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- Mike Enzi and Charles Grassley don't want to make a deal on health-care reform. They want to kill it. That leaves Olympia Snowe as the lone reasonable Republican member of the "Gang of Six" but it's not clear what sort of a quid pro quo she's looking for to make a deal. Hopefully, she won't take the advice of National Review, which approvingly links to road signs in Maine describing death panels which, apparently, already exist.
- There hasn't been a while lot to say about the gubernatorial race in Virginia, but now it seems the Republican candidate, Robert McDonnell, has attracted a great deal of negative publicity over the contents of his master's thesis, which describes working women as "detrimental" to the family, and that unmarried couples shouldn't cohabitate or have access to contraceptives. Conservatives treating women as subhuman is nothing new. And McDonnell's insistence that his views have changed over the past two decades doesn't wash.
- Michael Hiltzik writes in The Los Angeles Times about William Wirt, who had 15 minutes of fame back in 1934 charging the Roosevelt administration with being agents of a Bolshevik takeover of the United States. Of course, these same accusations are being made today about Barack Obama, but notice what's changed in 75 years. In the 30s, there actually was a Bolshevik regime in existence; today, there is not. Once Wirt's conspiracy theories were proven to be false, he lost support of Republicans who thought this was their ticket to destroying the New Deal. Today, top Republicans regularly refer to Obama's socialism. Lesson: the right wing hasn't changed tactics, but they are incredibly more tolerant of their cranks, and even give them television shows!
- The tea bag crowd doesn't disguise that it considers taxation little better than theft, and if they talk about what our tax dollars are spent on at all, it's usually an excuse to bash welfare recipients or inflate foreign aid figures. With this in mind, I wonder if any of the secessionists down in Texas who had a little tenther rally over the weekend have ever stopped to consider the consequences of Texas suddenly becoming an independent nation. How would they finance themselves? Would they raise an army? Are secessionist senior aware that dissolving their relationship with the United States would, in fact, take away their Medicare and Social Security?
- Weekend Remainders: The Washington Post ombudsman notices that reporters don't like reporting policy details; don't let Mike Huckabee trick you into thinking he's just a folksy weirdo; what is it with conservative Christian leaders and their insatiable love for violence; The Wall Street Journal endorses the view that 24 is an accurate depiction of terrorism/counterterrorism; Megan McArdle is still, inexplicably, supported by The Atlantic; and is there reason to be optimistic after the summer of town halls?
--Mori Dinauer
