One of Jon Ralston’s 27 remaining paid newsletter subscribers forwarded to someone who forwarded to me the following quote from Monday’s edition of Ralston’s Flasher Report or whatever it’s called…
“After reading all of the stuff in the weekend papers, and comments from my broad range of weekly insiders, I really wonder why we are paying attention to what can only be called The Failure Caucus, Not to diminish real terrorism, but these folks – Tony Dane, Citizen Outhouse, Michele of the Thousand Tax Liens – are nothing more than political terrorists, who are relentlessly unsuccessful but have loud enough voices to keep being heard.”
Far be it for me to correct the Grammar King, but there should be a period after “Failure Caucus,” not a comma.
And Jon really thinks it’s cute calling conservative political activists “political terrorists,” so be prepared to hear him use that the term ad nauseum for the duration of the upcoming legislative session.
That said, it seems to me awfully conceited for Nevada’s #2 liberal blogger-without-a-TV-show to presume to tell his colleagues in the media who is newsworthy and deserves “paying attention to” in the political world and who is not.
It also smells of rank hypocrisy, since King Jon is obsessed with “paying attention to” and writing about me (though never by name) and conservative Assemblywoman Michele Fiore on a regular basis, and wrote extensively about Dane just last week.
And why is it that when conservatives try to hold elected officials’ feet to the fire and demand that they actually honor the campaign promises they make, we’re “political terrorists,” but when liberal GOP leaders strong-arm conservative legislators with threats to kill their bills and remove them from their committee assignments, that’s OK?
And by the way, here’s something political spectators like Ralston will never understand…
When you honestly and strongly believe in something – such as opposing tax hikes so as to deny the government more money to expand – it’s not a failure if you don’t win at the ballot box. It’s only a failure if you refuse to put on the uniform or quit.
Since Jon has never been in the arena himself, opting instead to criticize the players on the field from his perch in the peanut gallery, it’s no real surprise that such a notion is too deep for him to understand. And why he’s the real Boss Hog of the Failure Caucus.