GUCCI GULCH GROVER'S GRIPES :

Conservative "Dismay" at the Times : The New York Times says religious conservatives are unhappy with John Ashcroft. Which is news to them. (Jonathan V. Last, 07/24/2002, Weekly Standard)

WEDNESDAY'S New York Times carried a front-page article by Neil A. Lewis headlined "Ashcroft's Terrorism Policies Dismay Some Conservatives." Lewis asserts that Attorney General John Ashcroft is becoming unpopular with religious conservatives who fear that their organizations may be investigated under new anti-terror legislation. Can this possibly be true?

To make his case, Lewis quotes Grover Norquist, the Washington lobbyist and head of Americans for Tax Reform, as saying, Ashcroft's "religious base is now quite troubled by what he's done." [...]

For several years, [Grover] Norquist has been trying to convince Republicans that Muslims are a natural GOP constituency (see Franklin Foer's informative New Republic piece on Norquist, Fevered Pitch. September 11 threw a spanner in the works of Norquist's project, especially as American Muslim groups reacted with ambivalence, if not hostility, to the fact that the war on terrorism, of necessity, would focus on Arabs. In the ongoing struggle between these groups and the Justice Department, Norquist has been a consistent critic of Ashcroft. This is also in keeping with Norquist's longstanding, anti-government brand of conservatism--his so-called "leave-us-alone coalition," which has been a harder sell since last September. Not that Norquist has relented. After the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, he kept his powder dry for less than a week. By September 17, he was denouncing Ashcroft's plans for the war on terror as "a real danger for civil liberties."

So Norquist has an Islamo-libertarian axe to grind. Bully for him. But that makes him doubly unreliable as a guide to the feelings of "religious conservatives"--unless by that phrase the Times means Norquist's American Muslim allies, who are, indeed, dismayed by Ashcroft's policies.

It must suck to work at the NY Times now and have people actually check your stories. Of course, the Times no longer has editors apparently, but out in the ether, folks are watching. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 25, 2002 8:39 PM