They Pay This Guy For Writing This Trash?

I just saw an NY Times article on RCP talking about MN-6, my home district. The author, Charlie Baxter, titled the article A Campaign in Crisis Mode. The article would be blank if not for the hyperventillating progressivism found in the article. Here's a taste of Mr. Baxter's liberalism:

Compared to Ms. Bachmann, a suburban radical of an increasingly familiar sort, Patty Wetterling seems rather tame and pleasant and sensible, conservative, that is. In the view of Ms. Wetterling (who came into local prominence when her son was abducted at gunpoint and disappeared in 1989) we are not in the end times but in a stable world shaped by well-financed public education, Social Security, benefits for veterans, a decent respect for the opinions of others, a reluctance to engage in foreign adventures, and balanced budgets.

I can't believe that people get paid for writing this type of trash. Mr. Baxter spins Patty Wetterling's radical anti-war views into her being reluctant "to engage in foreign adventures." That isn't sensible policy; it's stupid policy. As Sen. Bachmann said in Monday's debate, the "terrorists have declared their intentions and they haven't changed." What's so virtuous about being reluctant to kill terrorists? What's so virtuous about ignoring Ahmadinejad or Chavez?

Somewhat predictably, she draws her support largely from evangelicals. The centrist Republicans I know, those few who are still around, tend to regard her as superficial. President Bush visited Wayzata, Minneapolis's most affluent suburb (though not in the Sixth District) to speak on her behalf. The two are quite in sync.

I hate breaking this to Mr. Baxter but Central Minnesota folks are centered enough to know that people whose views are shaped by religion are quite sane. It's raging secularists like himself that we worry about. Mr. Baxter's only hope is to think things through, apply logic to information and to realize that he isn't the font of all information. It'd be helpful for him to realize that he's the font of misinformation.

I also suspect that the people that Mr. Baxter refers to as "centrist Republicans" are actually liberals like Lincoln Chafee.

But citizens don't join hands much anymore in Minnesota, nor are they encouraged to. The problem faced by politicians who wish to preserve the social programs enacted by their grandparents is that President Bush has been wildly successful at creating an air of constant crisis, both foreign and domestic. Crisis rhetoric, which is inherently radical rather than conservative, dissolves social stability.

What's scary is that Mr. Baxter is hinting that Social Security and Medicare are just fine in their current forms. Social Security isn't sustainable in its current form. That isn't just President Bush saying that. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that it's unsustainable. So did President Clinton. Any honest college econ professor, such as King Banaian from SCSUScholars, will tell you that the actuarial tables tell a pretty grim tale about Social Security as currently configured.

Here's Baxter's final flight of fantasy:

This outlook has the effect of trivializing most local issues; who cares about farm-price supports when radical Muslims want to make Stillwater part of the caliphate? And it ensures that the volume will always be turned up to 11, at least until everybody begins to suffer crisis fatigue and tries to calm down.

Considering that Mr. Baxter writes for the NY Times, you'd think that he'd remember that "radical Muslims" crashed a pair of planes into two NYC landmarks, destroying the buildings and killing almost 3,000 lives. You'd think that he would've read about terrorist groups like al Qaida in 9/11's aftermath. If Mr. Baxter had read about those terrorist groups, he wouldn't think that the Michele Bachmanns of the world were nuts for believing terrorists when they say they want to kill us.

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Posted Sunday, September 24, 2006 10:06 PM

August 2006 Posts

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