But I Said Taxes!!!

The empty rhetorical trick of comparing taxes to tyranny has finally worn too thin to be tolerated by those of us interested in actual problem solving. Tom Schaller simply destroys Jonah Goldberg today:

Goldberg says he "bring[s] this up because many in the Democratic Party and in the news media have a hard time understanding what the 'Tea Party' crowd is talking about when it complains of incipient tyranny and intrusive government." Yes, many of us do, including that uber-Democratic media maven and former Reaganite Bruce Bartlett, who surveyed tea partiers and discovered they have no idea what the true tax burden in the country is. Their average response for what share of GDP goes into the (federal) public sector was 42 percent--more than twice what it actually is.

However, trying to engage Goldberg in an intellectually honest discussion seems like a futile effort at best. He's never struck me as anything more than a partisan/ideological hack, just like his mother.

Return of the Pragmatic Conservative

It looks like Frum is leading the charge. Another conservative speaks out:

I am an old Republican. I am religious, yet not a fanatic. I am a free-marketer; yet, I believe in the role of the government as a fair evenhanded referee. I am socially conservative; yet, I believe that my lesbian niece and my gay grandchild should have the full protection of the law and live as free Americans enjoying every aspect of our society with no prejudices and/or restrictions. Nowadays, my political and socio-economic profile would make me a Marxist, not a Republican.

[...]

I did not like Medicaid and Medicare when they were passed. I was opposed to them. Maybe I was too young, too strong, and too ideologically confined. Yet, over the years, I saw how Medicare helped millions of elderly Americans. I saw how Medicare helped my mom in her final years battling emphysema caused by years of smoking. You have to be blind to oppose those programs. You have to be blind to wish for the suffering of millions of Americans just because you believe in personal responsibility.

[...]

Then something happened in the 1990s. The leaders of the GOP grew belligerent. They became too religious, almost zealots. They became intolerant. They began searching for purity in Republican thought and doctrine. Ideology blinded them. I continued to vote Republican, but with a certain unease. Deep down I knew that a schism happened between the modern Republican Party and the one I grew up with. During the fight over the impeachment of President Clinton, the ugly face of the Republican Party was brought to the surface. Empty rhetoric, ideological intolerance, vengeance, and religious zealotry became the common currency. Suddenly, if you are pro-choice, you could not be a Republican. If you are for smart and sensible taxes to balance out the budget, you could not be a Republican. If you are pro-civil rights, you could not be a Republican.

It started with minorities: they left the party. Then women; they divorced the GOP and sent it to sleep on the couch. Then, the young folks; they left and are leaving the Republican Party in droves. Then, someone stood up and told my niece and my grandchild that they are not fully Americans — just second class Americans because they are homosexual. They wished hell and damnation upon my loved ones just because they are different. Are we led by priests or are we led by rational politicians? Now, we have became the party of the Old Straight White Folks. We should rename the Republican Party the OSWF rather than the GOP.

[...]

We are living through tough times. We are being challenged like I have never seen America being challenged before. China is a formidable foe, and it is out there competing against us on every field and beating us on several fronts. While our education budgets are being slashed in every state across the nation, China is doubling and tripling theirs. These are the challenges and challengers that we are facing. And we need our best and brightest to lead us, not a half-term governor or radio/TV talking heads.

Maybe I am too old and too cynical, but I think the Republican party is in the last stages of agony. If nothing happens, we might win an election or even two, but in the long run we will lose America.

GOP Projection

If you want to see GOP projection at its finest, I suggest reading Breitbart's latest shitpile:

The first Alinsky president is now using surrogates to split this nation into two hostile parties so he can puppeteer the have-nots against the perceived haves.

[...]

Linking the health-care bill, which has nothing to do with black and white, to the divisive civil-rights period, while simultaneously accusing its opponents of being racist, is an evil strategy — literally. Charles Manson would approve.

[...]

The media is doing their job for them by speaking of an unhinged white Tea Party mob. Absent any evidence other than creatively selected hand-crafted signs from the fringe of the audience that are presented to represent the whole, the media is simply repeating assumptions that Democrats and media elites have against fly-over types. What we have here is hardcore media elitism mixed with politically correct class warfare.

[...]

Change the subject, misdirection, their side caught with their pants around their ankles, don’t look there media, there’s nothing to see here.

[...]

