Cooperster,
Be sure your brain is in gear before your hand goes writing or your mouth gets operating. Your comment about Valerie Plame being a "covert" agent shows your ignorance, thus placing your entire commentary in jeopardy. She was no more a "covert" agent than I am. Not only that, but she was "outed" by Richard Armitage, a Democrat, not anyone attached to the Bush Administration.
There is a reflexive desire among a certain species of moderate Republicans to be perceived as "civil" by liberal opponents who believe that the mere existence of free-market, limited-government conservatism is an indecent affront to humankind. All aboard the U.S.S. Lost Cause.
This disastrous, bend-over bipartisanship is a hard habit to break. In 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain rode the "Barack Obama is a nice guy, but vote for me" wave to crashing defeat. In 2012, McCain's endorsee, Mitt Romney, has made "Barack Obama is a nice guy but in over his head" a standard stump-speech talking point.
Conservatives of good will who've...
At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson's employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.
(Patrick Fitzgerald)
"outed" - High-level members of the Bush’s administration