The political craziness just gets crazier, and the Infotainment Noozers cheer it on. Thank goodness for E. J. Dionne Jr. and Paul Krugman

As we all know, high prices at the pump are part of an administration plot, at least according to President-to-be Willard Inc. -- "the sort of thing," says Paul Krugman, "you used to hear only from people who also believed that fluoridated water was a Communist plot."

"Thanks to [Rep. Paul] Ryan, we now know that this election is not about deficits at all. It is about whether we will respond to growing inequalities of wealth and income by creating even larger inequalities of wealth and income."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his WaPo column today devoted to
this week's three great lessons in real right-wing priorities

by Ken

In case you thought the Republican presidential contest couldn't get any sillier, consider that we've reached the point where mere silliness takes the plunge into preposterousness. On Saturday both the WaPo and NYT political insider junkies advanced to the subject of a running mate for the life form that emerges from the nominating process, now that it's (once again) all but certain to be the Incorporated Willard.

OH NO, IT'S "VEEPSTAKES 2012"!

On washingtonpost.com's "Fix" blog, Fixmaster Chris Cillizza offered "Veepstakes 2012: The Inaugural Edition," with an annotated Top 10 list of his contenders. The initial Fix "line," in case you missed it, minus the nattering verbiage (if you want Fixian "reasoning," you can get it onsite via the link above), was:

10. Paul Ryan
9. Mitch Daniels
8. Tim Pawlenty
7. John Thune
6. Chris Christie
5. Susana Martinez
4. Booby Bobby Jindal
3. Rob Portman
2. Bob McDonnell
1. Marco Rubio

Question: Is there anyone on this list you would trust to watch your cocker spaniel for just the length of time it would take you to dash into the dry cleaner to pick up your stuff?

Perhaps better still, though, is this gem from the NYT, first a post from the nytimes.com "The Caucus" blog, "Vetting a Running Mate in a Post-Palin World," and then an actual newspaper piece by Richard W. Stevenson, "Raising the Bar for Vetting a No. 2." Well, no, I didn't actually read them. Do you really think I'm going to waste a NYT free click on the likes of this? I just think it's delicious to think of the Republicans applying a "raised bar" vetting process to their vice presidential nominee when they've spent all these months trying to distinguish among a pack of would-be presidential candidates who, if you could pool all of their collective brain power, would compare unfavorably with a goldfish.

Vetting, for goodness' sake? More hilariously still, raising the bar? Stop, you're killing me!

I only wish there was any indication that this was meant humorously.

E. J. DIONNE JR. ON THE WEEK'S 3 GOP MOMENTS OF CLARITY

Meanwhile, back in reality, the op-ed heavy hitters are in a groove. The Post's E. J. Dionne Jr. has a sensational column that's misleadingly titled "The right's Etch A Sketch imperative." Oh, E.J. does indeed contemplate the Willard campaign's Etch A Sketch moment, and does so as elegantly as I can imagine it.

Romney later said [aide Eric Fehrnstrom] was talking about post-primary changes that would be made "organizationally," a claim that is plainly untrue. Ironically, the semi-denial reinforced the lesson Fehrnstrom taught: To win, Romney is willing to change not only his own positions but also reality itself.

Conservatives will need an exceptionally powerful Etch A Sketch to wipe the nation’s memory clean of the education it received during the 2012 campaign’s most enlightening week so far.

[Note: I have taken the liberty of correcting the Post's "Etch a Sketch" spelling to "Etch A Sketch," which as far as I've been able to determine is the Ohio Art Company's consistent spelling. -- Ed.]

But as E.J.'s last paragraph indicates, Etch A Sketchgate is only one of three developments he's considering from the week past:

Clarifying moments are rare in politics. They are the times when previously muddled issues are cast into sharp relief and citizens get a chance to look past the spin and obfuscation.

Americans were blessed with three such moments last week.

And Etch A Sketchgate seems almost a tack-on to two that concern basic policy matters:

* the revelation in Paul "The Doofus" Ryan's latest budget nightmare, by means of which he "made absolutely clear that he is not now and never was interested in deficit reduction." E.J.'s devastating (and of course absolutely correct) conclusion:

Thanks to Ryan, we now know that this election is not about deficits at all. It is about whether we will respond to growing inequalities of wealth and income by creating even larger inequalities of wealth and income.

* the cruel exposure, via the belated furor over the killing of Trayvon Martin, of the lunacy of "the 'Stand Your Ground' laws that the National Rifle Association has pushed through in state after state, laws "that perfectly reflect the NRA's utopia. No longer will we count on law enforcement to preserve the peace. Instead, we will build a society where all citizens are armed and encouraged to take the law into their own hands. If you feel threatened, just shoot."

Since when did conservatives start believing that laws should be based on "feelings" and subjective judgments? What kind of civilization does this create? Surely this moment should inspire the peaceable majority to challenge the entire gun lobby worldview -- and that most certainly includes the legions of timid Democrats who have been cowed by the NRA.

AND PAUL KRUGMAN IS ON FIRE

There are now two sensational columns you need to read if you haven't already.

