NP: Radiohead, Hail To The Thief

Hank is forcing me to stay honest and/or clarify what I'm trying to say, and I appreciate it. Although part of me thinks he's equating me with arguments I've never made just because I use a few of the same words, but hence the need for being more clear.

I'm NOT necessarily buying into the "extreme and angry left" argument Klein is trying to make, badly by most accounts. What I'm trying to say is that there's an inherent danger to the argument that "anyone who is offended by what I say isn't part of the audience I'm trying to reach anyway," and what we're seeing with Coulter is a manifestation of that. She even plays right into it, saying that conservatives will stick by her "no matter what."

The reason this is dangerous to the left is twofold. First, Coulter seems to assume that because all conservatives agree with her on some things, all conservatives agree with her on all things, and they'll follow her wherever she goes. As with most things coming out of the right these days, the reality on the ground is much different. Conservatives clearly aren't all with her on this, unless she's discounting any conservative who thinks she's out of line as not really a conservative, which is, again, part of the thing I'm trying to point out.

The second assumption is that there are enough conservatives out there who do agree with her to somehow validate her opinions as worth hearing in the larger debates. Not only is she getting a smaller slice of the pie, but we're making the pie lower, to borrow and adapt a phrase from Dubya himself. And I find it interesting that Markos willfully ignores this in order to paint all of conservatism with the Coulter brush. But that's his ballgame.

My distaste for that particular ballgame goes back to the first part, about this implicit assumption that if you agree with me on a few points, you agree on all of them. In another post, Kos is effectively saying that you can't even be friends with Joe Lieberman and still call yourself a Democrat, that politics is more important than personal bonds. And come on, Dennis Kucinich needs friends.

Yeah, I'm a bit of an idealist, and I really don't like slash-and-burn politics, from either side. Sue me.

Back to the original point, the danger to the left is that they adopt this "only preaching to the choir" approach, and do it early enough that they burn the middle that's currently on board with them before the 2008 election. They're not there yet, by any stretch, but I see some signs, and those signs worry me. On the other hand, it could lead to the same schism I see coming on the right, and then we've got four or five separate political parties instead of three.