Matthew Yglesias says that the American right hates Mohamed ElBaradei because he was right about Iraq, not because he's wrong for Egypt now.
It's no surprise that the growing movement for democratic change in Egypt is prompting some mixed feelings on the American right. On the one hand, the conservative movement has gotten deeply invested in rhetorical tropes about "freedom" and "democracy." On the other hand, the conservative movement is deeply hypocritical and mostly likes this rhetoric because it can be used as a club to wield against regimes that stand in the way of our geopolitical aspirations.
Hosni Mubarak's Egypt is, on this score, not an anti-American rogue state. It's a client, a lackey, an ideologically and economically exhausted regime eager to do Washington's bidding. Its largest opposition party is the Muslim Brotherhood, one of many religiously inspired, populist, and nationalist movements in the Islamic world with similarities to the religiously inspired, populist, and nationalist movement of the American right. But those similarities are visible only to the American left.
Something a bit funny happened on the road to revolution, however. An educated, Westernized, and liberal former international diplomat and civil servant named Mohamed ElBaradei has risen to prominence as a leading figure in the opposition protests. It's something close to a best-case scenario, right?
