Tom Levenson may have his own “You Can Teach Someone, But You Can’t Make Them Lernean” hydra to swing his wit-sharp blade at, but my Own Personal Skeletor keeps compelling me through the ephemeral mystery of her continued employment at Kaplan Central to scream “We’ve got movie sign!” and head on into the theater once again.
President Obama, I have frequently argued, has been fabulous for the conservative movement. He spurred the creation of the tea party. He helped the GOP win the House majority in 2010 and make big gains in the Senate. His Obamacare has helped revive the Commerce Clause and given a boost to conservative jurisprudence. His refusal to support human rights has caused a bipartisan revulsion and reminded us that foreign policy must be girded by American values. He’s sent independents running into the GOP’s arms. He’s forced conservatives to think hard and express eloquently principles of religious liberty, limited government, free markets and Constitutional democracy.
I don’t think I can breathe right now. This particular combination of freely admitting that the Tea Party was founded solely on the patriotic value of “We believe Obummer is the anti-Christ in Mammon’s monster truck come to send us all to Socialist hell” and World Nut Daily concern trolling deep into the land of freebasing Lester Kinsolving’s socks might actually win some sort of prize for the most densely-compacted block of garbage outside of a New Jersey landfill. Not only does she cop to the fact that the only uniting thing in the Republican party right now is screaming inchoate rancor towards the President, but a conservative hack and life-long Bush fan saying word one about anyone’s human rights record deserves their own personal laugh track to follow them around for a couple of years.
O children, that is but the first paragraph.
Obama also has wrecked havoc in the the Democratic Party. He’s firmly affixed the “tax and spend” label to it after Bill Clinton declared that the era of big government was over. He’s made Clinton into a pitch man for Mitt Romney. His rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline has split the party. His refusal to adopt the Simpson-Bowles commission’s recommendations has turned Democrats into reactionaries, defending the status quo on entitlements. He’s alienated Jewish voters. He’s re-McGovernized the party, which now stands for appeasing despotic powers, turning on allies and slashing defense spending.
Whatever reality that this woman inhabits, I have to report that there, the snozzberries do not taste anything like snozzberries. I’m pretty sure that every Democrat to the left of Harold Ford, Jr. would look at this particular list of stimulus measures, taxing the wealthy, booting the Keystone XL pipeline, ignoring Simpson-Bowles, keeping the safety net intact, and admitting there are Jewish voters out there that think that Israel might not be in the right 100% of the time while cutting defense spending would reply to it with a seventeen-minute standing slow clap. (There are exceptions, but then again unreality is not an affliction just for WaPo folks, and even Slick Willie turned on the charm again today and said “Now wait a minute” on the Romney thing.)
Rubin knows nothing about a single damn thing the Democratic party.
I found your next problem.
…“House Republicans have spent the past two years taking tough votes on entitlement reform, preparing themselves for an ambitious offensive should 2012 deliver the opportunity to cast those same votes and have them count. The Senate Democrats, on the other hand, have failed to even pass a budget: There is no Democratic equivalent of Paul Ryan’s fiscal blueprint, no Democratic plan to swallow hard and raise middle class taxes the way Republicans look poised to swallow hard and overhaul Medicare. Indeed, there’s no liberal agenda to speak of at the moment, beyond a resounding ‘No!’ to whatever conservatism intends to do.”
That’s because what conservatism intends to do is destroy eighty years of classic liberalism behind Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s smiling faces, and a lot of us appreciate somebody standing athwart this particular fecal mountain yelling “No sir, I don’t like it.” Paul Ryan’s “fiscal blueprint” reminds me of the old Far Side Sidney Harris cartoon with the two scientists studying a blackboard full of complex equations, then near the end is scribbled “Then a miracle occurs” as the step right before the answer is obtained. That’s literally the Ryan Plan, right the hell there. The “miracle” is that cutting taxes for the rich even more than destroying the safety net will somehow create massive prosperity for anyone with a net worth of less than a million bucks instead of adding trillions more to the national debt at an even faster pace than in the last 12 years, and all but assuring such a spiral of crushing inequality that America collapses under the weight of it all. Also, fire will be involved, I’m sure.
Not even Jimmy Carter did this much, I would suggest, to jerk his party to the left and hobble its electoral prospects. No wonder Clinton is on a rampage.
