To the Extreme

As we all know and expect, Republicans constantly attack liberals for having extremist positions. But why is it they only seem to be able to do so by focusing on unknown liberals who are unrepresentative of most liberals (eg, Ward Churchill), or by inventing absurd positions that bare no relation to our actual position? You'd think if we were such oddball extremists it would be easy to find mainstream liberal views that people actually have.

I mentioned the other day Condi Rice's reference of liberals who think terrorism didn't start until after Bush invaded Iraq, and now we go to Carpetbagger with this quote from Giuliani:

“I’m for victory,” Giuliani said. Democrats, he added, are “living in a world where they refuse to admit the existence of Islamic terrorism.”

Huh? What liberal denies the existence of Islamic terrorism? As Carpetbagger says, our argument has always been that Bush was doing a bad job fighting terrorism. Specifically, that we thought the Iraq War was not only a distraction from the fighting terrorism, but that it was making things worse. And just as our Vietnamese opponents didn't follow us home to attack us after we left their country, the Iraqi's won't follow us home either. They just want us out of their country and these aren't the people who were attacking us before we invaded.

Now, this is a debatable point, I suppose. They could argue that this war is different and that these people will follow us home. I have no idea why they'd wait until we left, as an attack on us in America would be far more effective than attacking us in Iraq, and that having our soldiers in Iraq is not preventing that. In fact, I think we're an easier target with the troops in Iraq, particularly when we consider the extra money we're tossing away there that could go towards securing the homeland. And if Al Qaeda wants to attack us, I don't see why they'd wait until after we left Iraq.


But regardless, in no case are we ignoring this threat. You can disagree with our plans for dealing with the threat, but you can't pretend we don't have one. Yet that's exactly what Rudy's doing. And he's doing it because that's what the GOP base wants to hear. But that's not what they need to hear. In fact, it only pushes them deeper into crazytown. And the more they hear this claptrap, the further from reality they become.

That's why it's so difficult for us to talk to conservatives. They have absolutely no idea what we're talking about and their basic assumptions are completely whack. And how can they win arguments if they don't even understand what we're talking about? And so these people continue to push further to the right while imagining that everyone else is shifting left...except they've been told that it's only the "extremists" who disagree with them. But that's no real difference. They think anyone's an extremist who doesn't agree with them. They're just not willing to admit to how big a group that really is.

So they have to doubt the polls and scratch their heads and invent more and more extreme excuses for why people aren't agreeing with them. Media bias. It's the internets. Whatever. They know who the extremists are, and it's the people their leaders say they are. And the guy who gets to be their next leader is the guy who will tell them the most extreme lies about us. That's been working for their current leader, who now polls consistently around 30% approval. Maybe the new guy can push it all the way down to 20%. After all, there's nothing more extreme about your enemy than having a lot more of them.