Joe Scarborough Is Part Of The GOP's Problem

While he has on occasion refused to drink the Christianist/Tea Party Kool-Aid (as has Kathleen Parker at times) that is so widely consumed among today's Republicans, Joe Scarborough nonetheless continues to be part of the conservative pundit class problem that is continuing to allow the GOP to slide to ever increased insanity.  Partisanship should never trump the best interests of the nation and the vast majority of Americans.  Likewise, partisanship should never trump logic and objective reality - especially in the case of those who hold themselves out as "expert political observers.  Yet that is what has happened to to many pundits who mindlessly cheer lead for the Republican Party.  And it's just not Scarborough who has thrown away common sense - former compatriots from my old GOP days seem to have consumed Kool-Aid by the gallon.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this frightening phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

If you recall, Scarborough's original, slanderous words against Nate Silver were the following:

Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue, they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops and microphones for the next 10 days, because they’re jokes.

Scarborough called Nate Silver an ideologue and a joke. Instead of copping to his slander and his foolishness, he now writes a Politico column that is so brimming with, well Politico-style Village media horse-shit you need a medical mask to keep breathing to the end. First off, he starts with mockery of Upper West Side limousine hippie liberals and all the usual, lazy, exhausted boomer tropes that make Scarborough and all his flunkies as irrelevant as they are desperate for attention:

Just as the Beatles had the Maharishi to guide them through the tough times after the death of their manager Brian Epstein, progressives had Silver’s New York Times blog to comfort them after the first presidential debate.

Even if that analogy isn't itself stupid and lazy ... so fucking what? Mr Scarborough, you were wrong because you have no understanding of statistics, and you slandered someone who was sincere and transparent and smart. So where's the apology? Not there yet. Instead we get this:

The Obama-Romney race proved to be the least fluid in a generation. As Mr. Silver noted this morning, public opinion surveys remained consistent from June through Election Day.

 Notice the old MSM I-Never-Screwed-Up crap. Notice the "I'm not really apologizing" - but I'll add in a generic mea culpa to insure myself. Notice also that Scarborough is still too stupid to understand that Silver's model included Gallup and Rasmussen and all those "Dr Nick" pollsters, showed considerable fluctuation in the race, and yet also correctly predicted the demographic mix and state polling consensus in ways that revealed the structural advantage Obama had throughout.

I didn't call Nate a fool who should be banished from the Internet. I saw him as a fantastic breath of fresh air in a tired, discredited and fathomlessly self-important commentariat. Of which Scarborough is an almost text-book case.

It is time for those in the pundit class to start calling a spade a spade and condemning GOP insanity on a regular consistent basis.