Comments on: EJ Dionne…

By: Assistant Village Idiot

Assistant Village Idiot — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:55:05 +0000

Oblio, good point. I have said the same about Maureen Dowd and Manhattan’s Upper West Side. EJD is good reading as a summary, so you don’t have to wade through a lot of other liberals vaporising.

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:15:05 +0000

kcom: oh, I know what “fisk” means alright. To fisk yourself is to present your arguments so poorly and illogically that they don’t need fisking by someone else; they fisk themselves.

By: Oblio

Oblio — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:44:10 +0000

E.J. Dionne is essential reading: he never thinks for himself; he just transcribes the inside-the Beltway Left’s conventional thinking and talking points. When he will go to the trouble of summarizing, I don’t have to. Another way of saying it is, he always reveals the position of the Left’s guns, and that is very useful for planning counter-battery fire.

By: kcom

kcom — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 06:26:34 +0000

I have to wonder, Neo, if that clip from "The Princess Bride" in the post above might not also apply here. You used the word "fisk" but I'm not sure it means what you think it means. I didn't see fisking in the Dionne article, but maybe I'm dense. I think a better description might be (to use a favorite phrase of Tim Blair): EJ Dionne beclowns himself

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 01:37:10 +0000

Good pickup, Neo. Reminds me of the famous NYT headline: Crime rate down. Why is the prison population up?

By: rickl

rickl — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:54:30 +0000

Mr. Frank Says: September 23rd, 2010 at 4:31 pm

Does it bother him that the 10% of the electorate which is black picked the president?

Actually, I blame his election on white liberals who thought that voting for a black man--any black man--would somehow expunge their sense of guilt.

By: East Bay Jay

East Bay Jay — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:20:39 +0000

EJ Dionne pronounces the ‘b’ in ‘dumb’ I bet. This is the guy that after the 2008 elections pronounced capitalism dead. Next in his sights? The 1st Ammendment?

If Dionne wants to worry about something try worrying about what black America will think when Obama isn’t re-elected. The cavalier way the MSM threw the race card was deeply irresponsible and will come back to further divide the country.

By: Mr. Frank

Mr. Frank — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:31:57 +0000

What a crock. Did he notice when Obama packed the primary caucuses with bussed in supporters to get the nomination?

Does it bother him that the 10% of the electorate which is black picked the president?

By: Daniel in Brookline

Daniel in Brookline — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:26:40 +0000

That was one of the most incoherent pieces of political analysis I’ve seen lately.

Let’s see, what arguments does EJ Dionne make?

– American discontent is better expressed by my chosen example than by a straw man. (When has any prominent Tea Party voice “proclaimed [the] unconstitutionality of the New Deal and everything since”??)

– The Tea Partiers have money. (Hard to dispute, but the point ends right there… leaving me to wonder, so what?)

– The Tea Partiers have influence out of proportion to their numbers. An important argument, if it can be supported… but this is argued by saying that recent Tea Party victories were by small margins. Uh, excuse me?… Victories by small margins are still victories. Ask JFK. Ask Woodrow Wilson.

– The point is then made that Tea Party candidates have won with majorities much smaller than the pool of registered voters. In other words, either they’re more enthusiastic about voting — likely — or they’re better at getting out the vote. (Again, so what?) EJ Dionne doesn’t seem interested in pursuing either possibility.

– Finally, let’s close with some slander about the Republican Party and claim that they’ve been supporting Tea Partiers all along (which is quite untrue indeed; very few Republicans have been willing to get on the bandwagon, and for the most part, Tea Partiers want nothing to do with them. Sarah Palin is a rare counterexample.)

Yeesh. I’m sorry I took the time to read that.

— DiB

By: Bob from Virginia

Bob from Virginia — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:01:12 +0000

Interesting how a loose knit, nebulous movement of people indignant over reckless spending morphs into a consolidated, defined, and directed political movement, without their knowledge, and then exposed by EJ Dionne.

Next, directions on how to nail cluster to the wall.