Last night on Fox News, Bill Kristol called Napolitano’s comment “stupid” and stated outright that there should be no trial:

KRISTOL: I was very struck also by Janet Napolitano’s comment, I hadn’t read it before to see her say that, that the number one priority is to bring him to justice is such a knee-jerk comment and such a stupid comment. He’s going to be brought to justice. He is not going to be innocent of murder. There are a lot of eyewitnesses to that. They should just go ahead and convict him and put him to death.

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Apparently, Kristol is not a huge believer in the Constitution, the Sixth Amendment of which states that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”

Hasan’s attorney, Col. John Galligan (Ret.), noted this fact when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked how he could “represent someone accused of mass murder”:

GALLIGAN: I fully appreciate the importance of ensuring that everybody has a fair trial. I think that’s particularly important when it applies to anyone in uniform, officer or enlisted. Their profession is to defend us. We owe it to them as either fellow service members or as U.S. citizens to ensure that we properly defend them. The rights that I’m asking be accorded to Major Hasan are the rights that service members live and die for. Let’s just make sure we don’t deprive them in his case.

As Adam Serwer at TAPPED noted of those espousing Kristol’s view, “This is Salem Witch Trial justice: If the crime is heinous, the accused is automatically guilty. That the evidence may be overwhelming doesn’t matter: You don’t just ’skip’ a fair trial because you feel like it. There’s a word for systems of justice that selectively afford due process — that word is ‘corrupt.’”

Throughout this year’s debate over health care reform, Kristol has played a similar role, arguing in the media that Republicans should “kill” reform instead of trying to be “constructive.” In an interview on the Washington Times’ America’s Morning News radio show yesterday, Kristol revealed that he had met with some congressional Republicans on Wednesday night to devise strategy for defeating reform:

KRISTOL: Next week will really be a first crescendo in the big health care debate. And this dinner I was at last night was some Republican members, Senate and House, some staffers, some outside people, trying to think about how to, the best arguments against it and where the politics of this lies. She is really going for it. And I think the issue is Medicare. I mean this will be the largest package of Medicare cuts I think the Congress will ever have passed.

Later in the interview, Kristol distilled the conclusions from the strategy session with congressional Republicans, saying that citizens “need to go see their congressman and say ‘do not vote for this until either we have a chance to read it more carefully, but really more importantly just don’t vote for it because it’s going to cut my Medicare and raise my taxes.’” He echoes the same attack line in his Weekly Standard column today: “There will be no Republican votes for the Pelosi Plan of tax hikes and Medicare cuts. Will there be enough Democratic resistors so the bill is either withdrawn or defeated?.” Listen here:

For the past month, Fox has been claiming that it is not actually a “communications arm” for the Republicans. What do they think about one of their regular contributors advising Republicans on strategy behind closed doors? Will they disclose Kristol’s advisory role when he appears on the air?

KILMEADE: Let’s go to your second question. What did you talk about in your off-the-record meeting with opinion journalists at the White House-friendly media outlet for over two hours and why should it be kept secret? Who was there? What do you need to know Michelle?

MALKIN: Well, we know that a lot of left-wing opinion journalists were invited to this off-the-record meeting that lasted two-and-a-half-hours. That’s a lot longer than General McChrystal got and I think that the news-consuming audience ought to know what was discussed. We ought to know and it ought to be disclosed what was discussed by those attendees when they talk about this White House and its policy. Why shouldn’t this be completely transparent?

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As Crooks and Liars’ Susie Madrak notes, the complainers at Fox appear to be “suffering from memory loss” about President Bush’s many off-the-record chats with conservative columnists and radio hosts, including Fox News personalities Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck. Additionally, they seem to forget that Obama shared an off-the-record dinner with conservative columnists, including Fox contributors Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol and Paul Gigot, before his Inauguration. Malkin should note that the dinner lasted two-and-half hours.

