Kos is Far Worse than an Ideological Bomb-Thrower.
By Repair Man Jack Posted in Liberals — Comments (21) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (AKA Kos) has a reputation as an ideologue and a bomb-thrower. I wish this were true, since he succeeds in helping Democrats win elections. He also raises enough money and attracts enough attention to keep liberal memes afloat, even when they lose. Alas, this isn’t the case. Kos is far worse. He’s a power-monger with no ideas.
Kos openly admits this. He once said he was not trying to be the next Jesse Jackson. What he meant was that he was a political tactician, rather than a movement philosopher. He describes himself as being all about winning.
Winning is a great thing. There are few things more satisfying than the joy of winning a fight that takes everything you have. Kos’ addiction to the sweet narcotic of victory requires no great effort to understand. But, political victories are like the Allied Victory at D-Day. They start the process, leaving the hardest miles ahead of the newly victorious.
This seems to be the hard truth now confronting the Democrats in control of Congress for the first time in over a decade. With Kos’ help, they stormed Washington, DC in 2006, and sacked the GOP majorities the way Alaric took over Rome in 410 A.D. However, they seem to know as much about running the empire as Odoacer did after he took over for Romulus Augustulus in 476 A.D.
The comical travails of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi now prove infuriating and tragic. They did such a good job of taking over. They have no basic clue of what to do, now that they have acquired power. They promised to drain the swamp, but find themselves stuck in the quagmire of their own profound ineluctability.
In fairness to the Democrats; they may have leaders poised to depose Reid and Pelosi for the benefit of the nation. These two could just be two standard deviations below the normal level of competence found in the Democratic Party and got to be in charge because the better people didn’t want the job of minority leader in either house. I find this proposition highly doubtful.
The Democrats do well in elections and prove useless in charge because they adhere to the Kossian doctrine of Winnerism. They regrettably have company in the GOP and in many corporate board rooms across America. A lot of people want to take charge; few seem to have given thought to what comes next.
The lady and gentleman in charge of the Democratic Congress, as well as their aspirants to the presidency, show the negative impacts of pure Winnerism. Candidate Obama’s debate promise to talk to ever leader in the world, without precondition, within his first year of office, comes to mind. His pathetic threat to invade Pakistan days later was a transparent attempt to reverse the bad publicity he received after his debate gaffe.
His positioning had nothing to do with any understanding of terrorism or foreign policy, and was designed only to move the needles of opinion polls. The fact that an American invasion of Pakistan would likely explode in our faces the way Pop Rocks candy used to eviscerate sea gulls mattered nothing during the moment at hand. Barak was saying what he thought would win. The future consequences of his words could go hang like the unfortunate contractors that Kos blogged about in Fallujah.
Thus, the Democrats are not only in power because of people like Kos, they regrettably abuse power they way they do because of people like Kos. Their focus shrinks to the election next cycle, and the long term consequences are some other administration’s problem. The ideology of Winnersim has reduced them to a party of people who want to tell us all where to get off, but who can’t be bothered with even a cursory reading of the map.
I blame the influence and power of Mr. Zuniga for exacerbating this trend. It is this, far more than the obscenity, anti-Americanism, and churlishness on daily parade at his website; that makes Kos a sarcoma that damages the health of American society and democracy.
More like his generations "useful idiot".
He survives because his unprincipled philosophy is supported together by like minded Marxists, Socialists, Anarchists, Democrat Party operatives and above all else their God; Soros money. One day he will live out his usefulness and be abandoned like an empty mollusk shell; rest assured that latter disposition is just one incident away.
His operation provides Democrats with plausible deniability for their more damaging, egregiously contra intellectual and anti democratic ideas. They brusquely defend his right to act as a smear merchant while appearing at his conference. This alone should disqualify any candidate as Presidential material. Tell me, how can they parse away the demeaning and detestable dalliance of this group, chortle in the background defending it as free speech and not be called to task? Is this what a majority of Americas want? Hardly, and it need to be exposed to the light of day.
This is all of course very funny, if you relish substantial Constitutional departures, socialist agendas and inept politicians who adhere to hate America first tendencies while professing the opposite. Oddly, this is what they project on us with no supportive facts. Yet the sycophants lead others into a cavernous abyss of ignorance that grows like a virus.
Frankly, I can't wait to see the Democrat candidate defend a plethora of disgusting nonsense mined from that site come election time.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
Contributor to The Minority Report
should distance themselves from Kos. This post was featured on Kos last month.
... or is he making it up as he goes?
He built an organization, a pretty mean force, but he seems not to know how best to use it. His biggest gambit so far has been backing Ned, which was pure idiocy if you want to be perceived as being about winning.
I wonder what the man thinks of Ron Paul. I'm really, really curious.
Markos not so much. He showed he can kill a candidate that can and will win in the primaries. If I were running for office I would take that very seriously.
Lets say you are a democratic congresscritter running in a centrist district. (not connecticut). If you are primaried odds are your dead.
So Markos backed the biggest boob imaginable (short of a senator from massachussets) and made him win the primary. Now all he has to do is go up to someone and say, "I think I can find a candidate more electable than lament to run against you"
Given the courage of democrat politicians, I hope he has a pooper scooper around when he does that.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
that inspired this one...
