"Oligarchy's lies never die, while political truth is strangled every day" [View all]

[phantom power]

One of Charlie Pierce's great additions to the blogosphere, besides his sublime writing, is his historical memory. In this post, he takes on La Noonan and her gauzy view of the old TipnRonnie trope and then lays some knowledge on all of us...

...

Of course, Reagan and O'Neill got along. Reagan was sharp enough to know that O'Neill was willing to sell out enough of the traditional Democratic party to give Reagan most of what he wanted. The reason Bill Clinton got the awful welfare "reform" deal together with Newt Gingrich and his group of Republicans was because the Republicans got a lot of what they wanted. However, at this current moment in history, the Republicans repeatedly vote against what previously were their own ideas — on health-care, on education, on immigration — simply because this particular president has proposed them.

There were people, you see, even at the time, who saw the Democrats for what they were becoming and "centrism" for the servant of power if really was. The reason this is important is that for some reason, liberals have to "discover" these things over and over again and then in the throes of "new" knowledge, spend vast amounts energy and time educating their own allies about stuff they should already know. This endless reinventing of the hamster wheel gives the conservatives a big advantage --- unlike liberals who are stuck going around the same track, the other side is constantly evolving. And liberals are always caught by surprise by what they've become.

I don't know the answer to this problem. But reading Charlie Pierce is a good start.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/oligarchys-lies-never-die-while.html