On Fox News Sunday today, the “All-Stars” jumped to Limbaugh’s defense. NPR’s Juan Williams set up a false comparison, claiming that people don’t complain about MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann announcing football games even though he makes “divisive” statements about conservatives. The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol used the NFL player’s union’s opposition to Limbaugh to attack unions in general, saying “thank God most of the workforce isn’t unionized”:

KRISTOL: Thank God most of business isn’t a monopoly. Thank God most of the workforce isn’t unionized. Why could this happen? This could happen because all the NFL players are in one union. Because all the NFL owners are in one club and pressure can be put on them. Thank God there’s more diversity in this country in terms of different industries and different businesses. And people can be controversial and can still find places that are willing to have them.

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Kristol’s attack on unionization ignores the fact that unions are good for the American economy since unions help workers secure higher wages and greater benefits. Additionally, the collective bargaining of unions give workers the ability to shape the conditions of their employment, as the NFL players union successfully demonstrated.

According to Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for Sports and Society at Northeastern University, the NFL has 78 percent African-American players. Because the player’s union has leverage, that means the players won’t have to work for someone who said just two years ago, “the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s eldest daughter Liz will launch a new group aimed at rallying opposition to the “radical” foreign policy of the Obama administration which it says has succeeded only in undermining the nation’s security.

The new group, Keep America Safe, will make the case against President Barack Obama’s moves to wrench America away from Bush era foreign policy on issues from detaining alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to building a missile shield in Eastern Europe.

“The policies being proposed by the Obama administration are so radical across the board,” Cheney said. “Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you want the nation to be strong and so many steps this president is taking are making the nation weaker.”

Along with Cheney, Keep America Safe’s board features Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Debra Burlingame, whose husband was killed in 9/11. The project is being helped by a number of former McCain campaign aides, including blogger Michael Goldfarb, war room chief Aaron Harison and video producer Justin Germany.

KRISTOL: Our economy doesn’t need the boost of the Olympics. And then an American president in sort of a George W. Bush-like way goes and tries to bully the International Olympic Committee. [...]

Come walk with us. I’m here for America. Can you imagine if some Republican — if Bush had done this and we hadn’t gotten it? Typical Bush heavy-handedness, cowboy unilateralist, hegemonic imperialist action. Obama falls into that trap and they went for it. I must say you couldn’t help be amused by it.

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First of all, Kristol was a big fan of the Bush administration’s policies, so it’s not clear why he wouldn’t like Obama going to Copenhagen. But more importantly, Obama’s trip was not a “hegemonic imperialist action.” Brazil, Spain, and Japan — the other three 2016 finalists — all sent their country’s leaders to Copenhagen, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed out on NBC’s Meet the Press today. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks said that he was proud Obama had “put his country ahead of his own personal prestige”:

MADDOW: In 2012, London got the Olympics after Blair tried for them. In 2014, Russia got them after Putin tried for them, and in 2016, all four finalists sent their head of government or head of state to make the argument. Obama did nothing unreasonable, and it would have been a shock if Chicago won. For them to be cheering America’s loss here on the right, I think is sort of disgusting. [...]

BROOKS: Nonetheless, I have to say, I’m with Obama on this. He took a risk, he comes away somewhat humiliated, but he took a risk for his town, he took a risk for his country, he put his country ahead of his own personal prestige, and he lost one. I actually don’t mind it. I think he was all right on this.

E.J. Dionne added that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential slogan was “Country First,” but “in this case, it was Obama-hatred first on the right, not the country.” Watch it:

When Hewitt asked him if a resignation by one of Obama’s top foreign policy advisers “would mobilize public opinion” against Obama’s decisions, Kristol said “it would help.” He added that he had “just heard this morning from someone who’s been in touch with people in the administration, a foreign gentleman who deals with this government, that people are talking about Secretary Gates leaving at the end of the year, and being replaced by Chuck Hagel.” Hewitt and Kristol then took the opportunity to attack Hagel:

KRISTOL: People are talking about Secretary Gates leaving at the end of the year, and being replaced by Chuck Hagel…

HEWITT: Ugh.

KRISTOL: Yeah, exactly, as Secretary of Defense. I think that’s quite a plausible rumor, and a very worrisome one, because he is an advocate of retreat everywhere, I think.

HEWITT: Yeah, it’s sort of neoisolationism replacing neoconservatism as the driving intellectual force behind the intellectuals on either side.

