THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

M. STANTON EVAN'S LAW ABOUT "OUR" PEOPLE | 2001-02-10

Last week I wrote about "The Ashcroft Grovel." At the hearings on his appointment as Attorney General, we watched Ashcroft crawling around and begging Ted Kennedy for the chance to prove he will follow Kennedy's policy.

As I said, Ashcroft's boot-licking performance is nothing new among professional conservatives. If you think Ashcroft was bad on television, you ought to see the average conservative begging for liberal approval IN PRIVATE. It's nauseating.

The fact is that conservatives do this selling out in private all the time. But when they get a chance to get some kind of appointment, they regularly do what Ashcroft did and sell us out in public.

This is so routine the conservative leader M. Stanton Evans turned it into a rule

"As soon as one of our people gets into a position where he could really help us, he stops being one of our people."