may be one of the few righties who still does – and I have never seen them rip a Democrat that hard. Even more telling, the editors threw their own op-ed sage (David Broder) under the bus. Broder has a column praising Freeman (for those interested, here it is) right on the opposite page; the editorial makes Broder look utterly naive and ignorant. Ouch!
Now, I am thrilled to see Freeman go, and I’m glad the editors of the Post agree. However, I also know how the editors deal with the psychological effects of their decidedly sober foreign policy views: by going after Republicans in Virginia with gusto.
Considering the fact that one of the few Commonwealth Republicans they endorsed (John Cook) managed to win narrowly this week, we could be looking at 28 Days Later-level rage for the rest of the year.
If I were Bob McDonnell (or Bill Bolling, or especially Bill Howell), I’d steer clear of reading the Post for a while, a long while.
March 12, 2009 at 2:12 pm |
Amazing how the WaPo gets around to taking a lead pipe to Freeman AFTER he’s been thrown overboard, but not a peep before.
March 12, 2009 at 4:49 pm |
Frankly, I don’t see what the big deal about Freeman was to begin with.
The worst thing I heard him say was that America’s national interest don’t always coincide with Israel’s national interests.
And, well, that’s true.
March 12, 2009 at 9:20 pm |
Doug, I’m surprised at you.
Do you not know what he said about the Tiananmen Square massacre. An anti-Communist like you should be on top of these things.
March 13, 2009 at 8:44 am |
Honestly, I hadn’t because I wasn’t paying that much attention to the nomination.
As a general rule, though, I think that Presidents should be free to have the nominees they wish.
June 29, 2009 at 12:20 pm |
[...] on international affairs, they have routinely lambasted Republicans in Virgina. The addition of a local GOP endorsement led me to believe that the “balance” required would be [...]