Kristol is typically off-base when he describes Hagel as “an advocate of retreat everywhere.” Instead, Hagel is simply in favor of smarter engagement with the world. As he wrote in the Washington Post earlier this month, “global collaboration does not mean retreating from our standards, values or sovereignty”:

Development of seamless networks of intelligence gathering and sharing, and strengthening alliances, diplomatic cooperation, trade and development can make the biggest long-term difference and have the most lasting impact on building a more stable and secure world. There really are people and organizations committed to destroying America, and we need an agile, flexible and strong military to face these threats. How, when and where we use force are as important as the decision to use it. Relying on the use of force as a centerpiece of our global strategy, as we have in recent years, is economically, strategically and politically unsustainable and will result in unnecessary tragedy — especially for the men and women, and their families, who serve our country.

Indeed, Kristol has long been antithetical towards Hagel’s concern with thinking through the potential negative consequences of military engagement. Before the Iraq war — which Hagel supported before becoming an aggressive critic — Hagel wanted to know, “What comes after a military invasion? Who rules Iraq? Does the United States really want to be in Baghdad, trying to police Baghdad for twenty or thirty years?” Kristol dismissed Hagel with the assertion that “predictions of ethnic turmoil in Iraq are even more questionable than they were in the case of Afghanistan.” Kristol was wrong.

Perhaps, Kristol is lashing out because Hagel has so publicly chastised the foreign policy vision that Kristol supports. In his book, America: Our Next Chapter, Hagel wrote: “So why did we invade Iraq? I believe it was the triumph of the so-called neo-conservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence that took America into this war of choice … They obviously made a convincing case to a president with very limited national security and foreign policy experience, who keenly felt the burden of leading the nation in the wake of the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil.”

Kristol, Kagan, and Senor are now enthusiastically dedicating their efforts to building support for a U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan, calling such a strategy “politically smart for Republicans.” Kagan said recently that withdrawing from Afghanistan would be to “commit preemptive suicide.”

President Obama is thus far resisting the calls to rush more troops into Afghanistan. “I don’t want to put the resource question before the strategy question,” he said on CNN yesterday. “Because there is a natural inclination to say, if I get more, then I can do more. But right now, the question is, the first question is, are we doing the right thing? Are we pursuing the right strategy?” In a letter to Obama earlier this month, FPI made clear that the only “strategy” it’s interested in is escalation:

Since the announcement of your administration’s new strategy, we have been troubled by calls for a drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan and a growing sense of defeatism about the war. … There is no middle course. Incrementally committing fewer troops than required would be a grave mistake and may well lead to American defeat. We will not support half-measures that repeat the errors of the past.

Of course, no one knows more about repeating “errors of the past” than Bill Kristol. At its conference this week, FPI has two separate panels on Afghanistan. The right-wing organization is not hosting a single Democratic elected official (though Rep. Jane Harman did participate in its last event on Afghanistan in March). Instead, the conference is marked by the presence of right-wing luminaries, such as Sen. Jon Kyl, former Gov. Mitt Romney, Elliott Abrams, and Newt Gingrich. Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt is moderating a panel, while Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack from the Brookings Institution are also participating. Finally, the conference will fittingly wrap up tomorrow with “A Conversation with John McCain.”

Matt Yglesias writes that the Obama administration needs to “reject the kind of discredited neocon logic that says the only way to deal with the problem of the moment is with maximum force.” He adds, “the situation in Afghanistan has gotten as bad as it has in large part precisely as a result of the last administration listening to the counsel of people like McCain.”

KRISTOL: Can I just say one thing? He [Obama] is leading his party off a cliff, and Speaker Pelosi is going to lead his party — her party off the cliff if they try to rebuke Joe Wilson.

He has apologized. It will be a disgrace if they do some stunt in the House to try to humiliate this man, who is, in fact — has a reputation for bipartisanship on the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee he’s on.

Obama and Pelosi are leading the party off a cliff, I think, and I hope a lot of Democrats say, Slow down. Let’s take a look at this bill.

Watch it:

Republican leaders, including Minority Leader John Boehner (OH), have also been pressuring Wilson to apologize to the House.

