Matthew Yglesias
reminds us that, just because his self-effacing humor is appealing, just because his age and military service are worthy of respect, Dole is really no better and probably a lot worse than most Republican thugs.
Yglesias has been scathingly terrific lately, and this is a great example:
Thus Dole found himself present at the creation, almost simultaneously, of all the most repugnant aspects of the modern Republican Party: the pursuit of partisan gain at the expense of the public interest and any recognizably coherent ideology, the dogmatic insistence that no tax ever be raised under any circumstances, and the pretense that the Democratic Party is less an opposition party than some sort of illegitimate force to be crushed by any means necessary.