You know how Obama “jerked the party to the left”? He stayed as a fiscal moderate and social left-of-center President while the Republican Party ran 49% of the circumference of the globe to stake out where the “right” is, then declared that the center was 48.975% the global circumference distance from the left. And Clinton’s on a rampage? Where? Through Jennifer’s dreams?
Rather than spin endless excuses and blame it all on money, liberal elites might want to reconsider tying themselves too tightly to Obama’s mast. They have already become quite whiny and sacrificed a good deal of intellectual rigor in trying to defend every misstep as brilliant and every loss as a win.
So do the honorable thing, stupid commie pinko liberal fascist dogs, and surrender to our holy might now, because money has nothing to do with politics. It’s all about honor and decency. When applied to liberals. When applied to Rubin’s side, screw you, we have billions and we will crush you with our intellectual rigor. Also, your mom.
They should take a page from the conservative playbook from the second Bush term. Then, conservatives stuck by their principles, criticized him where appropriate and maintained their integrity. That was a wise choice. Presidents, especially inept ones, come and go, but parties, journalists and political movements need to endure more than four years.
Has anyone bothered to explain to her that the Republican party of 1980-2007 got taken out back and beaten within an inch of its life, and for the last 4-5 years or so its adherents have been purged from politics and replaced with people like Michelle Bachmann and Rand Paul? Not to mention that journalists over the last 3 decades have been run out of town and replaced with Jennifer Rubin, both by a reactionary political movement that showed up the second America got its first African-American President and then proceeded to all but destroy civil politics in America?
I’ll tell you what, Rubin has mastered the tiny pocket dimension where she lives and writes from. It’s like Katamari Damacy, only all the little bits and baubles she runs around rolling up are really discrete chunks of victimization and outrage and when she gets to a certain diameter, she writes a column out of it.
This one’s just maddeningly awful even for her.
Comrade Dread
Jennifer Rubin is proof that we as a species are well and truly screwed.
Stuck in the Funhouse
I don’t think it is so much ‘concern trolling’ but rather some kind of Field of Dreams politicking. We see it in the RW intelligentsia, as well as rank and file nutters. A building of a mental world where everyone despises Obama, both personally, and his policies, and that somehow, if we build this bullshit big enough, and bold enough, the voters, they will come.
tkno77
That paragraph about the Katamari Damacy was just beautiful.
SteveM
“How did Obama get reelected? No one I know voted for him!” — Jennifer Rubin, about five months from now
Hunter Gathers
This is going to sound sexist (ban me if you must) but someone really needs to ask Rubin what Mitt Romney’s dick tastes like.
kth
In what universe did Jimmy Carter jerk the Democratic Party to the left (or was even remotely as liberal as LBJ for that matter)?
David Koch
I really wouldn’t pay any attention to her.
In fact, I only read the first few lines of your post and I when I figured out you were talking about Rubin, I stopped.
Ben Cisco
That is some nebula-class stupid right there. Also, this:
should be put into the same category as Peak Wingnut – it don’t exist.
jl
Swine work by hack unclever.
This stuff needs to be believable to work.
Just throwing stuff up against the wall. Next week she will write that Obama’s base is disillusioned: good news for Republicans.
FlipYrWhig
The recent wave of Clinton stuff has been mindblowingly idiotic for everyone concerned. He didn’t say things they thought he said, said things they didn’t notice, and now they’re just blithely quoting each other in the world’s least pleasurable circle jerk.
gnomedad
Fixt.
arguingwithsignposts
Well, she didn’t quite use the N word, but she stepped very close.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Jennifer Rubin has never heard of a Palestinian child she wouldn’t drop a grenade on. Seeing her yap about “human rights” is a special moment.
Ben Franklin
These shit-birds were holding their noses about the deficit and spending throughout the Bush years and the 2008 campaign. T?hey suddenly discovered their nutroots when the Black Man not only left the plantation, but foreclosed on their majority monopoly.
They are verklempt in every sense of the meaning of ‘Reichstag”
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
You wrote “fecal mountain” above, which was followed soon by “fiscal blueprint”, which I misread as “fecal blueprint”. I humbly suggest that we call anything Paul Ryan shits out from here on out “Ryan’s fecal blueprint”.
Jennifer Rubin is just sad. I don’t even really bother to read her, she’s so sad. Charles Krauthammer, who is far eviller, well, I find him somehow more interesting. Rubin just seems like, well, I don’t know what she seems like. It’s like she deosn’t even really try. She just sweeps up the droppings of random conservative losers and mashes them all together into one fecal column. I don’t see how some entitled, rich 15 year old high school sophomore who’s read 137 pages so far of Atlas Shrugged couldn’t do it any better.
gbear
@Hunter Gathers: Nutra-sweet.
James E Powell
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Jennifer Rubin is just sad.
No, no. What’s sad is America and life in America. No matter who wins this election, Jennifer Rubin will have a job with higher than average income, health care, and a more or less permanent seat at the discussion table.
Hill Dweller
The entire article smells like panic. It’s nothing more than a tacit admission that she can’t win the argument dealing in reality.
MeDrewNotYou
A Katamari Damacy reference in a post about Jennifer Rubin? You, sir, are a king amongst nerds.
I don’t think the King of All Cosmos would put up with the Republican’s bullshit. He’d roll ’em all up into a katamari and we’d have a nice new star beaming down on our suddenly once again functional country.
JPL
@MoeLarryAndJesus: Yup…
dmsilev
Sidney Harris, not Gary Larson.
some guy
for the last 6 months she has served, first and foremost, as a Romney publicist, so her attempt to spin Mittens complete capture by the far right as something positive is just another variation of every column sh has typed since the Thug primary began. as soon as Mittens flames out she’ll revert back to her primary role, shilling for racist Likudniks and the colonists they serve.
Zandar
@dmsilev:
THANK YOU.
No wonder I could never find it.
R Johnston
@Hunter Gathers: What’s the mormon equivalent of “altar boy”?
Sly
Baruch Goldstein was unavailable.
Villago Delenda Est
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
Yup, this.
Valdivia
I had this woman’s number when she wrote a 20 page column on why Jewish women hated Palin. The reason? Palin was sexy and beautiful therefore outside the realm of comprehension or acceptability for jewish women.
Rafer Janders
And if there’s one thing the untrammeled conservative reign of the Bush years taught us, it’s exactly how much conservatives really value any of those things.
russ
yea. But he’s a nigger who beat us at our own game, and a white president is the norm. we don’t like abnormal and we’ll do all within our power to, “Take back our country”.
pretty much sums that up!
piratedan
someday my mensch will come……..and he better be wearing protection…..
Villago Delenda Est
@Ben Franklin:
And this, also, too.
Roger Moore
@Hunter Gathers:
Why is that sexist? Are you suggesting there aren’t plenty of male Romney fluffers?
jl
@Valdivia:
[Rubin] ” wrote… that… Palin was sexy and beautiful therefore outside the realm of comprehension or acceptability for jewish women. ”
Are you funnin’ us yokels here at BJ? Did Rubin really write something so silly?
Palin was sexy and beautiful? Weeelllll… i dunno. Certainly not THAT sexy and beautiful.
Anyway, I read someplace that the old anti Semitic line was that Jewish women were too sexy and beautiful, and had the power to debauch all the goy men.
But that is the wisdom of the old communist hack saying: Give me the side and I will give you the argument. But not necessarily a non hilarious argument.
Keith G
Please do not waste time parsing what Rubin types. She willfully lies. There is nothing she would not shit out to give voice to her emotionally disturbed world view
jl
@Roger Moore:
Just pick one side or the other and stick with consistently. Then no one can accuse you of nothin’
Elizabelle
Jennifer Rubin is a liar and an intellectual whore.
Saw the headline at WaPost; wouldn’t page click on her unless you paid me (and well).
That said, delighted you excerpted, ahem, liberally so the idiocy is there for the taking.
