Glenn Greenwald writes, “One can see this principle [of conservatives branding all critics of Bush as ‘liberal’] at work most illustratively in how Bush followers talk about Andrew Sullivan. In the couple of years after 9/11, Bush followers revered Sullivan, as he stood loyally behind Bush, providing the rhetorical justifications for almost every Bush action. And even prior to the Bush Administration, Sullivan was a fully accepted member of the conservative circle. Nobody questioned the bona fides of his conservative credentials because he ascribed to the conservative view on almost every significant political issue.”

Now Greenwald may not be to blame here because he has bought into Sullivan’s own revisionism about himself. But it is simply not the case that most conservatives thought of Sullivan as one of them in the 1990s. And while Sullivan loves to write about his allegedly consistent record of opposing big government, such opposition was not at all a major theme of his writing in the 1990s. When most conservative writers fought the Clinton health plan in 1993 and 1994; when they cheered Newt Gingrich in his efforts to cut federal spending in 1995 and 1996; when they opposed the budget deal of 1997 for its spending increases; when they tried to stop the creation of the new entitlement for children’s health care; when they protested the efforts to regulate cigarettes and campaign finance: Sullivan had almost nothing to say. (Except when he came out for campaign-finance “reform.”) But he now pretends that those of us who did say something at that time have less sterling records than he does.