Bobo’s Fantasy World
By David Weigel gets it exactly right with respect to Bobo’s fantasies about a centrist third party built around two politicians who don’t have anything resembling centrist views on the most pressing issue of the day:
Moreover, as Yglesias points out, Brooks’ heroes McCain and Lieberman don’t represent the mainstream on the most pressing issue of our time. Both men are diehard Iraq war hawks. The mainstream of American opinion – Iraq’s a mistake, let’s start getting out, let’s not bomb Iran – if it’s represented by anyone, is represented by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE.). Why don’t pundits like Brooks assign Americans membership of the Hegel party (maybe the Hagel-Cantwell party?). Because they like McCain and Lieberman. They don’t care that they’ve been rejected by their party’s presidential primary voters. The pundits who keep flogging these two senators and demanding that voters embrace them are like nerds raging against the popular kids winning homecoming court, and voting for the Star Trek fan club president and treasurer in protest.
Right. Pundits like Brooks have projected their adolescent crushes on hawkish pols like Lieberman onto the general public, and no matter how much evidence stares them in the face are convinced that their increasingly discredited foreign policy ideas must be overwhelmingly popular.