Valdivia
@jl:
no, not funning you! I think it’s this one
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/why-jews-hate-palin/
but I really can’t read the whole thing again. I almost had fermklemt the first time don’t want to repeat it! :D
handy
Sure Barack Obama is partially responsible for the creation of the Tea Party. Everything would have been gravy had he simply not insisted on being a Democrat with a funny name and a permanent tan.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Keith G:
Yes, but it’s worth knowing what they’re writing. Lets us get our own answers ready. I’ve always believed that Democrats need to answer the shit that Republicans spew, however untrue and foul it may be. Can’t answer it unless you know what they’re saying.
beltane
@jl: Yes, Rubin actually did write that almost verbatim. Her argument was that Jewish women were frumpy and physically unattractive and that they were somehow threatened by Sarah Palin’s starburstiness. And yet it’s Ms. Rubin who like to throw the self-hating Jew trope around.
Valdivia
@beltane:
also, too. I only saw a picture of her last year. not to be petty, but boy was that a case of the pot calling the kettle.
Yutsano
@Valdivia: You’re not allowed to go verklempt. You still haven’t taught me to make arepas yet!
kay
Rabid Republicans here believe this too.
They think Obama is “toast”
Nate Silver has Obama at 80% if election held today and 60% as a projection, but this is not what they believe.
Rabid Republicans here believe it is 100% sure thing for Mittens. She’s simply expressing the views of the base.
They all got an email or something. It’s remarkable.
Valdivia
@Yutsano:
arepas are indeed delicious. though I confess they are not part of my culinary repertoire as I am from a country where we eat tortillas :)
But I have a good friend who married a Venezuelan so I can get a good home recipe for you. There are two or three restaurants in Queens NY that make some very good ones.
Full of Woe
By which Ms. Rubin means he’s tidied it up very nicely, thank you.
mclaren
The proper phrase is “[X] wreaks havoc,” not “[X] wrecks havoc.” Moreover, “wreaks” is an older verb with an irregular past form, so she should actually have written “Obama has wrought havoc…”
All of this implies some level of minimal literacy, however, far beyond the reach of this ignorant alexic kook.
One tip as far as your writing goes, though, Zandar: it’s a good idea to tell folks about whom you’re writing, and best to do it above the fold. Mention Rubin’s name in your first paragraph if you can. It’s a courtesy. That way, people can tell whether they want to read further, without having to click on the link to see to whom you’re referring.
Frankly, I don’t give a fat rat’s ass about Jennifer Rubin. She’s so pathetic she’s a Megan McArdle-wannabe, which is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. So I didn’t care to finish your post (no reflection on you — you’re just talking abuot a hack so pathetic I have zero interest in her).
Valdivia
@kay:
between the email about Obama being toast and the one the pundits got last weekend about everyone turning on him and Romney being the true Keynesian. I have to wonder where the marching orders come from and how they disseminate them.
Yutsano
@Valdivia: The recipe is really simple (corn flour, water, salt, then anything else you wanna put in them!) then bake or fry them. I shouldn’t have too much trouble getting the P.A.N. flour to make them thanks to teh Interwebs. I think a mixing of green onion and Oaxaca cheese would work nicely, but you can put just about anything into them.
jl
@Yutsano:
Arepas are good. I should try to make some myself sometime.
Little hole in the wall down the street as specials on them a couple of times a week.
Roger Moore
@kay:
Of course not. They haven’t had a chance to spend their Unlimited Corporate Cash! yet. Once the money tells, they’ll walk to a victory.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Valdivia:
I actually read that wretched piece. Well, I guess I can live knowing I needlessly wasted 10 minutes of my life doing that; I’ve done worse. Anyway, this struck me:
“…more vociferous newspaper reading”? What the hell does that mean? Do the newspapers themselves scream loudly when Jews read them? Do Jews read their newspapers aloud, really, really loudly? When I was in college, though, I don’t recall any of my Jewish friends reading their newspapers aloud, so that seems unlikely. This sociological tidbit is new to me…
And also, I might be the only one here who doesn’t know this, but what does “verklempt” mean?
beltane
@Full of Woe: Jennifer Rubin must have read Matt Stoller’s recent emo masterpiece. At least there someone out there who takes him seriously.
Valdivia
@Yutsano:
the arepas I had in Caracas were served not stuffed (like a Salvadoran pupusa) but with a dollop of cheese and meat on top. really fantastic. They make also some wonderful variation with fresh corn instead of flour. Even better.
beltane
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): I must confess to not knowing the meaning of “verklempt”, though I do know that my elderly relatives on the Jewish side of my family really did scream when they read the newspaper, and always at conservatives.
kay
@Valdivia:
It’s going to be President-elect Romney from here on out, I’m afraid. We’re just in some narrative and we won’t be getting out.
