In this morning’s Washington Post, Norman Ornstein of the (center-right) American Enterprise Institute has a superb, must-read op-ed entitled, “Obama: A pragmatic moderate faces the ‘socialist’ smear.” Here’s an excerpt:

To one outside the partisan and ideological wars, charges of radicalism, socialism, retreat and surrender are, frankly, bizarre. The Democrats’ health-reform plan includes no public option and relies on managed competition through exchanges set up much like those for federal employees. The individual mandate in the plan sprang from a Heritage Foundation idea that was endorsed years ago by a range of conservatives and provided the backbone of the Massachusetts plan that was crafted and, until recently, heartily defended by Mitt Romney. It would be fair to describe the new act as Romneycare crossed with the managed-competition bill proposed in 1994 by Republican Sens. John Chafee, David Durenberger, Charles Grassley and Bob Dole — in other words, as a moderate Republican plan. Among its supporters is Durenberger, no one’s idea of a radical socialist.

[…]

Looking at the range of Obama domestic and foreign policies, and his agency and diplomatic appointments, my conclusion is clear: This president is a mainstream, pragmatic moderate, operating in the center of American politics; center-left, perhaps, but not left of center. The most radical president in American history? Does Newt Gingrich, a PhD in history, really believe that {expletive}?

Although Gingrich might not “really believe that {expletive},” it appears that many Republicans do believe it. Here in Virginia, for instance, we have Ken Cuccinelli ranting to a Tea Party rally (what else?) about the individual mandate. We also have Prince William County Board chairman Corey Stewart appearing to compare the Obama Administration to the Nazis (see InsideNova.com for more on that).

The question is, do Cooch, Stewart et al. “really believe that {expletive]?”  Are they completely ignorant of history, including the fact that Republicans came up with a lot of the stuff they’re railing against (e.g., the Republicans came up with the “individual mandate” as an alternative to the “employer mandate;” “cap and trade” was an idea developed in the Reagan Administration as a way to harness market forces to combat acid rain pollution)?  Are they just cynically using the most extreme, demagogic language to stir up their “base,” regardless of the fact that they know it’s all {expletive}?  Or do they actually believe the Big Lie they’re spewing?  

Ignorance, fear-mongering demagoguery, or complete insanity, take your pick. That, ladies and gentlemen, is today’s Republican Party of Ken Cuccinelli, Corey Stewart, Newt Gingrich, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, etc.

P.S. Just to demonstrate the illogic of Cooch et al., they claim that “Obamacare” (as they ridiculously call it) is a “government takeover of health care,” yet they also rant that the government is forcing people to buy…wait for it…private insurance. From private, for-profit, capitalistic health insurance companies. Huh? A “government takeover” that (supposedly) “forces” you to buy from capitalist companies? This is the strangest “socialism” I’ve ever heard of, that’s for sure.

Thanks to Tom Whipple for the Wednesday “Clips.”

1. MCDONNELL OPPOSES SHIFT IN PENSIONS

7. VA. FUNDING AIMED AT SPACEFLIGHT CENTER

8. MCDONNELL PROPOSES TO REINSTATE BUSINESS TAX BREAK

11. VA TAX COLLECTIONS INCREASE BY 3 PERCENT IN MARCH

12. MCDONNELL SPOKESMAN SAYS VOTING RIGHTS LETTER SENT TO FELONS ‘WITHOUT APPROVAL’

13. MCDONNELL BLAMES ‘POLITICAL ATTACKS’ FOR FIRESTORM OVER FELONS VOTING RIGHTS

14. KAINE: MOST FELONS ALREADY WRITE LETTERS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS RESTORATION

15. MCDONNELL: CRITICS ARE “UNCIVIL AND PARTISAN”

20. PRINCE WILLIAM DEMS HIT STEWART ON NAZI COMMENT

24. VA. RANKS LOW IN HOME-BASED SERVICES FOR DISABLED

31. GOVERNOR IS BATTING .000 ON RACE MATTERS

34. FOES OF ARLINGTON COUNTY AFFORDABLE HOUSING PROJECT LOSE CHALLENGE

…Tonight we can report that Governor Bob McDonnell is stepping back from a third, radically right-wing policy position that he’s taken as governor, in response to very negative public reaction. Governor McDonnell keeps trying this stuff, over and over and over again, then it gets national attention and he has to dial it back  and pretend he didn’t mean it in the first place.