Since the announcement of your administration’s new strategy, we have been troubled by calls for a drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan and a growing sense of defeatism about the war. With General McChrystal expected to request additional troops later this month, we urge you to continue on the path you have taken thus far and give our commanders on the ground the forces they need to implement a successful counterinsurgency strategy. There is no middle course. Incrementally committing fewer troops than required would be a grave mistake and may well lead to American defeat. We will not support half-measures that repeat the errors of the past.

Palin’s inclusion on the list shouldn’t be surprising, considering that during her time as Sen. John McCain’s running mate, neocons considered her a “blank page” and a “project” for them to mold into a messenger for their cause.

Kristol — who has urged conservative activists and Republicans to “resist the temptation” to work with Democrats in crafting health reform and instead “go for the kill” — responded that the military “deserves it,” but the American people do not:

STEWART: Are you saying the American public shouldn’t have access to the same quality health care that we give to our better citizens?

KRISTOL: To our soldiers? Absolutely. [Crowd boos]

Kristol explained that soldiers get paid less, but “one way we make it up to” them is by giving them “first-class health care.” “I feel like you’ve trapped me somehow,” Kristol observed. Indeed, Stewart explained the flaw in Kristol’s logic:

STEWART: I just want to get this on record — Bill Kristol just said that the government can run a first-class health care system.

KRISTOL: Sure it can. [Crowd applauds]

STEWART: And a government-run system is better than a private health care system.

Kristol tried to backtrack, saying he wasn’t sure the military system is “better,” and later argued that other government-run systems aren’t providing the best health care.

Stewart wrapped up Kristol’s argument by stating, “So what you are suggesting is that the government could run the best health care system for Americans, but it’s a little too costly, so we should have the shitty insurance company health care.” Watch it:

The President could have said, you know that was a stupid thing for me to say. But he didn’t say that for some reason. You know, that would be too self-deprecating. And I think he is an arrogant man. And he feels entitled to pass judgment on Cambridge cops or on pediatricians…

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Putting aside that Kristol has made a career of sitting in judgment of others, the Cambridge cops have said they are “profoundly grateful that the president took time out of his busy schedule to attempt to resolve this situation.” In a statement, Cambridge police officers said, “It is clear to us from this conversation that the president respects police officers and the often difficult and dangerous situations we face on a daily basis.” As former McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt said of Kristol, “He’s in the business of ad hominem insults and criticism.” Schmidt observed, “That’s a reflection of [Kristol’s] values. He’s the Washington, D.C., talking head and glitterati.”

Miller claimed that “liberals are trying to co-opt” the term, but they haven’t “completely commandeered it” yet, so conservatives should “start claiming progressivism on the right too.” Kristol agreed, citing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s frequent use of the phrase, “progressing Alaska forward”:

KRISTOL: And I agree with you. What’s progressive about heaping tax burdens and energy costs burdens on working class and middle class people in a tough economic time? I mean, who’s really for progress? People make fun of Sarah Palin, her grammar’s not so good some times and she’s always talking about “progressing Alaska forward.” It’s not a verb I usually use, but maybe she’s on to something in the notion that conservatives should not give up the notion that they’re the progressive force now in American politics.

Listen here:

Kristol and Miller’s musing about co-opting progressivism for the conservative movement will likely shock right wingers like Glenn Beck, who have sought to demonize the term. “I’ve been saying now for awhile, and it really has clicked in my mind, um, that it is the progressive movement, it is the cancer that is inside both parties,” said Beck last month. Citing the lessons he learned from Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, Beck is convinced that “progressivism” is the true insidious force threatening America:

BECK: We’ll come back with Jonah Goldberg. I want to make something real clear, though. It wasn’t just — don’t think that this is a Barack Obama or a Democrat-bashing thing. Because it’s not. Compassionate conservativism is the same thing. Progressivism is in both parties, and that is the cancer that you need to educate yourself on and know what it is so you can fight it and irradiate it. It is — and you can find the beginnings of it. A great place to start is a book, it’s just come out in paperback I think tomorrow, or maybe it was out last week. Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism.

