Pundits Have Difficulty Discerning the Republican Party's Priorities

[babylonsister]

http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=04&year=2011&base_name=pundits_have_difficulty_discer

Pundits Have Difficulty Discerning the Republican Party's Priorities
By Mori Dinauer | Posted 04/08/2011 at 09:35 AM


What more is there to say about about the topic of the week, Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity?" Its novelty, as it were, is a complete fiction. Anybody who has paid the slightest bit of attention to American politics over the last century knows that Republicans are opposed to funding a welfare state. Anybody paying attention to American politics over the last 30 years knows that slashing income taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes or any tax falling on the richest Americans has been the top priority of the Republican party. And anyone paying attention to American politics over the last 15 years knows that Republicans have only intensified in these views, and have begun to punish apostates across the board.

Yet there seems to be utter confusion in punditry that this is what the Republican party stands for. This week, Mark Kleiman wrote, as an aside, "The basic fact about American political life today is that one of the two major parties is dominated by dangerous extremists. The basic fact about American journalistic life today is that reporters aren’t reporting that fact." I happen to think that's a pretty accurate assessment, but calling Republicans "dangerous extremists" is a value judgment, and journalists don't tend to make value judgments when reporting. But you know who does make value judgments? Opinion writers! And the dominant value judgment of the week has been how "serious," "adult," and "courageous" Paul Ryan has been.

snip//

So yes, we could use better pundits. But return to Kleiman's observation. Reporters don't need to make value judgments in order to report the substance of what the Republican party wants for America. An accurate, neutral account of Ryan's proposal would baldly state that Medicaid and Medicare as we know it would end, except for people who happen be 55 or older. It would say that this deficit reduction plan does not raise taxes in order to address the problem. It would say that further tax cuts for the wealthy would be offered, but none for poor or middle class Americans. It would say that defense spending is untouched. Armed with these basic facts, curious readers in our center-right national could perhaps judge for themselves whether Republicans are "dangerous extremists" or not.

[flamingdem]

1. Author states that the democratic party is dominated by extremists?

hahaha

[CreekDog]

2. Pundits are stupid --this is an inevitability

do you ever follow David Gergen's Twitter? it's sad, he's not dumb, he's been around DC a long time and he knows lots of stuff.

but he's always announcing how he's going to be on Anderson Cooper "to talk about the economy" or "to talk about Libya".

what's next? "to talk about when to perform a quadruple bypass?" ??? :wtf:

what on earth does he know about these subjects that he belongs on tv talking as an expert on them? :banghead:

this is why pundits always become stupid:

they start out as journalists or some other profession in DC

they then get hired to give their pedestrian opinion (as experts!) on every issue under the sun

however, doing so does not make them less popular in DC, it makes them moreso, and thus their numbers increase.