PNAC: Palin’s Pentagon In Waiting?
PNAC: Palin’s Pentagon In Waiting?
It looks like Bill Kristol may be making good on his threat to revive the Project for the New American Century. Since May, visitors to PNAC’s website were informed that “this account has been suspended,” but now the website is back up, though it does not seem to have been updated with any new material.
PNAC’s militaristic ultra-nationalism is implicated in some of the worst mischief of the Bush years, from the “global war on terror” to the invasion of Iraq to President Bush’s support for Israel’s refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians. Many of its members served as advisers to John McCain’s presidential campaign. Bill Kristol is still listed as PNAC’s chairman, and is known to be “exceptionally close” to the senator. McCain’s top foreign policy aide, Randy Scheunemann, serves as PNAC’s project director. McCain spokesperson Michael Goldfarb is also listed as a PNAC research associate.
We should consider what PNAC’s possible revival means for the future of Sarah Palin. Palin was first “identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause” in June 2007 when the Weekly Standard’s annual summer cruise docked in Juneau. Several editors — including Bill Kristol — had dinner with Palin. Scott Horton reported that in the following months, the Standard published a number of laudatory items about Palin — “starting with a paean entitled ‘The Most Popular Governor‘ that ran right after” the dinner.
Among those associated with the McCain campaign, Kristol, Scheunemann, and Goldfarb are known to have been three of the biggest Sarah Palin boosters. It was reported that Scheunemann had even been fired by the campaign after it was discovered that he was leaking information favorable to Palin to the press. Goldfarb later denied that Scheunemann had been fired, but “told reporters that Scheunemann’s Blackberry had been confiscated in the days before the election,” and that his email had been cut off.
After lobbying McCain to pick Palin as his VP, Kristol then used his prominent position as a New York Times columnist to promote Palin and criticize the McCain team’s handling of her. Given that Kristol’s faction began to close ranks around Palin in the waning days of the campaign, and given how deeply leveraged Kristol’s reputation is in her future success, it will be interesting to see what role the revived PNAC plays in continuing political adventures of Governor Sarah Palin.
4 Responses to “PNAC: Palin’s Pentagon In Waiting?”
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William Kristol’s long association with such out of the mainstream efforts and his behavior as a McCain campaign adviser very strongly suggest that the New York Times should look elsewhere for a conservative commentator.
Kristol remains little more than a mouthpiece for his favorite discredited causes, and does little or nothing for the New York Times as a contributor.
That, and—seriously—he simply is not a good writer. His diatribes barely reach above the level of those of Jonah Goldberg.
November 10th, 2008 at 10:06 amShallow enough? My. A “potential future leader” only because William the Bloody wanted to hump her leg. Pfft. Fame is cheap.
November 10th, 2008 at 1:41 pmI see that these very evil people are still proud of their 2000 paper. It expanded upon the 1992 Cheney/Wolfowitz plan of invading Iraq to steal its oil by adding resources from countries around the world.
It talks of the process of transforming the US military into a bunch of marauding thugs and says:
America’s “new Pearl Harbor” happened on 9/11. A day when Dick Cheney was running two separate war games exercises (normally held months apart) which prevented any interception of the hijacked aircraft.
Wow! It couldn’t have worked out any better for the Bush maladministration if they’d planned it to happen that way.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:49 pmThe neocons and republicans knew that the GOP party would fail because of the coming (back then) Economic Crisis (foreknowledge), and due to Bush’s low ratings. So they pulled Mitt Romney from the race and let the “old man” have it…to fail, then counting on a disgruntled America, after socialist Democratic leadership through a bad economy, to re-elect them again in 2012. (This is also the belief of Michael Savage, that McCain was thrown in to lose, and explains Romney’s weird departure).
January 5th, 2009 at 1:51 am