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What’s striking about this clip is how closely it tracks some of the key tropes of nutroots paranoia during the Bush years. Now as then, it’s assumed that the greatest threat to the country is its own government. Now as then, the “solution” to getting the nation back on the right track involves some ghoulish catastrophic failure of national security (losing the Iraq war in Bush’s case, failing to prevent a new attack in this one). And now as then, because the president acted in a legally controversial way in one circumstance — Bush on “torture,” Obama on corporate takeovers — he’s instantly suspected of ruthless designs on the Constitution itself, irrespective of whether he actually has the support he’d need to change it. (If you think Blue Dog Democrats are going to vote for a massive gun grab, you’re kidding yourself.) The only major difference between then and now is that the nutroots indictment was limited to Republicans whereas Beck and Scheuer keep it bipartisan. Thank heaven for small favors, I guess.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
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