Barnes Takes The Lead in “America’s Worst Columnist” Sweepstakes
Fred Barnes takes decisive action to recapture the lead from Charles Krauthammer in their long-running duel for the title of “America’s Worst Columnist.”
Two facts all but forced Republicans to adopt the zero option. Partisan zeal wasn’t one of them. Republicans were ready to be pawns in a bipartisan game. But Obama’s promise to bring the parties together played out in form (he courted Republicans) rather than substance (he declined to compromise). Republicans got nothing in the bill. That was fact number one. And after they objected to the cost of the House version ($819 billion, not counting the debt payments), the measure grew larger in the Senate. That was the second fact.
Democrats couldn’t hide their self-consciousness about the excesses of their own bill. Supporters made few TV appearances to defend it and rarely talked about specific spending items. Obama sounded like Al Gore on global warming. The more the case for man-made warming falls apart, the more hysterical Gore gets about an imminent catastrophe. The more public support his bill loses, the more Obama embraces fear-mongering. “The failure to act, and act now,” the president said last week, “will turn a crisis into a catastrophe.”
Yes, that’s right, hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts now count as “nothing.” And Barnes has (a) invented the fact that there’s no man-made global warming, and (b) invented a new meta-fact which claims that there’s growing evidence for his position. Normally when reading something like this you need to wonder if the writer is being stupid or being dishonest, but in Barnes’ case it’s usually safe to assume that the answer is “both.” Naturally, contributors to Barnes’ Weekly Standard—a publication that enjoys nothing more than misinforming people—will continue to be guests on cable television much more frequently than will contributors to progressive publications.
32 Responses to “Barnes Takes The Lead in “America’s Worst Columnist” Sweepstakes”
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February 9th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Sorry to go off-topic, but what do the people who defended Michael Steele’s “governments can not create jobs” spiel think about this?
http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0209/Steele_calls_for_Bling_Blingfree_stimulus.html
February 9th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I’m afraid that contributing to a publication which enjoys misinforming people is, actually, excellent training for cable tv news.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
So either Barnes penned several of these hit pieces and is publishing them in spite of the new polling numbers. Or this is just a typical GOP rouse and they are going to ignore the facts once again, that the public supports Obama and the stimulus bill?
BTW, if the GOP got nothing in the deal, then who was it that called for removing the funding for family planning in the House??
February 9th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I don’t read Barnes often enough to adjudicate this particular rivalry, but Krauthammer?? He’s not even the worst op-ed columnist on the WaPo op-ed page.
That honor goes to George F. Will, and not by a small margin. Will’s reputation of erudition seems to have blinded people to the fact that he’s bad with both his facts and his arguments, and his columns tend to wander around, largely directionless.
At least Krauthammer, Not-Paul Samuelson, and the other bozos of the WaPo op-ed page can write their fact-free bad arguments in a linear, coherent manner. Will usually fails in even that simple task.
Plus he’s the guy who got the ball rolling on Fairness Doctrine Paranoia, with columns last August and September. Credit where credit’s due.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Longstanding problem, not going away: the support of corporatism by corporate-linked media. The Fred Barnes’ get so much more support for their stuff than progressives. Yeah, we have our mags and the NYTs but the Progressives do not have the bigtime, nearly constant face-time in the big tv media that reach the very folks that Barnes’ brand of stupid and disinformation appeals to the most. Progressives now have the Internet/Blogs as their main soap-boxes. How long will this last?
February 9th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I’d have to go with Robert Samuelson as the worst. He even looks the neo-Hooverite part, with his mustache and frowny face.
People are saying Republicans outplayed Obama or that Obama was suckered by them or whatever, but to me the Republicans look like a clown show.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
When you boil it down, what does today’s Republican Party have for an issue. Tax cutting is the Alpha and Omega of any semblance of winning message. It used to include war, but Iraq took care of that, not to mention bungling Afghanistan. Nobody cares about gay marriage and faux wars on Christmas, when their out of work, or afraid of being out of work. So it’s tax cuts, one and all. Can’t really expect a one pony party to share rides with the enemy. So it’s gotta be liberal tax cuts bad, wingnut tax cuts good, and the inanity that comes with such silliness.
Whether or not this bills tax cuts were a fiscal or political mistake by dems, it has been entertaining to watch the GOP parse it down and thread an ever smaller needle.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
That was in Obama’s original proposal.
Put there as something that both sides could agree with. Obama’s problem is that he started out with the common ground and worked from there. The Republicans should have been falling all over themselves to praise Obama to the skies for supporting Republicans like that. Instead they just let loose with an avalanche of partisan vulgarity, stabbing one of the best friends they’ll ever have in the back.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Put there as something that both sides could agree with
No, Obama had been promising that middle-class tax cut for over a year, all through his campaign. It is Obama’s tax cut, he owns it, and as circumstances changed he would not change his mind.
Since the largest single item in the stimulus bill was Obama’s tax cut, it set the terms and limits of the rest of the bill.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
I think your right bob. And when you filter out all the political noise from the left and right, he appeard to be working off a checklist of what he said he’d do during the campaign, at least so far, and with major issues.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
He’s not even the worst op-ed columnist on the WaPo op-ed page.
Choosing the worst columnist in the Post is like doing a taste-test of cyanide, arsenic, and hemlock. My god, just ponder these names: Krauthammer. Will. Broder. Gerson. Hiatt. Marcus. Oh my god! Richard Cohen! It’s polonium!!!
February 9th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Too true, Herschel. Pick your poison, indeed. In my book, Hiatt is the worst because he’s incredibly misabled as a moderate liberal by some (such as that idiotic Forbes list MY referenced a few weeks back) simply because he’s the WaPo editor of that horendous page. At least Richard Cohen will pen a decent column about twice a year or so.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
“mislabled” as a moderate, that should have been.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
My god, just ponder these names: Krauthammer. Will. Broder. Gerson. Hiatt. Marcus. Oh my god! Richard Cohen! It’s polonium!!!
And now they’ve hired Kristol. It really is a Murderer’s Row of stupidity.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
It is interesting that the phenomenon we hope to stop, a Liquidity Crisis, is largely a theory of psychology rather than eocnomics. You would assume a man who hope to stem this psychological depression would not at the same time declare the sky to be falling, unless his true aims were not to help the country, but to pump through several long awaited spending bills.
February 9th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
What Bob McManus(!) and DTM said. The idea that Obama included tax cuts only as a compromise for Republicans is farcical.
I didn’t say that above. What I said was that “both sides” (Obama and the Republicans) could agree on tax cuts as a positive. You seem to have the odd idea that for Republicans to support something, it has to include something that Obama does not want it. That’s a bit of a zero-sum mindset, isn’t it?
February 9th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
In passing, the global warming debate has been abruptly closed off in Australia by an unprecedented hot spell leading to a massive set of bushfires that have so far killed 200 people with no end in sight. Anybody still sceptical is shutting up.
And yes, I know it’s just weather. It’s the kind of weather you get when the climate’s already changed enough to cast some doubt on the entire project of European settlement.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:52 am
That’s a bit of a zero-sum mindset, isn’t it?
That sums up the perspective quite nicely. Obama’s interpretation is right: he’s going to have to deliberately not include things he wants in original bill proposals that Republicans might agree with, and wait for them to introduce these things and take credit for them. Notice upthread where someone says “he owns it” — i.e. Republicans can/should only take credit for concessions from Obama, not for helping to craft and support sound policy (with their preliminary input during the drafting process).
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