I’m sorry, anyone that calls John Negroponte a moderate obviously doesn’t understand the term. Anne-Marie Slaughter of the Washington Post has earned the coveted Wanker of the Day award over at Atrios’s Eschaton for her latest piece, “Partisans Gone Wild“:

A funny thing is happening in American politics: The fiercest battle is no longer between the left and the right but between partisanship and bipartisanship. The Bush administration, which has been notorious for playing to its hard-right base, has started reaching across the aisle…

Let’s just call this what it is: 1984 style doublespeak. Anyone that defines the actions of the Bush administration as moderate, or who thinks that compromise for the sake of compromise should be the goals between Democrats and Republicans, is woefully naive. Bush and the last few Congresses have followed a game plan of extreme, no holds barred, far-right politics. They’ve gone past far right to extreme far right.

Compromising with these people does not make you a moderate, it makes you just a little less right-wing.

Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings sums this sentiment up perfectly:

Anne-Marie, let me put it very simply: People like you are responsible for getting the United States into Iraq, people like you make it much harder for us to get out, and people like you increase the danger of newer, stupider wars in Iran and Syria and wherever else. People like you, frankly, validated the set of policies that fostered the September 11, 2001 atrocities before that. If you get the feeling we hate you for that it’s because we hate you for that.

***

Other blogger reactions (thanks in part to MemeOrandum): (Sadly, No!) -explicit language warning; Big Tent Democrat (TalkLeft); Libby (The Impolitic)

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