The Democratic party has been exposed as trying to create a Kristallnacht to save the Obama presidency along the fault line of race and the essence of the First Amendment. If the GOP does not have the intestinal fortitude to fight back, a growing number of disenchanted and disenfrachised Tea Party participants will have to do it themselves.

[...]

The only good thing to come of this is that we can now officially put to rest the laughable notion that Obama was going to be the first post-racial president.

I imagine it's really painful to be so full of shit. How do we know Breitbart is full of shit? Because he continues to lie about the ACORN affair :

I am still dealing with the same press telling me we didn’t prove that ACORN was aiding and abetting criminal activity because we “did not provide enough audio and video evidence.” (Insert laugh track.)

And objective third-party evidence to the contrary continues to accumulate. The Attorney General of California concurs:

While the secretary of state's office found four instances of voter fraud in San Diego during the 2008 election campaign, the attorney general's report found no "evidence of actual fraudulent votes being cast."

Brown's office did not determine whether the filmmakers violated the state's privacy laws but criticized them for creating "heavily edited films" that overstated the goings-on at ACORN.

"The evidence illustrates," Brown said, "that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."

Objective facts illustrate that the ACORN tapes were entirely fabricated! Nevertheless, Breitbart sees his treatment on that matter as a double standard:

Is there not a blatant double standard at play here? Nancy Pelosi tipped her hand that race was a central part of her strategy. She invoked the Civil Rights Act and compared it with the universally reviled health care bill. Her caucus is doubling down on the civil-rights rhetoric. There are no coincidences. [Emphasis mine.]

It's amazing how often their line of attack betrays subconscious guilt. But why spend all morning on Friday writing an essay arguing that the Democrats are engaged in aggressive propaganda efforts to discredit the Tea Party? Easy ... to rationalize the next move:

Who is calling the shots here? Is it the White House, by way of Chicago? Or is it Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? The press refused to tell you the truth about this president. It refused to tell you of his proud adherence to the teachings of the original Chicago “community organizer” Saul Alinsky. We have now entered the first full-fledged Alinsky presidency. The only way to beat Alinsky is with Alinsky. The Democrats and President Obama will not give up this tack. Do you think the GOP will win the day in November and in 2012 if its strategy is to apologize for every manufactured “right wing fringe” outrage?

With President Obama over the last week calling attention to the Tea Parties and their “heated” rhetoric, he has officially connected himself to the civil war his minions have flailingly attempted to inflame. [Emphasis mine.]

Are you fucking kidding me?

Facts to Fit the Ideology

A large swath contemporary behavior on the right can be explained if we assume that they only believe facts consistent with their ideology. We see this with Fox news, the Kenyan birth certificate and many other less exciting daily domains. A particularly alarming case of this aggressive myopia is discussed in McClatchy Thursday:

In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and influential figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today's politics.

The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton? Ill-informed professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.

Theodore Roosevelt? Another socialist. Franklin D. Roosevelt? Not only did he not end the Great Depression, he also created it.

Joe McCarthy? Liberals lied about him. He was a hero.

Some conservatives say it's a long-overdue swing of the pendulum after years of liberal efforts to define history on their terms in classrooms and in popular culture.

Update: Benen finds the same theme and runs with it:

If today's conservative Republicans reject reality, it stands to reason that they'll reject history, too.

But it's nevertheless a reminder of why conversations with those immersed in a right-wing ideology tend to be rather frustrating, if not futile, experiences. In order for political discourse to have any meaning or value, there have to be certain agreed upon facts that serve as a foundation for the dialogue. But as the McClatchy piece notes, that foundation is no longer stable -- conservatives frequently choose to believe versions of events that aren't real, because the make-believe version makes them feel better.

The result is an American history in which every era can be distorted to satisfy the far-right ego. Indeed, it continues to apply to more contemporary events -- tell the typical Republican that Ronald Reagan raised taxes in six of his eight years in the White House, and he/she will probably look at you as if you've lost your mind. That is, in fact, what happened, but the right chooses to reject this history, because they don't like it. (Tell these same Republicans that Barack Obama's health care plan is in line with what moderate Republicans have supported for years -- and that the individual mandate was actually a GOP idea -- and you'll get the same reaction, even though it's true.)

For all the talk about getting reasonable people with different ideologies into a room to find common ground on a host of complex issues, it's worth remembering that for many political actors in 2010, there isn't even agreement on the basics. When dealing with a large group of influential conservatives who believe FDR created the Great Depression, Theodore Roosevelt was a socialist, and Joe McCarthy was a hero, what's there to talk about? [Emphasis mine.]

