Unintentionally, of course. Here’s Wallace:
In an interview with POLITICO today, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace questioned Peggy Noonan’s “conservative bona fides,” following her recent editorials criticizing of Mitt Romney’s campaign.
“Peggy Noonan has bashed George W. Bush, based Mitt Romney, wasn’t crazy about McCain. So, [her] conservative bona fides I’m not sure I take too seriously,” Wallace told POLITICO’s Patrick W. Gavin. “[Columnists] like Peggy Noonan, sometimes they’re New York City’s idea of conservatives.”
Wallace’s remarks come on the same day that Romney surrogate and former Gov. John Sununu criticized Noonan, a Wall Street Journal columnist, for her attacks on Romney, telling MSNBC, “I wouldn’t hire Peggy Noonan to run a campaign.”
In her column today, Noonan doubled-down on criticisms she made earlier in the week: “This week I called [the Romney campaign] incompetent, but only because I was being polite,” she wrote. “I really meant ‘rolling calamity.’”
See, Noonan’s not a “real” conservative because she argues that she wants Mitt Romney to win and he’s coming up short. Most people would call this “realism,” but conservativism ejected all the realists a long time ago, so maybe Chris is on to something.
Unfortunately, Republican rising star and Wisconsin Governor Scott “Che” Walker is likewise insufficiently uncritical of Romney’s rolling calamity:
I thought [picking Paul Ryan as Mitt’s running mate] was a signal that [Romney] was getting serious, he’s getting bold, it’s not necessarily even a frustration over the way Paul Ryan’s been used but rather in the larger context. I just haven’t seen that kind of passion I know Paul has transferred over to our nominee, and I think it’s a little bit of push-back from the folks in the national campaign. But I think for him to win he’s gotta [do] that.
They not only need to use [Ryan] out on the trail more effectively, they need to have more of him rub off on Mitt because I think Mitt thinks that way but he’s gotta be able to articulate that…I think too many people are restraining him from telling [his vision].
Both Scooter and Peggy argue that Mitt’s not doing a good job of winning, so I suppose that makes them both fake righties. Luckily for Chris Wallace, logical consistency is no more welcome in the GOP than realism.
