clifp, I agree extremists are "bad".. to an extent. In the best of scenarios they aid in establishing positions
to react to and which provide context. The problem over the last couple of decades is that the right keeps moving those goalposts rightwards.. and that the right-wing extremists are standard fare, not only at FOX, but at the NYT, CNN, etc. Their left analogs may exist, but are decidedly under the MSM radar. The MSM doesn't "do" context or history very well.
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Too bad (for you guys) it's the right these days who is quicker to activate Godwin's law:
McCain: "We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement."
Coulter: "unlike McCain, Hitler had a coherent tax policy."
O’Reilly said that MoveOn, “the Daily Kos or whatever that stupid thing is,” and others “use propaganda techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of information. They lie, distort, defame, all the time.”
Think Progress » O’Reilly Compares Nevada Debate Opponents To Nazis
Then there's that imbecile Jonah Goldberg with his "Liberal Fascism".
CNN: Reaganism = Stalinism?
What do Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, and the current US Congress have in common with Joseph Stalin?
No, it’s not that they are dead.
Recently I appeared on one of those TV shows where a right-wing host interrupts the guest frequently. (Not that I had realized what it was. I had not heard of the guy, Glen Beck, and the producer had only told me they wanted me to talk about Washington’s reaction to new recession fears.) On the show I said I thought it would be a good idea if the recipients of tax rebates this time around included lower-income Americans, at least those workers who did not make enough to pay income taxes, but who did pay payroll (social security) taxes. This would be in contrast to the last 7 years of tax cuts which have left these people out. The TV host’s reaction was “Welcome to the show Mr. Stalin.” A media watch site called Media Matters for America picked this up, as an egregious comment even by the standards of talk show hosts. Of course the Democratic and Republican leadership of Congress, with the encouragement of the White House, have decided to include precisely these lower-income workers in the tax cuts this time. So I guess they are Stalinists. And Milton Friedman originally proposed the negative income tax, which was enacted as the Earned Income Tax Credit, and became highly successful when expanded by Ronald Reagan (1986) and Bill Clinton (1993). Quite a few Stalinists around!
Fiscal Stimulus: What do Ronald Reagan and Joseph Stalin have in common? | Jeff Frankels Weblog | Views on the Economy and the World
I don't hear that level of stridency (or frequency of Nazi-invocation) coming from the left.. Look to your own house.
MoveOn.org Voter Fund did show a digital ad on its Web site for a time in 2004 comparing President Bush to Hitler. However, the ad was not paid for or produced by MoveOn; it was produced by another group as a contest entry, and MoveOn pulled it and apologized when objections were raised.
FactCheck.org: Caught "Red-Handed?"
MoveOn is just a vehicle, and Daily Kos is just a very large group blog. It's not quite the same as the rarified media access that Novak, Kristol, BOR, Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Podhoretz, Goldberg, the Kagans, et al. have.
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Sadly, the recent "conservative" mission has, for at least the last 16 years, been one of destruction, not of construction. They have no one to blame but themselves if that message has stopped being appealing, if it ever was. Obama will prevail, I hope, with a positive message. The right-wing pundits are screaming and writhing like the Wicked Witch of the West when they see voters gravitating to the center. They feed on bad vibes and character assassination. "Getting along" and means risking their bread & butter.
And what if the unthinkable happens, and President McCain is inaugurated? I've led an impeachment movement before, Coulter said, and "I can lead another one."
Unhinged Coulter Uses Hitler Analogy To Bash McCain - Politics on The Huffington Post
Translation: Screw the country.. we will NOT be IGNORED!!
(and yes, I know Coulter is a sideshow.. but she is also the tip of a certain -destructive- political iceberg nonetheless.) Those that "risk" appealing to what the majority of voters want are now "sell-outs" (!).. not to the Republican cause.. but to the neocon right-wing-pundit cause, which is an out-of-control Golem and a hothouse media creation. Like with kudzu, it will be a long, hard, road to its eradication, if ever.
I do feel badly for the "real" conservatives.. because I actually could share some of their principles. What has passed for 'conservatism' lately has been actually quite radical, and profligate. "Not your father's Oldsmobile", clifp..
Indeed, what the Republican establishment considered an unbeatable alliance, talk radio combined with National Review, was unable to save them from what they perceive as the horror of a John McCain nomination. Still, the predominant narrative you see among that crew since Tuesday is that McCain must come to them to reassure them of his stalwart conservatism. That’s hubris all over again, isn’t it? GOP voters have obviously considered the merits of McCain vs. his conservative “deficiencies”, and decided that he’s the candidate they prefer. What business, then, do these people have in demanding that he come kneel at their feet for their blessing? McCain’s CPAC speech is the best they are going to get out of him, and it was little enough. Indeed, Kathryn-Jean Lopez at NRO tried to give the talkers credit even for that:
This McCain speech would not have been given today, if it weren’t for folks like Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Andy McCarthy, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Can I thank them on behalf of America?
This is the delusion the Republican leadership, and the conservative establishment are laboring under: They really think that there is nothing wrong with their ideas, their methods, or their scorn for their own voter base. Even after the 2006 “thumping” they took in Congress, they don’t see it. Rather than take a step back and consider that McCain may actually be closer to the base in terms of his policy preferences (they can, after all, always tell themselves these primaries were about “electability”, not policy), they intend to soldier on with their losing agenda, keeping a nice supply of brickbats ready to hurl at their own base when things don’t work out the way they expected them to.
Right wing establishment failed to deliver for Romney « Cadillac Tight
Their sense of entitlement, and thus "betrayal" is acute. Right-wing sis sent me this stupid post from Mark Steyn (NRO):
Mark Steyn on John McCain & 2008 on National Review Online
and I wrote:
Basically, when NRO accuses Obama of being "highly partisan".. that means "he doesn't vote the Republican line as often as Lieberman".
What you missed in the Steyn post is the most telling aspect.. not funny, but sad:
"He loves us not. She loves us not. .."
Boo hoo hoo. The right-most righties now feel unloved. SO WHAT?
If you were reading Jesse Jackson complaining that he wasn't getting enough attention from Bush and Kerry.. would you care, particularly?
Steyn's sense of entitlement is profound and disturbing.
This is apparent all through the righty pundit class.. they've been constantly braying for the last 16 years and have gotten comfortable assuming that they can call all the shots. Now they may be faced with their own version of 'downsizing' and they're hopping mad. I think they fear Obama because they can't get a negative handle on him as much as on HRC... if they can't keep deriding the "awful Clinton years" of relative peace and prosperity where are they going to hang their hat for the next 5+ years? They make a living raising pitbulls in the ghetto, where everyone is at each other's throats. Agreement and co-operation and bi-partisanship is bad for business. If you live in a leafy suburb, a snarling pit bull is out of place. I think people are suffering from angry-right-wing-pundit fatigue, and so the pundits are running scared. People want to move forward.
Clifp, I'd take you up on your challenge. While I don't agree with 95% of what Fidel or Chavez does... I'd survive better, as would you, in Cuba than Afghanistan. The Taliban and OBL were aided and abetted by the American Right. Cuba would no doubt be more open if we'd dropped our embargo. When you create polarizations (in order to exploit them), you can't point to the same polarizations as an excuse for more of the same.
Somehow guys with white hair look a lot better to me now than they did 20 years ago.
