alien & sedition.
Friday, March 02, 2007
  Yeah, They Pretty Much ARE That Crazy

If you're not familiar with Cliff Schecter, you should be. His too-infrequent appearances on MSNBC - some of which have managed to survive the attentions of YouTube's enforcers - offer the viewer the rare pleasure of watching a liberal pundit reduce conservative gasbags to scorched chitterlings. My own opinion is that progressives should be pushing the cable news programmers to agree that the "left" viewpoint for every show will only ever be provided by Schecter; I realize that this might be a bit of a drain on Cliff, but I'm sure we could take up a collection to keep him in caffeine pills.

At any rate, I bring him up because of a post at his blog about a recent poll of 63 conservative bloggers conducted by rightwingnews.com. Here are the first four questions, and the results:
1) Do you think the surge should go forward?

Yes (61) -- 97%
No (2) -- 3%

2) Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)-- 84%
No (10) -- 16%

3) Do you believe that the wall on the border will ever actually be completed?

Yes (6) -- 10%
No (56) -- 90%

4) Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?

Yes (0) -- 0%
No (59) -- 100%
Cliff comes to the poll via Andrew Sullivan, who, in his Tory way, is properly horrified. Says Sully:
The rightwing blogosphere is almost certainly to the right of most Republican voters, let alone independent voters who are open to the GOP. But I didn't expect quite this amount of loopiness.
Or, as Schecter puts it:
Can these people seriously represent the thinking of the far right? These are the kinds of people who cheered as folks were burned at the stake, dunked witches at Salem and opposed teaching Darwin at the Scopes trial. If we do not beat them, they will continually drag our country backwards.
Of course, the scary thing is that the "far right" they represent constitutes the better part of the conservative movement. Sullivan may be correct that these bloggers are to the right of most folks who pull the lever for the GOP, but it's this crowd who are running the show.

Sure, the bloggers are cruder and more bluntly nasty than the Heritage Foundation and American Conservative Union types. But all they do is recycle - with less tact but more panache - the same talking points. Do you think they'd feel out of place at CPAC? Hell, a lot of them are probably going to CPAC and planning to have a merry old time. And - with the exception of question 3 - is there anything in the above results that doesn't basically jibe with what we've been getting out of the Bush administration?

They may be extremists compared to Americans in general, but they're right in line with the conservative movement that's been in power for the last six years.

Labels: , ,

 
Comments:
Paul,

You provide the caffeine pills--I'll go on the shows and rip into conservative morons (it is my catharsis after all).

In any case, thanks for the kind words pal!

Cliff
 
Sweet... it's a deal.
 
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"An obscure but fantastic blog." - Markus Kolic

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Critical analysis of the American conservative movement from a progressive perspective. Also some stuff about the Mets.


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