If You’re Wrong, Get Out of the Way

Filed in National by on February 18, 2009

This advise to the GOP seems perfect today:

This is an incredible piece by Rachel Maddow, but here is the money bit:

Cutting food-stamp funding to attract Republican support is proof-positive that the Republicans are not trying to come up with an effective stimulus here. If your house is on fire, and you call your fire department, and your fire department tells you to pour gasoline on the flames, they’re not actually making a good-faith effort to help you put out the fire. They’re not a good fire department.

If you’re working up policy to fix an economic crisis, which is characterized by there being no spending in the economy, and someone in that debate says, ‘OK, but cut the spending out of the rescue plan,’ they’re bad at making policy.

And you know what? It matters when you’re wrong. A whopping proportion of the Republican rhetoric about stimulus is wrong…. It’s just wrong. The time is now to take the radical step, as Americans — as civic-minded Americans concerned about our future — it’s time to take the radical step of privileging correct information over incorrect information….

If you are wrong, from here on out, you should lose the argument and you should lose your political potency. Form a flat-earthers club or something, where you talk enthusiastically to each other about your made-up economic ideas that aren’t based in reality. (italics mine) But get out of the way of the people who are actually trying to save the country.

Exactly right. The real conundrum is in reminding the media that these repubs and their minions are Habitual Offenders — and there is no percentage any more in pretending that perhaps this one time the Habitual Offenders might not be lying to you.

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Comments (3)

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  1. Unstable Isotope says:

    We need mainstream journalists to start realizing this. The coverage of the stimulus bill was awful, as bad as the run-up to Iraq, IMO.

  2. When she’s good, she’s good!

  3. cassandra_m says:

    Coverage of much of the national political scene is just awful — and I think that the Maddow model really points the way. A way where He Say She Say does not become more important than facts on the ground.