The netroots are really irritating
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in Bad Decisions, Blogging, General Politics, News, Partisan HacksThe Democratic netroots are really irritating.
First they started a war with the Nevada Democratic Party because the Nevada Dems had the temerity to let Fox News Channel broadcast one of their primary debates. They’re gripe? It would “legitimize” FNC.
Never mind that it would send a couple hours of Democratic politics out over Fox’s airwaves, giving them a chance to reach voters they might never reach otherwise. Even if the Kossacks believe that all Fox viewers are partisan automatons, they’d be pre-empting Fox’s regular programming during that time. Surely they would count a two-hour shutdown of FNC as a good thing?
More irritating, it demonstrates a style over substance ideology in which it doesn’t matter what the broadcast would actually say; all that matters is that it would be said on FNC.
I don’t watch FNC; I don’t watch much television news, period. And I could understand Democrats deciding FNC wasn’t a good venue because it would force Democrats to tune in to a channel they generally dislike if they wanted to see the debate. But one gets the feeling that even if Fox started broadcasting flower-children videos tomorrow, the netroots would oppose it because it was on FNC.
At least Air America found some humor in the situation, offering to broadcast Republican primary debates. It’ll be interesting to see if the Republicans agree — although, ideology aside, Air America’s tiny listenership offers a valid reason to reject the offer.
The netroots then followed up that idiocy with a campaign to demonize moderate Democrats who aren’t sure they support Nancy Pelosi’s “date certain” Iraqi withdrawal bill. They refuse to acknowledge either the political realities Democrats in conservative districts face, or the big tent nature of the Democratic Party, or the principled disagreement about how best to untangle the Iraq mess. Disagree? Fine. Call members of your own party “saboteurs”? Lordy, they sound like Sunni fundamentalists, who consider insufficiently pious Sunnis to be even worse than nonbelievers.
Of such rigid, shallow ideology are failed movements made.
Perhaps they don’t realize how counterproductive their actions are to their own party. Those members they call “saboteurs” are the only reason Democrats control Congress. And that control is the only reason we’re finally starting to see movement and get answers on a long list of issues that were buried during the long years of one-party Republican rule. Ideological purity may be nice, but it’s not the way the real world works. Thank God.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 and is filed under Bad Decisions, Blogging, General Politics, News, Partisan Hacks. 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.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
My understanding of the Nevada “fiasco” is that Fox would be moderating the debates. If that was true, they would slant the questions to make all of them look as bad as possible. And if this was not the case, then my position on the matter was partially off base. Of course Fox could use this as “proof” that they are “Fair & Balanced” if the debates went ahead as originally planned
I don’t know exactly what you mean by “webroot”. I assume it includes organizations like Move On, who circulated one of the petitions against the Democrats “idiocy” in choosing Fox to air their debate in Nevada.
Anyway, I don’t watch much TV news either, nor do I read extremist blogs at either end of the spectrum. It tends to raise the blood pressure. I don’t like the Democratic split concerning timed withdrawal from Iraq. I’m with the Blue Dogs, too. Phased withdrawals coupled with deadlines for complete withdrawals don’t work unless we are winning, which we aren’t.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:19 am
The left and right act the same way, if you are not goose stepping in unison you are a traitor. The trouble is that without a clearly defined moderate party candidates in both parties will have to deal with their ranting extremes.
Amazing how the organizations on the left and right can get their members to froth at the mouth on command.
March 14th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
The problem I have with the people that go ballistic if FNC appears on their TV is that they scream GOP bias in 100% of all broadcasts, yet the organizations like newhounds who exist to point out bias in FNC news only point out bias in editorial and opinion broadcasting.