TPM's slide into Atrios-ism

More on the decline of Talking Points Memo -- main page blogger David Kurtz approvingly quotes reader "RB" saying the following:

Why doesn’t a progressive with an audience say something to the effect "This is who and what the once proud and honorable Republican Party has turned itself into. It is a party of hate, intolerance, incompetence, greed, treason, fanatical, hostile to science and reality, and totally corrupt. They have no honor and no shame. They're fascists and a cancer on our great nation, plain and simple and this is just another example of that."

Kurtz endorses the sentiment, with only the mildest parenthetical disclaimers about blanket accusations that the GOP is a party of "treason" and "fascists":

Around here we focus on showing it rather than just saying it. But with Coulter and her ilk, it's probably necessary to just say it from time to time. So, yeah, what RB says pretty much covers it. (Treason is not a charge to throw around lightly, so I'll hedge on that; and we probably flatter ourselves by saying the GOP is fascist, although I agree its fascist tendencies are alarming.)

The reason that TPM has become far more strident and one-sided since becoming a large commercial enterprise is left as an exercise for the reader.

Comments

[SomeCallMeTim]

It's not clear to what, precisely, you're objecting here. Is it all of the characterizations, or only "fascist"? It's hardly news that the Bush Administration has authoritarian impulses, promotes extreme nationalism, and was (at one time) constructing a fairly cult-like following of the President among hardcore Southern Evangelical Republicans. That gets you to the right neighborhood, if not to "fascism" itself.

[Micah Weinberg]

If it were possible to use the term fascism in a definitional rather than historical sense in a political debate, you are completely right "SomeCallMeTim" that the current incarnation of the Republican Party does have fascist tendencies.

However, the overblown rhetoric that calls the Republicans a party of "hate, intolerance, incompetence, greed, treason, fanatical, hostile to science and reality, and totally corrupt" is totally overblown, inaccurate and unhelpful. (Though that description could be accurately and profitably applied to certain members of the party.)

I equate this to the anti-drug advertising. So drugs are bad, m'kay. Many of them are really, really bad for you. As many Republican policies would be and have been bad for the country and the world. But there is also a time and place for the usage of legal and illegal drugs as there are times and places for market-based economic reforms, international armed conflict and so on.

Having a policy of insane hyperbolic take-downs of all Republicans blinds us to the time when they have useful things to share. But it also sets the rest of the country who aren't vicious partisans (such as yourself?) to get exposed to some Republican thoughts(/drugs) realize they aren't all that bad and then think that all of the other warnings that they received about them must have been bunk too.

It has been said elsewhere, but this dynamic is probably going to work greatly in favor of Hillary Clinton. Republicans have been so willfully hyperbolic in casting her as the Demon Queen of Hell that once people get to realize that she isn't said Demon Queen, they might take quite a shine to her.

[Xanthippas]

Eh, I sort of read that the opposite way, that they were unwilling to be as fiery as the readers demand. But that's just my interpretation.

[wonkie]

When was the last time the Republicans had a good idea to share?

Not snarking--seriously.

The terms used to discribe the current state of the party are, sadly, accurate. Years ago Republicans were just the party of people who only cared about their tax rate, but now the party is controlled at the top by robber barons and at the bottom by relgious extremists. The only normal people left in the party are the ones who aren't paying any attention.