For Republicans and the Tea Party set you've got pork-barrel spending and earmarks, two catchwords that are frequently abused and used to paint with too broad a brush but in this case seem pretty fairly to describe a senior senator's power to wrestle tens of billions of federal dollars back into his home state. For Democrats, there's the outrage at archaic Senate obstructionism which has rapidly escalated from annoying to outrageous to pure comedy with a mind-numbing speed. It's the heart of the story about the demise of Health Care Reform, the slow death of so many unobjectionable nominees and much else.
For Republicans and the Tea Party set you've got pork-barrel spending and earmarks, two catchwords that are frequently abused and used to paint with too broad a brush but in this case seem pretty fairly to describe a senior senator's power to wrestle tens of billions of federal dollars back into his home state.
For Democrats, there's the outrage at archaic Senate obstructionism which has rapidly escalated from annoying to outrageous to pure comedy with a mind-numbing speed. It's the heart of the story about the demise of Health Care Reform, the slow death of so many unobjectionable nominees and much else.
Paul Waldman, however, is more cynical since obviously, everything IOKIYAAR.
But now this kind of stuff barely raises an eyebrow, particularly among a press corps that has gotten used to the idea that Republicans play hardball, Democrats don't do anything about it because they're wimps, and therefore the latest outrage is barely worth taking note of.
I'm with Paul -- Democrats are too chickenshit to be seen as tough. They'd rather get plowed by an impolitic GOP lest they be accused of being "partisan".
The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and “the cult of multiculturalism,” asserting that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”
Wait, I thought we were university-educated elitist pointy-headed intellectuals. Now we're illiterate? Wingnut logic is so confusing!
And speaking of educated wingnuts: