I dare anyone to read today’s David Broder column and tell me that it is in any way, shape, or form less insane than anything that Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich have ever said. The column starts with this gem: “Was Christmas Day 2009 the same kind of wake-up call for Barack Obama that Sept. 11, 2001, had been for George W. Bush?” This is closely followed by: “Like Bush, [Obama] vowed to see that the consequences also fell on the foreign country that gave birth to the plot — Afghanistan eight years ago, Yemen today. For now, we are conducting a proxy war in Yemen, but that may change. Al-Qaeda’s local enablers must learn that there is a price to be paid when Uncle Sam is attacked from their bases.”
As a commenter at Balloon Juice pointed out: “It’s great that at this point “making fun of” Broder literally means nothing more or less than just blockquoting his words.”
But beyond that, I think it important to note how Broder gets to draw an equivalency between the murder of 3000 and a guy blowing up his junk in order to justify using the latter incident as a basis for war. This is the position of the DC establishment that Broder so often seems to represent. Somehow, this is deemed a “moderate” opinion, while opinions of movement liberals and movement conservatives are dismissed as radical and insane.
H/T: DougJ.
Is this considered a moderate opinion? I think a ton of moderates in this country are pretty sick of the call to war. Not that I disagree that this is plain crazy, and I know Broder represents the Beltway middle and all that. I just mean – real American moderates, the sort that aren’t hugely political – I don’t hear them calling for us to bomb, bomb, bomb Yemen…Report
I hear you. I’m just pointing out that there’s nothing moderate at all about DC-style centrism. Especially since the purveyors of that centrism have this awful habit of painting principled liberals, conservatives, and libertarians as essentially extremists…and getting away with it.Report
Put it this way – consider this yet another entry in my push for a sort of New Middle.Report
I hear ya. I think the only flaw in your current push is that while I think a new middle could be found on foreign policy, I’m not sure how you can merge the progressives and tea-parties on domestic policy.Report
From the bubble to the mouths of babesReport
Right on, Mark. As a matter of fact, I think the center is the MOST ideological cohort in US politics. My vision of centrism would be of people who listen to everyone and take ideas from wherever they come from if they’re good–sort of a radical center, if you will. In reality, all you have to do is look at the health care debate, in which the centrists assumed or dismissed ideas based on whether or not they were perceived as too liberal. This sort of thing happens all the time with these people. This isn’t centrism, it’s posturing!Report
Today’s ‘center’ is yesterdays radical left….it’s called decline.Report
To the catacombs!!Report
Everything was going along just fine until that Jesus fella screwed everything up by rabble-rousing. Hey, we don’t *WANT* things to be changed. The old covenant worked.Report
Well said, Bro North!Report
Just for the record (not that what I think about it is central to anything, but) I don’t think either Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul say much of anything at all that is really insane.Report
I don’t think there is such a thing as a “moderate”, since there is no middle ground on many isues. I think many people practice moderation in their political opinions, but to be called a moderate, as if there is always some position in the middle that someone can adhere to and, thus, call himself a moderate — Frum is never moderate when it comes Palin — Brooks is never moderate when it comes to the “uneducated” — it’s a phony stance used by political pundits to hide because they don’t want to commit for poltical reasons — in many instances, it’s a form of intelectual dishonesty, although every serious thinker moderates at times, compromises when it seems reasonable to do so.Report