J.G., the administration’s ploy seems rather obvious. At the very time their conservative and moderate supporters are getting cold feet — from Chris Buckley to David Brooks to David Gergen – they badly feel the need to demonize the Republicans, painting them as too extreme to be taken seriously. It is imperative for them politically, as they are losing the center, to attempt to prevent the GOP from seizing it.

And then of course, there is the real issue: the tanking markets, the panic over the non-plan to rescue the banks and the general sense that the administration isn’t interested in rescuing the economy so much as embarking on a liberal escapade on matters only tangentially related to our current problems. (Bill Kristol weighs in on this point as well today.)

So although it might not be “smart,” it is sufficient to distract much of the mainstream media, which of course thinks a spat with Rush Limbaugh is front page news and the market panic is someone else’s beat. In this regard, I haven’t weighed in on the Michael Steele-Rush Limbaugh contretemps, in part because many have commented already on the foolishness of the entire episode. I think conservatives, and really all Americans, have more important things to worry about than who apologized to whom and whose remarks are more ”incendiary.” Really, we’re talking about the fate of the free market system, folks.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 6:15 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.