But Miller, who raised the idea of re-branding conservatives as progressives, might not mind that his idea tramples on Beck’s paranoid shtick. Miller has mocked Beck as “a shaky cat” who “makes Howard Beale look like John Wayne.”

Transcript:

MILLER: Yes, if I was them, I’d start planting a flag — if I was Republicans right now or conservatives, whatever way you want to look at it — I would plant a flag on the phrase progressive. I think that the liberals are trying to co-opt that phrase because they want to get away from their past. And I think it’s still in play. I don’t think they’ve completely commandeered it. I would start claiming progressivism on the right too. I think Obama, he’s getting a big thumbs up, his issues not so much. What the gap right now in disparage between the, his approval rating and some of the ones for his issues.

KRISTOL: You know, its about ten points or so. But you know, what’s striking to me is people wish, obviously wish an American — Americans wish an American president well. He’s a new and popular president. He won the presidency with 53 percent of the vote. Even in the CBS/New York Times poll out today, which has always sort have been a better poll for Democrats than maybe some others, I think that Obama’s personal job approval is 56 percent. So, we’re now, he’s really, the honeymoon’s over. I mean, he’s back to basically the people who voted for him in November and I — you know maybe he’ll have a huge economic comeback. Maybe the Iranians will throw over their nuclear program. Maybe the world will fall at his feet. But if not, I’ve got to think his numbers continue down as those people take a close look, as you say, at these proposals. And I think it’s very important for the Republicans to define these proposals correctly. Health care, cap and trade, the huge tax increases. And I agree with you. What’s progressive about heaping tax burdens and energy costs burdens on working class and middle class people in a tough economic time? I mean, who’s really for progress? People make fun of Sarah Palin, her grammar’s not so good some times and she’s always talking about “progressing Alaska forward.” It’s not a verb I usually use, but maybe she’s on to something in the notion that conservatives should not give up the notion that they’re the progressive force now in American politics.

KRISTOL: Everyone said [Obama couldn't] compete with people with these long records. … He seems to have gotten President. I don’t think it is foolish for Palin to think, “You know what, if that’s the world we live in now where people don’t value — maybe correctly — experience in years of experience in Washington, or two terms counts more than two and half years as Governor of Alaska. Maybe she thinks she gets out there and becomes a leader of the conservative movement, and then a leader of the Republican Party, and then conceivably a nominee of the Republican Party, and then conceivably a president just as Obama did.

Watch it:

Kristol has been particularly unreliable as of late, and has been extremely poor in predicting the likely success of would-be presidential candidates. In 2006, he declared that “Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary.” Earlier in the program, Karl Rove expressed a less charitable view than that of Kristol, saying, “[E]ffective strategies in politics are ones that are so clear and obvious that people can grasp it. It is not clear what her strategy is.”

Kristol fingered one particular McCain official for blame: chief strategist Steve Schmidt. Kristol claimed that Schmidt trashed “Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign.” And now Schmidt is firing back by unloading some very candid rhetorical bombs against Kristol. Politico’s Jonathan Martin reports:

Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I’m sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”

“After all, his management of [former Vice President] Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away,” Schmidt continued. “His attack on me is categorically false.”

Schmidt then offered more colorful perspective of Kristol’s character:

“Bill Kristol, going back to the time of the campaign, has taken a lot of cheap shots at the campaign without ever offering a plausible path to victory,” Schmidt said. “He’s in the business of ad hominem insults and criticism.” […]

As for the charges of being a sunshine soldier with regard to Palin, Schmidt said: “Nonsense. I’m a team player. That’s a reflection of [Kristol’s] values. He’s the Washington, D.C., talking head and glitterati. I live in Northern California and I really don’t give a s— about that stuff.”

Kristol responded by claiming that “John McCain deserved better” than Schmidt. And Kristol’s chief McCain campaign ally — Randy Scheunemann — likened Schmidt to the “Iranian secret police.”

