This is a must read post by Roy Edroso, the best writer and clearest thinker on the internets these days. He encapsulates the entire gamut of right wing madness currently ongoing against the duly elected President and Congress of the United States and makes the case for the fact that these people are simply unwilling to accept that their political viewpoint is not in the majority. Or not in charge -- I am pretty sure that they don't really care if they are in the majority or not. But, as Roy notes, what is most telling in all this, is that the Republican leadership is complicit in the madness, continually giving encouragement to the violent and the irrational -- a core part of the GOP's constituency.
It is fascinating (in an infuriating sort of way) to watch the right wing clowns write the rest of us out of America. Thus, you have a Republican Congressman claim that if the Democrats pass health care reform without Republican votes, they are doing so without the support of America. Now you would think after the drubbing that the GOP has received in the last couple of elections that they would understand that they are not, in fact, synonomous with America.
While Roy tackles the disloyalty issue, Joe Klein has a pretty good piece about dealing with the party of crazy as the opposition. Klein's piece, like much he has written over the last year or two, is a well done dissection of the madness that plagues the GOP. However, Klein feels compelled to point out that we dirty fucking hippies on the left have had our problems too -- even if they are of a qualitatively different nature than those on the right. Indeed, Klein largely points to issues where we have been right and he wrong -- although he has been whipped into shape by constant critiquing from the left, you get the sense that he can't quite forgive the presumptiousness on our part.
Rick Perlstein reminds us that craziness and the GOP have long had a historically cozy relationship, but that the difference now is that the mainstream media is incapable of either ignoring or firmly debunking the crazy. (Tonight on Fox -- What kind of universal health care would Hitler have favored?") As he so memorably puts it, "in America, the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy."
The Washingtn Post, on the other hand, remains irredeemable, with an editorial about the need for we on the left to give up on the public option. What is the matter with us, after all, that we can't figure out that we don't have the sixty votes in the Senate that we need. (And no, God forbid that the Post pressure wise men like Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, and Charles Grassley to get on board.) The Post, in a profound act of projection, basically implies that liberals only care about the public option because it arouses conservative ire. I wonder if they consulted with Post contributors like Sarah Palin, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Bolton, before penning this editorial. Watching that rag crash and burn is going to be a delight.
