Erick Erickson's Blog, page 58

The Left No Longer Finds Dissent Patriotic

Workforce Fairness is releasing a series of videos chronicling left-wing intimidation, including showing up at people's houses to harass them and their families. We're pleased to debut the first of the videos here at RedState. The videos document a growing trend in American civic discourse — the use of intimidation against private citizens to punish dissent.

Listen to Media Matters For America and other outlets on the left and they claim they are outraged at Rush Limbaugh for using the word "slut."

They're OK with it when the left does it. Routinely, conservative activists are targeted for harassment, subject to degrading comments, etc. from the left and they are okay with that. Bill Maher gets invited to keynote Democratic dinners.

Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia, in a Lenten Letter to his pastoral flock, said that evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant and then tries to silence good. The secular left, having preached tolerance for years, is proving the Archbishop true with their new found intolerance for opposing views. Witness opponents to Proposition 8 in California actively targeting for harassment supporters of Proposition 8. Witness union goons showing up on the doorsteps of private citizens to scare them into submission. Witness Media Matters For America targeting American supporters of Israel and attacking them as "Israel Firsters," questioning their loyalty to the United States.

The left is trying to shut down the opposition. When they were out of power, dissent was patriotic. Now that they are in power, they want to use both the state and intimidation in the public square to shut down opposing views. It goes beyond boycotts to financially intimidate those who disagree with them. Now, the left is showing up at the private homes of American citizens they disagree with to intimidate them, threaten them, harass them, and make them pay for daring to have a different view.

The only time anyone wants to shut down opposing views is when the opposing views are winning. And that is the left's problem. Rush Limbaugh, the free market, the right to work states, etc. are all winning. And it is not just that the right is winning, the left is losing.

David Brock of Media Matters, for example, took the desperate act of spending $850,000.00 to buy his ex-boyfriend's silence about Media Matters. He only spent $100,000.00 to try to silence Rush Limbaugh, by comparison. Media Matters has been subjected to two months of revelations that raise questions about their tax exempt status and coordination with the Democratic Party.

But it is not just Media Matters. It is unions too.

Like Media Matters, the unions are threatening and bullying businesses. They are threatening private citizens. Threatening the livelihood of businesses and individuals, unions, Media Matters, and the left are intending to shut down the opposition through fear of a loss of livelihood.

What is most appalling to me, however, is how the right has failed to counter this bullying with an aggressive adverttising campaign showing what is happening — showing the gay rights protestors in California targeting donors to the Proposition 8 campaign, showing Media Matters targeting businesses that support free speech, showing unions targeting small businesses that won't give in to union demands, showing union thugs showing up at the private residences of individuals to silence and intimidate them, etc.

That may be changing. Workforce Fairness is releasing a series of videos chronicling left-wing intimidation, including showing up at people's houses to harass them and their families. We're pleased to debut the first of the videos here at RedState.

Morning Briefing for March 26, 2012

RedState Morning Briefing

March 26, 2012

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. The Left No Longer Finds Dissent Patriotic

2. MSNBC's Karen Finney Says the Koch Brothers Killed Trayvon Martin

3. PTA Assaulting School Choice in South Carolina

4. And Now for a Postal Bailout

5. Evan Feinberg in Pennsylvania

———————————————————————-

1. The Left No Longer Finds Dissent Patriotic

Workforce Fairness is releasing a series of videos chronicling left-wing intimidation, including showing up at people's houses to harass them and their families. We're pleased to debut the first of the videos here at RedState. The videos document a growing trend in American civic discourse — the use of intimidation against private citizens to punish dissent.

Listen to Media Matters For America and other outlets on the left and they claim they are outraged at Rush Limbaugh for using the word "slut."

They're OK with it when the left does it. Routinely, conservative activists are targeted for harassment, subject to degrading comments, etc. from the left and they are okay with that. Bill Maher gets invited to keynote Democratic dinners.

Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia, in a Lenten Letter to his pastoral flock, said that evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant and then tries to silence good. The secular left, having preached tolerance for years, is proving the Archbishop true with their new found intolerance for opposing views. Witness opponents to Proposition 8 in California actively targeting for harassment supporters of Proposition 8. Witness union goons showing up on the doorsteps of private citizens to scare them into submission. Witness Media Matters For America targeting American supporters of Israel and attacking them as "Israel Firsters," questioning their loyalty to the United States.

The left is trying to shut down the opposition. When they were out of power, dissent was patriotic. Now that they are in power, they want to use both the state and intimidate in the public square to shut down opposing views. It goes beyond boycotts to financially intimate those who disagree with them. Now, the left is showing up at the private homes of American citizens they disagree with to intimidate them, threaten them, harass them, and make them pay for daring to have a different view.

The only time anyone wants to shut down opposing views is when the opposing views are winning. And that is the left's problem. Rush Limbaugh, the free market, the right to work states, etc. are all winning. And it is not just that the right is winning, the left is losing.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. MSNBC's Karen Finney Says the Koch Brothers Killed Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin's death in Florida is a terrible tragedy made even worse by a police department that seemingly bungled the investigation. There are multiple eyewitnesses, some who saw the shooter, George Zimmerman, yelling for help. Others saw Trayvon Martin yelling for help.

It shouldn't be a partisan issue.

But MSNBC decided to make it one. According to Karen Finney on MSNBC, the Koch Brothers, NRA, and other conservatives are responsible for Trayvon Martin's death.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. PTA Assaulting School Choice in South Carolina

As a mother of four, the first of which entered public school last year, keeping up with my children's education is extremely important to me. I've heard the stories of children fearing the end of the world due to global warming and seen the history books that exclude any Republican or Conservative from the important events that have shaped our country. My husband and I moved to a small town in South Carolina due in part to the notoriety of the schools. I immediately joined the PTA, looking forward to communicating and working with other parents to help our children achieve the high standards to which we hold them accountable.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case, this PTA had an agenda and used its access to my email address to push that agenda.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. And Now for a Postal Bailout

It's another week in Washington, and it's yet another bailout. This time, taxpayers will be tapped for another $41 billion to subsidize the healthcare retirement benefits of postal workers – benefits that are quite scarce in the private sector.

Democrats have a serious problem with creative destruction and advancements in technology. For self-described progressives, they are quite regressive when it comes to efficiency in markets and use of technology. They exhibit nostalgia for 14th century energy technology and 20th century banking technology. Hence, they don't care too much for market progression. In concerted drives to hold back the tide of technology, they are quick to offer a helping hand to a dying industry. One such industry is the mail delivery.

It's no secret that the United States Postal Service is on its way out. The transition to electronic communication, in conjunction with the success of private mail carriers, has dramatically reduced the demand for their service. Consequently, they no longer generate enough revenue to function as a self-sufficient entity, particularly when it comes to paying employee retirement benefits. In recent years, the USPS has patched the annual losses with borrowed money from the Treasury. However, it is now in such dire straits that it's expected to hit the $15 billion borrowing cap later this year. It needs extra taxpayer cash to fill in the gaps.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Evan Feinberg in Pennsylvania

The Republican Primary in Pennsylvania is one month away. I have documented just how terrible Congressman Tim Murphy is.

I'd like to encourage you to support his opponent, Evan Feinberg. Evan is endorsed by Senators Tom Coburn and Rand Paul. He is a solid conservative and a great fit for Tim Murphy's district. Conservatives lost a primary with Don Manzullo's defeat last week. What conservatives are seeing is conservative activists not opening their checkbooks. I realize people don't have a lot of money to give these days, but the cruel reality is that conservatives need money to get elected and our opponents are opening their checkbooks up while we are not.

So do what you can for Evan Feinberg. We need him in Congress.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

MSNBC's Karen Finney Says the Koch Brothers Killed Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin's death in Florida is a terrible tragedy made even worse by a police department that seemingly bungled the investigation. There are multiple eyewitnesses, some who saw the shooter, George Zimmerman, yelling for help. Others saw Trayvon Martin yelling for help.

