From his debate wrap-up last night:
I suppose there were some encouraging things tonight – tax reform, cutting red tape, investing in education. But I have to say the level of debate, the other-worldly discussion in which so often up is down, and white is black, and our urgent priorities today are to ensure that 40 million people lose their health insurance and that Wall Street be deregulated more thoroughly than in the 2000s … well it’s disorienting. The cure for spiraling demand is to cut more now, not later.
I really don’t know what to say to this. I find it surreal. I’d like a minimally intrusive federal government, and lower, flatter taxes, so why do I feel so detached from this debate? I think because I respect the president and have some sympathy with the appalling legacy he was bequeathed, because I still believe the GOP has responsibility for that legacy and it would behoove them to figure out where they went wrong rather than insist on doing all the same things again; and because, as I argued earlier today, 2011 is not 1979, and repeating Reaganism is simply not attuned to the times, when revenues are in the toilet, debt and the threat of deflation are omnipresent, and corporate profits are enormous.
Huntsman I can understand and appreciate. Perry is an empty bad suit. Romney lies with such facility it unnerves me. Bachmann is a fanatic, as, although I am extremely fond of him, is Ron Paul. Santorum just seems like a lost child from the 1950s, trying to have the campaign he dreamed about when he was ten. Cain is an egomaniac businessman with a talk show host patter and a mild wit. Gingrich is a giant, gaseous asshole.
Thank God for painkillers.
On his reaction today to Douthat’s latest ‘Both Sides Do It” bullshit, asserting the Democrats would have been just as bad to John McCain:
Does Ross believe McCain would have gotten zero Democratic votes for his first stimulus? And zero Democratic votes for a cap-and-trade bill? Nah. Does he think they would have defunded McCain’s closing of Gitmo, as he wanted to? Please. Ross’s excuses for his pathetic reptile of a party are getting thinner and thinner. I’m no fan of the Dems. But the GOP is just way further out there on intransigence and ideological rigidity.
Is Sullivan learning? I suppose the real test is the next time one of his political crushes like Paul Ryan comes forward with another thinly veiled plan to screw the poor and hand out trillions to the rich- will he go to the mat about how “serious” the plan is? If even Sullivan can start to use language like this to describe the comic super-villains in the GOP and their fluffers like Douthat, there is hope.