Like many of you, no doubt, I’ve been following the wide-ranging debate about the domestic political implications of the British terrorist bust of last week. It has come as no surprise, of course, that Republicans and their conservative allies have seized on the foiled plot to claim, for the thousandth time, that it shows how important it is to have a party focused on national security in charge in Washington, even if the consequences of its Iraq policies are looking more disastrous every single day. (The GOP’s comcomitant campaign on the theme that Joe Lieberman’s loss in Connecticut proves there’s only one party committed to fighting terrorism, absurd as it is, is Part B of its longstanding implicit argument that however much Bush is screwing up, he’s screwing up with the right intentions). But I do wonder if the revelation of an advanced plot to replicate 9/11 on a large scale isn’t going to unravel the whole line of “reasoning” that has reinforced the persistant gap between public feelings about Bush’s performance in Iraq, and the GOP’s general reliability on national security. We’re all familiar with the “flypaper” theory, so often articulated by Bush himself, that whatever else is going on in Iraq, the insurgency there is drawing jihadist attention and resources away from attacks on the U.S. (“We can fight them here or we can fight them there,” as Bush routinely says). And I personally think this factually crazy contention has been far more important to Bush and the GOP than most of us would like to accept. Back during the last presidential campaign, I became convinced, mainly through conversations with undecided voters back home in Georgia who would up voting for Bush’s re-election, that the most powerful thing the incumbent had going for him was a rough and unsophisticated argument that went like this: Some Arabs came here and killed a bunch of Americans. George Bush went over to Iraq and killed even more Arabs. Since then there have been no attacks. He must be doing something right.Anything and everything that reminds Americans that the Iraq War has not done a thing to reduce the terrorist threat against the United States will erode that argument, and with it, the GOP’s belief that any and all concerns about national security will benefit it at the ballot box. To the extent that clearly focusing on what they would do to deal with the actual terrorist threat undermines both parts of the Republican argument, while connecting public unhappiness with Iraq with residual concerns about terrorism, Democrats should hammer away on this subject every day. This administration has been a national security disaster. The “flypaper” has worn out, leaving us with a horrific mess in Iraq, an energized and growing jihadist threat, and a country more exposed than ever to terrorism. It’s time for a dramatically new direction.

Some days you open up your email and a message just jumps off the screen and flies up your–well, your sensibilities. That happened to me today when I read a toxic little note from self-styled populist avatar David Sirota ripping me apart for a post I did about Russ Feingold’s recent indictment of the DLC for doing things it did not do (e.g., creating the Clinton Health Plan). My post, written in a tone of bored sarcasm, was described by Sirota as a “temper tantrum,” a “meltdown,” and an “attack” on his very self, reflecting my “rage” and moreover, my “fear” at the rising tide of people-powered politics, etc., etc. This is all standard Sirota rhetoric aimed at anyone who disagrees with him, but he also called me a liar, which where I come from is pretty damn serious, and way over the line.I have a strange history with David, who is as reasonable and conciliatory offline as he is frantically abusive online. I first became aware of Sirota back in 1997, when I interviewed him (then just barely out of college) for a writer-researcher job with the DLC. He got sent up for a final interview with Al From, along with two other people, and didn’t get the gig. That was obviously the right decision for all concerned.Next time I noticed David was when he blazed into political journalism with not one, but two, nasty, slur-ridden attacks on the DLC and party “centrists” generally, towards the end of 2004. The American Prospect invited me to rebut one of them, and then Matt Yglesias–no big DLC fan–did a definitive smackdown of the factual inaccuracies of the other.But in no small part because of his willingness to pick up the phone or the keyboard and say abusive things about anyone, particularly Democrats, who dared to differ with his exact views, Sirota has become a major blogger and mainstream media quote-meister. He has also, to credit his considerable energy, written a book, Hostile Takeover, that is earning him serious attention with the same sort of indictment of both Republicans and Clintonian Democrats as part of a vast corporate conspiracy to enslave the nation.In a TPMCafe discussion of Hostile Takeover, I said nice things about Sirota’s analysis of D.C. Republicans, and actually agreed with most of his suggested policy agenda, but then had to say something else about his habit of demonizing people who don’t agree with him:

David’s approach creates a political as well as a moral hazard. The attribution of corrupt motives and systematic mendacity to anyone questioning his brand of “populism” and everything that goes with is what leads him to think of Bill Clinton as a “sell-out,” or to describe Rahm Emanuel as a politician obsessed strictly with his status within the “corrupt establishment,” and to confidently assume that anyone working in Washington, DC, spends his or her spare time toadying up to “elites” at “Georgetown cocktail parties”….. It’s how you wind up believing that all the vast differences that separate Ds from Rs are completely meaningless… [a]nd it’s ultimately how you forget the real-life consequences–which Hostile Takeover examines so thoroughly–of Republican rule as compared to that of “corrupt” centrist Democrats like Bill Clinton.