It shouldn't be a partisan issue.

But MSNBC decided to make it one. According to Karen Finney on MSNBC, the Koch Brothers, NRA, and other conservatives are responsible for Trayvon Martin's death.

They have blood on their hands because they apparently built a time machine with their billions and went back to 1789 and inserted the second amendment into the Bill of Rights.

Idiot.

Nikki Haley at the NRCC

I was at a separate meeting in Florida a few weeks ago where Nikki Haley spoke. She left such a good impression people were still taking about her the next day. It's not often you hear people putting Thatcher's name in the same sentence with the Governor of one of the fifty states. She really left a strong, positive impression.

Here's her speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee meeting from a couple of weeks ago. Well done.

People Are Badly Misinterpreting Rick Santorum

Much hay is being made of Rick Santorum saying he'd prefer Obama to Romney. Except that is not what he said or what he meant. Certainly he could have had a clarifying clause in his statement, but given the context, I think he was saying no more and no less than what I have been saying.

I'm on record thinking it is over and Romney is the nominee, but the hand-wringing over Santorum is juvenile and reminds me again why I so dislike Team Romney. We're going to have put up with months of Team Romney whining about things if he is the nominee. This is the latest example.

What Santorum said was:

"You win by giving people a choice," Santorum said during a campaign stop in Texas. "You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different than the person in there."

Santorum added: "If they're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future."

I think it was clear from the context of his remarks that Santorum was not expressing his own thinking, but expressing the thinking of general election voters. And I think he is absolutely right, which is also why I think Romney makes such a bad nominee (not that I think Santorum would be any better).

As I have said before

conservatives may not like Barack Obama, but most other people do. And when faced with a guy you like and a guy you don't like who says he can fix an economy that no longer needs fixing, you're going to go with the guy you like.

Right now Mitt Romney has higher negatives with independent voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2008. Add in the Etch-A-Sketch comment and he is ripe to be painted as the next iteration of the Massachusetts flip-flopper no one can trust.

I think Santorum was spot on in describing how voters would see the race in November. Why would they want to give up a guy many of them like, but who don't much care of his job performance, for a guy they don't like whose own campaign admits is like an Etch-A-Sketch.

Media Matters' Desperate Need to Focus on Rush Limbaugh

The Washington Times has the story of Media Matters' latest effort to drive Rush Limbaugh from the airwaves. They'll use radio ads in eight cities.

In one of the anti-Limbaugh ads, listeners are urged to call the local station that carries Limbaugh to say "we don't talk to women like that" in our city.

Ad time was purchased in Boston; Chicago; Detroit; Seattle; Milwaukee; St. Louis; Macon, Ga.; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The cities were selected to support active local campaigns against Limbaugh or because of perceptions Limbaugh may be vulnerable in that market, said Angelo Carusone of Media Matters.

What I found interesting was Media Matters listing Macon, GA. I'm writing this from Macon right now. It's where I got my start on the radio and where I live. There is no active local campaign to silence Rush Limbaugh.

That's when I realized what Media Matters is doing. They say they are advertising in some locations because "of perceptions Limbaugh may be vulnerable in that market."

Media Matters is trying to be a glory hound and take credit if Rush Limbaugh is dropped when they have nothing to do with it.

Three stations in the list, Macon, Detroit, and Chicago, are Cumulus Media stations. Cumulus Media has plans to launch Mike Huckabee as a competitor to Rush Limbaugh later this year. In fact, Cumulus's management has, though to a lesser degree than Media Matters, been playing up Rush Limbaugh's comments on Sandra Fluke suggesting Mike Huckabee would be a more responsible alternative.

Already I'm being told Cumulus will offer Huckabee as a cheaper programming option than Limbaugh. Likewise, they plan to start putting Huckabee on a number of Cumulus stations around the country as their contract with the Premier Radio for Rush's show expires. Even Rush's flagship station, WABC, might go to Huckabee as it is owned by Cumulus.

