In any event, there's been quite a bit of comment over the past day or two about the fact that the Washington Post has decided to balance their liberal columnists Charles Krauthammer and George Will with someone more conservative, a 24-year-old punk who should be signing up to fight for his beliefs in Iraq instead of being paid for his malformed opinions. He's been at it for two installments now; yesterday he talked about how Democratic ideas and hyperbole are so unpopular that "the floor may be nonexistent." Today he mocked the "ridiculous hyperbole" of liberal commenters.
If you want to see what a "nonexistent floor" really looks like, you might want to check here: the frequently updated digest of polls, showing Bush's approval/disapproval spread. If there's a floor over the past five years, Bush hasn't found it yet. It's like the game of CandyLand we used to play when I was a kid. My sister would stack the deck so that she immediately got to climb the big Tootsie Roll to get to the top, while the rest of us would strategically be placed on the icing flumes any time we got past the first ten squares.
The next time you hear that the left isn't popular, or that people like Bush, or that the Democrats aren't running on any platform but being anti-Republican, just remember that it only becomes true if you act like it is. The truth is that left-of-center views are still a majority in this country when put to question. No one likes Bush - he's extremely unpopular, and opposing him is not a risk to your livelihood the way it might have been in 2002. And if you can actually enumerate the Republican "platform" for 2006, I'd like to hear it.
3 comments:
According to The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes, the Republican platform for 2006 will be gaybashing, anti-abortion law on the Federal level, attacks on the Federal court system's independence, and promoting government endorsement of Christianity. Or, in his words:
This spring and summer, Republican leaders in the Senate and House plan to bring up a series of issues that are popular with the Republican base of voters. The aim is to stir conservative voters and spur turnout in the November election. Just last week, House Majority Leader John Boehner and Whip Roy Blunt met with leaders of conservative groups to talk about these issues.
House Republicans, for their part, intend to seek votes on measures such as the Bush-backed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a bill allowing more public expression of religion, another requiring parental consent for women under 18 to get an abortion, legislation to bar all federal courts except the Supreme Court from ruling on the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance, a bill to outlaw human cloning, and another that would require doctors to consider fetal pain before performing an abortion.
Or, the same-old-same-old, only with an extra healthy dose of "don't look at Iraq!" Given how South Dakota has been reacting, I have to wonder if they might finally have torn it. I sure hope so.
If you don't read Berkeley Economist Brad DeLong's blog, I think you should. Lately, he's been focusing on Domenech.
http://delong.typepad.com/
Nice work! AHAHAHAHA
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/redamerica
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