There is something equally sickening in reading the glee of liberal commentators such as the Post’s Harold Meyerson, who reflexively reduces all moral issues to questions of immediate partisan advantage. Meyerson is clearly perplexed by politicians who not only espouse principles but act according to them. “The coming collision of libertarian fantasies with reality will be instructive. Can a congressman vote to defund the government and approve a military action in the same month? Or vote to authorize cruise-missile attacks while insisting the government default on its debts?” writes Meyerson, who seems incapable of recognizing that libertarian Republicans such as Amash and Paul won’t find themselves in any such conundrum.

But they can and will vote against war and against increasing a federal budget that has exploded over the past dozen years. Even as Meyerson licks his chops at the dramedy unfolding on his computer screen, he seems anxious that things might not go according to his (and Obama’s) wishes: “Right-wing Republicans may decide not to authorize a strike because they want to embarrass the president, but even they must know that there’s more at stake than their war on Obama: life and death; the future of a crumbling country and a volatile region; our own security as well as U.S. credibility.”…

Meyerson’s grotesque partisanship-über-alles mentality has its equal and opposite reaction on the right. James Ceaser, dubbed “one of American conservatism’s leading thinkers” by no less a grand poobah than William Kristol, has written a brief for Syrian intervention that at its core comes down to this: “There is the important matter of the future—a future that may one day have a Republican in the presidency. The precedent of setting too low a threshold for blocking presidential initiative in foreign affairs is unwise.” Ceaser goes on to counsel his fellow Republicans that they even “can sign on to the president’s discretion to act without signing on to his actions,” thereby hedging their responsibility.