Today, in "Lobbyists, Guns and Money," he too looks at "Florida's now-infamous Stand Your Ground law," but from the standpoint of the long-simmering and lavishly financed right-wing program of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which Howie has written about a lot here but which hasn't received anything like the attention it deserves among the Infotainment Noozemedia. "Language virtually identical to Florida’s law," he notes, "is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states" by ALEC," and all over the country Republican legislators have been introducing ALEC-written bills (more than 50 in Virginia alone), "and these bills often become law."

ALEC tells the same lie that E. J. Dionne Jr. catches Paul Ryan in with regard to deficits.

ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

PK concludes:

Now, ALEC isn't single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters -- a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what's going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

Friday there was another Krugman must-read column, "Paranoia Strikes Deeper," extrapolating from the preposterous lie blithered by Willard Inc., "that gas prices are high thanks to an Obama adminstration plot" (not just nuts but "a sort of craziness triple play -- a lie wrapped in an absurdity swaddled in paranoia . . . the sort of thing you used to hear only from people who also believed that fluoridated water was a Communist plot").

The conspiracy theories are proliferating so fast it's hard to keep up. Thus, large numbers of Republicans -- and we're talking about important political figures, not random supporters -- firmly believe that global warming is a gigantic hoax perpetrated by a global conspiracy involving thousands of scientists, not one of whom has broken the code of omertà. Meanwhile, others are attributing the recent improvement in economic news to a dastardly plot to withhold stimulus funds, releasing them just before the 2012 election. And let's not even get into health reform.

Why is this happening? At least part of the answer must lie in the way right-wing media create an alternate reality. For example, did you hear about how the cost of Obamacare just doubled? It didn't, but millions of Fox-viewers and Rush-listeners believe that it did. Naturally, people who constantly hear about the evil that liberals do are ready and willing to believe that everything bad is the result of a dastardly liberal plot. And these are the people who vote in Republican primaries.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE WORLD OF "GOTCHA"
POLITICS, RICK THE NO-MAN MAN GETS A GIFT

The last thing we need is Infotainment Noozers whose sloppiness undercuts the reality that every word out of the mouth of every right-winger is a lie. For cripes' sake, I'm about to utter words I never expected to run together consecutively: Rick Santorum was right. Only because a reporter got sloppy, enabling him to "correct" him.

Here's the start of an item by Rachel Weiner on the Washington Post's "Fix" blog, "Rick Santorum: Real Republicans curse out reporters":

Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum cursed at New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny on Sunday while campaigning in Wisconsin, saying, "Quit distorting my words. ... It's bulls---."

Monday morning, the presidential candidate explained that he was just acting the way a Republican should.

"If you haven’t cursed out a New York Times reporter during the course of a campaign, you're not really a real Republican, is the way I look at it," Santorum told Fox News.

Zeleny had asked Santorum to elaborate on an earlier remark that Romney was "the worst Republican in the country." Santorum responded that his words were distorted, as he actually called his rival "the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama."

First off, saying that using the word "bullshit" is "cursing out" a reporter is nuts. If you're that stupid, you shouldn't be involved in any way in the gathering or dissemination of news coverage. What should you be doing instead? Well, you might explore opportunities in the manufacture of license plates. Or see if there are any circuses in your area in need of help sweeping up after the elephants. Or maybe you could be a "scholar" in a right-wing think tank.

Even worse, if "The Fix" has gotten the incident right, the No-Man Man was right. That's something I don't think I've ever said in the long, arduous years since the crap-brained scumsucker entered public life. But come on now, saying that Willard is ""the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama" really and truly isn't the same thing as saying that he's "the worst Republican in the country," and the Times is assumed to employ reporters who understand that. Apart from undermining your own paper, you provide a pile of filth like the No-Man Man to mount his high horse, as he did in this statement issued this morning:

Earlier today, while campaigning in Wisconsin, I criticized Romney and Obama for their outrageous healthcare legislation. Predictably, I was aggressively attacked by a New York Times reporter all too ready to defend the two of them, and all too ready to distort my words. Let me assure you, I didn't back down, and I didn't let him bully me. I think it is high time that conservatives find the courage to expose the liberal press for what they are, a defender and enabler of Romney's and Obama's liberal agendas.

Providing him with such an opportunity is, well, inexcusable. What he should be asked is whether he can imagine any circumstances under which he would give any consideration to telling the truth about any subject under the sun. The evidence seems to indicate: not a chance. Even this dump of bullshit is all lies. There is, of course, nothing "liberal" about the Obama health-care package. Lord knows, the Village establishment made sure of that, and as anyone who's been paying attention, the whole thing was a Republican idea to begin with.

But the No-Man Man is a privileged character by virtue of his extreme right-wingedness, which confers on him an absolute Right to Lie. Non-right-wingers may utter actual truths and see them twisted into misstatements by the Right-Wing Noise Machine. But certified (and, yes, often certifiable) right-wingers, can apparently say anything at all -- no limit on the crazy quotient -- and stand untouchably above reality.

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