Jonah Goldberg notes that despite repeated calls for a "new tone" when it comes to the rhetoric from the liberal choir, the song remains the same:
The dishonesty and/or stupidity of all this is really quite breathtaking — and obvious. First of all, you could cut government funding down to 1950 levels and still have money for food safety. But this is what liberals do. They metaphorically lash children to the fenders of government so that the budget cutting blade must slice through them first. Then, after insanely putting them in harm’s way, they proclaim it is the sane budget cutters who seek to harm children. In fairness, sometimes liberals hold the young human shields in reserve and put firehouses, historic monuments, and old-age homes outside the budgetary walls of the fiscal keep. And, again, they declare that the fiscally sane want to get rid of fire fighters and the Washington memorial — and not, say, the Export-Import Bank or agricultural subsidies.
But this is an old complaint. What is infuriating about Pelosi’s comments is the silence that greets them from the same cloying mob of bleaters and emoters who demanded a “new tone” not so long ago. How is saying the Republicans want to kill your children less “extreme” and irresponsible than anything uttered by Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin? Why hasn’t it occurred to all of these media outlets currently reporting the news that Jared Loughner has pled guilty to mass murder to do a story on how the new tone they demanded hasn’t materialized with Nancy’s Pelosi’s repugnant musings as exhibit A? Perhaps it is because the whole “new tone” censorial fraud was always aimed rightward. When liberals accuse conservatives of wanting children to die, that’s hardball politics. When conservatives put banal targets on congressional maps, that’s incitement to murder.
Pelosi's slanders are only the most recent example of what has been the standard liberal approach to "debate" since at least the early Eighties (and maybe even earlier). Accuse anyone who dares mention cutting back or even limiting government of wanting to kill children, throw grandma out in the street, and ruin the environment.
