Last night on Keith's program, Idiot Punditocracy self-inductee David Frum said there was something in "the air" and he sensed "a gear change" in the tone of our political rhetoric. Um, David (we'll be saying this a lot to him since David is a nice guy, hence our rebukes gentle and good-natured) that something in the air is the crackle of negative sound waves emanating from Limbaugh, Beck, Levin, Savage, Hannity, O'Reilly and all the other whackos, wingnuts and assorted proto-fascists cited by Keith in his incisive commentary (below). That "gear shift" is 4-RR for four wheel drive Republican-Reverse. It's the only gear they know.
David is from the "Bourgeois Bohemian" (BOBO) school of scented vanilla Pollyanna conservatives pioneered by that other David (Brooks, of the NYT), the self-styled sociologist of silliness who wrote a book about his musings. The two Davids are that rare inoffensive conservative you could go out for a beer with during one of their wild 'Bohemian' flings and share a laugh about your political disagreements. Appropriately enough, 'BOBO' in Portuguese and Spanish means silly or naïve. The "gear shift" Frum is picking up on are the changing perceptions of THE AMERICAN PEOPLE — as distinct from the Teabaggers' 'American people' — of President Obama (a majority now correctly view him as a "moderate"), and of the wingnut Republican plan for repeal of the Affordable Health Act against every expressed desire of THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, only 18 percent of whom in the latest ABC News/Wapo Poll support complete repeal of the law. Who was it that said, you can always get one-fifth of the people to support or believe anything?
Can anyone say, buyer's remorse? It's what a lot of THE AMERICAN PEOPLE are feeling at this moment in time about their vote last November. Unfortunately, elections in this country, more than in other developed democracies, are decided by a minority of the eligible electorate, a subset of which call themselves "independents" because politics isn't (as it should be) a major part of their lives. Suddenly they're waking up to the realization that they voted into office an extremist right wing Congress that plans to do things they fundamentally disagree with. These are smart middle class people who were taken in by the slick corporatist Republican propaganda, so many lies and distortions that they simply could not process in real time. Now that they're beginning to see the tangible results of the law's gradual implementation, they're saying "whoa, wait a minute! I don't want this repealed!"
Which poses a problem for the rabid Right, fellow travelling Teabaggers, and assorted wingnuts. The gear shift FORWARD WITH THE HEALTHCARE LAW was made by THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. Keith lifted the veil of the Right's attacks on the President, post-Tucson massacre, when most of the victims hadn't even been buried. Will their tone or tune change? ABSOLUTELY NOT. These wingnuts know ATTACK DOG and nothing else. Progressives and progressives alone (writ large) must continue to call them out, take names and numbers. Because let's face it, only the progressive media has exposed the Right's lies, propaganda, extremist ballistic language, and false equivalence. Don't expect David Gregory to do it. NBC is already switching gears to CNN. Who's next? The COMCAST deal does not bode well for independent progressive media. The corporatist Tom Brokaw-Charlie Rose MSM Axis of David Gregory, Brian Williams, Meredith Vieira (disgracefully, in her interview of Glenn Beck) has already fallen down on the job.
As Chris Matthews said of the President's plea for more "civility" in our political discourse, "He's got his job and I've got mine." Well said, Chris. It's not about civility. It's about the facts and reporting the truth to THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
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