When it happens, Media Matters will try to take credit when, in fact, these are business decisions by Cumulus Media, which is struggling financially following its purchase of Citadel Broadcasting and wants some in house talent it can syndicate instead of having to pay Premier syndication fees.

What's most important though is why Media Matters is trying to keep the focus on Rush Limbaugh.

Media Matters is trying to steer this conversation away from all the problems Media Matters has had in the past month.

The Daily Caller began their "Inside Media Matters" coverage on the evening February 12, 2012; they would file several more entries in the category over the coming weeks.

Media Matters might have been able to skate by a while longer without much notice except Alan Dershowitz came out against Media Matters over its use of anti-semitic slurs. He even argued that Media Matters could become the Jeremiah Wright of 2012. Media Matters had to find a target to which they could redirect attention.

David Brock and Media Matters have by now become conspicuously silent over the Daily Callers reporting — despite being the self-appointed conservative misinformation police — including largely ducking a Daily Caller question at a Brock book event on February 27, 2012, over M. J. Rosenberg's use of the anti-Semitic "Israel firster" slur, arguing that they "don't [have to] respond to trolls."

The heat was on. On February 29, 2012, the Rush Limbaugh controversy came to life.

Bill Kristol's Emergency Committee for Israel ran a full-page ad in the New York Times on March 1, 2012 calling out both Media Matters and the Center for American Progress — and their donors — for their involvement in promoting the interests of the murderous Iranian and Syrian regimes on the Israeli-Palestinian question.

Alan Dershowitz, in a March 18 interview with NewsMax, noted that the White House appears to be distancing itself from Brock and Media Matters as the election grows closer; for a guy like Brock, who wants to style himself as a "kingmaker in Democratic politics," even a tacit snub from the President and the White House has got to be personally painful.

Media Matters put its years-in-the-making astroturf campaign to strip Limbaugh of his sponsors into effect right as Bill Kristol, Alan Dershowitz, and others were getting media traction. That Media Matters had had its astroturf campaign against Rush just sitting on a shelf collecting dust was uncovered by Prof. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection on March 15, 2012. Lefties tried to laugh off the astroturf charge, but two days ago an excellent bit of investigation revealed that Jacobson was, in fact, right.

David Brock wrote an op-ed about Rush Limbaugh and placed it in Politico the other day — a full three weeks after the Sandra Fluke story began, after ducking and dodging probing questions about their organization, leadership, about M.J. Rosenberg, and possibly not-really-tax-exempt practices. It's not like Brock wrote this op-ed three weeks ago when the whole thing blew up and had some kind of trouble placing it. I think just about everyone inside and outside of journalism knows the Politico and MSNBC serve as near proxies for Media Matters' hit jobs.

David Brock and Media Matters have been trying to bully, intimidate, and otherwise silence other views for some time. As conservatives finally started digging into Media Matters, the organization had to do something to get attention away from them. They grabbed hold of Rush's comment and fired up their dormant Stop Rush campaign right as the heat was building on Media Matters.

That now presents a conundrum for conservatives. We absolutely should be defending Rush Limbaugh. But in the mean time we should also not let up on Media Matters and its tax exempt status. The Daily Caller's reporting suggests Media Matters should not be tax exempt. Media Matters' behavior of late also suggests while they want to shut down Rush by driving away his advertisers, Media Matters might have its own problems with its donors.

Morning Briefing for March 23, 2012

RedState Morning Briefing

March 23, 2012

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Media Matters' Desperate Need to Focus on Rush Limbaugh

2. People Are Badly Misinterpreting Rick Santorum

3. Obama's Secret Debt Milestone

4. Washington Post's Lisa Miller Is An Idiot. Part 2.

5. The Club for Growth on the Ryan budget

6. Same Talking Points For ALL The Countries

———————————————————————-

1. Media Matters' Desperate Need to Glory Hound Rush Limbaugh

The Washington Times has the story of Media Matters' latest effort to drive Rush Limbaugh from the airwaves. They'll use radio ads in eight cities.

