Since I’m feeling kinda floaty today anyway, I’ll warn you about getting out of the boat into Jennifer Rubin country. Do not go there, brave traveler. It is a silly place.
The latest media obsession (or is it an Obama campaign talking point?) is to demand Mitt Romney explain how his budget and entitlement ideas differ from those Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). When he declines, the media screams, “Evasion!”
Why on earth would Romney answer that, and, more important, does anyone care? If the media is really interested in a compare and contrast exercise they can do their own analysis or ask some staffers. Romney, of course, is running at the top of the ticket, and both Romney and Ryan are running on Romney’s agenda. All Romney need do is explain what HE is for and how that differs from the president’s plans. Is there any voter who will decide to vote for or against Romney because of deviations from the plan his VP has proposed? That would be a first.
The media might have a point if Ryan had criticized Romney’s plans or if his own plans were vastly different from Romney’s. But in basic framework there is no difference between the two. They both want to lower tax rates and expand the base. Both Ryan and Romney want to block grant and reform Medicaid. Both favor a premium-support plan for Medicare. In short, they are in sync on every significant fiscal issue, and Ryan has agreed to be Romney’s VP.
I don’t even have to say anything at this point, she is the tautology of terribadness, the existential essence of ERHMAGERD, the dao of derp.
I’ll say it anyway. Jennifer Rubin is so shamefully awful a shill for Romney, that if his programming included the advanced neural algorithms to approximate embarrassment he’d have to sit her down and let her cry on his synthetic pauldrons for a while until he had to flush his cache. It actually causes physical pain for me to contemplate how bad the other employees of the Post have to feel when they read Rubin’s whiny, adolescent crap. Why somebody in charge up there hasn’t told her “look, you’re pretty much the worst political pundit on the planet, and we would actually gain readership on a sustained basis if we fired you just from the intensity of the euphoria generated by your terminated employment” I have no idea, other than I guess they like what she writes. That thought alone could rip apart suns.
Here’s another thought. The Romney camp should just hire her. They really, really do deserve each other, and she can go on pundit shows and say “Why should Mitt Romney have to answer that question? Who cares?” because why should our media do anything that mitt Romney doesn’t like? Why should they ask questions when everyone knows the purpose of the media is to crap out talking points like owl pellets and nod seriously? Heck, then she could get paid in energon cubes or whatever Romneybot runs on these days and we could all be really happy far, far away from the both of them.
Hillary Rettig
+1 zillion for punny title and Ermaghard reference.
c u n d gulag
Jeez, it’s amazing that with a mouth that full of Mitt jizz, some of it doesn’t spill onto her keyboard and short her damn computer out.
She puts the ‘hack’ in “HACKtacular!”
Violet
Soyulent Green.
NonyNony
Why? What benefit would they possibly get from hiring her?
She has a regular gig at the Washington Post where they pay her to shill for Romney. If he hired her he’d have to pay her to do the same thing. But without the veneer of credibility that the Washington Post gives her. She’d be just another campaign shill, rather than a representative among the Beltway media elites. She’d be less valuable as a pundit. And Romney would have to pay her out of his own funds for doing something she was doing for him anyway.
The Dangerman
That’s GREAT! So, when Romney is asked how his plan deviates from Ryan’s plan, he doesn’t have to evade the question. It’s a simple “not at all”. How EASY!
Which one is playing Justin?
Linda Featheringill
Rubin:
Yes.
Even the conservative Jennifer Rubin says that Romney’s and Ryan’s budget goals are the same. They both want to gut Medicaid. They both want to destroy Medicare.
[Isn’t this an important point?]
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Seems like a pretty big disconnect to me. Rubin, I guess, is considered a journalist of sorts, yes? And yet here she is mocking her brethren, suggesting they are “obsessed” or Obama’s puppets and/or that they’re collectively lazy. And yet her readers will somehow fail to recognize that she is a journalist and will take her words seriously. Boy, the us vs. them thing is getting bad. Collectively, the nation holds a low opinion of the MSM, but the right believes their special tribe of journalists are somehow above the fray and are fair and balanced. (Of course, as soon as a right-wing journalist makes so much as a peep about the fact that Emperor Mitt (or Sister Sarah, et al) has no clothes, they freak out and disown the traitor, the JINO (Journalist in Name Only). In the words of Yakov Smirnoff, what a country.
SatanicPanic
“Does anyone care?” Maybe she’s asking a rhetorical question here, but my immediate response to this is- hey stupid, you’re an alleged journalist, why don’t you find out?
Trakker
Please, not in front of the children.
ding dong
I had never seen Jennifer Rubin till last week. Being judgemental and all. I find Jennifer Rubin is damned unattractive, moreso with her views. I do not want to call her ugly but she desperately needs a total makeover. For all of the shilling she does for the GOP and Likud one would have thought one of the two would have sprung for a makeover.
