The left and the media commonly blame conservatives for hate speech. But as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proved with her Nazi comment, the left is often the real guilty party. The latest example of this hypocrisy is The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein calling “Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers” [1]“political terrorists.”
Pearlstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist for the Post, has a long record of saying outlandish things. But his August 7 health care column outdid even some of his previous efforts. He accused Republicans of “poisoning the political well,” called them “two-faced” and their position a “flat-out lie.”
Here is the complete “terrorist” comment:
“The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.”
[2]In early 2008, Pearlstein said the financial sector must “burn, baby, burn” to teach financial professionals a lesson about priorities and motives. In his [3]February 20 column, he said that “the best thing that could happen to our economy is for a dozen high-profile hedge funds to collapse; for investment banking to enter a long, deep freeze; for a major bank to fail; and for the price of a typical
Later last year, the Post business columnist wrote an [4]obituary for capitalism. “It's always risky to call turns in history, but my guess is that this consensus [toward free markets] is unraveling,” Pearlstein [5]wrote in the Post. “Just as the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era and the New Deal gave way to the post-war era of big government, big business and big labor, the current era of free-market capitalism seems to be giving way to something else.”
He also advocated for a tax increase despite the economic downturn. Pearlstein [6]told MSNBC’s “The Politics of Money” co-host Melissa Francis in 2008 that tax increases in times of economic duress aren’t necessarily bad. His reasoning: the government could spend the money better than the people.
“That there’s something wrong with raising taxes in the middle of a recession – that it’s always a bad idea – not true,” Pearlstein said. “It depends on what the government does with that money and what people would have done with the money if they already – if they had it and it wasn’t taxed.”
The Post just found itself in another controversy as two staffers made a criticism of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that went over the line. In an online video, columnist Dana Milbank and White House correspondent and blogger Chris Cillizza discussed the types of beer politicians should drink, tied to the Suds Summit at the White House. According to the [7]Post’s apology, “Milbank said he couldn't reveal to whom President Barack Obama would serve a drink called ‘Mad B---- Beer.’ That line was followed by a brief picture of
Their regular video segment was canceled as a result.