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I Don’t Think Drum Meant to Tell Us That….

Kevin Drum tells us about as much about Democrats as he is about Republicans with this one… and much about his own inability, as well…

“THANK GOD FOR TALK RADIO!”.. [1]..Why is Tom Tancredo such a monomaniac on the subject of illegal immigration? In an interview on our radio show with Markos Kounalakis and Peter Laufer, he explains that a lot of it isn’t about winning, it’s about redefining the playing field: [2]

What happens is, you provide people with some space to get into where they can say, “That guy is a racist xenophobe. That guy is just so crazy that we can take a more moderate stance.”

….I have to set the bar as high as I can. I’m being completely candid with you. If I had actually set out to become president, then of course it would be ludicrous for me to do it in the way I’m doing it. I don’t have that as my goal; I never have. The only way I can get on that plane and go to Iowa or New Hampshire and spend night after night in hotels in places you’ve never even heard of is by saying, “Think about why you’re doing this, Tom. It is because the issue is important. You are the person that is advancing it.” I have the luxury of saying, “I will set the goalposts as far as I can down the field because then I will have a better chance of getting the game played on my side.”

So: Politics 101. Stake out an ultra-extreme position so that when the rest of your party endorses a merely extreme position it looks like it’s a moderate compromise.

Question: why don’t liberals do this?  The stock answer is that we’re wimps, but I don’t think that’s it.

Emph is my own. He goes on to try and construct his own answer.  Trouble is, he’s missed something kind of crucial.

I mean… they DON’T do this?

Does Drum’s suggestion mean that Charlie Rangle MEANT to cause the largest tax increase in history with a proposal of his the other day [3]? I’m not sure which scares me more, frankly.  Come to think of it, it seems reasonable to suggest that Eliot Spitzer did the same thing with the driver’s licenses for illegals.

His missing that whole situation tells us more about Kevin Drum his lack of perceptive ability, as anything else he’s ever written.  He obviously figures the left to be as clean as the driven snow on the matter .  You and I both know better.  If he’d start reading something other than MOVEON publications and listen to something other than Err America, he would too.