I love the Daily Kos, I think it should be required reading for all conservatives. Mark Sumner gives a nice summary of the 2012 election season today, he's pretty much spot on. Give it a read. Here are some highlights:
"It's not even that what's now coming from the right consists of 100% emotional, fear-based appeals without a factual basis. In 2012, a campaign of suggestive fear-mongering seems almost quaint. . . . . . . . . . It's that the Republicans have staked out a position that requires that they lie, 24/7, 365. Not shade the facts their way. Not put their own spin on the situation. Lie. Big, sloppy, and constantly. . . . . . . . . . The lies go beyond instantly dismissible claims like President Obama being the "food stamp president" (why you have to go back one whole administration to discover that more people joined the food stamp ranks under Bush than Obama, but then the Republicans don't seem to remember Bush in any case). The blatant lies extend through every aspect of the Republican platform, such as it is. The simple reason is that the Republicans have no ideas left, and least no ideas that have not been tested and proven to be failures again, and again, and again. . . . . . . . . . The economy didn't just crash under a Republican president, it crashed under Republican policies. It crashed with low taxes. It crashed with deregulated markets. It crashed with huge restrictions on union activity. It crashed with massive cuts in environmental regulations. It crashed with lowered trade barriers. It crashed with big fat Pentagon spending. . . . . . . . . . They got what they wanted. They got CEOs with no limits on their wealth. They got banks with no limits on their "creativity." They got trade agreements that guaranteed manufacturing could be moved to the dirtiest, cheapest, most desperate source available. They got massive cuts in capital gains taxes and equally large boosts in the wealth they could pass along in estates. They got everything they said would make us all wealthy. They got record oil and gas drilling. They got record giveaways of public land. They got everything they said would create jobs. They got the middle class to shoulder more, more, more of the burden so that those beautiful job creators would be free to work their magic. . . . . . . . . . They can't say the economy crashed because taxes went up, because they didn't. They can't say that the economy crashed because there was a raft of new regulation, because there wasn't. They can't blame it on "union thugs" or Saul Alinsky or the guy who writes Happy Holidays cards at Hallmark. They can't blame it on a president who was elected when the world was already in free fall. Only, of course they do. They say it because they have no choice. . . . . . . . . . For the same reason that they have to maintain that global warming is the creation of a conspiracy of scientists, and that evolution is a conspiracy of other scientists, and that gay marriage is a threat to "traditional" marriage. They have to lie about the threat of illegal immigrants. Lie about the state of the national debt. Lie about the effects of the President's health care plan. They have to lie, because lies are all they have left. . . . . . . . . . They certainly can't admit the truth about the economy. They can't admit that they did it. Own it. That their policies directly caused the worst economic failure in American history. Strike that. Make it "the greatest failure in American history since the last time that these same policies were tried." But then, they've been lying about that bit of history for years. . . . . . . . . . The truth is that the Republicans have nothing to offer. Not even anything that looks like a governing philosophy. Instead they have to try to rewrite history, rolling lies back and back as they try and justify their deeds by turning the founding fathers into ardent supporters of the free-market system that they loathed. Tricorner hats are the new tinfoil. . . . . . . . . . The real danger isn't that someone might listen to the Republicans -- anyone who lies long enough and loud enough can always find an audience, especially when that someone has half the television media and ninety+ percent of radio. The danger is that we might forget that they're lying."
The whole blog post can be found here. Give it a read, check out the whole site while you're there, it's great reading this election season.
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