"In one of the anti-Limbaugh ads, listeners are urged to call the local station that carries Limbaugh to say "we don't talk to women like that" in our city.

"Ad time was purchased in Boston; Chicago; Detroit; Seattle; Milwaukee; St. Louis; Macon, Ga.; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The cities were selected to support active local campaigns against Limbaugh or because of perceptions Limbaugh may be vulnerable in that market, said Angelo Carusone of Media Matters."

What I found interesting was Media Matters listing Macon, GA. I'm writing this from Macon right now. It's where I got my start on the radio and where I live. There is no active local campaign to silence Rush Limbaugh.

That's when I realized what Media Matters is doing. They say they are advertising in some locations because "of perceptions Limbaugh may be vulnerable in that market."

Media Matters is trying to be a glory hound and take credit if Rush Limbaugh is dropped when they have nothing to do with it.

Three stations in the list, Macon, Detroit, and Chicago, are Cumulus Media stations. Cumulus Media has plans to launch Mike Huckabee as a competitor to Rush Limbaugh later this year. In fact, Cumulus's management has, though to a lesser degree than Media Matters, been playing up Rush Limbaugh's comments on Sandra Fluke suggesting Mike Huckabee would be a more responsible alternative.

Already I'm being told Cumulus will offer Huckabee as a cheaper programming option than Limbaugh. Likewise, they plan to start putting Huckabee on a number of Cumulus stations around the country as their contract with the Premier Radio for Rush's show expires. Even Rush's flagship station, WABC, might go to Huckabee as it is owned by Cumulus.

When it happens, Media Matters will try to take credit when, in fact, these are business decisions by Cumulus Media, which is struggling financially following its purchase of Citadel Broadcasting and wants some in house talent it can syndicate instead of having to pay Premier syndication fees.

What's most important though is why Media Matters is trying to keep the focus on Rush Limbaugh.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. People Are Badly Misinterpreting Rick Santorum

Much hay is being made of Rick Santorum saying he'd prefer Obama to Romney. Except that is not what he said or what he meant. Certainly he could have had a clarifying clause in his statement, but given the context, I think he was saying no more and no less than what I have been saying.

I'm on record thinking it is over and Romney is the nominee, but the hand-wringing over Santorum is juvenile and reminds me again why I so dislike Team Romney. We're going to have put up with months of Team Romney whining about things if he is the nominee. This is the latest example.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Obama's Secret Debt Milestone

Here is a debt milestone that we surpassed this week, yet you won't read about it anywhere in the media. The gross federal debt has increased more under Obama in just 3.2 years than it did during Bush's entire 8-year tenure. And Bush was no limited government conservative either.

When President Bush was sworn in on January 20, 2001, the total federal debt stood at $5.728 trillion. On January 20, 2009, the day he left office, the debt had increased to $10.629 trillion, a jump of $4.9 trillion. Just 38 months later, the debt has increased another $4.954 trillion to a grand total of $15.583 trillion! Amazingly, $4.514 trillion, or 91% of the debt increase comes from the public share of the debt, which now stands at $10.8 trillion.

We should also keep in mind that we are on pace to breach the $16.394 trillion debt limit before the November elections, even with the uptick in revenue. That means that he will have amassed almost $6 trillion in debt by the time he, God willing, leaves office next January. And it's not just the $6 billion. He has set us on such an unsustainable trajectory that we will never achieve a balanced budget without massive restructuring of government. If Obama's proposed budget blueprint was allowed to come to fruition, the federal debt would reach $26 trillion in 10 years assuming rosy revenue predictions.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Washington Post's Lisa Miller Is An Idiot. Part 2.

Earlier this month I posted on the attack by Lisa Miller, the Washington Post's egregiously stupid religion correspondent, on Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney because they had large families. Miller found large families to be vaguely threatening to her self esteem and indicative of a "smug fecundity" and not valuing women for anything other than their ability to reproduce.

Today Miller doubles down and accuses Rick Santorum of being a "cafeteria Catholic."

