How the Republican establishment learned to shirk responsibility
The “establishment” was the institutions of liberalism — the media (especially The New York Times), the universities, the courts. We, by contrast, were outsiders, training low-caliber arms fire at the high, fortified walls protecting the liberals who really wielded power.
The fact that the magazine’s editor in chief advised George W. Bush prior to his run for the White House and then occasionally visited the president of the United States in the Oval Office was irrelevant. So was the fact that one of Bush’s senior advisors (Peter Wehner, who now writes regular op-eds for the Times) sent frequent faxes to our offices giving the administration’s spin on events — spin that not infrequently made its way, uncredited, into the editor in chief’s widely read monthly column in the magazine.
.. the Republican counter-establishment unanimously supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and actively excommunicated the few on the right who dared to dissent from the party line.
If there was a mea culpa for this, I missed it.