[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
That even the Associated Press would admit in their enabling environment Eric Cantor is a loathsome manipulative lying lowlife brings some grim satisfaction, yet the knowledge he fulfilled his filthy mission is still immensely galling. To my intense chagrin last week I missed in real time work of the most talented political blogger ever to be seen in the United States, Billmon of the late legendary Whiskey Bar, and I urge with every atom of my soul every reader stop. Click the link for a new tab, slot the time, and read some of the most important political knowledge ever to be comprehended in our lifetimes.
To grossly simplify the work Cantor opened a fresh deep cut on the American body politic by frantically trying to flip around terribly damaging news or facts in accusing the opposition precisely of what his people had done: incite heinously risky and morally abhorrent political violence on Democrats. The move so stinks of Rove weary observers are telling him to come on out from behind the curtain on this one, no need to have the childishly clumsy Cantor front for you here, Karl.
This is just insane, Steve The Machine Benen semi-desperately recently said of another apt Rove pupil, the awful Lindsey Graham, this time incredibly trying to flip the fact the it’s been the Democrats who’ve been obstructionist, childish, exasperating political louts in the healthcare evolution, not our erstwhile Republican cousins.
If one really wants to lose a mind remember the appalling Rovian flip of accusing John Kerry of faking his war wound medals, since George Bush classically lied like a sieve about his needledick National Guard Vietnam evasion. I doubt I will ever be so virulently politically offended as when I saw a porcine middle-aged Republican delegate at the 2004 Republican convention gleefully wearing a purple bandage on her face, delighted to foul American politics in awful sleaze as American service people were dying in a lying war.
If Josh Marshall is somewhat relieved that the Associated Press is telling its readers Cantor is completely full of shit as much as their stylebook allows, well, I am not nearly so sanguine the rest of the appalling American journalism corps has got the message that every time a Republican opens their mouth they’re manipulating you, the press, just as much as they’re manipulating the American people.
That a journalism shop with the utterly humiliating record of Judy Miller in its recent past could be so arrogantly, childishly duped into producing this vapid work on Cantor speaks immense volumes to the tragically broken and bought American journalism corps. A Republican opposition degenerated into nothing but extremist lying manipulative cranks is so very bad for the Republic, we’ve been told so many times, yes, but a sycophantic, stenographic journalism corps is equally damaging to the political health of the country.
If the American journalism corps awakes from its corporate coma--an event that seems as likely as George Bush going to prison where he belongs--then this abuse to the American people would stop. Since that’s never going to happen in our lifetimes it’s up to the Democratic Party, and no, the record is not full of hope here, but there are promising signs awareness and change is starting to sink in.
Go for it, President Obama goaded the obnoxious Republicans in their ludicrous claims repeal of healthcare was so very high on their agenda. Goading is not the usual mental stance of this President toward Republicans, and it’s exactly this combative attitude to precisely call Republicans on their bullshit that eventually will make them stop, even they have embarrassment and shame levels they cannot endure. Really.
Perhaps then at last President Obama will live the paradox of accomplishing bipartisan legislative results: act like a partisan. Push the Republicans around, corner them, give them no alternative but to vote for proposed legislation. There you go, bipartisan results.
Anyway, potential rewards should not distract from the current reality of how much immense harm Republican regression and American journalism enabling are inflicting upon the Republic. The truth is hidden, progress is immensely difficult if not impossible, and the discouragement to citizen participation cannot be overstated, no rational human soul wants to be exposed to this atrocious environment every day.
Cantor should be forced to resign tomorrow for his outrageous contempt for the American people alone. That he will not does not discourage us, merely sets the standard for what should be the proper outcome. America cannot survive well in any sense with these constant propaganda wounds, the flaming mess we now find ourselves in from eight years of Republican Bush abuse irrevocably demonstrates that.