Kevin Drum catches Bruce Bartlett of NRO in a rare moment of truth-telling: butchering Medicare and raising taxes are necessary to get the deficit under control, Bartlett says, but it would be politically inadvisable to talk about that reality until after the election, so let’s not.
Of course, the President’s re-election campaign will be devoted to dissembling that simple fact. Any Democrat who points out that the logic of the tax cuts for the half-million-dollar-a-year crowd involved an attack on entitlement spending and tax increases for the less wealthy will be accused of scare-mongering and peddling conspiracy theories.
So here’s the question for the self-appointed guardians of the national civility, such as Nicholas Kristof: If it’s wrong to call a President who currently plans to run a second national campaign centered on dissembling the budget question a liar, because the word “liar” is uncivil, what, pray, are we to call him?
AF&Opourri
Interesting reads from around the blogospheriverse.