Paul Krugman wants to know:
During the Bush years, it often seemed that on any given day all the leading conservative commentators were reading from the same list of talking points — because they were.
But without a conservative in the WH, who’s handing out the talking points now?
One thing’s for sure: someone is.
He adds an example that made him ask the question.
And neither he nor any of his commenters know the answer, which is:
Many dailykos readers know by now:
Jack Kingston, R-GA-01, is the chairman of the GOP Theme Team, whose purpose is to make up talking points and get them out there by all means available:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
He brags on his web page bio about being chair of the Theme Team since 1997:
http://kingston.house.gov/...
So there's no surprise that the talking points continue even without an R-Whitehouse.
Now I'm not saying Kingston is the only source or distributor of talking points. Bobby Jindal seems to be able to make up his own loony points, for example.
But Kingston has consistently been out there with this stuff for a decade and more. From the Lincoln Bedroom to California marsh mice, Kingston has a pithy "humorous" line about everything Democrats try to do.
He doesn't just make up lists: he actively assigns House members weekly one-minute talk duty, he organizes conference calls with bloggers, he goes on TV personally, and on and on.
Yet he almost always manages to fly under the radar even when he's right there in plain sight on your TV on Bill Maher's show or Colbert's Report. He acts so goofy people don't take him seriously. They don't realize he's not just parrotting this stuff: he's in charge of making it up. And goofy or not, he gets it out there to massive TV and other audiences.
Maybe Kingston will get the recognition he deserves. And maybe that will help GA-01 get a representative they deserve.