David Brooks Defends Liz Cheney: Liberals Called Dick Cheney Mean Names Too
David Brooks excuses Liz Cheney and his "friend" Bill Kristol's fear mongering ad by saying we've been too mean to Dick Cheney. Instead of actually addressing how corrosive their attacks have been, Brooks tries to write it off as politics as usual. Sorry David, but it's not politics as usual unless you think the sort of rhetoric used by McCarthy should be considered part of our civil discourse now.
Transcript via PBS.
JIM LEHRER: Let's go to another disagreement...
JIM LEHRER: ... the so-called al-Qaida seven. Liz Cheney and her group have criticized some Justice Department lawyers because they once represented some Guantanamo detainees.
Where do you come down on that?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think the ad, which sort of accused whose values do they have, do they have al-Qaida or Taliban values, I thought that was tremendously unfortunate.
I mean, it's just part of a long range of corrosive language. And, to be fair to Liz Cheney, if you Google Taliban and Liz Cheney, millions of people have called her a member of the Taliban and made similar charges. But it's a series of steps away from the, you know, normal way any of us should be talking to each other.
MARK SHIELDS: The idea of the al-Qaida seven, I mean, there are those of us who are old enough to remember the Chicago Seven, when incitement to riot and the seven protesters, militants, whatever you want to call them, disrupted as a matter of course, and it became a famous court case at the time and trial.
I just thought it was more than unfortunate. I thought it was offensive. And I thought it was, frankly, un-American, in the true sense of the word.
