The Washington Post somehow calls one of their blogs “Right Turn: Jennifer Rubin’s take from a conservative perspective.” This is an odd title when Rubin complains that a politician is destroying himself and the Republican Party by advocating conservative principles. Rubin was put on the Post op-ed page on Friday trashing Virginia’s Attorney General and GOP candidate for governor this fall: “It is not like I didn’t spot the Ken Cuccinelli train wreck coming up around the bend.”
Then, in another blog from her pro-Israel perch, Rubin blasted Chuck Hagel, but this take did not make the newspaper: “It’s fascinating, actually, to see a nominee of this importance do so poorly. Chuck Hagel, nominated for defense secretary, has gone from awful to atrocious today... It is unclear whether he was not prepped properly, whether he refused to be coached or whether he simply isn’t bright.”
Rubin quoted an unnamed Democrat on Capitol Hill after the hearing: “It is very clear from the testimony that Sen. Hagel will not be bringing the potato salad to the next Mensa picnic.”
That blog was titled “Hagel sinking.” The blog the Post preferred to publish for the masses was titled “Cuccinelli digs himself a hole.” She began by quoting Politico as if it’s not a liberal rag:
Politico reports that he is coming out with a “252-page tea party jeremiad of blistering attacks on government in general and President Barack Obama in particular that could make it difficult to broaden his appeal to the kinds of voters he needs to win in November.”
Surely, Robert McDonnell won election in 2009 by being more Romneyesque, the way Rubin likes it, by stressing transportation and the economy and downplaying the Santorum-style social issues that Rubin clearly hates. But Rubin even whacks her former hero Romney for talking about how Democrats build political power by growing government dependency. Rubin doesn’t care whether that is true. She only cares that it “sounds” clueless to her:
His book picks up where Mitt Romney left off: “One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security, and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, and the like). These programs make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can’t afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run, or costly to the rest of society. Creating government dependency is the typical method of operation for big-government statists.”
Rubin came unglued about how opposing “big-government statism” is mean-spirited:
This, in a nutshell, is precisely what is wrong with the GOP and why it has so much trouble winning competitive races. Cuccinelli is preaching and screeching to the choir, ignoring the nonideological voters and painting himself as an ideologue. He sounds simultaneously clueless and mean-spirited.
Rubin really lost all grip on the idea that she was presenting the “right turn” in the Post offices when she begged Sen. Mark Warner (D) to run for governor again:
And by the way, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), it is not too late to change your mind and primary Terry McAuliffe, win the Democratic primary and romp to victory. (He reportedly hates and is bored by the Senate anyway.) For Virginians that might work out just fine.
How on Earth is that take any different than the other liberal columnists already populating the Post op-ed page?
