Over the last week or two, I’ve noticed a certain… unanimity among the left. Apparently the one person who caused the failure of the SuperCommittee, triggered the debt crisis, and in general is the most responsible for the federal government’s fiscal mess is Grover Norquist. His staunch opposition to new taxes, and ability to “bully” Republicans into going along with it, is the font of all evil and meanness and unhappiness in the US today.
This means, to me, that he is the latest boogeyman, the person or persons on the right who is to blame for all the nation’s woes. He joins (or replaces, I’m not quite certain how it works) the Koch brothers as the worthy recipients of the nation’s Two Minute Hate.
Over the past few years, I seem to recall quite a few folks who’ve cycled in and out of this august distinction. Karl Rove, Richard Mellon Scaife, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh (a hardy perennial), Haliburton, Rupert Murdoch… the list goes on. I’m leaving Bush and Cheney off the list; it kinda goes with the jobs they held.
So, I find myself wondering: how do folks get on this list? Who decides? Who is the maintainer of the list? How is it propagated? It just seems like I wake up one day and the “old hate target” is quietly shuffled off, and the “new hate target” is the one who all the liberal talking heads, bloggers, bloviators, and boneheads are raging about.
I’d like to get on that distribution list. (And no, not as the target; I’m not that delusional.) It’d do my cred wonders if I could get ahead of the curve and predict “just watch: today, there will be no more talk about Grover Norquist, and today’s Source Of All Evil On The Right will be Robert Stacy McCain/Greg Gutfeld/Trace Atkins — just watch!”
Should I get in touch with Ezra Klein and see if he can sneak me on to whatever version of JournoList he’s quietly running now?
