Panic and Bewilderment on the left

Maureen Dowd's column for the Sunday New York Times is something that I rarely read. MoDo (as Dowd is known) has a penchant for nastiness that annoys me. I do not mind a well placed zinger; in fact, I enjoy them, but there has to be substance and reason that underlie the insult, characteristics that MoDo rarely shows. Todoay's column, however, while suitably nasty, is worth reading. It clearly demonstrates the panic and bewilderment that those in the liberal government/media bubble are feeling.

MoDo laments the lack of leaders currently in government. She quotes a Congressman who says that he is watching Obama turn into Jimmy Carter before his eyes. MoDo cannot understand why her hero Obama has no plan that he is trying to sell and instead is careening towards defeat doing no more than criticizing others but offering nothing himself. MoDo also points out that Harry Reid is just not up to the task of leading either.

MoDo saves special venom for the Tea Party. They are trying to destroy the government according to her. She is partly correct, but her vision is so distorted that she does not understand what is happening. The Tea Party is trying to destroy BIG government, government that spends and spends and spends with no demonstrable effect other than running up the debt.

Even in MoDo's distorted reality, however, she recognizes what is happening in part. Here is her summary:

"Consider what the towel-snapping Tea Party crazies have already accomplished. They’ve changed the entire discussion. They’ve neutralized the White House. They’ve whipped their leadership into submission. They’ve taken taxes and revenues off the table. They’ve withered the stock and bond markets. They’ve made journalists speak to them as though they’re John Calhoun and Alexander Hamilton."

MoDo also recognizes that no one other than the Tea Party has achieved anything.

The truth is that the left does not understand how any group could refuse to follow their guiding dogma of "Government is good and more government is better. People cannot be trusted; they need the government to guide them."

Here you have the GOP and its Tea Party wing trying to roll back the government. It is heresy of the first order. Where is the compliant GOP of years past, the ones who spoke about smaller government but went along with bigger government? MoDo and the left cannot figure it out. When the GOP says no new tax revenues to feed an ever bigger government, it bewilders MoDo and the left. To them it makes no sense since they understand that by starving the government of tax revenues, it will inevitably get slimmed down. Imagine that, a smaller, leaner government. No sane person could favor that! No one ever proposes such things in Manhattan, DC or Beverly Hills. That is why the Tea Party consists of "crazies" in the world of MoDo.

The truth is that the real world has intruded into MoDo land. Indeed, although MoDo land is about as real as Mordor, the inhabitants have managed to delude themselves for years about the true reality. Now that they have to face it, we see them in full panic mode.