Peggy’s changes

Here is a bombshell launched by Peggy Noonan during the battle over the immigration bill that I missed, but that was picked up by Sam Raymond at The Inverted World:

Naturally I hope the new immigration bill fails. It is less a bill than a big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity, with a touch of class malice, and it’s being pushed by a White House that is at once cynical and inept. The bill’s Capitol Hill supporters have a great vain popinjay’s pride in their own higher compassion. They are inclusive and you’re not, you cur, you gun-totin’ truckdriver’s-hat-wearin’ yahoo. It’s all so complex, and you’d understand this if you weren’t sort of dumb.

Wow. I have been tracing with interest Noonan’s journey from pro-Bush, open-borders, pro-democratism neocon to someone who not only opposes Bush’s policies but expresses personal dislike for Bush. But this surpasses anything else along these lines that I’ve seen. To grasp the scope of Noonan’s transformation, see what she said just four years ago about the president whom she now accuses of pushing a “big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity”:

George W. Bush is an American of the big and real America. He believes in it all—in the vision of the founders, in the meaning of freedom, in the founding and enduring ideas of our country…. America appears to have a President worthy of its people.

Now, if Noonan would just retract her infamous “mud” remark, she’d really be cooking.

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John Hagan writes:

Noonan really should be commended for speaking the truth about Bush and the immigration bill fiasco considering that she is still employed at the open-borders rag WSJ. I’m sure management over there is not pleased watching her viewpoint on immigration “evolve.”

LA replies:

Yes, it must be quite interesting over there now. It would be as if the most celebrated propagandist in the Kremlin suddenly became a vocal critic of Communism. Her presence has become an intolerable affront, but she’s too big for them to send her to Siberia.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 26, 2007 05:27 PM | Send