Alex Knapp, who blogs for Outside The Beltway, is a self confessed Iraq war supporter, but of course, it’s not his fault. He was misled, tricked and fooled:
At the time, I did support the Iraq invasion, which in hindsight was stupid.
Knapp also doesn’t support Obama’s “stimulus” plan, except when he does:
I am also skeptical about the stimulus package as passed. But I wasn’t opposed to a stimulus package per se.
Yet Knapp is sure of something. He hates the Tea Parties:
I’ve been following the growing “Tea Party” and “Going Galt” movements with no small amount of amusement, in part because there is really just too much sweet, delicious irony surrounding both of these groups of people
The “people” supporting the Tea Parties and “Going Galt” are, well, so unhip that they supported the Iraq war. Ooopsie Knapp supported the war, hence, Knapp’s mea culpa quoted above, to distinguish his mere support of the war from those who really supported the war:
The folks in the blogosphere largely cheerleading the Tea Parties are the same folks in the blogosphere who cheerleaded the war in Iraq.
Actually, the difference between those who were “cheerleaders” for the war versus those who merely “supported” the war is the difference between people who have the courage to stand behind their convictions, and those who go with the political flow without conviction.
But Knapp does not stop there. He attacks the Tea Party participants as acting contrary to their own economic self-interest (under the false premise that Obama really will deliver “tax cuts” to 95% of Americans):
The “Tea Parties”, of course, started springing up in response to Obama’s stimulus package, a package whose largest fiscal component is a tax cut that will largely benefit the people in the income brackets who make up the Tea Party movement. That I find funny.
What I find funny is that someone who decries economic greed finds funny that people would do something that isn’t greedy. Yet Knapp saves his best (or worst, depending on your perspective) for attacking the “Going Galt” movement (which I refer to as the Revolt of the Kulaks):
Some of the biggest proponents of the “Going Galt” bandwagon in the blogosphere and at Pajamas Media are Glenn Reynolds and his wife, both of whom have jobs (Professor of Law at a public university; forensic psychiatrist) that are dependent on public, taxpayer-funded institutions.
Having a job is bad, having a job at a state university is worse, and the “worst person in the world” is a forensic psychiatrist because a forensic psychiatrist can diagnose Sitemeter Envy from a mile away. And the attack on Reynolds smacks not only of Sitemeter Envy, but also of a cheap Rule 4 “make some enemies” ploy to generate traffic (which may actually work).
Whatever it is, Knapp’s attack on people who are taking a stand is not principled. When the movement grows, when the folly of Obamanomics is further revealed, when a year from now everyone is saying I told you so, where will Knapp be? Here’s my prediction of Knapp’s next mea culpa:
(Disclaimer: I was against the Tea Parties and Going Galt, but that was stupid. I didn’t actually support the stimulus plan, but was against it kind of, but not really, you see, I’m confused. I just wanted to be popular. And Professor Reynolds, please send me an Instalanche, because no one is listening to me anymore.)
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UPDATE: Talk about funny. Knapp’s blog parents love Glenn Reynolds and credit him with helping them get noticed. They sing an ode to Reynold’s help in the “about” section of the website:
Early notice by ScrappleFace’s Scott Ott of and VodkaPundit’s Stephen Green led to OTB’s first InstaLanche on March 13, 2003.
In honor of this irony, I am officially changing the title of this post to “Instalanche Loving Blog Hates Instapundit.”
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UPDATE No. 2: Bush derangement syndrome meets the confused Tea-Party-Hating Instapundit-loving-hating blog post. Citing Knapp, Andrew (“Palin Baby Hoax“) Sullivan writes:
My sense is that it is a delayed reaction in some ways to Bush, and his betrayal of conservatism. For all sorts of reasons, most of the current tea-partiers backed the GOP under Bush and Cheney, although some, to be fair, did complain about some of it. The pent-up frustrations behind conservatism’s collapse under Republicans were trumped, however, by the fruits of power, partisan hatred of “the left”, defensiveness over the Iraq war and torture, and, above all religious devotion to the Leader. Now that Bush has been removed, the massive damage done, and a pragmatic liberal is trying to sort out the mess in a sane, orderly fashion, they’ve gone nuts.
But at least Sullivan does link to this great example of a Cheerleader.
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UPDATE No. 3: More on this at American Power Blog: Cases in False Equivalence: Tea Parties and Iraq
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