For those who aren't familiar with the term, a cafeteria Catholic applies to Catholics who dissent from Church dogmas. These are the "smells and bells" Catholics who have some cultural attachment to the Church but find that its teachings on sodomy, birth control, etc. gives them hives and boils on their butt.

For her evidence, Miller trots out the following killer evidence.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. The Club for Growth on the Ryan budget

Yesterday, the Club for Growth released a statement saying that the Ryan budget was "on balance, a disappointment to fiscal conservatives." We applauded the strong pro-growth reforms in the bill, but the reasons for our opposition were twofold:

First, the budget doesn't balance within 10 years, or for that matter, even 20 years. Our country is currently enduring unsustainable trillion-dollar deficits. We cannot wait until 2040 — the year the Ryan budget balances (page 84) — in order to arrest our ever-growing national debt.

Second, we are opposed to how the budget dismantles the annual sequestration spending cuts enacted into law by last year's Budget Control Act (also known as the debt-limit deal). As you may recall, the debt deal established annual discretionary spending caps for the next ten years. But the debt deal also required additional cuts (both discretionary and mandatory) because the supercommittee failed. Therefore, for the upcoming year, the real number that needs to be achieved, beyond the spending cap, is $110 billion in cuts in total spending authority. But Ryan's budget achieves less than that: $19 billion in discretionary cuts and $53 billion in cuts to mandatory authority, of which only $18 billion would be included in budget reconciliation, a fast-track process requiring committees to actually pass implementing legislation.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

6. Same Talking Points For ALL The Countries

Danish broadcaster Thomas Buch-Anderson from Detektor has analyzed some of what President Obama has to say about other nations.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Trayvon Martin — The Facts and the Bubble #EERS

Tonight, I'm going to spend a bit of time discussing the Trayvon Martin story. There seems to be a concerted effort by the left to take on this cause and turn it into some sort of partisan issue. But there isn't a partisan issue. There is, however, a matter of justice. There is also a difference between many of us and what we think is news and what others think is news. What I didn't think was a national news story is clearly a national news story to a lot of people. Why the disparity? I'm going to get into it tonight. At 7pm ET, Roland Martin will join me to discuss it.

You can listen live tonight on the WSB live stream and call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK. The show starts at 6pm ET.

Consider this an open thread.

An Extra Note on Pundits

Let me add a bit of extra "get off my lawn" bile to my morning post on young pundits who don't know their history.

There's another disturbing trend and it has both Matt Lewis and me extremely aggravated. I'm not sure he's written on it yet so I will. He and I were lamenting this a few weeks ago at dinner.

The number of pundits on television, radio, and the internet who have decided to mouth off about political campaigns and have no freaking clue how to run a political campaign is really out of control. The other day I was listening to some young pretty pundit on television who was described as a Democratic strategist mouth off about campaigns. I had never heard of her. That's not a big deal as there are lots of people I've never heard of down here in Macon, GA.

But I googled the young lady and found out that her resume consisted of pretty much nothing, which was self-evident from the clueless way she spoke about campaigns. It really is rampant.

I got my start in politics in earnest in 1994 doing grassroots coalition building on a voluntary basis for a guy running for congress. I moved up to helping with fundraising, press releases, GOTV, etc. By the time RedState started, I was flying around the country helping people run for office, scripting commercials, reading poll data, and doing precinct by precinct turnout estimates based on historic data.

You would be shocked how many so called campaign experts on television, radio, and the internet have never so much as phone banked for a candidate, let alone run a campaign. This is not to say a person cannot become an expert or sharp analyst on campaigns who has never actually sat in a campaign office stuffing envelopes at 3 o'clock in the morning. But it is to say that many who pose as authorities are not.

In an effort to get the youngest, prettiest people on television and build blogs around campaign analysis from which one hopes to derive some level of reputation, the left, right, and center have started getting information about the political lay of the land from people who really don't know much more than those relying on them for the information.

Now get back off my lawn, please.

Forgetting History

I have a confession to make.

I am a thirty-something pundit on television and radio and I am frequently aggravated by many twenty and thirty-something pundits on television and radio. It is even a non-partisan aggravation.

