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Eventually, Wile E. Coyote Read the Fine Print. Hopefully, So Will Republicans.

Jimmie | July 19, 2010 | Comments (3)

This post by Stacy McCain ought to be in the hands of every member of the Republican Party establishment today, if for no other reason than this paragraph.

The GIGO principle (Garbage In, Garbage Out) is as applicable to political discourse as to any other information system. If you let liberals like [TNR's Jonathan] Chait tell you which Republican candidates you should support, you will never support any Republican candidate — except in a GOP primary, when liberals will invariably tell you to support the most liberal candidate on the ballot. As soon as the primary is over, however, your liberal friends will then return to their usual arguments of why you should vote Democrat. Sic semper hoc.

It amazes me how many on the right do not understand the very simple principle that left-wing pundits want left-wing politicians to win. They will never intentionally give advice that will help anyone on the right because they want the right to fail. Jonathan Chait wants Harry Reid to win and Sue Lowden to lose to decisively that her loss discredits Republicans in general and the Tea Parties in particular. Why on Earth would any Republican listen to him?

The Republican tendency to take the advice of those who do not have their best political interests at heart remind me of an old Road Runner cartoon. In this one, Wile E. Coyote tries to use a fine ACME catapult to squish the Road runner only to have it fail painfully over and over again. After about the sixth time the catapult “malfunctions”, he reads the fine print on the bottom of the catapult and learns that it wasn’t built by ACME but by the Road-Rummer Manufacturing Company.

At some point, we conservatives need to look at the fine print. Chait is a partisan pundit — quite a good one for the left, as it happens – and he’s doing what partisan pundits do. ”consider the Source” seems like awfully good advice when dealing with him and the other Helpy McHelpersons who want to swoop in and tell the Republican Party how it has the answer to finally catching that Road Runner Congressional majority.

UPDATE: Bob Belvedere has a good take on the subject that points toward a more direct way we can focus the GOP’s attention.