"Euphemism of the day".. "Occasional"

[Cha]

<snip>

"ADAM NAGOURNEY MORAL EQUIVALENCE WATCH"

"Adam Nagourney in today's New York Times (emphasis added):"

Passage of the health care legislation challenges the heart of the Republicans' strategy this year: To present a unified opposition to big Democratic ideas, in this case expressed in a stream of bristling anger and occasional mischaracterizations of what the bill would do.

<snip>

""This legislation is nothing more than a socialistic power grab of an estimated sixteen percent of our total gross domestic product and comes on the heels of federal intervention in the banking and automobile industries," Blakeman continued. "Where will it end?"

I don't even know why I'm quoting this. Some Republican or other says precisely this every few hours, and that's been true ever since health care legislation started to go through Congress last year. It would take less time to compile a list of Republicans who haven't mischaracterized the legislation this way than a list of who have.

But to Nagourney, the mischaracterizations are "occasional."

He has to say that. He needs to believe it. He couldn't live with himself if he didn't. He has to persuade himself, as do the vast majority of reporters and pundits in the mainstream press, that there's no real difference between the two parties in terms of honesty of rhetoric and willingness to demagogue, even though it seems impossible to imagine that he's unaware of the tsunami of lies we've heard for the past year about health care and other aspects of the Democrats' "socialist," "fascist" agenda."

<more>
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2010/03/adam-nagourney-moral-equivalence-watch.html

<via Benen's Blog>
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/