We’ll have to straddle two worlds, the world they’re inventing and our own lame attempts to stay realistic :)
I really loathe pundits. I am honestly curious how it would look unfiltered and without packaging by professionals.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Valdivia, @kay:
I’ve been wondering about this since Ezra blinked a few days ago. The “tone” all turned, and all at once.
There must be a rumor driving this.
tybee
i thought “land of freebasing Lester Kinsolving’s socks” was a pretty good line.
Roger Moore
@mclaren:
Wreck havock, and let lose the dogs of war.
Valdivia
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
you didn’t know that all Jews scream loudly at their newspapers? in disagreement? (btw, this used to happen to me everyday when reading the NYT during the 2008 election, but it was vapidness of the writing not my Jewishness that made me scream!)
Verklempt is like having a conniption. This is the Yiddish definition. I remember my grandmother using the word a lot when I was growing up. Only unlike American jews she used it with spanish words instead of midst an english sentence, funny how that works.
bk
Not only is she getting (deservedly) eviscerated in the comments, they are starting to delete critical comments.
burnspbesq
@Valdivia:
Oddly enough, this Irish Catholic boy finds Natalie Portman to be smokin’ hawt, and she’s about as Jewish as they come.
Yutsano
@Valdivia: The old fashioned way is to mill the corn really slow-like. I don’t have the patience for that! And I am passionate for pupusas. At my old job I intentionally sat near all the Latinas and every Wednesday a Salvadoran restaurant had a special on pupusas. We’d pretty much clean them out and eat really well. That was good times.
Valdivia
@kay: @Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Judas: what would the rumor be, the money Romney raised this month? something else? I can’t imagine what would make it change on a dime like that since the polls are not really showing Mitt ahead at all.
Kay: I am going to fight for my right to live in reality :)
President Elect my ass! Ahem. Sorry. I know what you mean.
I would love to see a story about how it is that they all get the same message out at the same time.
Linda
Hee hee. Did the opposite occur to you? The Tea Party has been a godsend for Obama. In the midst of a terrible economy, they have driven the Republican Party over the edge, will actively keep the Etch A Sketch Man from pivoting to the center credibly, and have convinced many Americans that the Repubs are nuts.
burnspbesq
Remind me again why we waste time on Ms. rubin.
David Koch
@kay:
It’s the current propaganda meme on Fixxed News and Hate Radio.
Valdivia
@burnspbesq:
I am a totally hetero girl but I too think she is hawt. And smart.
@Yutsano:
nothing like fresh pupusas. I grew up eating those, heavy immigration to my place of origin of Salvadorans when I was a kid.
beltane
@David Koch: Typical Rovian psy-ops. Seems to be working from the looks of it.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq:
Methinks Ms Rubin has a jealous.
Citizen_X
Goddamit, do I live in some alternate reality? Because in my world, I would swear that there is no such thing. The commission could not come to an agreement, so Simpson and Bowles stepped out ahead of the others and shat out some Randian starve-the-peasantry plan (which is what everybody, right and left, keeps referring to as “the Simpson-Bowles commission’s recommendations”), while the rest of the commission announced their plan–rejected by Simpson and Bowles, and thus not adopted–which was not all that bad.
Doesn’t anyone else remember that? Then why do we keep talking about this thing that doesn’t exist?
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Valdivia:
Maybe early predictions of the results in WI? Nate Silver had called it even earlier, so who knows what polls make the grapevine the weekend before an election.
Even out here, we’re realizing that ‘UNLIMITED CASH!’ really can buy a recall election in a swing state. And quietly wondering what the implications are for November.
PanurgeATL
@Linda:
But is it enough? People don’t seem satisfied with Obama, but will they decide that the alternative is worse? Maybe it really is the mirror-image of 1972.
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
Ya think?
burnspbesq
@Citizen_X:
If you were trying to convince the middle-class to vote against its interests, would you really talk about what Paul Ryan has in store for them?
