I know exactly how Frank Rich feels.
"Yes, the Tea Party is radical, its membership is not enormous, and its race problem is real and troubling," concluded the Times columnist yesterday, but "if the Democrats can’t muster their own compelling response to the populist rage out there," then this tiny, radical, troubling bunch of crackpots could win it all in November.
Does that make sense? Of course it doesn't. Yet it reflects the left's enduring sense of pessimism as well as self-knowledge of its historically disadvantaged status against the loud, activist right. No matter the growing Mt. Everests of evidence that the opposition is imploding, we should be very, very afraid. Because afraid is what we do, because the right is so damned wily and the left is so incredibly inept.
Still, the right can go too far in its conceit and self-assurance. And that would seem to be precisely what it's doing now, to the enormous benefit of the left, even if the latter trusts the trend not.
Our center-rightness is indisputably dominated by the center. That's what allows the left its occasional triumphs and dooms the right's outright lunacy, which is swiftly becoming personified not only by Mr. Paul, but the unfailingly reliable Newt Gingrich.
Go read what he says about Neutie and his "secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did" meme. Heh. The nearly sane amongst the Repugs are backpedalling so fast from that one that they're wearing out their chains and sprockets in the other direction.
Yes, it's good that the Dems aren't goose-stepping-toward-1954 ideologues like the Repugs. Yes, it's bad that they're disorganized and light on ballsack. Our best chance is for the Repugs to tear themselves to shreds, and to them I say "continue the march" with my blessing.
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