Last March, I got to the same point Rachel Maddow is at now. It's the whole reason I'm doing this blog. It's time to stop treating lies and misinformation as a viable part of the discussion. Republicans often try to supposedly "debate" an issue, in order to misinform and muddy the waters. It's an effort to make all ideas relevant. Everything is relative. Opinion is fact.
Maddow's advice is the answer. It's time to call conservative out when their wrong, when they contradict facts, when they ignore reality. Rachel has drawn the line in the sand.
Philadelphia Inquirer Political Columnist Dick Polman seems to also think enough is enough:
Rachel Maddow, the left-leaning MSNBC host, wondered the other night: "Is it really that important to bend over backward to try to make the Republicans in Congress happy right now?" That's the polite way of putting it. After Obama excised family-planning money from the stimulus bill, to mollify the Republicans who were railing about "contraceptives," feminist Katha Pollitt said it was "bewildering that he sacrificed low-income women's rights and health in a vain bid to woo antediluvian right-wing misogynist Republican ideologues who will never, ever vote his way."
Mike Lux, a Washington strategist who, in a previous life, worked in the Clinton White House. He has a new book, The Progressive Revolution, which argues that America typically changes for the better only when progressive reformers are bold enough to defeat conservatives in partisan battle. He sees the same opportunity today. "There is no such thing as 'post-partisanship,' " he insists. "Conservatives are going to oppose progressive policies, period. If that's the way they want to play it, that's OK. . . .
The big complaint today is that Obama has seemed far too willing to indulge the GOP partisans who think it's fine for the government to spend upward of $1 trillion on a war in Iraq, but who consider it a scandal to spend the same amount to confront an economic crisis at home (and who have a vested interest in thwarting Obama's priorities, because a successful recovery plan might doom them indefinitely to minority status).
Indeed, what's the point of sweet-talking the Republicans when they clearly prefer to fight? Consider Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, chairman of the GOP 2010 election operation. Wednesday, he publicly shared his party's credo for good governance in these perilous times:
"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes."
He said it, folks. The Taliban.
Obama may soon discover that there's no point in extending a hand to a foe who won't unclench his fist.
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