Hugh and Cry

Powerline thought this meant we should keep trying to pay it down. Come to think of it, maybe the cartoonist did too. 

Astounding stupidity—well, maybe not that astounding—from Hugh Hewitt:

to get the gears engaged and the city moving again, an infusion of third party trust is needed.... I think it starts with a phone call from the president –to Williamsburg. The Hon. Robert Gates is the Chancellor of the College of William and Mary and of course the esteemed former Secretary of Defense under both Presidents Obama and Bush. Gates was also the former CIA director and Deputy National Security Advisor. He probably ran the the Parks Service and NIH at one point or another. He certainly ran during Texas A&M during one of his breaks from D.C., which is like running a couple or three agencies at once. Point is, he is one of those guys, one of the fabled “wise men. [missing close quotes mark and "during Texas A&M" as if it were not a university but a Chinese imperial dynasty* and italics in the original—the entire post is in italics, no doubt the entire website, to emphasize the urgent importance of everything Hewitt has to say.]

Hewitt's idea is that Gates, a certified Wise Man who has served government by both parties and negotiated with North Korea, is the man to meet with the President and the four senior leaders in Congress, perhaps with their whips and certainly with their staffs, to "forge" a "deal" in the Roosevelt room and and commit himself to the process when needed for the final blessing.  Then he lists the 20 or so provisions including a complete new proposal for immigration reform that the well-forged deal must contain, I guess because these are busy men and it would be silly to ask them to come up with any ideas when Hugh is ready to supply all the ideas they need. What Gates himself is meant to do is still not clear to me; Hugh's description makes it sound as if he's just to sit quietly as the other five guys fill in the details point by point on the Hewitt List and then, at a crucial moment, shout "Into thy hands, Process, I commend my spirit!" upon which the clouds will part in the Tiepolo sky and a Hollywood soul chorus start to sing.

Left unsaid is how this whole thing is supposed to impress the Republican Teddy Boys (named for Cruz and Yoho**). Gates is commonly referred to by Hewitt's comrades in low-information anarchism as "R.I.N.O. in chief", an "Obama flunkie", a "traitor or fool". Worst of all, he's called them names too: on the subject of BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! he says they're "cartoonish". Which is such a well-chosen word I'm surprised Hugh's not on the anti-Gates train screaming Gatesgate! or something of the kind.

Conservative humor. Funnier now than when it was published on March 12 2012.

*And Gates was not "former Secretary of Defense under both Presidents..."; he's former Secretary of Defense now.
**Yoho is of course the congressman (Birther-FL) who has decried the 10% tax on tanning beds as racist and suggested that defaulting on the national debt would improve our country's credit rating:

I think the creditors that we owe money to around the world would say, "you know what, they're getting their house in order." And I think our credit rating would do better, if we did that than face the mass [sic] program we've been up to ... There are several of us that we're not raising the debt ceiling; don't ask us.

Actually I believe that happened in the Florida real estate market. How we got the mortgage crisis. What Yoho really wants, of course, is classic Florida: a Yoho ho and a bottle of rum.