Bill Kristol invokes the “some of my best friends…” defense

The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol offers a Stephen Colbert-style defense of the conservative movement's commitment to tolerance:

Where was Sarah Palin last Friday night, before coming to Washington to speak at the Glenn Beck gathering Saturday?

She was a guest speaker at a Jewish “Shabbaton”—a Sabbath gathering for prayer, meals, songs, study and conversation—in Lancaster, Pa.

So evangelical Christian Sarah Palin spent Friday night with (mostly) observant Jews, along with various Christians, including some Amish. Then on Saturday she spoke at a rally hosted by a Mormon who went out of his way in his remarks to refer to the important role of “churches, synagogues and mosques” in American life.

Early Monday morning, as it happened, I received an e-mail from (Catholic convert) Newt Gingrich from Rome, asking for contact information for a (Jewish) scholar whose book on certain (not very religious) enlightenment thinkers he was reading.

Welcome to today's intolerant, divisive, close-minded, and just plain scary American conservatism.

See? Newt Gingrich isn't intolerant or divisive! I mean, sure, he's made a decades-long career out of intolerant bomb-throwing, from his attempts to link Democrats to Susan Smith's murder of her children to his more recent comparisons of the Obama administration and Park51 supporters to Nazis -- but, hey, he's reading a book by a Jewish scholar! So, clearly, Newt's a uniter, not a divider.

And, sure, Sarah Palin defended Dr. Laura's repeated use of the n-word and statement that if you are “that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race,” absurdly claiming that Dr. Laura had been “shackled” by critics. Sure, she runs around falsely accusing the Obama administration of creating “death panels” and urging her followers to read columns comparing Obama to Hitler. And it's true that virtually every word she utters is an attempt to promote a culture war. But she spoke at a rally hosted by a Mormon -- and talked to a group of Jews, too! She's all about bringing people together.

And, ok, Kristol himself accused Democrats of disliking Joe Lieberman because he is “pro-American” and thinks “white women are a problem” and wants to bomb almost everyone (except the people he wants to torture) and echoes Palin's “death panel” lie. But, really, Bill Kristol just wishes everyone could get along. There's nothing divisive about Bill Kristol.