Tonybrown74
@NonyNony:
[Derisive SNORT!]
wrb
They haven’t?
No bennies at all?
Doubt it
I imagines she prefers being able to get goodies from both Mitt & Israel
Betty Cracker
She really is a horrible, awful terrible excuse for a pundit. I think her gig may be an extended audition for Press Secretary in a Romney Admin. And whomever did the caricature for her WaPo blog shares our opinion.
Comrade Mary
I think my brain broke trying to make sense out of what she wrote, so let me just translate that excerpt into ERMAHGERD and see if it makes any more sense:
Not much difference, really.
For those who have not been introduced to ERMAHGERD:
Know Your Meme
ERMAHGERD generator
ERMAHGERD translator
Keith G
I cannot focus any thought process on that vile creature, Rubin. Even the sound of her voice and her appearance is odious to me – and I usually am very able to tolerate those with whom I disagree.
I am not sure that I have ever witnessed someone who lies with such glee or who exhibits such orgasmic joy in attacking the virtue of others.
Frankensteinbeck
The fuck? How can someone talk over, under, and around the central point and completely miss it like this? We have to discuss the difference between Ryan and Romney’s plans BECAUSE they’re so similar. Ryan’s plan is a stinking toxic refuse heap, and if Romney’s plan is a stinking toxic refuse heap with a sign on it reading ‘It’ll Grow Flowers Any Minute Now!’ we need to know.
Thor Heyerdahl
@ding dong: Oy – I see what you mean. The inner beauty comes to the surface – and there’s not much in her case.
http://images.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=619&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=jennifer+rubin+washington+post
Shteyner zol zi hobn, nit kayn kinder.
Matt
Remarkable – weren’t all the Mittens fans shrieking about how “we need to talk about policy” just A COUPLE DAYS AGO? Well, here we have a serious policy question and now they’re all terribly offended that people are asking about policy.
The Romney campaign should just drop the pretense and announce that they will no longer answer any question whatsoever that we the “you people” ask.
The Other Chuck
@Keith G:
Michelle Malkin?
MattF
It’s par for the course on the WaPo opinion page, all the right-wingers are unapologetic political hacks. Will, Krauthammer, Gerson, Parker, Thiessen,… I suppose it’s fair to note that just seeing Thiessen’s name on the page makes me physically ill, so I’m not claiming objectivity here.
Alex
I’m sure all Romney has to do is point to his plan and…
Oh wait. Maybe the problem is that Romney’s plans don’t have specifics while Paul Ryan’s plans do.
terraformer
I think a not small part of my general stress and apprehensiveness over the past oh, ten years or so is due to the relentless, never-ending stream of utter bullshit and sycophancy for all Republican persons emanating from Establishment outlets.
For anyone with a even passing relationship with reality, the incessant scribbling and orating in preservation of the status quo exercised by these nincompoops in direct contravention to said reality cannot but test the limits of sanity.
JWR
It’s a fine distinction, but it strikes me that she’s not so much a shill for Romney; it’s that she actually believes what she writes, and can’t see why anyone would disagree.
maya
Cry not for them Zandertina. They all work out of separate, sequestered cubiciles where some minimum wage intern from the WaPo commissary tosses in a few slices of raw meat on the half-hour until production quotas are met. They’re not allowed to read each other’s scribble for the simple expediency of avoiding plagiarism in the same edition.
Keith G
@The Other Chuck: Oh gods.
You see, I had totally erased her from my thoughts.
Thanks a fuckin lot
Alex
As has been pointed out on the twitters, last week Rubin said that it was unfair to criticize Romney’s tax plans because he didn’t provide any details.
Retief
I think owls regurgitate their pellets. Unless my hazy memory of grade school science deceives me.
Scooter
@Keith G:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Linda Featheringill
According to my numbers, the Dems need to take 26 House seats from Republicans in order to take back the House. DCCC, of course, is actively targeting approximately twice that number.
It would be nice if we could force every single Republican Representative to bear the consequences of that vote for the Ryan budget.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
fixed.
jim filyaw
i don’t know about you, but i for one am looking forward to madam rubin’s first postelection column (assuming she doesn’t commit seppuku).
Keith G
@Scooter: Well yeah. I think one should vigorously press one’s disagreement without going spastic. Save theatrics for the exception.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
You called it, The Other Chuck… Michelle Malkin is perfectly dreadful. I think she’s gotten by on her physical appearance and the evident self-confidence with which she spews her fictions. She and Coulter make me ill. (As do Hannity, Savage, Limbaugh….)
Roger Moore
@Alex:
Ryan’s plans can be considered to have specifics only by comparison with completely vague things like Romney’s plans. They are deliberately vague and will remain that way for as long as possible because that’s the only way the Republicans can avoid admitting that they want to gut popular programs. The more specific the Republicans get, the less people like them.
