I was beginning to think the Beltway commentariat was granting, not atypically, this Republican linguistic curiosity a pass: that a "covert" operation can be overtly proposed, while maintaining its covert integrity.
Thus, in "The Maltese Falcon," still the classiest tale ever of skulduggery, deceit and intrigue, Sydney Greenstreet announced to Humphrey Bogart that he was slipping him a mickey.
Well, Greenstreet would have, had he been scheming as a modern GOP presidential wannabe. And I wish he were around to do so. For the party could use a little cloak-and-dagger class.
Last Saturday night -- you've probably blocked it from your recall center; it was that Night at the Comic Opera, another GOP debate -- Mitt Romney, as I noted at the time,
opened by asserting that President Obama should have provided "covert assistance" to the Iranian resistance movement. Perhaps Obama did. How would we know, if the assistance was indeed covert, just as Romney demanded?
Naturally I assumed that similar and quite voluble howls of perplexity would soon erupt from both pundits and press. That such howls were muted or mum, however, was understandable, given the other and abundant piles of perplexity that all the wannabes coughed up that night.
Yet David Ignatius gets around to it today, and his complete column is required reading:
What is it about "covert" that the Republicans donβt understand?... Activities that are so glibly discussed lose some of their credibility, in addition to their deniability.
All of which, though, poses a much broader question. In their shabby pursuits of the lowest and commonest denominators, is there anything these Republican wannabes won't say, anyone to whom they won't pander, any line they won't cross, any logic they won't butcher, any tradition they won't upend, any propriety they won't violate?
Appears not.