Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
It's On! Krauthammer vs. Sullivan
Topic Started: Dec 1 2009, 09:51 AM (213 Views)
George K
Member Avatar
Finally
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/11/the_quintessential_andrew_sull.html

Quote:
 
Blogger Andrew Sullivan charged Sunday that, whereas in December of last year I advocated a gasoline tax, in my “latest column” on climate change, “the gas tax idea is missing.”

“Why?” asks Sullivan. Because: “In the end, the conservative intelligentsia is much more invested in obstructing and thereby neutering Obama and the Democrats than in solving any actual problems in front of us. It’s a game for them, and they play it with impunity.”

He calls this “The Positioning Of Charles Krauthammer,” a demonstration of rank partisanship and bad faith.

It is quite a charge: This “latest column” proves that I've positioned my views on a gasoline tax for reasons cynically partisan, mindlessly anti-Obama, interested only in the game of power and not in the welfare of the country. In other words, so blinded by selfishness as to be unpatriotic.

However, there’s a slight problem with Sullivan’s analysis. If you click on the column of mine that he cites, which he calls my "latest" and which betrays my anti-Obama fanaticism, you will find that it begins with the following headline:

Carbon Chastity
The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 30, 2008

Note the date: May 30, 2008. A year and a half ago. At the time, George Bush was president. Barack Obama hadn’t even won the Democratic nomination, let alone become president of the United States. The column has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama.

Sullivan's entire ad hominem conclusion -- that my views are animated by nothing but the basest, most corrupt partisan motives -- turned out to be a complete invention based on his inability to read dates.

And, characteristically, on total ignorance of the subject he is writing about -- in this case, my views on a gasoline tax. I've been an advocate of a tax on oil not since December 2008 but since 1983 (“The Oil Bust Panic," The New Republic, February 21, 1983). I have not changed my position in the intervening 26 years. I've criticized every administration, Republican and Democratic, for not taxing petroleum, beginning with the Reagan administration, which I repeatedly criticized for the idiocy of trying to persuade the Saudis to curtail production and raise the world price rather than impose some kind of oil tax on our own.

I've advocated a petroleum tax at least 20 times over the years. (The only thing I have changed is the form the levy should take: from an oil import fee to the more simply administered and refunded gasoline tax.) I have never changed my views.

Sullivan’s conclusion that I advocated a gas tax in December ’08 and then dropped it this year because I’m only interested in neutering Obama shows that he knows absolutely nothing about my views. The column in question -- the one Sullivan thinks I wrote just now, but in fact was published in May 2008 -- is not "positioning." Bush was president, Obama not even an issue. The gas tax wasn't mentioned because it's not particularly relevant to the subject I was addressing -- the ideological rigidity of climate-change activism. And because my views on the gas tax had been repeated so many times, writing about it again would have been superfluous.

Nine months later (March 5, 2009), I gave a public presentation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies to a group of around 30 economists and energy analysts on my proposed “Net-Zero” gas tax. I’m no historian, but that appears to have occurred during the Obama presidency.

Sullivan’s post merits reading as the quintessential Sullivan, leaping from nonexistent fact to blanket ad hominem without even a pause for a reality check. Enjoy it here
.
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
Wasn't Andrew Sullivan supposed to be deported or something?
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Mikhailoh
Member Avatar
If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
Looks to me like Sullivan's going down. Krauthammer is too sharp to be beaten by him.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Piano*Dad
Member Avatar
Bull-Carp
Krauthammer is too sharp to be 'beaten' by just about anybody. I may disagree with him on many issues, but I accord him utmost respect for his integrity.

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ivorythumper
Member Avatar
I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Mikhailoh
Dec 1 2009, 10:04 AM
Looks to me like Sullivan's going down.
you have a way with words.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Mikhailoh
Member Avatar
If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
It's a gift. :lol:
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
« Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic »
Add Reply