We all make mistakes and I am sure someone can be critical of me for the same reason I find so many up and coming political pundits so aggravating, but I try to do my homework. I do keep a Lexis-Nexis account. I do read my history books. Mistakes happen, but it seems a lot of up and coming soon to be somebodies are making needless mistakes.

This may sound like a Matt Lewis inspired "get off my lawn" screed, but put very simply, a lot of pundits of the twenty and thirty-something variety have absolutely no sense of history. For them, partisan politics began at Bush vs. Gore and history did not exist before November of 2000.

Made worse are the pundits who decide to completely re-write history to fit their narrative, no matter how wrongheaded, foolish, or just plain dumb their re-write is. A good example of what I'm talking about comes from Ben Domenech's excellent Transom.

Ezra Klein, who once said no one pays attention to the constitution because it is so old, has decided Jimmy Carter's "malaise speech" was popular. You will no doubt be not exactly surprised to learn that Hendrik Hertzberg totally believes the malaise speech was awesome too. Hertzberg was the speechwriter.

But that gets history wrong. Twenty and thirty-something pundits should know better.

As Ben Domenech, himself a former speech writer, notes in the context of Presidential speeches, the Carter speech was popular at first, but historically it is wrong to say it was popular as it came to be viewed very negatively. A pundit claiming it was popular should really note the popularly was fleeting instead of simply claiming it was popular. To this day, when seasoned politicos reference "malaise speeches" they do not mean popular speeches.

From Ben Domenech, relevant to the larger question of Presidential speeches:

These two pages from Steve Hayward's book share some reaction. Hayward notes that at the time, The New Republic editorialized that the speech was a "pop sociology stew" filled with "servile flatteries": "Carter seems to think that teaching us to sing 'Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella' can be a substitute for leading us in out of the rain. Fortunately, he utterly lacks the rhetorical skill for such a con job." The Economist labeled it "amateurism." One labor leader who had supported Carter in 76 was quoted as saying: "The fault is his, not ours, and asking us to say something nice about America is like Gerald Ford telling us to pin on little lapel buttons and Whip Inflation Now." The point is that the people responded positively in the immediate, but a critical eye quickly tore the speech apart. It became the starting point for mockery of Carter's essential failing: that, as Hayward has written elsewhere, that "Carter ran for president promising us 'a government as good as the people,' only to discover the people were no good."

This should serve as a reminder that speeches aren't just assessed in the immediate – it's whether they have lasting value that matters and determines their relevancy over time. [Emphasis added]

Too many pundits say stuff like "the malaise speech was popular" and it seems most of the ones who do are the twenty and thirty somethings who really have no sense of history. I was four years old when Carter gave that speech and I am aware enough of history to know that the reception to the speech hurt Carter.

Matthew Yglesias is another example of pundits who just have no basic awareness of things that lead them to ask dumb questions like "Why does Ohio have so many separate medium-sized cities instead of a single giant metropolis?" and pondering why Miami didn't expand more to the west, etc.

Every pundit will make mistakes or get history wrong. I am as guilty as any. But I am noticing more and more that as organizations on the left and right and the media in general rush to build up a core of young pundits, they are getting noncontroversial, readily agreed to by both sides, history wrong.

A few weeks ago I talked to a young conservative pundit who will go nameless (no offense for bringing this back up) who mouthed off the standard pablum that Ronald Reagain in 1980 was a shoo-in, everyone knew he would be the nominee, and it was nothing like this year's primary. He did not know that there was an effort to get Gerald Ford to run in 1980. He did not know that Republican leaders in Washington pushed George H. W. Bush aggressively as a way to stop Reagan. He did not even know that John Anderson had been a Republican before bolting to run as an independent.

As pundits get old and eventually die, they will certainly be replaced by younger people. But left or right, I hope they learn to use Lexis-Nexis or at least read through wikipedia before offering up opinions without any historic context of anything that might have happened before George Bush beat Al Gore by a few hundred votes in Florida.

Now get off my lawn.