...the proof is around the world. if you want to see it yourself, all you have to do is get off the o'reilly set, go to other countries, and talk to people. quite of few of them have spontaneously talked about that very issue to me. it really isn't hard to find a ton of evidence if you really want to see it.
i'm incredibly fascinated by this weird alternate universe that movement conservatives seem to be living in today. perino takes something that seems obviously true to anyone who has talked to regular people around the world over the past few years and then claims that, contrary to many people's first hand experience, that something is completely false. to me, and i think to much of the country, perino comes across really badly when she says such things. but her audience, the small percentage of bush administration loyalists, she seems completely reasonable.
it's like joel achenbach's dispatch from planet hannity, or roy edroso's weekly surveys of right blogistan. when i first became politically aware in the 1980s there were mainstream conservatives and then there were the john birchers, a crazy fringe minority. nowadays, it's completely reversed. 2 decades ago, i would have to pick up those hand typed tracts at truck stops to find people railing about socialist infiltration of government. now i just need to listen to republican members of congress.
members of the conservative movement seem to be speaking their own dialect. when they talk among themselves, goes over fine. they're just reinforcing what their own people already believe or want to believe to be true. but they don't seem to realize that when viewed from the outside, these claims come across as completely batshit crazy. as a result, these conservatives are largely unable to communicate with people who don't already share their political beliefs. because a clear majority of the country, and an overwhelming majority of democrats and independents, aren't in the conservative bubble, i don't know how the movement can ever hope to win another national election. every time they open their mouth, they build another wall between themselves and the rest of the country.
(HT MatthewB on FB for the achenbach link)