On Actually Governing (Drill Baby Drill!)

Look, I'm no fan of offshore drilling. But I'm amazed at how many smart people don't understand the strategy revealed this morning.

First, let's be clear, Obama never claimed (as far as I can recall) that offshore drilling was an evil to be avoided at all costs. His primary response to the "Drill Baby Drill" refrain from the election was that drilling was "only part of a comprehensive solution for energy independence." Anyone thinking seriously about policy for transitioning to sustainable green domestic energy knows that increased drilling and increased use of nuclear power, as unpopuluar as they are, are indispensible early steps in that transition. What distinguishes serious policy advocates from sloganeers like Palin is their ability to think beyond more drilling to the actual long term solutions. But this isn't my point.

My point is best illustrated by referencing the argument as forulated Yglesias (normally the smartest guy on the internet):

I don’t understand this at all. Increased coastal drilling would be a small price to pay in exchange for actual congressional votes for an overall energy package that shifts us to a low-carbon economy over time. But any price is too high a price to pay in exchange for nothing at all. This isn’t the greatest environmental crime in human history, but it sure does seem like poor legislative strategy.

True. This would be a poor legislative strategy. But as a political strategy, it's a revolutionary application of the same political jujitsu that shocked the Clinton camp with the greatest political upset in half a century. By pre-emptively implementing precisely the policies that the GOP have historically demanded (modulated slightly by reasonable environmental concerns), Obama has created an opportunity for the Democrats to recast themselves as the only adults in Washington.

The American people want results. If the Democrats in Congress can come together a few more times in support of Obama's effort to solve real problems with a healthy mixture of Progressive values, reasonable compromises and common-sense solutions, then November will be nothing to fear. He's already pushed major legislation through during a election year--which Conventional Wisdom took to be impossible--and he seems on track to do it a few more times. His largest obstacle has been the fact that Congressional Democrats are too thoroughly driven by the outdated Groupthink of the Beltway pundocracy to follow through on the gamble.

On Right-Wing Strawmen

The single most frequently used weapon in the arsenal of your standard right-wing propagandist is the Strawman Argument. Close competitors are projection: cast your opponents as weak on your own greatest sin; and caricature: cast your opponents in general as reflective of the most extreme characteristics associated with them.

Barone's defense of the teabaggers today is riddled with all three:

The Progressives' scorn for the Founders has not been shared by the people. First-rate books about the Founders have been best-sellers. And efforts to dismiss the Founders as slaveholders, misogynists or homophobes have been outweighed by the resonance of their words and deeds.

[...]

Polls and recent election results tell us that racial minorities and the so-called "educated class" -- the people who expect their kind will administer centralized institutions -- still take the side of the Progressives. Most Americans, however, are rejecting the path of dependence and are intent on declaring their independence once again.

It is disingenuous to suggest that "good government" and "big government" are synonymous. To suggest otherwise is to commit the worst kind of Orwellian newspeak in the tradition of Madison Avenue and Frank Luntz. We can do better than that, America.

(How brave to stand up for Liberty! It is indeed a time for all of us to put aside petty politics in an effort to make hard decisions. And, by the way, who wants to take Jefferson out of the text books?)

Ha! You're Going to Prison! (Enjoy Your New Swastika Face Tatoo, Boys.)

Eugene Robinson gets to the heart of the equivalency argument currently being trotted out on the right to rationalize their well-armed redneck base coming completely unhinged:

The episode highlights the obvious: For decades now, the most serious threat of domestic terrorism has come from the growing ranks of paranoid, anti-government hate groups that draw their inspiration, vocabulary and anger from the far right.

It is disingenuous for mainstream purveyors of incendiary far-right rhetoric to dismiss groups such as the Hutaree by saying that there are "crazies on both sides." This simply is not true.

[...]

It is dishonest for right-wing commentators to insist on an equivalence that does not exist. The danger of political violence in this country comes overwhelmingly from one direction -- the right, not the left. The vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day -- and, quite regularly, at Tea Party rallies -- is calibrated not to inform but to incite.

Demagogues scream at people that their government is illegitimate, that their country has been "taken away," that their elected officials are "traitors" and that their freedom is at risk. They have a right to free speech, which I will always defend. But they shouldn't be surprised if some listeners take them literally.

Wolverines! I couldn't help it. (But seriously ... Go Blue!)