Posted on 04/02/2012 2:31:40 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Right before our eyes, American conservatism is becoming something very different from what it once was. Yet this transformation is happening by stealth because moderates are too afraid to acknowledge what all their senses tell them.
Last week’s Supreme Court oral arguments on health care were the most dramatic example of how radical tea partyism has displaced mainstream conservative thinking. It’s not just that the law’s individual mandate was, until very recently, a conservative idea. Even conservative legal analysts were insisting it was impossible to imagine the court declaring the health-care mandate unconstitutional, given its past decisions.
So imagine the shock when conservative justices repeatedly spouted views closely resembling the tweets and talking points issued by organizations of the sort funded by the Koch brothers. Don’t take it from me. Charles Fried, solicitor general for Ronald Reagan, told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein that it was absurd for conservatives to pretend that the mandate created a market in health care. “The whole thing is just a canard that’s been invented by the tea party . . .,” Fried said, “and I was astonished to hear it coming out of the mouths of the people on that bench.”
Staunchly conservative circuit judges Jeffrey Sutton and Laurence Silberman must have been equally astonished, since both argued that overturning the law would amount to judicial overreach. Yet moderate opinion bends over backward to act as if this is an intellectually close question...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
For someone who makes a conscious decision to call himself a “progressive”, E. J. certainly seems afraid of change.
Liberals on the other hand can NOT do the same with us. We answer questions - then they fill out the same form trying to answer AS IF they were conservatives. They can't do it. They have no idea how we think. And this intensely stupid piece by E.J. Dionne Jr. proves that point. I would be embarrassed for the guy - but he's probably incapable of shame.
Largely a given with E.J. Dionne in the byline.
No wonder nobody buys the WaPo anymore. Fiction is even more believable than this garbage.
Radical Tea-party thinking - “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Yep, those radical right wingers trying to change the moderate foundation of our nations.
E.J. Dijon. Like Dijon Biden, another Democrat that’s never held a real job.
Coup? As in the illegal persecution of Ted Stevens which
became the 60th vote, that gave us this monstrosity?
This article was really intended to be published a day earlier, right?
bm
E.J. Dionne is of the brie-and-chablis circuit, writing for the brie-and-chablis circuit and all his thinking is by the brie-and-chablis circuit.
Dionne is the quintessential Washington "insider" -- he doesn't know anybody who isn't.
What Dionne is writing is what Washington is thinking. And, thus, revealing of just how out of touch his entire circle is. Despite their pretense toward intelligence...
Perfect description.
WTF is he talking about?
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