Les Jones: What's the Conservative Equivalent of Rathergate?

September 13, 2004

News > What's the Conservative Equivalent of Rathergate?

Eric Rasmusen looks at belief in whether the CBS documents are authentic or forged as a litmus test. Considering how easy it is to re-create them in Microsoft Word, it's hard to seriously argue that those documents are legit.

I credited lefty bloggers Josh Marshal, Kevin Drum, and Matthew Yglesias for expressing doubts about the documents, and noted that Kevin at Lean Left had gone back and forth. Atrios hasn't wavered in his confidence the documents are genuine, which tells me something about his credibility, though it's pretty much what I already knew.

Speaking of which, Rasmussen posted this comment over at Atrios:

It would, by the way, be useful to have a test for conservatives, too. Can anyone think of one? I don't mean something stupid like "Which conservatives have the intellectual honesty to admit that the dividend tax cut was a disaster?" We need something where a conservative is caught in provable wrongdoing, and some conservatives deny it. An old example might be the My Lai massacre-- I'm not up on it, but I recall that Lt. Calley had a lot of defenders.

That's a good question. What's the modern conservative equivalent of believing the Rathergate documents aren't forgeries?

Posted by lesjones

AlphaPatriot linked with Was There a Conservative Rathergate?
Silflay Hraka linked with The Carnival Turns Two
Silflay Hraka linked with The Carnival Turns Two

Comments

Believing that Reagan didn't know at least the outlines of Iran-Contra well before it came out in the press.

Posted by: Steve K. at September 13, 2004

You know, that sparked a memory for me. There's one part of the conservative canon that's just lame. It's the belief that the Iranians let the hostages free because they were afraid of the mighty Reagan.

The truth, of course, is that Reagan had agreed to sell the Iranians arms in exchange for the hostages. His backdoor deal was the very opposite of resolve.

For that matter, why the hell should the Iranians have been afraid of Reagan? He turned into a tough guy internationally later on (shooting a missile into Qadaffi's kitchen and all), but when he took office in January, 1981 his only political experience was as governor of the Sunshine State.

Posted by: Les Jones at September 13, 2004

Ollie North certainly had his defenders; perhaps we should just roll that one up with the example offered by the previous commenter.

Watergate certainly comes to mind, too. 18 minutes of tape, anyone?

Posted by: Mike at September 14, 2004

Nobody defends the tapes.

People may still like Nixon, but they can't--and don't deny the tapes.

And Iran-Contra? There was a scandal, and an investigation. No one disputes that. There is a lot of debate over the results of that investigation--because it IS debateable(meaning it is still possible to have a 'side')

Rathergate is not open to debate. The documents are forgeries or they are not. All the evidence so far points to forgery.

Therefore believing them to be real means believing a lie in spite of verifiable evidence to the contrary.

I don't think there IS a conservative equivalent of Rathergate.

Posted by: jack at September 15, 2004

People acted as if Jack Ryan merely wanted to have sex with his wife, when (at least according to her) he wanted it to be in public and not just sex but particularly ostentatious acts. Of course, he does deny it, but the people who say that what he was asking wasn't that bad are the ones I have in mind, not the ones who withhold judgment on whether he asked her to do these things.

Posted by: Jeremy Pierce at September 20, 2004