Kristol asks Bush to "fight back."

There are few sights more ridiculous that Bill Kristol in full flow. The man who was wrong on every single prediction he made before the Iraq war, despite his awful, smug, condescending predictions beforehand, has decided that Bush needs to "fight back" as the Democrats, "are trying to destroy his presidency".

I'd have thought, as the Bush administration implodes, that they are doing a good enough job of that themselves and that it would be churlish for the Democrats to take the credit.

But Kristol sees dark Democratic hands behind all kind of plots. Like Dick Durbin justifying why he would like Karl Rove to testify in public and under oath:

Durbin explained that he wants Rove to testify so he can be forced to answer questions about "how much did the president know" and what did he do. Durbin wants to destroy the possibility of confidential communications between the president and his White House staff.

I'd have thought that Durbin's asking perfectly valid questions. There has been a plot here to remove Attorney's - based on their perceived political persuasions - and in any investigation it is valid to ask how far up the food chain this plot was hatched.

But to Bill, this is not an investigation into what appears to be the politicisation of the DOJ, this is nothing less than an attempt to "destroy the possibility of confidential communications between the president and his White House staff."

He then comes up with another way that Bush could empower himself against this Democratic attempt to subvert the government:

He could pardon Scooter Libby--now.

Kristol is so obsessed about getting Libby pardoned that I'm beginning to wonder if Libby owes him some serious amount of dosh. It's simply delusional to think that this would in any way strengthen Bush's position, but by now Kristol is leaving planet Earth in a big way.

As an example of how unreasonable the Democrats are being, he brings up John Kerry and Sam Fox:

Last week, the White House withdrew the nomination of St. Louis businessman and philanthropist Sam Fox to be ambassador to Belgium after John Kerry threw a fit about Fox's having given money in 2004 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Kerry tried to insist that Fox apologize for his donation. Fox, a man of stature and dignity, refused to pretend to be contrite. Kerry bludgeoned Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats into opposing Fox--which was not so easy, as Fox had wide and bipartisan support in Missouri and beyond. But the White House did nothing, and Democrats fell into line behind Kerry.

Sam Fox won't be an ambassador, but maybe the White House can learn from his experience. Refusing to yield to Kerry's bullying, Fox defended his contribution: "I did it because politically it's necessary if the other side's doing it." The other side is doing it in spades right now.

Hypocrisy on this level is hard to take. Sam Fox contributed to a campaign that lied and distorted Kerry's military record at a time when he was fighting for the Presidency against an opponent who sat the Vietnam war out thanks to his father's contacts. It was breathtaking in it's audacity. It was a smear campaign. An series of ugly, vicious lies, that sought to undermine the work Kerry did in Vietnam.

And yet here we have Kristol - with no apparent sense of irony - talking about "Kerry's bullying" towards Sam Fox because Kerry had the audacity, during the confirmation hearings, to ask if this was the kind of judgement Fox would bring to the Ambassadorship.

Kristol sees nothing wrong with this "man of stature and dignity" contributing to such a campaign, but he thinks it is "bullying" for the person who was smeared by this campaign to dare to ask the person who contributed to it, why they did so, and if they regretted it.

And this is the party that believes in personal responsibility?

However, he keeps the best to the last.

Even as Gen. Petraeus makes headway, even as John McCain demolishes the arguments of his Democratic colleagues, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain support for the war if the administration is in free fall.

Yes, you read that correctly. "Even as John McCain demolishes the arguments of his Democratic colleagues".

I suppose he's referring to McCain's recent trip to a Baghdad market, which he made to back up his statement last week that Americans could walk through Baghdad and have a coffee without any fear in the new post-surge Iraqi capital. Many of us thought McCain was as deranged as we think Kristol is. But yesterday, McCain - as Kristol is swift to point out - "demolished" our scepticism by, indeed, walking to a Baghdad market.

The fact that he did so surrounded by 100 US soldiers, three blackhawk helicopters and two apache gunships would appear to me to undermine the argument that he made last week, if not "demolish" it, but Kristol actually holds this up as an example of a Republican victory over Democratic colleagues.

Watch the video of McCain's brave freedom march through Baghdad here. Tell the truth, don't you just feel "demolished"?

He ends by asking that Bush fight "to save the country from a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress in 2009, with all that implies for foreign policy."

Yeah, 'cos it would be terrible if anyone tried to stop you guys in the middle of your current success, wouldn't it Bill?

Kristol has always been a strange little creature, with this article he's starting to sound unhinged.

Click title to read the whole deluded thing.

Tags: Bill Kristol, Bush, Democrats, Kerry, Sam Fox, Iraq war, John McCain, Karl Rove