All these qualities are illustrated for the umpteenth time by David’s latest post, supposedly motivated by my “attack” on him for praising Feingold’s remarks. As consumers of Sirota’s rhetoric know, anyone who disagrees with him, however mildly or briefly, is invariably “attacking” him and “lying” about him. He can sure dish it out, but for a blogospheric street-fighter, he has a hard time taking it. What’s hilarious is that the “lie” David accuses me of comes from my suggestion that maybe the DLC isn’t the political behemoth its more paranoid critics always assume it to be. Why is that so offensive to Sirota? Maybe because if the DLC is not the ultimate Giant, then David Sirota ain’t no giant-killer, either. The Sirota style is perhaps best illustrated by his choice of words to describe yours truly: “formerly a Zell Miller staffer,” underlined with a link to a news report about Miller’s despicable 2004 Republican National Convention speech. The reader is presumably to understand that my secret fidelity to the GOP cause–which of course, I am lying about–is exposed by this association. Here’s the thing: I worked for Zell from the fall of 1992 until the end of 1994, in a period when absolutely no one thought of him as anything other than a very loyal and partisan Democrat–indeed, as a bit of a “populist.” And I have written far more sad and angry words (here, here, here, and here) about Miller’s slide into apostasy and his eagerness to serve his old enemies in the GOP than anybody else you will meet. So my work for Zell Miller in the early 90s is clearly no more relevant today than David Sirota’s interest in working for me and Al From in 1997. If I did a post casually referring to Sirota as a “disappointed job-seeker at the DLC,” he’d be rightly offended. But he shouldn’t be able to have it both ways.Lots of bloggers I talk with have the same private opinion of David Sirota’s tactics as I do, but think he’s useful to The Cause, precisely because he matches the single-minded energy and “take no prisoners” style of bloggers and pundits on the Right. Indeed, that’s what Matt Yglesias concluded in his American Prospect review of Hostile Takeover–a review, BTW, that sparked a long Sirota post repeatedly accusing Matt of various forms of dishonesty, including “dishonest regurgitation of Big Business’s talking points.”If that’s so; if Sirota’s type of fulmination actually contributes to the goal of expelling the venal GOP gang that’s running our country right now, then I suppose the offense caused by his chronic character attacks on fellow Democrats is just acceptable collateral damage. But I really don’t see that calling people like me or Matt liars serves any purpose other than to start stupid fights that aggrandize Sirota’s self-image as a brave truth-teller fighting the godless and omnipotent Washington Establishment. I wish some of his friends who find his talent for invective so useful would have a private word to him now and then and suggest there are a few lines in intra-party debate that should not be crossed.

You’d think from what we’re hearing this week from Republicans all over the country that Joseph Lieberman is indeed the Bush Lite politician that his Democratic detractors insist he is. Virtually every major national Republican pol has weighed in with crocodile tears for Lieberman’s narrow primary loss. And in a really odd development, Senate Republican candidates have begun endorsing Lieberman’s indie run in Connecticut. I can’t imagine that these hugs and kisses are any more welcome in Liebermanland than was Bush’s famous “kiss” at State of the Union Address. It’s not like Joe needs Republican help in Connecticut; in the absence of a viable GOP candidate in the race, there’s not a whole lot of doubt that Nutmeg State Republicans would overwhelmingly prefer Lieberman over Lamont in November without any encouragement from on high. And all the love directed at the incumbent from national Republicans could seriously erode his support among Democrats and independents. But here’s what I really want to know: are all these national Republicans embracing Joe Lieberman willing to support anything he stands for other than his position on Iraq, which they claim crazy lefties have illegitimately targeted him for? Will they suddenly develop an interest in dealing with global climate change? Will they agree that labor laws need to be revised to make it easier for workers to organize unions? Are they on board with Lieberman’s ambitious proposal for a federally funded National Center for Cures to speed new medical treatments? Will they take a serious look at Joe’s 2004 tax proposal, that would have made income tax rates actually more progressive than they were before the Bush tax cuts? Will they push for a systematic attack on corporate subsidies in the federal budget and tax code? Not hardly. But don’t expect any honest disclosures that their professed Joemania is about as genuine as Meat Loaf’s vow of eternal love in the classic rock song Paradise by the Dashboard Lights. The GOP’s love for Lieberman is just for one night. And he should inform them to go home and grow up.