I'm amused by all the advice we're getting lately from conservatives who're warning us not to succeed. Each day turns up another example of the failure of conservatism, and now that the Democrats are starting to get in touch with our base, instead of playing to the Republicans' dwindling supporters, the right is running scared.
And so the right wing offers the Democrats the friendly advice that, unless we're the last ones to support their failed policies, unless we stand with them when even Republicans are leaving them, we're going to be seen as crazy.
It's as stupid as it is desperate.
Take this guy, for instance. Try to believe that Jonathan Gurwitz wrote this:
[are you for] tax cuts, for free trade or against an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq? Then you are tagged for political extinction by ideologues who are driving the Democratic Party away from the American mainstream.
You see, it's not that Jonathan Gurwitz is an idiot. The problem is that Jonathan Gurwitz assumes you're an idiot who doesn't know what the "American mainstream" is.
We already
went through this with the lying bastards at ABC's The Note. The American mainstream wants to roll back Bush's tax-cuts for his class and they want things in return for that tax revenue. The American mainstream knows that every nation practices protectionism, and that what you choose to protect shows what and whom you value. And the American mainstream wants to get the hell out of Iraq.
This isn't just another lazy journalist problem. They aren't making mistakes, they're deliberately passing on the same misinformation, even after we've made it easy for them to tell the truth. It doesn't matter. They'll go on lying about Harry Reid, lying about Al Gore, and sniffing around the privates lives of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton because that's their job. They're not here to inform you, they're here to keep you confused and isolated. They'll pretend that anyone who stands up for America is a loony, an extremist, a leftist, too angry, whatever.
They are propagandists for a cause inimical to the interests of their own country, and yet we are the ones who supposedly have to prove our patriotism.
But the really sick thing about Jonathan Gurwitz's afactual hit-piece is that the author thinks Lloyd Bentsen is his personal meatpuppet. Now that the man's dead, Jonathan Gurwitz is going to put his lies in the dead man's mouth. Watch as the hack becomes a necromancer.
In the Senate, as chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, Bentsen was an advocate of supply-side economics. As treasury secretary in the first Clinton administration, he was a champion of free trade.
This goes with the tax-cut blather in the first quote as Jonathan Gurwitz tries to make the dead Lloyd Bentsen into a Bush supporter. Here, Jonathan Gurwitz is hoping you didn't watch the Veeps' debates in 1988 when Bentsen slammed Reaganomics as a "hot check" that provides "an illusion of prosperity." Oh Jonathan Gurwitz refers to Bentsen's Veep run of that year, but he's hoping you don't know any of the actual content. It's just an empty icon to fool the ignorant.
He even quotes James Taranto. Yes, that James Taranto. These lying sacks of crap are in the same business.
Jonathan Gurwitz is Texas' answer to John Solomon, a reliable recycler of lies, willing to crank out a hit piece. They're scared to death that the rest of America will wake up the same way you did when you discovered the blogsphere and realized that you not only weren't alone, but that people like you were legion. They can only win if they alienate us from ourselves, if they can keep America in the dark about who it is and what it wants they can keep the scam going.
Could Bentsen win a Democratic Senate primary today? Would he be considered as a running mate for a Democratic presidential candidate? Could Lieberman, who was Al Gore's running mate only six years ago, make it onto a Democratic ticket? Not a chance.
And if the netroots ideological enforcers ever do succeed in liquidating the Bentsens, Liebermans and Cuellars, the Democratic Party will take a headlong plunge into political irrelevancy.
I smell fear.
With Democrats like Bentsen today, the people Jonathan Gurwitz sucks up to for a living wouldn't have a chance. But Gurwitz thinks you're too stupid to tell the difference between Lloyd Bentsen, Joe Lieberman, and even Henry Cuellar so he lumps them together. Cuellar and Lieberman are already neutered, so they won't stick up for themselves. Bentsen is dead, so he can't.
Independent-minded politicians willing to do right by their constituents are an increasingly rare breed in both parties. But among Democrats, they are positively an endangered species. And an alliance of far-left interests wants to push them into extinction.
See? It's not the money-machine that's pushing independent thinkers out of politics by cutting off their life-blood, it's some guy writing a blog. You can't be an "independent" unless you're a rubber-stamp for Bush. Real independents will have their "moderate" credentials revoked.
Oh, did I mention Jonathan Gurwitz thinks you're stupid? Who could blame him? Writing crap like that for a living and knowing that people actually pay for it, it's no wonder he thinks we're all stupid.
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