The Latest Frank Rich Hissy Fit

The entire country is focused on the left's fits of moral depravity and violence, and once again for Frank Rich of the New York Times, it's the tea party that's the biggest threat to democracy, "Why Wouldn’t the Tea Party Shut It Down?" (via Memeorandum):

The highest priority of America’s current political radicals is not to balance government budgets but to wage ideological warfare in Washington and state capitals alike. The relatively few dollars that would be saved by the proposed slashing of federal spending on Planned Parenthood and Head Start don’t dent the deficit; the cuts merely savage programs the right abhors. In Wisconsin, where state workers capitulated to Gov. Scott Walker’s demands for financial concessions, the radical Republicans’ only remaining task is to destroy labor’s right to collective bargaining.

That’s not to say there is no fiscal mission in the right’s agenda, both nationally and locally — only that the mission has nothing to do with deficit reduction. The real goal is to reward the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons by crippling what remains of organized labor, by wrecking the government agencies charged with regulating and policing corporations, and, as always, by rewarding the wealthiest with more tax breaks. The bankrupt moral equation codified in the Bush era — that tax cuts tilted to the highest bracket were a higher priority even than paying for two wars — is now a given. The once-bedrock American values of shared sacrifice and equal economic opportunity have been overrun.

That last line is the laugher of the month, but of course progressives have seized on it faster than union dues from a teacher's paycheck: "Frank Rich: “The once-bedrock American values of shared sacrifice and equal economic opportunity have been overrun”."

Yes, bedrock values have been thrown out the window, but it's progressives doing the dumping. Ann Althouse has had the best coverage, for example, "Althouse and Meade return to the Veterans Memorial and encounter apologetic protesters, the police, and a rudeness expert":

Ann also destroys petulant Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo, "Who invited Peter Yarrow to the Wisconsin protests? And why was he the only entertainer on the bill?"

Ann's the best.