I think these commentaries are revealing of two things. One is the closing of the conservative mind. I’d like to think that I have a reasonably good understanding of conservative economic doctrine and conservative views on health care; I disagree, but I do know what they have been saying in recent years. Barone and Steele, by contrast, act as if utterly unaware of what people like me, or the president, have been saying and writing: no idea that standard textbook economics says that you should sustain government spending in a recession, no idea that liberals have been trying to get universal health insurance for three generations.
The other thing is the way incomprehension becomes demonization. Because conservatives don’t understand at all what the other side believes, everything becomes a conspiracy theory: Obama must be indulging his grotesque ambition, because who could possibly believe that doing what he did is a good idea?
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