Chait’s larger point about how the left-wing netroots is trying to make the Left into a mirror image of the Right–or at least the Right as viewed by both Chait and the netroots–may be perfectly true. But in one passage he swallows whole David Brock’s self-dramatizing fictionalization of his own career.

One of the defining features of the conservative movement is an intense social pressure upon its adherents not to break ranks. One episode from the 1990s demonstrates a fair sense of the prevailing ethos on the right. David Brock, until then a member of the conservative movement in good standing, set out to write a book about Hillary Clinton. Rather than producing the undiluted hit job he and his readers expected, Brock found himself painting a not entirely unsympathetic portrait of the first lady. The reaction among his colleagues was swift and brutal. The organs of the right–The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, National Review, The Washington Times–denounced him for his heresy. A conservative friend of Brock’s, the late Barbara Olson, disinvited him from a dinner party she and husband Ted Olson were throwing for fellow righties.
For conservatives, it was simply the expected outcome–a traitor getting his due. “People get bumped off invite lists every day,” shrugged then-Weekly Standard writer Tucker Carlson.

Let’s start with the notion that NR “denounced him for his heresy” in the Hillary book. In the first paragraph of NR’s review of the book, Rich Lowry wrote that it would be “strange, and unfair,” to judge Brock’s book negatively because it “reveals no new scandals or other information embarrassing to the First Lady.” Lowry continued: “It is not incumbent on David Brock to spend the rest of his career as the opposition researcher for the Right. . .”

Lowry made two major criticisms of Brock’s book. The first was that Brock had gone too far in trying to be positive about the First Lady, which seems to fit Chait’s argument–except that Lowry noted that Brock’s kindness to the First Lady was often accomplished through an unfairly harsh portrayal of Bill Clinton. If there was a ruthlessly-enforced orthodoxy on the Right in the 1990s, that we should all be kinder to the president wasn’t it. The second was that Brock may have been trying too hard to prove himself not to be a conservative hit man. Both of those criticisms were also made in James B. Stewart’s review of the book for the New York Times. Were Stewart and the Times part of the “swift and brutal” attack on Brock by conservative thought police?

As for the disinvitation from a party, Olson told me that it happened because some of the other guests were sources who felt that Brock had burned them, not because he had been too positive about Hillary Clinton. Given David Brock’s record of dishonesty, I know which of the two I believe.

P.S. While I defend my employer above, my motive here is entirely annoyance with Brock.