The field of aggressive pro-Republican pundits, expanded by blogs and cable TV, has never been larger. And never have so few been so right about so little.

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Hewitt’s book, like his far-more-popular blog, is nearly devoid of criticism of the Republican Party. The goal he set for the 2006 elections is a “national campaign built on a showdown over national security and ending the Democrats’ obstruction.” The lesson of Republican rule was not that the party could lose its way if it got a, or that the administration needed the occasional gut check from conservatives and libertarians—Hewitt even supported the nomination of Harriet Miers, on the grounds that her confirmation would have given black eyes to the hated Donkey Party. ~Dave Weigel

Via Jim Antle

Mr. Weigel does fine work knocking over the pretensions of the Hewitts of the world (I have had some choice words about Hewitt in the past) and pointing out what have unfortunately become the all-too-common characteristics of GOP polemicists: intellectual laziness and reflexive party loyalty.  Only a massive betrayal on immigration has managed to elicit howls of protest from some of the bigger talking heads, and they were duly called in and given their new orders.  The point is not that the Hewitts or the Limbaughs of the world always agree with the party (though Hewitt usually does), but that they can no longer make a coherent argument for why anyone else should agree with them except that the other side will usher in some apocalyptic doom or nightmare scenario.  In a crunch, they will almost always trust the party to do the right thing, and they have taken their cues from the party on what “the right thing” is for so long that they will almost invariably be proven right in trusting the party.  That is why I regard the Hewitts and Limbaughs as GOP shills and willing propagandists.    

It is one thing to be partisan, which is common enough.  But to let partisan loyalty serve as a kind of support for every bad argument you make and to use invective against the opposition all the time as a crutch to prop up your own feeble policy positions are just sad testaments to how far so many pundits on the right have fallen.