April 24, 2005

Well, Yes, They Are Morons, But...

Atrios makes the obvious point about the Senate nuclear option and what it means while ripping apart an article by David Broder in the Washington Post**. Since there are so many obvious flaws in Broder's reasoning it is difficult to list all of the nuances of Republic newspeak in the article.

What we would like to point out is that, in our humble opinion, the Republics have been deliberately comparing their meltdown in the mid nineties with what is proposed to go on in the Senate by the Democratic leaders in order to scare the people. The mystical gang of five hundred not only get it, but they are actively helping to propagate the lie. Broder's jingoistic screed* is more of the same, right on down the line. Because no one cares so much about Senate grandstanding (as long as the paycheck keeps coming in), these media whores deliberately try and confuse the issue - by comparing shutting down the Senate with shutting down the government. Broder also uses this article to continue to propagate Republic talking points:
- it's the Democratic Party that is at fault for shutting the government down - Republics pulling temper tantrums to hide House Representative corruption, or to thrust a partisan agenda through the mechanism of the government, or to justify rewriting the rules to suit their own partisan purposes, has nothing to do with this situation!
- it's the Democratic Party that needs to bend towards the right in order to compromise. The administration and its' partisan agenda does not need to be accommodating to the minority; the minority need to get with the program and capitulate to the Republics' point of view.
- it's the Democratic Party that needs to even think about compromise in the first place. Compromise is not in the first section of the Republic manual, and with the mandate they firmly believe they have, the Republics are trying to suppress anyone who dares suggest they might not have all of the answers.
Broder serves up more Republic white noise to try and scare the sheeple into pressuring the pink tutus, and reframe the debate to the Republics' advantage.

As for Josh Marshall's analysis of Broder's compromise: Broder is only advancing the Republic party line on these things - in this case, moving the goalposts to the right. Nowhere in Broder's suggested compromise is the hint of removal of these radical judicial nominations from consideration. The Putsch badministration already has the highest percentage of judicial nominees being approved. Why can't they just let it go and forget about putting every single nominee in place? Why must we be subjected to the same schoolyard shenanigans over and over again?

And why oh why are we having such an eerie feeling of deja vu about the whole thing?


* - Washington Post subscription required (register - it's free!)

** - Editor's note 20050425 235500 EDT: we couldn't figure out why this sentence sounded a little odd, and then we realized it was because we missed a piece of the sentence when we first cut and pasted the post into our MT interface. We hope the italicized text adds to your comprehension of the post, and we are sorry that our error escaped our attention until now.

Posted by (: Tom :) at April 24, 2005 05:14 PM