HE KNOWS WE ARE, BUT WHAT IS HE? David Bernstein at the Volokh site (I refuse to accept its chosen cognomen, "Conspiracy," as that usage reminds me of a bunch of corporate financial officers calling themselves a "crew") wonders, in light of the recent NEA funding, "why liberals are so hostile to George Bush":

Give him a phony Haavaad accent instead of phony Texas twang, a wonky college life, a less religious persona, and an attorney general other than John Ashcroft, and George Bush, in theory, would be a dream president for many liberals, judging by their ex ante policy preferences.

Haw haw. Stupid libruls! With their stupid Kennedys and their stupid edumacations and their stupid Satan!

One expects this sort of treatment from operatives like Bernstein, but few of them have the stones to follow it up immediately with something like this:

...cultural cues are more important than policy and ideology. W just represents lots of things that coastal liberals dislike, and they will continue to dislike him regardless of how he governs policy-wise. But I find it amusing when they dress up their cultural prejudices in rhetoric...

To haul out the Mallard Fillmore caricatures and attack liberal "cultural prejudices" almost simultaneously takes a certain kind of... let's say, lack of self-consciousness.

As to his further claims that Bush isn't an ultraconservative 'cause he spends lots of money, I could tell Bernstein that real liberals prefer that public moneys be spent on enforcement of environmental regulations and Head Start, for example, than on grants to religious maniacs, but there wouldn't be much point, what with Bernstein standing there with his fingers in his ears, singing "La-la-la, I can't hear you."