This Is How They Win

Conservatives, that is.  

Whether they are Very Serious People, like David Brooks, or they work the back alleys of the wingnut dungheap, they never, ever back down.  Once they have decided a thing, no matter how utterly, pandimensionally wrong subsequent events show them to be, they never, ever admit they were wrong and they never, ever stop looking for excuses to re-litigate matters which reality has already settled beyond any doubt.

Take, for example, indestructible human trash-fire Paul Wolfowitz:

As the good Doctor Maddow points out so eloquently here, there is no matter of recent history more utterly fucking settled than the fact that "if you hear something clangingly, obviously wrong in America, look around. Paul Wolfowitz is somewhere near you."

Back in 2003, a greasy little neocon climber at The Weekly Standard named David Brooks was hard at work slandering critics of George Bush's Awesome Iraqi Adventure.  And of all the revolting Conservative claptrap Mr. Brooks cranked out on his way to fame and fortune at the New York Times, the method he used to champion the cause of scumbag Paul Wolfowitz was possibly the sleaziest of all. 

However since it appears that no onr in America but me remembers any of this, allow me to excerpt a small portion of Mr. Brooks' stirring defense of ol' Spitcomb McGee from almost exactly 12 years ago:

It's Back

The socialism of fools has returned to vogue not just in the Middle East and France, but in the American left and Washington.

11:00 PM, FEB 20, 2003

...

I mentioned that I barely know Paul Wolfowitz, which is true. But I do admire him enormously, not only because he is both a genuine scholar and an effective policy practitioner, not only because he has been right on most of the major issues during his career, but because he is now the focus of world anti-Semitism. He carries the burden of their hatred, which emanates not only from the Arab world and France, but from some people in our own country, which I had so long underestimated.

Then, of course, it all turned to shit, which is when people like Mr. Brooks -- the recently anointed high priest of the Beltway's brand new "People Should Publicly Apologize and Atone and Shit" temple -- quickly scrambled to use the awesome media platforms they had been give to mass neuralyze the American public --

-- so the uncomfortable subject of everything fucking thing they had said and done during the Age of Dubya never came up again.

Then people Mr. Brooks went immediately back into the business of selling the same old, horrible ideas to the public, but this time slathered in a thick layer of "Who can really say who was right and who was wrong?"

Here, then, is David Brooks' stirring defense of ol' Spitcomb McGee 12 years later, on the occasion of Mr. Wolfowitz being appointed to Jeb Bush's foreign policy team (h/t Heather at C and L.  Also emphasis added because I know you're busy people):

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. And so Bush has this problem.

And I thought the speech — I wasn’t quite as underwhelmed as Mark. I don’t know how you rate underwhelmed-ness. But I do think it was sort of lacking in some of the innovation and substance, the willingness to take a risk and offer something new. I think what’s heartening is that — we can have different views about Paul Wolfowitz. I think he’s a much more complicated character than sometimes he’s portrayed...

At no point do people like David Brooks ever stop being horribly wrong. 

And at no point do these people ever admit being wrong, or apologize it, or correct their thinking.

Because they don't have to.  Because at no point do they suffer even the slightest professional consequences for being wrong, or for being hypocrites.

Because there is still a Club.

And you and I are not invited.