FC: Jim Taylor on conservatives, Ashcroft, and Paul Weyrich

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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From: "Jim Taylor" <jpt () smartleaf com>
To: <declan () well com>
Cc: "Phil Agre" <pagre () alpha ats ucla edu>
Subject: RE: Paul Weyrich says conservatives don't want to ditch Ashcroft
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 09:51:11 -0400

Declan:

Maybe Weyrich is a "honest, straightforward person", but this piece isn't.
Some of it is reasonable, but most is disingenuous.  I don't have to
"imagine" what the Republicans would say about the accumulation of power, I
can quote Weyrich: "It is what a future attorney general like Hillary
Clinton could easily do with those powers."  There are "good" people,
Ashcroft and Bush, and "evil" people, best identified with the last name
Clinton.  I hope Weyrich is on your mailing list and has read the forward of
TIPS inquiries to Fox TV (and was that story NOT a parody?).

Then there is Weyrich's caterwauling about the Washington (and the rest of
the press is better?) press.  "What in the long-run is likely to prove to be
a minor flap is very instructive in how journalism in Washington is
changing. Rather than demonstrate commitment to getting the facts straight
first, writers simply write opinions as if they are facts."  I don't pretend
to know anything about Weyrich except for this piece, but I would bet that
he wasn't wringing his hands during the Clinton administration at the
press's treatment of Whitewater, et al.  He further confuses the matter for
berating the NYT [not my standard for good journalism] for a piece that " ..
read like several stories crammed into one."  Were there too many ideas in
the piece for Weyrich to parse OR, as is more likely, the story did not have
the spin that Weyrich would have liked.  I'm fairly sure if the story had
somehow tied in the "evil" ones with the power abuse, he would not have
complained that the story had too many threads.

And, staunch supporter of the Attorney General that he is, his statement
"Speaking for myself, **right now** I do not want to be part of any campaign
to dump the attorney general." is about as strong an endorsement as many a
baseball general manager's endorsement of his (are there any female MLB
general managers?) field manager who is soon to be unemployed.

Nowhere, other than by implication with his statement "My concern is not
what Mr.Ashcroft and President Bush will do with the new powers granted the
government to conduct the war on terrorism.", does Weyrich endorse Ashcroft.
He merely wiggles around the issue in as UNstraightforward a manner as I can
imagine.

Thanks for sharing with us.

   jim taylor ... a reader




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