As some of you know I frequent RedState myself on occasion but this particular gem I owe to TBogg.
From a discussion of McSame’s VP choices-
With respect, that’s (excluding former officials of the current administration- ek) just the wrong approach to take. We have to build up a farm team of Presidential prospects. It just does not do to create a Caste of Untouchables merely because their resumes indicate that they have been doing something fairly important at some point in time between January 20, 2001 and the present day. We deprive ourselves of talent that way. And again, we could pick the Angel Gabriel himself, the Heavenly Host could sound its approval and the Lord could issue his unqualified endorsement but at most, that would cause a 48 hour delay before the negative ads start coming in.
Additionally–and this issue cannot be emphasized enough–as much as you and I may be (and are) disappointed with various aspects of the Bush Administration’s job performance, let us remember that we are criticizing the Administration from the right. A critique from the right, however, may not emerge as the dominant critique of the Bush Administration and indeed, thus far, the dominant critique has come from the left.
If we allow the left to continue critiquing, allow that critique to become the dominant narrative and then declare that consideration of Bush Administration officials for high office is verboten, we are effectively silencing a very large portion of our counter-message against the left’s critique and allowing that critique to morph into a larger narrative against Republicans and conservatives in general. In other words, by our silence, by our cooperation in shunning very competent Bush Administration officials when it comes to considerations for high office merely because they served in the Bush Administration, we will allow George W. Bush and anyone who served with him–no matter how good–to be used as bludgeons against Republicans and conservatives for decades.
This is already happening; there have been any number of seminars and presentations on the Left that have argued that the “failures” of the Bush Administration constitute “failures” of conservatism proper. By practicing The Politics Of Leprosy when it comes to personnel decisions, we are implicitly giving running room to that critique. And don’t think it will stop there; there is no reason to think that Cabinet decisions will not be subject to The Politics Of Leprosy as well. Give the Left an inch and it will take the height of the Roman Empire.
Pejman Yousefzadeh
My emphasis.
The Politics of Leprosy.
Preach it and practice it.