It's Official: The Chattering Left Has Lost Their Freakin' Minds

I swear to God I at first thought they were trying to be ironic in the following. It begins with the usual fevered ramblings from the New York Times: Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead

A secretive network of Republican donors is heading to the Palm Springs area for a long weekend in January, but it will not be to relax after a hard-fought election — it will be to plan for the next one.

Koch Industries, the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes from the Cato Institute in Washington to the ballot initiative that would suspend California’s landmark law capping greenhouse gases, is planning a confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as an invitation says, “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.”

The invitation, sent to potential new participants, offers a rare peek at the Koch network of the ultrawealthy and the politically well-connected, its far-reaching agenda to enlist ordinary Americans to its cause, and its desire for the utmost secrecy.

Oh, good Lord. Not this crap again. It's bad enough that you have pinhead idiots like Alex Jones running around with conspiracy theories about how the Bilderbergers are going to enslave the planet (WARNING: Your IQ may drop 50 points if you click over and read that nonsense!), do we have to have the "paper of record" concoct a Republican only version of the same conspiracy theory?

Where is the irony? Well, the irony comes in when people who go in for the Republicans as Bildebergers conspiracy theory decry Republicans as conspiracy theorists for being Bildebergian.

It would be impossible to make up this stuff.

First, you have Yglesias bemoaning the "paranoid style" of the Koch brothers, supposedly because they say one of the reasons they want to confab is "...to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it." I'm assuming Yglesias has never received a fundraising letter from either the Republicans (ha!) or the Democrats. Such rhetoric is not unknown, it is positively ubiquitous. As such, the "paranoid style" (if that is what it is) should be recognized as what it is; namely, the way we do politics in a democratic society.

Or, you can read Chait in TNR wail:

I usually tend to think the liberals can be a little paranoid when they imagine that there's a cohesive elite of super-rich Republicans consciously pulling the strong of the political system.

As opposed to what exactly? Is Chait seriously trying to argue that Democrats never get together to discuss the best ways to win elections and influence the creation of public policy? What planet does he come from? On the planet I come from anyone who wants to succeed at politics thinks about it beforehand, and talks (conspires?) with others who hold similar goals and values.

But, maybe Chait is right and the Democrats really don't do this. This could be the explanation as to why their recent policy proposals have been, frankly, pretty awful. Perhaps they haven't thought about any of this beforehand and they are simply making it up as they go along.

Of course Chait knows the Democrats do this sort of thing. It's just that, for him, when Democrats do it they are acting responsibly. When Republicans do it, it is "the American social and financial elite [being] in thrall to insane conspiracy theories."

And, really, he wasn't trying to be ironic.