WHAT WE SAY; WHAT RIGHT-WINGERS HEAR

Fred Kaplan in Slate:

Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

Melissa Clouthier responding at Right Wing News:

You know, this analysis deserves an analogy. So, you're a woman married to an abusive jerk. You can't leave. Finally, you have a chance, you divorce. You change your life, but you can't move. You have kids together with the jerk, so you have to stay around. One of the kids, prefers abusive dad. You know what's best, but what can you do? You try to assert yourself. The ex, though, he's no nicer. It pisses him off that you dare defend yourself. He brings his gun over and he shoots you. Attempts to kill you, for having the nerve to defy him. And oh, by the way, he will show the others around where it's at, too. He's above the law, because he's crazy and everyone is afraid of him.

Most friends are outraged at this jerk's actions. He's wrong. He's abusive. He's vicious. But some people go after the woman for daring to believe she could be independent and assert herself. She should have known better. She should never have provoked him. Stupid woman. She deserves what she got. And furthermore, she's a complete idiot for listening to anyone who believed she could be independent.

Why does the Left always, always take the side of the abusive spouse?

Is Clouthier so blinded by hatred of liberalism, by her belief (widely shared on the right) that liberals live to serve evil, that she's lost the ability to read?

Kaplan isn't siding with the husband. If Clouthier wants a spousal-abuse analogy, she should try this: Why did the U.S. encourage a wife to leave her violent husband, even spurring her on to goad the husband, knowing full when that when the wife was ready to make her escape it fully intended not to show up with a gun and a getaway car, as it had effectively promised it would?

(Kaplan: "Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons, training, and talk of entry into NATO. Of course the Georgians believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans would bail them out.")

Try again, Melissa.