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/queenofcups/2007/aug/05/kos_an_undercover_...
Besides, it's my first real diary and I was hoping for more attention. :-)
The biggest problem with Kos is that he never does any of his own accounting or inventory taking, instead he sits back and lets his ranters rant without ever holding them to task for their idiocy.
More than 2 years after RedState initiated its anti-profanity policy, Kos started to finally crack down on the people on his blog slinging profanity around as though it was "reasoned discourse." As far as I know, he never publicly atoned for hiring an Astrologer to co-write his book and he never made any conciliatory statements to anyone for keeping a Wal-Mart basher who was also a Wal-Mart lawyer on the blogroll as his second-in-command.
One of the biggest reasons DKos is larger than RedState is that we filter out the losers who come here to do nothing but expectorate and waste people's time. Kos keeps them around because it makes him money.
People might reasonably ask how I know that this blog does a much better job of policing itself than Daily Kos does, even though it probably hurts their advertising revenue in the long run: because I've been whapped upside the head myself on a couple of occasions by various editors, for things that I've written that detracted from the general tone and tenor this blog strives to maintain.
I've been here for almost three years now and it's *because* the editors occasionally slap some sense into even longstanding users that this blog is generally a notch above Kos when it comes to discourse, even if it means that it loses revenue because it doesn't keep the trolls around to read their advertisements. Kos doesn't do that, as far as I can tell. His style is much more anarchic and irresponsible, which is why the Democrats should be very wary of handing him too much power.
I don't remember who booted me the first time, but it did me good here and in other inline forums where I participate...
"It's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die, and then dies...
...But if the man does know he's going to die and dies anyway. Dies, dies willing, knowing he can stop it, then...
Well, isn't that the type of man you want to keep alive?"
Karen Eiffel, Stranger Than Fiction
OOps. Sure was...
"It's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die, and then dies...
...But if the man does know he's going to die and dies anyway. Dies, dies willing, knowing he can stop it, then...
Well, isn't that the type of man you want to keep alive?"
Karen Eiffel, Stranger Than Fiction
"It's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die, and then dies...
...But if the man does know he's going to die and dies anyway. Dies, dies willing, knowing he can stop it, then...
Well, isn't that the type of man you want to keep alive?"
Karen Eiffel, Stranger Than Fiction
"It's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die, and then dies...
...But if the man does know he's going to die and dies anyway. Dies, dies willing, knowing he can stop it, then...
Well, isn't that the type of man you want to keep alive?"
Karen Eiffel, Stranger Than Fiction
by inserting a tag here.
...when they see me they'll say, "There goes Loren Wallace,
the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car."
Kos is pretty obnoxious but he's far from unique in American political history. You take him to task for the corrosive effect that he and his well-shepherded "movement" have on our politics. As a political partisan, I'll always take whatever actions I can against Kos and what his "movement" think they stand for.
But Kos wasn't the first of his kind and he won't be the last. In making your argument, you're implicitly saying that it's worth excising sarcomae like Kos from what is essentially a healthy body politic.
But I think our politics is fundamentally corrupt in ways that will always enable people like Kos, and (for a vastly more destructive example of the same type) Bill and Hillary Clinton.
And to me the only answer to this is to work tirelessly to ensure that the Federal Govt is as weak and defunded as possible. They will always make messes, but we can perhaps control the damage.
In this I've perhaps exposed myself as far more of a bombthrower, perhaps even a radical, than Kos will ever be.
In arguing that our politics has always been corrupt and nasty, you make some good points. However, I tend to think Kos, Wonkette, et al. are different and worse.
When Edward Kennedy slandered Robert Bork, it was rediculous. However, he did so for a reason. He actually had a judicial philosophy he was attempting to defend. It was an evil one; it's a shame Kennedy won.
Kos, OTOH, defends nothing. It's all me, me, me. Wonkette, the same way. his is why their sites are disgusting and their arguments are all ad hominem. At least Kennedy managed to believe something. Kos and Wonkette remind me of the useless 5th Century AD Roman emporers.
"Scott Thomas" - The New Republic's Winter Soldier
He generally seems to believe what he is saying. As I've stated before, it's not that I don't want his viewpoint represented, it's that I want it to lose.
I don't mind people who are wrong. I dislike people like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who are consistently disingenuous.
--
We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
work to our benefit... BECAUSE their positions are untenable. They possess the idealism without understanding the basic underlying truths of either economics or human nature. They keep dreaming of a Utopia that can only exist if EVERYONE'S HEARTS are filled with goodness, but they think they can legislate and enforce. Unfortunately, enforced goodness ALWAYS ends in bloodshed and tyranny.
Then when they do take power, it's an embarassing mess... and America has even less tolerance for it than in previous years due to the 24 hour news cycle.
However, I think there is something useful in gathering them all together in one place: their lunatic ideas can feed off of one another creating a miasmic caldron of confusion and chaos; on the record and on display for all the world to witness.
The Emperor truly has no clothes, and no one wants to see the ugly hairy underbelly of liberalism.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!