In Which I Just Start Re-Posting Paul Krugman, Ctd.

Going "full driftglass" once again, Dr. Krugman continues to encourage pundits who have started to figure out very belatedly what every Liberal knew years and years and years ago to keep up the good work:

Today in Well, Duh ...

Ezra Klein mans up and admits he was wrong. He had written a piece suggesting that if only Republicans knew how much Obama has been willing to offer, they might be willing to make a deal. Jonathan Chait set him straight, informing him that no matter what Obama put on the table, Republicans would find a way to say that it’s not enough. ...

What Klein has belatedly learned is how unlikely such a Bargain really is; but the same logic tells us that any Grand Bargain that might somehow be struck, via Obama’s mystical ability to mind-meld Star Trek and Star Wars or something, wouldn’t last. In a year — or more likely in a minute or two — Republicans would be back, demanding more tax cuts and more cuts in social programs. They just won’t take yes for an answer.

Meanwhile, it’s not just Republicans who refuse to accept it when Obama gives them what they want; the same applies, with even less justification, to centrist pundits. As people like driftglass .. digby .. Athenae .. blue gal.. every effing Liberal blogger for the last decade Greg Sargent point out time and again, the centrist ideal — deficit reduction via a mix of revenue increases and benefits cuts — is what Obama is already offering; in fact, his proposals have been to the right of Bowles-Simpson. Yet the centrist pundits keep demanding that Obama offer what he has already offered, and condemn both sides equally (or even place most of the blame on Obama) for the failure to reach a deal. Again, informing them of their error wouldn’t help; their whole shtick is about blaming both sides, and they will always invent some reason why Obama just isn’t doing it right.

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Just for kicks, this is me.

From April.

Of 2005:

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Seems to me that anyplace outside of the GOP House of Usher (full of death and madness, and soon to collapse), getting 96% of what you asked for right out of the box is the very definition of “compromise”. Hell, the very definition of “capitulation”. Of running the table. Of winning at a walk. But “radical” and “unreasonable”?

Who the hell are you talking to?

And thus we see yet in the harsh, naked light of Sunday Morning, the iron spike on which the "Moderate" Republicans now writhe. There is no way to sound like anything other that Tom DeLay’s personal Sock Puppet Jug Band when you get stuck having to argue that blocking 35% of Clinton Nominees was "reasonable" and yet blocking 4% of Bush Nominees is "radical".

But the Lugars of the Republican world have no choice, and it is getting progressively uglier to watch. Theocrats no longer bother to hide anymore. DeLay and the Shining Path Republicans now overtly call the tune now, and this spectacle is like unto the sight of otherwise dignified men forced at gunpoint to strip naked, rub their own shit their hair and play leapfrog with each other on national television...Because Boss Tom sez, “Jump Boy!”

They are Tom DeLay's trained seal, having to humiliate themselves by Shouting Very Loudly talking points that they have to know are absurd...and while dangling at the end of a DeLay’s leash, they practically beg for EVERYONE ELSE to please, please, please let the monster have his way. Again.

And as unseemly as it to watch a once-stout heart like Lugar grovel on behalf of his Teratoid Overlords, sorry Senator, but No Fucking Way.

Were on to the “Zeno’s Paradox” con game: move half the distance between Liberty and Tyranny and call it compromise. And then move half the remaining distance. And then, half of that again...but always conspicuously in the same direction. If you want anyone outside of Der Fuhrerbunker to respect you, turn around and punch these fuckers in the throat.

So what’s the “safe word” that’ll get you out of this grotesque Iron Maiden into whish you’ve been squeezed and constricts further and further every day?

Well let’s just say that when the ‘droid arrives bearing a hologram of you saying, “Help me Obi Wan Kenobe. You’re my only hope” we’ll know you’re serious.

Until then, you’d best start liking the position of Tom DeLay’s Rump Puppy; we hear he likes it rough and bareback.

And, again just for goofs, another little slice of pie.

Also from me. 

Also from April. 

Also from 2005.

Which is starting to be a long time ago:

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And again, BoBo fills up his incredibly pricey column inches with a lot of empty puling and cavorting and zero-sum-game masturbating on the glories to compromise and centrism…before he gets to the razor he has tried to hide in the candy bar.

BoBo, do you know what Centrism actually looks like? It looks remarkably like the Democratic Party with Bill Clinton in the White House. Center-right, to be accurate and y’all even got NAFTA, GAT, Welfare Reform and a bunch of other goodies from the Eternal Republican Wish List thrown in to the deal.

And as a big “Thank You”, you blocked 35% of his judicial nominees (a little statistic that Mr. Fair ‘n Balanced very conspicuously omitted because it made his whole thesis look like the puddle of damp excreta that it actually is), and are now raving that Dems blocking 4% is somehow an unprecedented breaching of “another civilizing custom”.

"The fact is, the entire country is trapped. Harry Blackmun and his colleagues suppressed that democratic abortion debate the nation needs to have. The poisons have been building ever since. You can complain about the incivility of politics, but you can't stop the escalation of conflict in the middle. You have to kill it at the root. Unless Roe v. Wade is overturned, politics will never get better. "

“Fact is” you wormy little Quisling, the Dems spent the 90’s compromising their fool asses off – precisely like it says right here on the prescription that Dr. BoBo wrote out for us.

For their troubles they got Newt Gingrich and his GOPAC Little Red Hatespeech Book launching a carefully planned, deliberately executed verbal blitzkrieg again the Democratic Party. A coordinated national campaign of that came with a detailed list of words (Free In Every Box of Cracka’ Jacks!) to be used to demonization and humiliate Democrats at every opportunity.