Right on Target, So Direct
By Holbo on the range of acceptable debate among the Bealtway elite and its implications for assertions about whether parties have “new ideas” and “vigorous debates”:
Let’s take it from the top: if the Republicans have got a guy who wants to spend money building a wall against Canada, that’s intellectual vibrancy. If the Democrats get someone who wants to expand health insurance or combat global warming, that’s a canary dying in the coalmine of the Democratic party’s political extremism?
It’s a nice illustration of a dilemma for Democrats. The only way they can get credit for ‘having ideas’ is by turning Republican – not because the Republicans have ideas, but because the range of media-acceptable impulses you can exhibit runs the gamut from the far right to the right-leaning left.
Right. And to be clear, having vigorous debate within your party about whether torture and arbitrary executive power are good things is really not a selling point.