Why We Don't Have Nice Things

Longtime readers will be familiar with Stephen Moore, yet another serially-disgraced Conservative hack

In a 2014 Kansas City Star opinion piece entitled "What's the matter with Paul Krugman?" Moore responded to Krugman's opinion piece entitled "Charlatans, Cranks and Kansas."[11][12] In his piece, Moore claimed that job creation had been superior in low-taxation states during the five years following the recession ending June 2009. After substantial factual errors were uncovered in Moore's opinion piece, the Kansas City Star indicated that it would no longer print Moore's work without "thorough factchecking."[13]

who is (surprise!) also a full-bird colonel in the Koch Brother's Army of Darkness:

Moore founded the Club for Growth in 1999. Moore was ousted by the group's board in December 2004, and subsequently announced his resignation.[8] After his ouster from the Club for Growth, Moore founded the 501(c)(4) Free Enterprise Fund with other former Club for Growth members including Arthur Laffer and Mallory Factor.[8] In 2005, Moore left the Free Enterprise Fund to serve on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.[7] Moore is a partner in the econometrics firm Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics.[9] On January 21, 2014, the Heritage Foundation announced that Moore would rejoin the think tank as chief economist.[10] Moore is a contributing editor for National Review.[9]

Being a resourceful huckster, Mr. Moore always has his finger in the wind, trying to divine the most efficient way to profit from whichever way the rage and paranoia of the Right is blowing on any given day. These days, for example, the cleverest wingnut prospectors have hiked up Mount Trump to mine a rich vein of "Whatever You Think Of Trump, It's All Obummer's Fault Anyway [Because Isn't Everything Always Obummer's Fault?])".

Here is Mr. Moore, "economic adviser at Freedom Works and a Fox News contributor",  in the Moonie Times a couple of weeks ago (no link to spare you the pain):

The ‘Fascist’ left in America
After Trump’s call for a Muslim moratorium the name-calling began

...
The left might want to engage in some introspection and ask why so many millions of Americans — many of whom enthusiastically voted for Obama — now agree with Mr. Trump. Are these suddenly terrible people? Have they been duped by a charismatic leader? More likely the answer is that an ever-shrinking number of Americans trust Mr. Obama to keep the dangerous Muslims out. People want above all right now to keep their families safe, and since Mr. Obama has no interest in real and effective terrorist screening, many Americans say best to keep them all out for now.

If middle class American voters are so afraid, so angry, so distrustful of Washington, and feeling so economically marginalized that millions would throw their support behind a man routinely denounced as a dangerous Nazi/fascist, maybe the left might want to ask: who made things so bad that it has come to this? Without Barack Obama’s full slate of failures and his eight years of polarizing politics, there could be no Donald Trump.

Got that?  It's not merely that the Kenyan Usurper is to blame for the rise of Il Douche.  It is that, according the the serially-disgraced Mr. Moore, "many" of those who "enthusiastically voted for Obama" are now out-and-proud "Chumps for Trump!"  Another wild and ludicrous lie pooped out in the pages of the poor man's Wall Street Journal in order to makes Crazy Uncle Liberty feel smug and secure in his Fortress of Derpitude.

But here's the thing.

While on paper (well, pixels), even the few remaining professionals at, say, MSNBC clearly understand that Mr. Moore is not a man to be trusted --

Being discredited is not always a barrier to success

By Steve Benen

...
I can appreciate the fact that Art Laffer and Stephen Moore aren’t household names, so the fact that they’re having conversations with national GOP candidates probably won’t raise a lot of eyebrows with the American mainstream. But these chats nevertheless touch on an important point about Republican politics: being discredited is not a barrier to success.

Take Stephen Moore, for example, the Heritage Foundation’s chief economist. Earlier this year, after Moore published a bizarre piece criticizing the Affordable Care Act, Paul Krugman described the conservative as “a guy who has a troubled relationship with facts.”

Krugman added at the time, “I don’t mean that he’s a slick dissembler; I mean that [Moore] seems more or less unable to publish an article without filling it with howlers … in a way that ends up doing his cause a disservice.”

-- just one year ago today, as the nation writhed in the grip of "Jeb!Mania!", who did MSNBC's own Steve "Chuck Todd-lite" Kornacki turn to for sage political wisdom but:



If the Left would like to make some genuine progress, then as a movement we need to stop worrying about the agenda and tactics of our political enemies on the Right.  Yes, as always, organize and votevotevote to oppose their agenda, but their their motives, tactics and goals are plain and clear and can be met and defeated head-on if...

...in this year of 2016, the Left as a movement focused on making the Both Siderist/Centrist/Beltway media pay dearly every single fucking time they enable the batshit Right.

Leave the Center intact, and nothing will change.

Take out the Center and the Right will fall.