Monday, May 02, 2005

 

Blinded by the Right

I don't often visit right-wing blogs. But while searching for a text I dropped by "Right-Thinking from the Left Coast." It was quite enjoyable. The author "Lee" just bubbles with joy at being a right-winger but for one teensy little problem—his fellow right-wingers and the people who represent them.

He has a post on Pat Robertson's declaration that liberals, and especially liberal judges, are more dangerous than al-Qaeda. He reluctantly admitted having to link to Think Progress, "a left-wing asshat site," for the text.

He got so upset by Robertson's comments that he started giving Democrats advice—

You know what I would do if I was the Democrats? As a preview of the 2008 presidential race I would, in 2006, find a reasonably pro-war Democrat who is running for senate. Then I’d take this video of Pat Robertson, and other conservative social leaders, all of whom have made statements as stupid as this. And then I’d have a voiceover that says something like, “Do conservatives really understand the threat we face from terrorism? Or do they view terrorism primarily as an excuse to enact their far-right social agenda?” You’re going to tell me a reasonably moderate, pro-defense Democrat couldn’t use that to win? Come on. The conservatives in this country are being shot in the foot by idiots like Robertson.

Not a bad scenario except for the "pro-war Democrat" business. That has been tried recently.

While blogger Lee thought Robertson was pretty crazy, he soon discovered that he was out of synch with his readers. His Comments section began to fill and he did a second update—

This is one of those “moment of truth” posts. When I read Robertson’s words this morning I thought they were the highest kind of lunacy. I mean, disagree with liberalism all you like (God knows I do), but to actually believe that gay marriage is a bigger threat than terrorism is, to me, self-evident lunacy. And then I read the comments to the post, where a whole lot of ostensibly mainstream conservatives agree with what Robertson is saying. It’s like being hit in the head with the hammer of reality sometimes.

Well, I read the Comments and thought they were pretty calm and reasonable by right-wing standards.

Then Lee did a post on the state pension fund scandal in Ohio, where the state has invested about $50,000,000 in the rare coin market through an attorney who's a big Bush supporter.

To Lee's consternation it's the Republicans who've done this. But he finds himself unable to point the finger

Lest you think this is some kooky liberal scheme, this guy Noe was Bush’s campaign manager in Ohio. So both parties suck equally at this sort of thing. The only solution is to get government out of the retirement business as much as possible and let us handle our own money.

...and turns all libertarian on us.

These are but two examples, but there were others. I ended up feeling almost sorry for the guy. He seems so basically decent yet so "religiously" devoted to his right-wingerism. The cognitive dissonance must be dreadful.

I wondered if I should send him an application to register as a Democrat. That would hardly place him on the Left, but at least it might ease the pain.

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