Democrats and their partisans in the mainstream media have been fully occupied these past few days with demonizing conservatives for their successful stand against tax increases in the debt ceiling compromise. To Thomas Friedman, the Tea Party is the “Hezbollah faction” of the Republican party. Maureen Dowd wrote a “column” about the Tea Party holding people ransom in a horror movie where the president will “need a bigger boat.” Even our normally thoughtful and taciturn vice president joined in, agreeing with Rep. Mike Doyle’s assertion that “We have negotiated with terrorists.
The hateful glee with which these comparisons have been made seems to indicate that there is a certain level of one-upmanship at work. You call them undemocratic? Pansy! They’re terrorists! Terrorist, eh? Show some backbone! They’re like Freddie, or Jason, or the shark in Jaws, or something!
This one-upmanship continues in today’s Washington Post, where Jonathan Capehart has managed to one-up the one-uppers. After asserting his admiration for Ruth Marcus’s Tea Party-as-carjacker metaphor (weak tea, if you ask me, Marcus), Capehart makes perhaps the most bizarre and incomprehensible comparison to date. After decrying Republican resolve as criminal and immoral, Capehart implores the president to “introduce their ‘carjacker’ to his Keyser Söze.” As he elaborates:
If you haven’t seen the movie, suffice it to say, just saying that Söze out-crazied the crazies hardly suffices. What he actually did was break into the home of his rival, rape his wife, murder her and her children, and then wait for his rival to come home, at which point he murdered him and burned down his house (so the movie could have a cool scene where a guy walks slowly away form a burning building).
To new civility! Huzzah!
