He's sooooo worried that conservatives have gone....mad!
Can anyone deny that the most trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama today comes not from the right but from the left? Rachel Maddow's grilling of administration economic officials. Keith Olbermann's hectoring of Democratic leaders on the public option. Glenn Greenwald's criticisms of Elena Kagan. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn's keepin'-them-honest perspectives on health care. The civil libertarian left on detainees and Gitmo. The Huffington Post on derivatives.
Who is this "anyone" who thinks Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are serious thinkers? Only a lunatic would that pair are anything but shrieking nincompoops on a third-rate television show with 3 viewers between them.
It is absolutely a condition of the age of the triumph of conservative personality politics, where entertainers shouting slogans are taken seriously as political actors, and where the incentive structures exist to stomp on dissent and nuance, causing experimental voices to retrench and allowing a lot of people to pretend that the world around them is not changing. The obsession with ACORN, Climategate, death panels, the militarization of rhetoric, Saul Alinsky, Chicago-style politics, that TAXPAYERS will fund the bailout of banks -- these aren't meaningful or interesting or even relevant things to focus on. (The banks will fund their own bailouts.)
No, idiot, consumers will fund the bailouts because banks will pass on any costs to them. Even if you flunked economics, there have been enough of those talking heads you despise informing you that this is the way life works. Or, as William Jacobson so eloquently puts it:
Ambinder lives is a fantasy world where left-wing commentators (including Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow) are serious policy wonks, while all conservative commentators are "entertainers shouting slogans;" where hyperbole is the exclusive refuge of the right-wing; where the vile language and defamation hurled at George Bush for eight years never existed; where the equally vile attempts by Democratic leaders to equate health care protesters to terrorists never happened.
Every day Democratic politicians and left-wing bloggers hurl epithets like "teabagger" and "racist" and "extremist" at political opponents, yet none of that exists in Ambinder's precious little world.
Ambinder cannot seem to understand that being mad is not the same thing as madness. The true madness is the direction in which the Obama administration is taking this country.
Maybe if Ambinder actually watched and listened to voices on the right, he might discover that there are plenty of "reasonable" people there with "reasonable" concerns about what the hell this government is doing. But I guess if you are dumb enough to think Keith Olbermann is some sort of senior statesman, then concern about the direction Democrats are forcing us seems "unreasonable."
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