Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The Rank Hypocrisy of the Right Makes Even the American Enterprise Institute Puke

It's not easy to get something as far right as the American Enterprise Institute to turn on its own but congressional Republicans and their backers in America's delusional rightwing media did just that.

Norm Ornstein, writing in AEI's Enterprise Blog tears a strip off congressional Republicans, the Wall Street Journal, and all the Republican hacks that infest America's TV and radio outlets:

...I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

2 comments:

  1. I have never given AEI much credit, but they seem to be able to hang on to Norm Ornstein. He's on PBS a lot, and I love him. How he straddles the two extremes so well is beyond me. I wonder if the USA will ever get back to principled conservatism?

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  2. I hear you Craig. Wouldn't it be great if we could base our debates on facts rather than the right always running for the cover of dark fantasy?

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