Inside the Beltway Syndrome
Dean Barnett addresses the breathtaking obtuseness of Morton Kondracke regarding the immigration bill, which I discussed here last week.
Mort, Fred, and Bob desperately need to get outside the Beltway and start talking to ordinary Americans. They can't see the forest for the trees.
As Thomas Sowell writes in "Upsetting the Elite," "This bill was an insult to people's intelligence from start to finish, and the elites are continuing to insult people's intelligence after being defeated...
"When the public turned out not to be as gullible as the politicians and other elites thought, the answer has been to insult their intelligence some more.
"Now the elites tell us that the protests were generated by conservative talk radio programs, and there are implications that this was due to xenophobia, if not racism. Anyone who actually listens to conservative talk radio or reads those who opposed this immigration bill will know what a crock that is. Elitists should at least come up with some new smears, instead of repeating the same old tired insults."
Update: Michael Barone, another supporter of the immigration bill, has a more reasonable response than Mort & Co.: "Those of us who have favored a 'comprehensive' immigration bill... obviously have some rethinking to do...
"We have to start by recognizing why the voting public was strongly against the bill. .. As pollster Scott Rasmussen has shown, the opposition to the bill was fueled less by anger at 'amnesty,' the idea that illegals would be rewarded for breaking the law, than it was by an astringent skepticism that it would provide real border security."
posted by Laura @ 9:20 PM
3 Comments:
In this aftermath, I think it would behoove everyone (politcos, news hacks, any with a vested interested in all decisions made on the hill, etc)to read the top 20 political blogs, both left and right, and immerse themselves in the comment sections. People like Kondracke and his arrogant ilk would get a birds eye view of the ebb and flow of the American publics' direct thoughts and reasoning on so many issues. Then, once well read and learned about 'real' voters (not views provided by lobbyists, etc), they would be far less inclined to make arses of themselves.
America's #1 talk radio host, Michael Savage, says it best, as usual: "They're about as elite as what comes out of my dog at the end of the day."
I have a degree in journalism, was editor of my college newspaper, and I can tell you the news business attracts plenty of second-raters who couldn't hack the work in engineering or business administration and headed to J School as a last resort. Like politicians, they're frustrated hams who are too ugly and untalented for real show business but still crave the limelight.
You folks take these "elites" far too seriously--because they're on television all the time with fancy hairdos and few workable phrases: "Nativist!" "Diversity!" "Paradigm shift!" They're like undiapered children who need to be supervised and scolded and carefully watched--the immigration bill just proved it a little more than usual.
They're truly the "ordinary" Americans they like to ridicule--and not even that.
Bag of Bones, its not a matter of taking them seriously and giving them credence - its a matter of how insulated from the real world they are and unfortunately, how influential they are.
If anyone is in anyone's back pocket, then all bets of clarity and understanding and reasonableness are off.
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