Ezra: Your Beltway Bubble is Showing, and Boy Is It Ugly

I have never been a fan of Ezra Klein, but jesusfuckingchocolatechristonapogostick, this idiocy proves he's one of three things: totally in the tank for rethuglicans and bucking for a gig on Fox, too stupid to live, or a motherfucking liar.

Kevin Drum:

Ezra Klein writes today about Republican Party priorities:

I’m not saying that congressional Republicans don’t care about poor people.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't say that, but whatever. Onward:

But they really care about rich people. So far, the policy agenda they’ve pushed has been a mixture of very expensive tax cuts for the very wealthy and very deep cuts to a lot of programs that focus on the very poor. It’s . . . curious.

....Now they’ve moved onto deficit reduction, or at least spending cuts, and their priorities in the 2011 budget are telling. Their cuts are coming from non-defense discretionary spending. That’s a category of spending, as you can see here, that tends to focus on services to the poor, the jobless and children. Among other cuts, they’ve proposed slicing more than $1 billion off Head Start, $1.1 billion off the Public Housing Capital Fund, $752 million from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, and $5.7 billion from Pell Grants.

I could, of course, go on. Democrats have tried to widen the cuts out to other
categories so their impact falls less heavily on the disadvantaged, but so far, Republicans have refused. If we’re going to cut spending, we’re going to do it on the backs of the poor.

In other words, congressional Republicans don’t care about poor people. But then, that's hardly anything new. They never have before, so it's hardly surprising that they still don't.

Guys, guys, guys. Honestly. Saying republicans don't care about poor people is - in the immortal words of Molly Ivins - like calling a dwarf short.

Get this straight: republicans live to make life more miserable for poor people. If Barack Obama gave rethuglicans the choice of eliminating taxes completely for rich people but also doubling food stamps, unemployment compensation, housing subsidies and welfare for poor people OR eliminating the social safety net entirely but also doubling taxes on the rich, the rethuglicans would take the latter in a heartbeat.

Ezra got it backwards: republicans may or may not love rich people, but they really, REALLY love sticking it to poor people.

Tell ya what, Ezra: you name one thing - ONE - that republicans as a party have done specifically to help poor people in the 102 years since Teddy Roosevelt left office and I will admit that it's remotely possible you are not a Village mouthpiece destined for the Politico shithole.