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@mclaren:
Actually, “wrought” is the past of “work”, not “wreak”, though many people use “wrought” to mean “wreaked”. I do it myself, just because I like to, even if it is historically wrong to do so. (But then, it’s historically wrong to not be speaking Anglo-Saxon; languages change, after all.) “Wrecked”, needless to say, is way off. Incidentally, “wroken” is an alternate past participle of “wreak”, so that kind of makes up for losing “wrought” to the pedants…
burnspbesq
Bruce Bartlett gets it.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/rich-nontaxpayers/
David Koch
@beltane: exactly, going into the 2006 landslide, Karl insisted he had “the math” that showed the republicans would win, and they all repeated it like parrots.
Roger Moore
@Citizen_X:
Because the events as you remember them do not fit The Narrative, and neither do the recommendations of the rest of the committee. Therefore those are unevents, and the suggestions of gloryhog chairmen are the real recommendations. When will you members of the reality based community get that facts and history don’t matter, only what the pundits say?
FlipYrWhig
@mclaren: yeah, for serious. Or maybe the name “Rubin” should appear within the first three words of the title.
burnspbesq
If God truly loved us, he would send Molly Ivins and Steve Gilliard back down from Heaven and get them press credentials to cover the Romney campaign.
jl
Man, tweaking a wreak wrought a wrack, didn’t it, now?
Valdivia
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
but the polls had him pretty much winning. I think this has to be something more Village-centric and rumor mill.
and now I am off to have my cocktail of pain meds and try to hobble to the kitchen for some water. Have a good night you all, just in case I am out to dreamland from the pills.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: Take for instance this thing everyone keeps repeating about Bill Clinton undercutting Obama. It’s based on nothing but deliberate lying. And yet it goes around and around and around, turning right to circulate on Fox, turning left to circulate among Left Blogistan. It’s driving me meshuggeneh.
Valdivia
@FlipYrWhig:
Good Yiddish usage! :D
Odie Hugh Manatee
Mr. Horse thanks you.
@Comrade Dread:
No, it just means that political dick sucking has become a sport on the right and Jenny is trying for first place.
I hear the prize money is good.
jl
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, I heard what Bid Dawg said, and seemed pretty clear to me that he was talking about tactics of maneuvering through the lame duck session. And I think he flatly said that Bush II tax cuts need to be ended.
But newsman don’t care, newsman don’t give a shit. Newsman’s hungry.
Edit: as I remember, though, Clinton only said it once, almost as if it were an aside, a given, as if it were something obvious. He did not repeat it over and over again, and yell and interrupt.
Some one let me know if I misinterpreted the infamous Big Dawg undercutting Obama video flash news idiot meme of the week.
On up side, no one will remember or care after the next newsflashalertmustgivecredit BS pops up.
Keith G
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): I agree to a point: Brooks, Will, hell even Krauthammer. But one doesn’t need to read Rubin to know the hate soaked crazy.
Matt McIrvin
@kay: I think it was the jobs numbers. There’s been this line for months among Democratic online pundits like Klein and Marshall that there’s some threshold for the average rate of job creation above which Obama wins, and below which Obama loses. Somebody had a model that spat that number out. (Nate Silver, to his credit, was always skeptical, but it was probably just because he’s got his own enormously complex statistical contraption he’s always promoting, with more dials than a jet-plane cockpit. Anyway.)
They were fairly bullish on Obama as long as the reports were above the magic number, but the numbers that came out recently were genuinely awful, so the narrative instantly switched to Romney as winner.
mainmati
@Stuck in the Funhouse: I understand where you are coming from and I assume you understand that only the 27% of Gooper hateists will buy into Jennifer’s “analysis” which is consistently just random blabbing. The WaPo OpEd page is already mostly conservative trash; I don’t know why they keep Jenny’s extremely sophomoric diatribes. They edify nobody.
lacp
@mainmati: She kind of has to go with random blabbing. As bad as WaPo editing is, she couldn’t get away with a column that just repeated “Barack Obama is a Negro; that’s right, he’s a Negro” 500-600 times.
Chris
@Valdivia:
Oddly, not the first conservative blogger I’ve read who droned on and on about the sex appeal and confidence that came with being a conservative. Someone should probably write a Freudian paper about the depths of insecurity a person has to have, and the extent to which their political movement’s become a total cult, before they’ll actually credit politics for sex appeal.
PWL
Wow. Somebody even more delusional than Charles Krauthammer.