Spatula
Zandar, with all due respect, and seriously: How is Rubin anymore a shameless shill for Romney than you are for Obama?
tomvox1
Hey at least a total partisan hack and Israel-firster like Rubin is easy to dismiss in the morass of “Post Partisan” Right-leaning dingbats at the WaPo. Does anybody even read her aside from blogs that call her rude names?
The greater danger is from reasonable “centrists” like Roger Cohen who write reasonable sounding drivel like this in the primo Op Ed space of the Gray Lady:
The totebaggers will suck their teeth and think that maybe good old Roger has got a point in giving us his worried internationalist perspective about how a Showdown on the Debt makes Romney/Ryan them men of the moment and that poor old Obama means well but can’t come up with “one big idea”…from whatever luxury hotel Europe he is getting drunk in this week.
Jesus F*#king Christ.
tomvox1
@Spatula:
Um, Zandar is living in reality while Rubin is creating a new one everyday to fit her political preferences?
tomvox1
And on the other hand, David Stockman–DAVID FREAKIN’ STOCKMAN–has a super-long editorial absolutely demolishing the two schmucks at the top of the GOP ticket and the entire GOP in general as it has existed for the last 20 years+:
Paul Ryan’s Fairy Tale Budget Plan
There are some clunkers in there but, man, his is an enjoyable wrath to behold.
LAC
I am surprised that she has time to write at all. I thought she would be in bed with her vibrator, fantasizing about pulling a train for Romney and Ryan. As ugly as that image is, it beats seeing her and Gerson vie for most up Romney’s ass writing.
muddy
I saw her for the first time the other day, and was amazed at the badness of her haircut. Not that I have a great (or any really) hairstyle, but then again, I don’t appear on tv. If I were to do so, I would make an effort to look decent.
I literally could not focus on what she was saying (just as well apparently) because I was constantly distracted by how truly bad the haircut was.
The Other Chuck
@Spatula: So Rubin is to be held to the standards of a random blogger who himself puts forward no pretense of objectivity?
Actually, in all fairness to Rubin, I’d be fine with that, as long as that’s how she’s marketed too.
Keith G
@Spatula They are not even in neighboring galaxies.
While I have not explored the Zandar canon, and despite finding some of his efforts a bit underprepared, his work seems to come from a sincere place with no indication of trying to purposely mislead his readers.
Rubin makes a plate of cold Santorum appear down right appealing.
Don
Hey Rubin, think maybe the fact that this never happens might be why everyone’s gonna keep talking about Ryan’s plans? Because, for all that they’re horrid, he HAS SOME.
Spatula
Seriously? You guys see Zandar as an objective, truth-telling observer who would not hesitate to slam President Obama when he needs slamming?
Really?
I gave up the fantasy that the MSM is in any way objective/professional, or makes any attempt to be so, 16 years ago…not sure why you are holding on to that illusion.
Rubin is just doing what they do, like most of the rest. In a way, her writing is more honest about its biases, more shameless. I kind of admire that.
ET
Jennifer Rubin is an idiot.
Of course the media can and more importantly should, do the analysis. The purpose of the media asking Romney about it is to see if 1- he will be open (no one likes an overly secretive president it just means they are hiding something, 2- he knows what the fluff he is talking about (i.e. he isn’t an idiot) and 3- respecting the voters (explaining = thinking/saying the voters are intelligent enough to understand).
The fact that she doesn’t understand the subtle and not so subtle signals a non-answer sends, means she doesn’t have the admittedly low level of intelligence, to be a Village mouthpiece. I understand this and I don’t do it professionally.
Gus
Why would the Romney camp hire her? She wouldn’t write anything different than she does now, and they’re not responsible for her paycheck. It’s classic outsourcing, but at no cost.
Keith G
@Spatula: In my formulation, ‘sincere’ and your ‘objective’ are two different things.
Rubin seems totally unhinged. Zandar does not.
grandpa john
@Spatula: wow a super sized strawman, you might have a point of anyone had actually said what you wrote.
dance around in your bones
Spatula =Flatulus
Disregard the wind.
Spatula
@dance around in your bones:
Thanks for telling everyone what to do, Hall Monitor.
Good to know I touched a nerve again…
dance around in your bones
@Spatula:
Haha, you fucking wish.
Cheap Jim
I think it was shortly after her blaming the crimes of Anders Breitvik on imaginary Norwegian jihadists that the Post’s ombudsman accidentally told the truth: Rubin is there to produce red meat for the rabid right, and has no expectation of telling the truth.
rachel
Spatula ≟ Knockabout
mclaren
You’d have to say that Jennifer Rubin’s piece represents a breakthrough. It appears to violate the Pauli Exclusion Principle — it exists in more simultaneous states of wrongness than was previously thought physically possible.