Radio Daze

I thought this was especially appropriate on the day when the RNC decided to start shilling for a radio talkers latest "book":

That question — the question of how we value things and how we deliver them, the question Republicans recused themselves from — is what politics is all about. Politics is about delivering goods to people. It’s about deliberating on the value of goods and then bringing them to the public — goods like economic growth, domestic security, education opportunities, environmental health and so on. Health care is one of the goods that politics concerns itself with. And thus the question of whether the Health Care Reform will prove to be smart politics will be answered on the basis of if — and only if — it effectively delivers more and better health care to more people (at tolerable costs). I think that it will. Some people probably disagree. The purpose of the senate’s slow deliberative process is so that these different views will clash together to shape a better bill — one that delivers more goods to more Americans.

The absurdity of the Republican’s position is that they chose to ignore this basic fact of what politics is about. They acted as if the deliberation on the bill was itself the politics of the bill. They acted as if politics were not about helping people’s lives but, instead, about a kabuki warfare of lies and messaging in the realm of ideas and rightwing talk radio shows.

In other words, the GOP has not only taken its cues from talk radio, but they have entirely forgotten that talk radio doesn't actually serve a real constituency. That might work in the short term, but eventually this will have disastrous consequences.