Steven Pearlstein, April 20, 2012 (H/T: Hot Air Headlines)

…something fundamental seems to have changed in the political marketplace. The winning strategy is no longer to be more moderate than your opponent, to offer a bigger tent. Instead, it is to be more zealous and committed to your party’s ideology.

Steven Pearlstein, August 7, 2009:

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

Always entertaining to read one of these guys after they’ve guessed so spectacularly wrongly about who was going to win a particular battle for popular opinion, huh? – And who here is willing to bet that Pearlstein would not have kept up this particular line of Two-Minute-Hating if the Democrats had somehow managed to keep the House in 2010?  Or that he won’t revert to type if the Democrats get control of Congress back?  Anyway: I will not follow the example of Mr. Pearlstein and call him a political terrorist*.  He is, however, an excellent example of a hypocritical jackass.  Not to mention one who doesn’t understand the implications of Google.

Shorter Moe Lane: don’t talk to me about civility if you’re not going to be civil yourself.  Or even if you are only being civil because you’re trying to blend in.  The second case is worse than the first.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I suggest that you look up which Democratic politicians he has worked for in the past, though. Some definite ‘They’re spying on me with RAYS!’ – style rhetoric going on there.  Oh, wait, was that me poisoning the well again?  I am such an awful political terrorist, you know…