Proud To Be A Filthy Liberal Scum

Awarded for the following statement via BobCesca.com:

“We have two candidates who really aren’t telling us much at all about how they’ll govern. People ask me all the time, Will President Obama govern as liberal or as a centrist? We get paid to figure this out and we don’t know the answer to it.”

This is a pure distillation of the “Both Sides” meme. It’s true that we have no idea whatsoever of how Mitt Romney would govern. He’s run so far to the right of the policies he enacted during his time as Governor of Massachusetts, and flip-flopped so often, it’s impossible to get an decent read.

On the other hand, Obama has been president for just shy of four years now. If VandeHei can’t figure out that Obama is going to continue to be a centrist and continue to reach out to an increasingly hostile GOP and then work around them where possible, he’s not very good at his job. The man ran as a centrist, he’s governed as a centrist and he’s running again as a centrist. I think we’ve established a firm pattern here.

VandeHei’s “uncertainty” is egging on the audience to stay on the edge of their seats for the horse race that Romney is steadily losing. A foregone conclusion to the election is bad for page views and propagating the right wing myth that Obama is just waiting until his second term to turn into a wild eyed liberal keeps things “interesting.”

I know I flog this horse on a regular basis but it’s hard to understand just how pervasive the meme truly is. It’s not just the right using it as camouflage; the media uses it to avoid doing their jobs and calling bullshit on the right’s mendacity or, worse, cynically prolong and deform the natural course of the election cycle.

For being unable to figure out what kind of leader President Obama is after 4 years, Congratulations, Jim VandeHei! You’re an official moron!