Just as it has been said that a history of Italian naval victories would be the shortest book ever written, a blog devoted to recording liberal inanities in the press and elsewhere would be endless. I have, with some difficulty, generally refrained from pointing out even real howlers, since they’re too easy to find and — like dog-bites-man stories — just what you’d expect. Still, Russell Berman’s discussion of the Democrats’ “depressing new reality” in The Atlantic deserves notice.
Berman begins:
To the very limited extent that congressional Democrats have enjoyed the last four years of gridlock on Capitol Hill, they have derived pleasure from watching the Republican Party rupture over and over again, its divisions between the conservative Tea Party and the establishment leadership preventing just about any real legislative accomplishments.
The notion that under the reign of Obama “just about any real legislative accomplishments” have been prevented by the division between Tea Party and establishment Republicans in Congress is risible, even by the low standard normally applied to liberal inanities. Last July, for example, Politifact — not a source usually friendly to conservatives — basically confirmed the charge of Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R, Kan.) that 352 bills passed by the House — “98% with bipartisan support” — were sitting on Harry Reid’s desk, unmoving. Under Reid and the Democrats, the Senate has become a virtual black hole for bills passed by the House.
It doesn’t take a genius, or even a conservative, to recognize that the absence of “just about any real legislative accomplishments” is caused by partisan disagreement over what should be accomplished, not by intramural differences between or among Republicans.
Moreover, look at Berman’s reaction to the recent “legislative accomplishment” of passing a $1.1 appropriations bill over the objections of those obstreperous Tea Party Republicans. Now he celebrates the Democratic denizens of the left-wing Warren warrens, trumpeting their objections to “a pair of onerous giveaways for Wall Street and wealthy donors.” There’s nothing noteworthy about liberals objecting to “onerous giveaways for Wall Street,” but regarding raising the limit on the amount individuals can contribute to individual party and political accounts as a giveaway to the “wealthy donors” is bizarre even by liberal standards, especially since the great bulk of individual donor contributions goes to liberals and Democrats. (The most recent data compiled by OpenSecrets.org shows that the 10 largest individual donors gave $95.5 million to Democrats and $36.75 million to Republicans, rounded off.)
