A Time for Choosing Indeed

This from The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol last week when it looked like an insufficient number of conservative House Republicans would rally in order to pass the Boehner plan:

To vote against John Boehner on the House floor this week in the biggest showdown of the current Congress is to choose to vote with Nancy Pelosi. To vote against Boehner is to choose to support Barack Obama. It is to choose to increase the chances that worse legislation than Boehner’s passes.

Then this from him this evening when the compromise bill that emerged over the weekend passed easily in the same House of Representatives:

But as the vote wound down on the House floor, I received an email from a friend and political comrade-in-arms that captured my sentiments almost exactly:

I must say I have a somewhat sinking feeling in my stomach about this agreement. The message to Americans seems to be that we have a (defense) spending problem—and the addition of that parenthetical substantially changes the whole sentence. I have a hard time saying what we really even got out of this deal. I suspect, however, that Obama is satisfied and will sleep well tonight, having gotten the one thing I think he really cared about: to be free of having to do this again before next November...       

This whole experience—especially the default to defense cuts—is a further reminder that we'll never get anywhere without a Republican leader who can make the case for real entitlement reform (Obamacare repeal, Medicare reform)

These two posts, the one demeaning those who would dare to oppose the Boehner plan last week, the other demeaning those who followed through with the logic of, as well as the inexorable momentum created by, their first vote, mystifies me.

Perhaps it's not just new Republican leadership that is needed, but a new conservative commentariat as well.