There are some juxtapositions you can't beat with a shtick, any shtick. They speak best for themselves ... as when Powerline's John Hinderaker broods that "The Left’s hatred for conservatives has become so obsessive that it is hard to engage a liberal in rational discussion of any public policy issue," just as Politico reports that Sen. Dick Durbin "says that a House Republican leader told off President Barack Obama during a negotiation meeting, and that they are so disrespectful it’s practically impossible to have a conversation with them."
"In a 'negotiation' meeting with the president, one GOP House Leader told the president: 'I cannot even stand to look at you,'" Durbin wrote in a post on his Facebook page over the weekend.
Now it's true that the left has its own abominations. Hello, Alan Grayson, who's a fundraising gift to the right and excellent propagandistic fodder for its media's perpetual outrage machine. His own recent fundraising email--which "includ[ed] a photograph of a burning cross with Klansmen in the background. The cross then becomes the "T" in the words "Tea Party" transposed over the picture"--was no doubt profitable for Grayson, but priceless to all the John Hinderakers and FreedomWorks et al.
It's one thing for a mere, nobody blogger like me to reference the neofascistic leanings of certain congressional Republicans, but for a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives to splash around in Gohmert-mentality waters is a disgrace. Grayson's material--because of its official status--is the kind of fetid hype that propels notice by the nation's Sean Hannitys, and brings them smiles. With a Grayson, they can easily paint all the opposition as hatefully unhinged. Thanks, Alan.
Rep. Grayson, however, is the only Dem who springs to mind when pondering Congress' veritable sea of disgrace. But from Bachmann to Yoho to whoever the idiot was at the WH meeting, the GOP's politics of vile disrespect has become a nearly universal kind of identity politics. It is, simply, who they are.