The Judy War

John Aravosis of Americablog exemplifies the passion of the left:

"If a senior White House staffer had intentionally outed an American spy during World War II, he'd have been shot. We're at war, George Bush keeps reminding us. We cannot continue with business as usual. A pre-9/11 mentality is deadly. Putting the lives of our troops at risk is treason.

"Then why is the White House and the Republican party engaged in a concerted campaign to make treason acceptable during a time of war? That's exactly what they're doing. On numerous news shows today, Republican surrogates, their talking points ready, issued variations of the following concerning White House chief of staff Karl Rove's outing of a covert CIA agent as part of a political vendetta:

"- It's the criminalization of politics

"- Is this 'minor' leak really worth all this?

"- Political payback is common and should not be criminalized

"- Mis-speaking or mis-remembering is not a crime

"Yes, the Republicans are now making light of an intentional effort to expose an undercover CIA agent, working on weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, no less, while we are at war in the Middle East on that very issue. The GOP has become the party of treason.

"It would be one thing for a senior adviser to the president to put the nation's security at risk during a time of war. That could be explained as an aberration - a quite serious one, no doubt - but a fluke nonetheless. But when the president himself refuses to keep his own word about firing that aberration, and when the entire Republican party rallies around that fluke and tries to minimize what is usually a capital offense during wartime, something is seriously wrong with that party and its leadership."

Andrew Sullivan gets equally worked up attacking "the ideological rudder of George W. Bush's presidency, also known as Karl Rove. It was Rove who crafted the new Republican majority in America: that of a religiously-centered party dedicated to steering the largess of bigger and bigger government to its own faith-based and corporate constituencies.

"It was Rove who used the war to marginalize fiscal conservatives alarmed at spending and libertarian conservatives worried about civil liberties and minority rights. It was Rove who forged a difficult alliance between a growing conservative intelligentsia and millions of evangelical Protestant voters who had previously been reluctant to engage in raw, partisan politics. It was Rove who decided that a wartime president, rather than seeking national unity, should use the war as a means to drive a wedge through the Democrats and consolidate his own faithful supporters. It was Rove who was the architect of a 51 percent strategy of always playing to the party base, and expanding it, especially among blacks and Latinos, rather than reaching out to the center. . . .

"Could Bush survive without Rove? Once unthinkable, Washington's chatterers now talk of it incessantly."