During the presidential campaign, neoconservatives Kristol and Scheunemann had made Palin their “project,” seizing upon her cluelessness to shape her foreign policy views. As Matt Duss observed at the time, Palin’s “simplistic presentation of the Russia-Georgia conflict, her mindless threat of war with Russia, asserting that America shouldn’t ‘second guess’ Israeli policy, and her tiresome and dishonest conflation of 9/11 and Iraq,” all confirmed that she was getting the neocon talking points. And now the neoconservative camp is returning the favor by rushing to defend her.

Yglesias notes that “Kristol doesn’t even attempt to say what he thinks this will accomplish.” “He just kind of tosses it out there for no reason because arguing that the United States should start wars is what he does.” Nonproliferation expert Joe Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund, tells ThinkProgress that “Kristol may sound authoritative on the Fox News set, but following his advice would be a disaster on the battlefield.” “A strike on North Korea would be the beginning of a war, not the end of a crisis,” said Cirincione.

Read Cirincione’s full statement:

It is not news when Bill Kristol recommends starting a war. It is his default foreign policy option. On Sunday, his answer to North Korea was to launch air strikes, as he was “certain” that North Korea is determined to become a nuclear power and there was no other way to stop them.

He was also “certain” in 2003 that invading Iraq was necessary to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and war would show Iran and North Korea that they should stop their programs or face similar attacks.

When the war proved a disaster, and when Iran and North Korea both accelerated their programs (making more progress in the past 6 years than they had in the previous 12), Kristol stayed consistent, arguing for strikes on North Korea in 2006 and for war with Iran in 2007.

Kristol does have a point. If we thought that North Korea was about to launch a long-range missile with a nuclear warhead, the president should and could destroy the missile on the launch pad. The North’s missiles are liquid-fueled, still relatively basic and take several days to transport to the launch pad, assemble and fuel. They are large, stationary, relatively easy targets for U.S. forces.

This “pre-boost phase” intercept” has always been my favorite form of missile defense. A commander would be a fool to wait until after an enemy had launched a missile to see of one of the anti-missile systems we deploy could intercept it. Tests indicated that the Aegis system deployed on Navy ships could not hit a Taepodong missile in its boost-phase, rising from North Korea. Nor could the Ground-Based Missile Defense System deployed in Alaska hit the missile in its mid-course phase if the North deployed even the simplest of counter-measures such as decoys, chaff or jammers.

The missile now crawling to the pad in North Korea does not pose a serious threat to the United States, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pointed out this weekend (and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley concluded following a similar July 2006 test). There is no evidence that North Korea has or is close to having a nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile. That would take more tests and more years to perfect. Nor do they yet have a working long-range missile. If the North tests again it will be only the fourth test of a long-range missile in 11 years. None have worked so far.

Finally, there is a very good reason why the Joint Chiefs have rejected military strikes on North Korea—and why Vice-President Dick Cheney did also back in 2006. “I think, obviously, if you’re going to launch strikes at another nations, you’d better be prepared to not just fire one shot,” he said. This is still true. A strike on North Korea would be the beginning of a war, not the end of a crisis. There is a high probability that the North would launch counter-strikes. A barrage of some of the 10,000 artillery and rocket tubes the North has trained on Seoul, South Korea could kill tens of thousands in the first few hours of a war.

Kristol’s gambit is a loser’s game, with no calculation of the next move. Particularly at this time of high tension over the successor to ailing leader Kim Jong-Il, does Kristol really think that the regime could afford to lose massive amounts of face and still maintain their grip on the country? Kristol may sound authoritative on the Fox News set, but following his advice would be a disaster on the battlefield.

KRISTOL: I think he has made up his mind, and I think it’s going to be Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan, for this reason. Obama gave that interview Friday which we saw the snippet from. In that interview, he uses the term practical seven times — I want someone with a practical sense of how the world works, I want someone with practical experience. Obama knows what he’s doing, and I think he wants to say, I’m putting on someone who went to Harvard Law School, clerked at an appellate level, was attorney general of Michigan, has good quotes from Republicans and Democrats about their conduct of that legal office, but who really understands the effect on real-world decisions.

Watch it:

Bill Kristol has also wrongly predicted that Ted Stevens would “hang on” in Alaska, that McCain would conquer “the path to the presidency,” and that Colin Powell would endorse President Obama at the 2008 DNC.

