Public Debate Jujitsu

In this editorial, the WSJ editors seem unable to detect any rational strategy in the Republicans' negotiations over the funding of the government. No? It appears plain as day to me - drag it out so that you can elicit nuggets of total idiocy from the usual quarters on the left. Sure enough, this mornign Drudge is littered with the cheap inanities that usually emanate from the usual suspects - Pelosi calls it a "war on women," Jesse Jackson says it's like the Civil War (really? over 600,000 people will die unnecessary and mostly quite horrible deaths...??), Eleanor Holmes Norton says it's like dropping actual munitions, which kill and maim, on people. And, of course, Dingy Harry has sussed out the real reason behind all the tumult - it's all a sinister plot to keep women from getting cancer screenings. These people are stupid and ridiculous, and any opportunity to get them to display these qualities for public consumption is welcome. The Democrats' strategy is to depict the Republicans as heartless, soulless fanatics, and the best way for Republicans to counter this strategy is to simply let those making such accusations reveal themselves as moronic laughingstocks. And so it goes. The best argument against the charge is the people making it. In such serious times as we are in now, this sort of typical, cheap hyperbolizing turns Americans off and let's us sort out the serious from the supersilious. (Seriously, do people do anything other than spit out their drinks and laugh when they hear this stuff?) All the better. I say drag it out for a tad longer, just long enough to get a few Holocaust, slavery, or ethnic cleansing comparisons from the nutters out into the public discourse.