It has happened again. Last night, we reported on Governor McDonnell’s plans to require non-violent felons to write an essay about their contributions to society since their release if they wanted to have their voting rights restored. What had been a relatively perfunctory process would now include something like a test of a person’s literacy about his or her merit as a citizen of Virginia. In another day that sort of thing might have been called a literacy test. And in another day, literacy tests were used to keep African Americans from voting in the south.

This policy change was greeted the way a lot of Governor McDonnell’s governing ideas have been greeted so far. Much of the reaction could be described as horrified. And so today, Governor Bob McDonnell went on the radio in Norfolk, Virginia, acting as if his literacy-test-for-voting policy wasn’t really wasn’t what his administration said it would be. And, uh, maybe it’s not really going to happen anyway.  

[McDonnell speaking] “There’s no essay, we’ve asked for just a simple, uh, statement of what the person has done in order to be reintegrated into society, a little bit about their crime, what they’ve done to get back into society, any community activities, and we’re still in the draft stages…and I just ask people to give us a few months, we’re gonna – we haven’t even announced the final process.”

The only problem with McDonnell’s “draft stages” excuse, as Rachel Maddow points out, is this letter was already sent out to “dozens of non-violent felons” seeking to have their voting rights restored. So much for the policy change being in the “draft stage.”

As Maddow points out, this is the third time McDonnell has walked back a radical, right-wing policy after a public uproar. First, we had McDonnell’s kinda sorta flip-flop on the issue of hiring protections for gays and lesbians in Virginia. Second, we had his kinda-sorta flip-flop on Confederate History Month. And now, we have his kinda-sorta flip-flop on a de facto literacy test for non-violent ex-felons. Should we all just start calling Bob McDonnell “Governor Flip-Flop,” the “do-over” governor, or what?

P.S. Check out the discussion in the second half of this video. The question is, why is Bob McDonnell launching these culture wars? Is anyone in Virginia clamoring for them? Is this simply who McDonnell has been all along, does he think this makes sense politically for him, or what? Bizarre.

The government will tax every building at $125,000 per year until no one has any money to buy food, at which point everyone will die out and there will be no people left.

I’m pretty sure that’s what Ken Cuccinelli is saying here, although it’s really hard to sort it all out — and I say that as someone who works on environment & energy issues every day. I think Cuccinelli starts with new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on mountaintop removal coal mining, confuses that with lies about a clean energy & climate bill that would actually create 1.7 million jobs & smushes it all together with lying about EPA global warming regulations under the Clean Air Act to say they’ll apply not to industrial polluters emitting at least 25,000 tons of CO2 a year but instead to any building Ken Cuccinelli points to. I have no idea where he got $125,000 — I think he made up a big scary number on the spot.

In other words, Ken Cuccinelli lies so much, even Ken Cuccinelli can’t keep straight what Ken Cuccinelli is lying about at any given moment.

West Virginia blogger Debra Dean Murphy has an op-ed in today’s Charleston Gazette taking on the myth that her state owes whatever prosperity it has to coal:

Lest I be misunderstood, let me say, as clearly as I can, that I don’t in any way denigrate the risky work that coal miners do, nor the sense of accomplishment they rightly feel in their vocation.

But here’s the thing: I worry, at least a little, when generations of West Virginians – whether they’re connected to coal mining or not – absorb this notion that they are beleaguered and put-upon, the most-derided in our culture, and then turn that woundedness into a kind of guarded bravado that refuses to reckon with some hard, uncomfortable truths.

To say we’re proud of coal miners without acknowledging that for decades miners have been given the shaft – literally – by greedy coal companies does not serve the long-term well-being of those who do this dirty, dangerous work. And, sure, we should pray for the victims of this most recent tragedy, but we should also do the holy, pressing work of challenging an industry that enriches absentee corporate shareholders while sucking the life out of the people and places it needs for its pursuit of profit at any cost.

This latest disaster should not be one more occasion for West Virginians to turn their latent defensiveness into full-blown denial of what’s really going on. Here’s the truth: Coal has not been good for West Virginia. Coal has been good for corporations. After more than a century of extracting this valuable resource from the earth, the considerable profits it has generated have gone elsewhere.

Takes a lot of guts for someone to stand up to their state’s status quo and call it like it is. Read more from Debra at her blog.