msnbc
Joe Scarborough holds up the front cover of the New York Daily News during a segment on Morning Joe about gun control.
Joe Scarborough, the Republican congressman who famously became an MSNBC pundit, is doing the job of a contemporary Edward R. Murrow in railing against the political genocide of the GOP committed by the Tea Party.
There has been a lot of talk ? in the wake of last November?s trouncing ? on the subject of the Republicans? purported identity crisis, about who is to blame and what is to be done.
But if we clear the room of hot air, then the answer, to the first question at least, becomes clear: This crisis has been caused by far-right extremists. They have been rejected by Americans at large, as shown by the defeats of nut jobs like Indiana?s Richard Mourdock and Missouri?s Todd Akin. And yet they push their power into every gerrymandered district where their lies find traction.
Scarborough knows all this, and is not afraid to say it ? neither to the Republicans in Congress, where he spent six years representing Florida, or from his bully pulpit on ?Morning Joe,? where he talks to the entire nation.
In recent days, Scarborough has been fearless. With Republicans holding up Chuck Hagel?s confirmation to head the Pentagon, he blasted Sen. John McCain for leading the charge against his fellow Vietnam veteran: ?For the 66,000 troops currently serving in Afghanistan and for the families all across America this morning. I?m sure they?re glad to know that we don?t have a secretary of defense in place and we?re not going to because of a . . . political grudge.?
He was just as tough on the NRA?s increasingly insane Wayne LaPierre, who wrote a bizarre Op-Ed in which he claimed that ordinary Americans needed to protect themselves from ?additional threats? spawned by President Obama?s policies, including drug gangs and looters, not to mention the rapacious federal government.
Again, Scarborough said the sensible thing, blasting the ?racial overtones? of LaPierre?s hateful piece, bluntly describing the truth gun-loving Republicans have been trying to avoid yet need to hear: ?They?re going to get hammered in future elections if they allow this clown to continue to lead them around by their nose.?
In other words, Scarborough does not duck when standing up to the millions upon millions of dollars made and spent by the sellers of lucrative paranoia, misogyny, hatred of government and racism. Being a Southerner and a former Republican politician, he knows intellectual rot by its scent. He will not accept what should be a Grand Old Party ? but is settling instead for being led into Grand Old Paranoia.
An independent having no innate feeling for the right or the left, I assume it is always the duty of the citizenry to look before we leap, and make sure we are not being hustled by forces greater than ourselves. Then again, plenty of Americans seem to subsist on a diet of pure factoids.
That is what makes Scarborough?s voice so valuable. Angry when it needs to be, always armed with the facts, it reminds us that truth is not a commodity to be cheaply peddled by the likes of Roger Ailes and the Koch Brothers.
He is not the only moderate voice who has helped to dispel the paranoia about black government helicopters and jackbooted thugs, about President Obama giving welfare benefits away like candy and opening our borders to anyone who?d like to come in. In this category also belong the pundits David Frum and Peggy Noonan, who are clearly dismayed by a Republican Party that has come to delight in diving off the deep end.
Like the old country saying used to go, ?Knowledge is freedom; ignorance is slavery.? Joe knows the difference. You should, too.
crouch.stanley@gmail.com
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nydnrss/opinions/~3/RfdaQo_UsoE/story01.htm
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