Andrea Mitchell: Would our mostly male administration have acted sooner if those Nigerian schoolgirls weren't girls?

Via the Free Beacon, the best part here comes when Feinstein challenges her to specify what it is she’s accusing the White House of, and … she can’t. She has no idea where to go with it. It’s as if she came up with the question because she thought it sounded smart — challenging the government to “check its privilege,” as it were — but, when forced to clarify, either realized how moronic it sounds or got cold feet at accusing a Democratic president of counterterror sexism. Normally, this is the sort of question on MSNBC that should and would only be asked of Republicans, just to put them on the spot and force them to answer. As it is, I think maybe Mitchell thought Feinstein would nod along with her in the spirit of sisterhood, Democratic sympathies notwithstanding. Nope. And once she refuses, Mitchell’s reduced to babbling about how the White House might have acted differently if this were “some other cause,” as if the feds scrambling to intervene had, say, a group of Americans been kidnapped instead of Nigerians is some sort of troubling disparity that we should reflect on.

Advertisement

But never mind her. Having dumped on McCain yesterday for his “invade everywhere” approach to Nigeria, I feel duty bound to share this with you. We’re all mavericks now.

nigeria

Fully 63 percent of Democrats think the U.S. should “get more involved” in rescuing the girls, although YouGov foolishly didn’t elaborate by asking them if that means merely aiding in the search or going the full J-Mac with boots on the ground to destroy Boko Haram. Dems are the only partisan group to show majority support for intervening in any of the countries mentioned, although pluralities of both independents (45/27) and even Republicans (41/35) agree with them that we should be more involved in finding the girls. I’m not sure what to make of that. I assume it’s mostly a function of expectations about U.S. casualties: When they hear “get more involved,” people are thinking about military intervention, and the only one of the countries listed where there would likely be few or even no Americans killed or wounded in action is an attack on Boko Haram. Score one for McCainism, then. The magnitude of expected casualties is now the touchstone for intervention, not the magnitude of U.S. interests at stake.

Advertisement

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement