My Wednesday column that feels like a Tuesday column because of the three-day weekend:
Tuesday afternoon, Matt Drudge, the notorious paleoconservative fire-eater and former mentor to Andrew Breitbart, tweeted, “It’s now Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. Since Democrats vs. Republicans has been obliterated, no real difference between parties…” He rapidly followed it up by tweeting, “Why would anyone vote Republican? Please give reason. Raised taxes; marching us off to war again; approved more NSA snooping. WHO ARE THEY?!”
Since the late 1990s, The Drudge Report has been the go-to news destination for the Republican Party and the conservative movement, not to mention some of the more hackish members of the news media. While Fox News Channel was still in its infancy, Drudge was already the standard-bearer for a blossoming right-wing answer to the so-called “liberal news media.” He was one of the primary cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, as well as an apologist for every bungled scheme and trespass of the Bush administration, including such issue areas as waterboarding, warrantless eavesdropping, climate crisis debunking and so forth. For Drudge to so publicly and resoundingly reject the Republican Party, and to do so in a way that sounded eerily similar to something Glenn Greenwald or David Sirota would blurt (minus the “raised taxes” gripe of course) was shocking to observe.
It should be clear by now exactly what’s going on.
As the far-right and the far-left grow increasingly pissy about their respective stations, and, more importantly, the fact that the two major parties are rightfully taking them less seriously by the day, these two seemingly disparate factions are converging under the banner of libertarianism. Strange given how libertarianism has been historically associated with the far-right, but these groups, having moved so far to the extremities of the political spectrum, have clearly found enough common ground to join forces… [CONTINUE READING]