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Opinion piece by Joe Scarborough on Politico. I think most of you will love how these guys are making asses of themselves.
The reviews are in, and it’s safe to say that most media elites won’t be voting for Republican candidates in 2012. Of course, most of them voted Democratic in 2010, 2008 and in every other election in modern political history. But if you’ve scanned editorial pages and news shows in recent weeks, you know that this time conservatives have really, really offended the national press corps by their refusal to raise taxes.
At issue is the GOP’s handling of the debt ceiling negotiations. Washington pundits are shocked and offended that conservatives refused to cave in to President Barack Obama’s demand to raise taxes.
The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen thoughtfully described the Republican position on fiscal matters this way: The GOP “has become a political cult” and its presidential field is “a virtual political Jonestown.”
The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait employed the type of subtle style that makes his articles sing when he made reference, in a Daily Beast column in late May, to his fondness for a former Clinton administration official’s description of the conservative base of the GOP as the party’s “Hezbollah wing.”
The Post and New Republic columnists weren’t alone in rolling out comparisons between the GOP and cults and terrorists. The New York Times’s David Brooks drew a straight line from fiscal policy positions to the morality of current-day conservatives, concluding that Republicans who have a good faith difference of opinion on tax rates possess “no sense of moral decency.”
My goodness. Those are awfully personal attacks to launch against a politician. Who would have guessed that last year these same columnists were then attacking Republicans for — get this — saying nasty things about Democrats.
Cohen wrote a piece titled “On the Right, Hateful Words Are Fired Like Bullets” in which he bemoaned the fact that GOP candidates used heated rhetoric to attack Democrats. Cohen concluded that the “language of rage fuels too much of the tea party.”
This past week, the man who was so concerned with civil political discourse on the right used his column to compare bland GOP candidates such as Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty to psychopathic cult leader and killer Jim Jones.
Meanwhile, Chait — who once criticized mainstream Republicans for using an apocalyptical approach against their opponents — compared the GOP’s leadership to a terrorist organization that killed over 250 Marines in Beirut, tortured to death a CIA operative and a Marine colonel, kidnapped scores of Americans and hijacked TWA Flight 847.
I wonder why Chait and Democratic officials from past administrations feel the need to associate fiscal conservatives to bloodthirsty terror organizations. I also wonder how such inflammatory rhetoric does not qualify as the kind of politics that Chait himself criticized not so long ago.
As for Brooks’s over-the-top attacks against the Republican Party, I suppose it is the price conservatives pay for having a moderately conservative voice showcased in the Times. I regularly take comfort in knowing that Brooks will never set back the conservative cause by launching hyperbolic attacks against Democratic officials. Unfortunately, sometimes David lacks the same restraint when expounding on his disagreements with the GOP.
During the 2009 TARP debates, Brooks called conservatives who voted against the three-page, $700 billion bill “the authors of the revolt of the nihilists.” The Times columnist also accused conservatives who opposed TARP as “being on a single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party.”
But the larger point here is not about Brooks or Cohen or Chait’s childish insults aimed at anti-tax Republicans. Instead, it is a reminder of the type of abuse Republicans take every time they dare to stand athwart history and growl “not this time.”
At issue is the GOP’s handling of the debt ceiling negotiations. Washington pundits are shocked and offended that conservatives refused to cave in to President Barack Obama’s demand to raise taxes.
The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen thoughtfully described the Republican position on fiscal matters this way: The GOP “has become a political cult” and its presidential field is “a virtual political Jonestown.”
The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait employed the type of subtle style that makes his articles sing when he made reference, in a Daily Beast column in late May, to his fondness for a former Clinton administration official’s description of the conservative base of the GOP as the party’s “Hezbollah wing.”
The Post and New Republic columnists weren’t alone in rolling out comparisons between the GOP and cults and terrorists. The New York Times’s David Brooks drew a straight line from fiscal policy positions to the morality of current-day conservatives, concluding that Republicans who have a good faith difference of opinion on tax rates possess “no sense of moral decency.”
My goodness. Those are awfully personal attacks to launch against a politician. Who would have guessed that last year these same columnists were then attacking Republicans for — get this — saying nasty things about Democrats.
Cohen wrote a piece titled “On the Right, Hateful Words Are Fired Like Bullets” in which he bemoaned the fact that GOP candidates used heated rhetoric to attack Democrats. Cohen concluded that the “language of rage fuels too much of the tea party.”
This past week, the man who was so concerned with civil political discourse on the right used his column to compare bland GOP candidates such as Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty to psychopathic cult leader and killer Jim Jones.
Meanwhile, Chait — who once criticized mainstream Republicans for using an apocalyptical approach against their opponents — compared the GOP’s leadership to a terrorist organization that killed over 250 Marines in Beirut, tortured to death a CIA operative and a Marine colonel, kidnapped scores of Americans and hijacked TWA Flight 847.
I wonder why Chait and Democratic officials from past administrations feel the need to associate fiscal conservatives to bloodthirsty terror organizations. I also wonder how such inflammatory rhetoric does not qualify as the kind of politics that Chait himself criticized not so long ago.
As for Brooks’s over-the-top attacks against the Republican Party, I suppose it is the price conservatives pay for having a moderately conservative voice showcased in the Times. I regularly take comfort in knowing that Brooks will never set back the conservative cause by launching hyperbolic attacks against Democratic officials. Unfortunately, sometimes David lacks the same restraint when expounding on his disagreements with the GOP.
During the 2009 TARP debates, Brooks called conservatives who voted against the three-page, $700 billion bill “the authors of the revolt of the nihilists.” The Times columnist also accused conservatives who opposed TARP as “being on a single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party.”
But the larger point here is not about Brooks or Cohen or Chait’s childish insults aimed at anti-tax Republicans. Instead, it is a reminder of the type of abuse Republicans take every time they dare to stand athwart history and growl “not this time.”
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