Battle Of Wits

Norbizness at Hapless Mangy Kitten Lying Press Conference¹ tells us that David Frum is as insane as David Brooks:

[T]he terrorists want the political parties of the pro-American right to lose, as they did in Spain. Logically, then, that implies that the terrorists want the parties of the anti-American left to win.

Jesse at Pandagon helps us understand Frum's babble:

If someone attacks the U.S. successfully before the election, it's evidence that we need to reward the people who failed to prevent the attack. Failure to prevent terrorist attacks necessitates a reward so that the terrorists don't know that their successful mass murder affected us at all.

Kevin over at Lean Left also translates for us:

In other words, Frum has said, in print, that the American people should not under any circumstances vote for who they think would be the best candidate. No, instead, they have an obligation to try and figure out what the terrorists want us to do and then do the opposite.

To be fair, Frum doesn't come right out and say we should vote for Bush if there's an attack, and a vote for Kerry is a vote for Osama bin Missing, but that's clearly the subtext. It all comes down to our assumptions about what the terrorists want.

I saw on CNN that al Qaeda planned "terrorist attacks to oust Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Partido Popular from power and replace it with the Socialists."² So in the winger world, Spain should have voted unanimously to keep the PP in power because that's exactly the opposite of what the terrorists wanted! Why does the "battle of wits" in Princess Bride suddenly spring to mind?

Now a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

In all seriousness, doesn't all this stuff sound like a bunch of reverse-reverse-reverse psychology? That's why we must safeguard our democratic processes more than ever and vote for whom we want, not for the candidate we think somebody else doesn't want. Otherwise, the terrorists have already won the battle of wits.

ntodd

1 - Sorry, but I didn't feel like coming up with a new nickname.

2 - How much credence do you give information that came from an Internet discussion board?

[Update: I changed HFPST's name, per norbizness' exhortation. I also added a link to a page with the full "battle of wits" exchange.]

['nother update: see my post about about how Life Imitates Snark.]  ¶ 3:33 PM