Will Marshall nominates Paul Krugman for a “Pulitzer Prize in hyperbole” for saying that "the dastardly centrists would kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and cut vital health care and food programs, while offering a fat tax break to affluent homeowners." All of that, of course, is true. Moreover, it's non-controversial. There's a weird rhetorical etiquette in politics where you can't really speak of policy actions in terms of outcome. You see this in health care all the time. Republicans frequently block bills that would keep a lot of people from, well, dying. They're not shy about explaining what the Democratic bill will do: Spend taxpayer money to increase government provision of health care. But Democrats are very shy about detailing what Republican obstruction will do: Ensure the predictable deaths of thousands. Saying that is not, of course, polite. The Republicans don't want thousands to die. They just don't want thousands to die less than they don't want the government to expand S-CHIP or provide health coverage subsidies. But you have to make that point euphemistically: "They're balancing the budget on the backs of the poor" and so on. Accurately describing the trade-offs involved in, say, health care or stimulus policy gets you a demerit for demagoguery.
