Chris Matthews inched up to the line on the neoconservatives tonight in a conversation with Pat Buchanan about the briefing of Sarah Palin. Don't you think, Matthews said, that McCain's foreign policy guru Randy Scheunemann is scripting her on this stuff. This is the neoconservative way, he said in so many words (I was eating ye olde spag-bowl when he said it, and lunged for a pen). "They find a cover" and here he mentioned Dan Quayle and George W. Bush, and then they brief them. Sort of invasion of the body snatchers, neocon style. And lest there was any doubt in the viewer's mind about what the neocons care about, he then mentioned Palin's thrice-repeated "I won't second guess Israel" line to Charlie Gibson. "Someone with an ideological point of view has given you exact words to use," Matthews said.
So Chris Matthews called George W. Bush a "cover" for the neocons' agenda, which he suggested was Israel. So much for the single-gunman-theory of the Iraq war, that it was all Bush. When will Chris give full throat to what he really believes, and have Walt and Mearsheimer on his show to explain it?
P.S. Recall that at AIPAC in June, Bill Kristol told a political session that it's all about relationships and then said that Dan Quayle was great on Israel because Hart Hasten, a Holocaust survivor and Indianapolis businessman, helped him from early on. And of course Kristol was Quayle's chief of staff and then the choirmaster for the They-will-greet-us-with-flowers strategy re Iraq. Matthews was really talking about Kristol. Say it, dude.
