Dueling Freds

In a post yesterday, I pointed out how conservative pundit Fred Barnes seemed comfortable on both sides of the Miers nomination issue, at the same time accepting the premise of the serious reservations skeptics had, and raking those skeptics with verbal machine gun fire.

I hadn't intended to make an issue of this, but last night on Special Report with Brit Hume, on FOX News, Barnes was at it again. I'm beginning to worry an alien pod invasion might be underway, and there are several Fred Barnes running around. Have you ever seen more than one Fred Barnes in one place at the same time? No. Pretty solid evidence there might be more than one Fred Barnes about.

Here are some of things Barnes said during the panel segment. (Any errors in transcription are mine, as I am not the Radioblogger.)

Every Senator I talked to was disappointed in her....They didn't really think she was much.
...
She wrote in her first questionnaire that she became a judicial conservative back in the 70s when she clerked for a judge in Texas. Then in a speech 20 years later she sounds like a judicial liberal, not a judicial conservative. So you needed a consistent narrative.
...
On the other hand, Brit, [a big fight] is exactly what the President needs...You know what a President needs more than anything else? He needs his political base intact so he can govern effectively...He needs a fight with conservatives on his side.
...
Last time he tried to avoid a fight. The reason he didn't nominate [Priscilla Owen] last time was because he feared a fight. Now, he needs a fight.
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When people say the extreme right or the right or so on, that's the Republican party, the conservative party in America. So that's he obviously going to nominate a conservative...An unequivocably conservative jurist would be perfect.
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President Bush ran on the issue of moving the balance on Court to the right, he said he would pick judges like Scalia and Clarence Thomas, that these were his models, and that's what he should do. He needs to do that...He said he was going nominate judges who were conservative, who would interpret the law, who wouldn't expand the Court, and wouldn't be activists, that's what he said, and if he follows that, why shouldn't he.

Also, there is this from the Weekly Standard, October 27:

Chances are the successor to O'Conner will now be the real thing, a justice with unequivocally conservative leanings who tilts the ideological balance of the court to the right.

Now, is all this any different than what we skeptics were saying all along about the Miers nomination? He wants the real thing, he wants a fight! Brother Barnes is one of us!

Well, one of the Pod Barnes is, anyway. There is another Barnes who has said the following things.

In a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt

I mean, there are two groups here, the conservative intellectual priesthood, and they've thrown a tantrum...

In a separate radio interview with Hugh Hewitt

Well, it certainly should freeze until the hearings, and if is has, if the fighting has ceased, it just started today, because it was certainly going on all week. And my point was, in the piece I wrote, that it never should have started in the first place.

In the Weekly Standard, October 20:

Why have so many conservatives suddenly revolted against President Bush, nearly five years into his presidency? I think their split with Bush is ill advised, counterproductive, and in some ways childish.

In the Weekly Standard, October 12:

My conclusion is: Bush supporters who were angry over Miers should have waited. That's the bottom line. Rather than bellow that Miers isn't qualified and won't turn the Court to the right, they should have given her a chance to prove her conservatism at the hearings. They owed Bush at least that much.

I'm confused. If anybody knows Fred Barnes, the next time you see him, check and see if there is any kind of tentacle protruding from the back of his neck.