When it comes to fighting the hydra-headed conservative beast - Leninist in its willingness to throw away all rationality, reason, and logic to pursue its regressive agenda - I'm open to any strategy. What we're fighting is so extreme and so dangerous that we need to be deft and nimble and strategically sharp.
But I'm sorry: when progressives on Kos and elsewhere exult because the right is "angry" at Bush, it sets my teeth on edge. I think this is a terrible line of logic to pursue and set of arguments to make.
This strategy doesn't advance any of our goals. Health care, ratcheting down militarism, return to progressive taxation, investing in our nation's physical, educational and energy infrastructure.
When we gleefully say Bush is "spending like a drunken sailor" and how the "fiscal conservatives" are angry about that, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Instead of selling the American people on tax hikes for the wealthy, we reinforce conservative dogma that government spending is "bad."
Why are we iving credence to right wing ideology? Why are we playing their game for them?
When we mock Bush's Supreme Court nominees for having taken 'liberal' positions, we accomplish NOTHING. We scatter the right for a moment, then they regroup and make sure they have a nominee to the right of Scalia. By engaging in empty tactics on these nominees, we simply confuse the American people. We're not pushing the key argument that the Constitution requires wise interpretation and that the doctrine of original intent is NOT the last word in legal theory. An argument that would set us up to fight EVERY right wing judicial nominee.
Whenever we try to use right wing "displeasure" over Bush to our advantage, we play a sucker's game. The right is using us for fools. When they paint Bush as a moderate who ignores their views, they are solidifying that insane notion: that Bush is a moderate because he hasn't ended income taxes or expelled Muslims from the country. And we play right into that, guarenteeing that the new "center" becomes Bush-style republicanism.
I'm all for anything that hurts conservative republicanis. Anything. I loathe these people with all my heart. But I do deeply feel this tactic of "embracing" the far right, even rhetorically, when it suits us, is a terrible one. The positive effects are transitory while the negative effects (failing to articulate our own agenda, having a paper trail of commentary that will haunt us later) are lasting.
I certainly hope to see less of this on Kos...