I just finished watching PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer (really the News Hour with Ray Suarez). They had a piece about the Alito hearings with a talking head segment moderated by Ray Suarez. The conservative side was represented by Ted Olsen, former Solicitor General under Bush and lead attorney representing Bush in Bush v. Gore. (Not that this latter part was disclosed.) The liberal side was represented by a law professor from Indiana-Bloomington (I forget her name.) So what happened? Typical - the conservative played to win. The liberal - the law prof - played to be fair. I think I may barf.
More crap on the flip.
It was like watching night and day. Ted Olsen was clear and forceful. Totally partisan to anyone who is politically aware - but to the broad, vast general public, he just seemed like he knew what he was talking about. Meanwhile, the Indiana prof kept tripping over herself and seemed to be attempting to be "fair".
When the hell will the talking heads on our side get the memo: its not about being fair? Hell, its not even about being right. Its about hammering our points like a sledgehammer, like a shiv. This is not an academic exercise. This is about taking back power for our side. Power. Period.
I don't care if you are fair or if you are techinically correct. I only care if you win. There is too much at stake to treat this like an academic exercise. I found myself at the end understanding how the general public can be convinced that its ok if the President becomes an Emperor. I mean, shit, that Ted Olsen guy on TV said the Founders thought it was supposed to be that way, right? Now, I am an attorney and I know that Ted Olsen's "unitary executive" argument is a complete crock of shit. However, this is way beyond the level of understanding for Joe Sixpack. (BTW, for the laypeople reading this, there are no bright lines demarcating the boundaries between the three branches of government. The whole point of a balance of powers is that each branches authority bleeds into the other at the ever important margins between them. The eternal argument in a tri-partite republic is over those boundaries. If the lines were as bright as the Right claims, we wouldn't have 200+ years of Supreme Court jurisprudence fucking arguing about it.)
So what do we get? We get Ted Olsen who sounds like he knows what he is saying, even if its bullshit. And we get our Liberal Talking Head sounding like she is talking about three things at the same time and trying to be nuanced which sounds like she is just wrong and partisan, even if she is correctly describing the issue. Who wins? The clear, firm liar. Who loses? All of us.
This isn't about winning a debate. This is about power. This is about taking back power from the theocratic and oligarchic fucknuts striving to bring down the Republic. If you aren't willing to play this game, then get the hell off the playing field. Politics is about power. Always has been. When will our side wake up and understand this?
/ rant over.