Dear Nick: Please Connect the Dots
by tristero
Nick Kristof writes:
Romney is a smart man and, his friends say, a pragmatist rather than an ideologue...
And then he writes:
...the Republican Party has moved far, far to the right so that, on some issues, it veers into extremist territory.
These two sentences do not add up.
Since it is true that the Republican Party has moved "far, far to the right" to the point of extremism, how did a pragmatist, rather than an ideologue, ever get nominated by the Republicans?
Answer: no pragmatist could ever be a modern Republican presidential candidate. Despite what Romney's friends claim, he obviously is not a pragmatist (if he ever was one). Everything the man says and does indicates he buys into all the rightwing delusions, all the extremist positions, and believes every single piece of far-right ideology modern Republicans hold dear.
And that also means that Romney is not very smart. Again, what Romney says and does demonstrates that he is the stupidest person to be nominated for president since....the last Republican president.
Kristof still seems to believe in false equivalence, as if somehow the Democratic interpretation of Republican administration achievements equals the denial by Republicans of simple, reality-based facts - like the absence of WMDs in Iraq or Obama's citizenship. And Kristof still hasn't figured out that the extremists that make up the modern Republican party are counting on pundits making false equivalence argument in order to shove the discourse further and further to the right. That said...
I may be wrong, but I detect in his recent writing that Nick is just going through the motions,. His use of the"they are equally guilty of distortions and I'm the only one above it all " trope seems tepid and forced these days, as if he thinks that it may be bullshit now, but nevertheless feels compelled to pretend that the US actually has two political parties with equally valid world views.
It's time for Nick to connect the dots, and say so.