There are people now, who are way out there on a limb. And I think they're just out there on a limb with the email they send us. Because I read it, and they are out there. I mean, out there in a scary place...I could read a hundred of them like this...I mean from today. People who are so amped up and so angry for reasons that are absolutely wrong, ridiculous, preposterous.
-Shepard Smith
Shepard Smith is an anchor for FOX News. In June, Smith made that statement on the air, after a shooting spree by a racist at the Holocaust Museum in DC that left one guard dead and after an anti-abortion extremist killed a doctor in Kansas. At the time, the right was busy freaking out of a draft report by the Department of Homeland Security detailing the threat of right wing extremism. Despite the fact that the report detailed concerns about groups that had already committed acts of domestic terrorism, Republicans and their allies thought it would be a good idea to pretend to be idiots and pretend to misunderstand the report. It was about them and they were all "right wing extremists." They didn't actually have any point in doing this, they just needed something to freak out about.
It's hard to take conservatives seriously these days. They play everything for political gain and they don't care about the consequences. A big chunk of their supporters are whackos, the arguments they make are incredibly stupid, and they offer zero alternatives. The GOP is like a crying baby who won't be consoled. They don't seem to know what they want, they just know they're unhappy. So they'll shriek and shriek and shriek until they stop being unhappy or just get tired of shrieking.
I'd like to use the example of a health care reform debate, but there isn't any health care reform debate. There are people on one side making reasoned arguments and people on the other pulling their hair out, jumping up and down, and shouting like lunatics. There is no debate here, just a tremendous effort to avoid having a debate. And the reason is clear; Republicans have no alternative and no argument.
Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post:
The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.
They don't care about debate, they don't care about health care, they don't care about anything other than hurting Democrats before the 2010 elections and crippling Obama before '12. None of this has a damned thing to do with health care reform. If you're having trouble making your premiums or getting care, you can just screw off. Getting Republicans back into power is the most important goddam thing in the goddam world... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
