I'm past the point where I find it stunning that the media only imposes accountability on the administration's critics. That's been maddeningly true for long enough now that we just roll our eyes and shrug our shoulders at it. But on Meet the Press yesterday, David Gregory launched one of the weirdest challenges I've ever heard to the basic conservative position on the nation's fiscal situation:
GREGORY: The question I have is who's really with you? You know, a lot of the business community, natural allies, have come around to the president's way of thinking, saying, you know, get more revenues if you want them, raise taxes if you need them. Just get something done. Silicon Valley, a lot of the innovators in the country, big job creators, big idea people, not natural allies of your way of thinking. So that's the question. Who's really with you?
OK . . . what? The big job creators in the country, including some in Silicon Valley or something - the "big idea people" - are suddenly demanding tax increases just to "get something done"?
If you have any idea what Gregory is talking about, fill me in, but what is this other than an attempt to cower Ryan into surrending by claiming that his position is unpopular - which has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it's substantively correct. The supposed position of the "big idea people," at least as Gregory presents it, is hardly compelling from a substantive perspective. It sounds like the position of a bunch of people who are just tired of hearing about the conflict all the time and want it to go away - which is understandable, but is not any sort of serious argument for a set of ideas positive or negative.
The citations of Paul Krugman and Jonathan Chait are priceless too.
Look, I understand what NBC is, but I wonder if it ever bothers these people at all that as members of a supposedly free and independent press they are constantly running interference for the White House, even if it means they have to concoct preposterous arguments like this as a way of trying to knock down the opposition party?