The real question any Republican strategist should ask himself is this: What will Republican chances be in 2012 if voters don’t remember the Bush administration–however problematic in other areas–as successful in defending the country after 9/11? To give this issue away would be to accept a post-Herbert-Hoover-like-fate for today’s GOP. That’s why Republicans should listen carefully when Cheney gives a speech this week in which he’ll lay out the case for the surveillance, detention, and interrogation policies of the Bush administration in the war against terror.

Kristol concludes, “Dick Cheney probably won’t be the glamour quarterback of the Republican comeback. But he’s proving to be a heck of a middle linebacker.” Those considering taking the advice of the Kristol Ball should check out his July 2007 op-ed on “Why Bush Will Be A Winner.”

Republicans who were chortling over that 20 percent drop in the stock market the first month or two of [Obama's] administration are going to be, fairly enough, hoist on our own petard by the fact that now Obama’s getting this big stock market rally. … I — no one should base anything on this forecast — but in my view the short term is surprisingly bullish, but medium-long term very worrisome.

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Indeed, a key talking point of the right-wing in late 2008 and the early part of 2009 was that the significant decline in the stock market was evidence that Obama’s approach to economic recovery was already failing. Kristol himself penned a column in the Weekly Standard entitled “Don’t Worry, Be Happy: Obama gives the markets the back of his hand.” In it, Kristol argued that Obama’s failure to base his entire economic agenda on ensuring day-to-day gains in the markets on Wall Street demonstrated he had already failed at governing:

So the stock market drops over 25 percent since Election Day, almost 20 percent since Inauguration — and Barack Obama tells the American people at his press conference Tuesday not to “spend all your time worrying about that.” [...]

The stock market is about real money, about the real livelihoods of real. … I’m told almost every theme in Obama’s speech last Tuesday night was focus-group tested–and the speech played pretty well politically. But the markets weren’t impressed. Isn’t it time for Obama and his team to get up the nerve to stop playing politics and to govern?

Kristol, of course, was not alone in making this argument. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Republicans in Congress all got on board. The question now is whether or not Kristol’s conservative brethren will follow his lead and issue a correction.

Kristol criticized Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) argument that detainees should be given “the same due process we give our own troops,” saying it is a political “gift” to Republicans (nevermind the fact that GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham made a similar argument the previous day). “Why not keep Guantanamo open?” Kristol asked, claiming that there is no longer any reason to close it:

KRISTOL: Literally, on substance, there is now no argument for closing Guantanamo. It is entirely symbolic. Obama has shown he symbolically would like to. The Europeans love him. They can’t love him anymore, you know. He should reverse himself.

And the Republican position should now be not just to embarrass the Democrats. Republicans should say it is a ridiculous waste of money, and a little dangerous, incidentally, to now close what has turned out to be an extremely effective, well-run facility.

Watch it:

What Kristol doesn’t understand is that symbolism actually creates substance and the Guantanamo Bay prison serves as a symbol that harms U.S. national security. Indeed, “16 highly-respected intelligence and counterterror officials” told the U.S. Supreme Court last January that holding detainees without due process provides “a powerful recruitment tool for violent extremists…and greater risk to the security of the Nation.” Other experts agree:

– Center for Strategic and International Studies: “In the view of many around the world, Guantanamo represents indefinite detention, torture, and abuse…Guantanamo does serve as a recruitment tool for al Qaeda.”

– Council on Foreign Relations expert Daniel Prieto: Gitmo has “direct effects on our counterterrorism policies, making them brittle and making the United States less safe in the world, in terms of serving as propaganda and an active recruitment tool for terrorists and really inflaming public opinion around the world.”

Even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), whom Kristol fervently supported to become the nation’s next president, has said “Guantanamo has become a symbol around the world that is not good.”

Indeed, as the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss noted, Gitmo “remains a potent symbol of American lawlessness, and a driver of anti-American sentiment” and “raises the political costs for potential American allies and partners.” Addressing Kristol’s claim that Gitmo has been “effective,” Duss notes that it “has been a significant radicalizing force for Islamic militants” and adds, “So yes, it’s been effective — at getting American soldiers killed.”