Cops vs. Scumbags

The next time a Republican accuses you of wanting to treat terrorists like criminals instead of going after them with soldiers ask them what they have against cops.

After all, cops are the frontline of law enforcement. Its the cops that do the hard work of hunting down criminals and protecting the citizenry. And its cops that the "tough on crime" Republicans claim they stand behind. Yet with their "terrorists aren't criminals" philosophy, they seem to be saying that cops, along with all the other parts of our law enforcement system, just aren't up to the task of protecting us.

An army protects us when we are attacked by an army.

Cops protect us when we are attacked by a criminal.

When the Republicans say the best way to fight terrorists is to use the Army they are saying that the terrorists are equivalent to an Army. An Army is made of warriors. So the Republicans are saying that terrorists are warriors equivalent to our warriors.

When we say the best way to fight terrorists is with cops (Just as an aside, I consider spies as equivalent to cops, not soldiers) we are saying terrorists are criminals. Criminals are scumbags. So we are saying that terrorists are scumbags who don't deserve to be given the warrior honorific.

Why do Republicans want to elevate terrorists while at the same time they denigrate cops?

Why is this man smiling?

Keeping the little people in line

Billmon takes a long look at the Capo de Koso brouhaha and comes to much the same conclusion as I have. None of this has anything to do with trying to hurt Markos or the blogosphere. It's all about keeping the Democratic pols in line. I posted about this myself back on the 12th, just after YearlyKOS, when this column by Byron York hinted at what was to come:

One theme of coverage of the YearlyKos convention is that Moulitsas and his followers are playing an active role in the 2006 and 2008 campaigns. Left unsaid is whether they will be an asset or a liability for the candidates they support. It seems reasonable to expect that any Democratic candidate who allies himself with Moulitsas, or accepts DailyKos support, will be asked, by Republican opponents, whether he or she endorses some of the things Moulitsas has written and said.

Here's part of what Billmon has to say about the latest shot in this battle:

Seriously, though, I suspect the real objective here is to try to scare away the Democratic pols who have been cozying up to Kos and the liberal blogosphere. The sight of all those powerbrokers -- Harry Reid, etc. -- lining up to kiss Kos's ring in Vegas must have really set the klaxons wailing at DLC HQ. ...

... The Lieberman Dems don't hate and fear Kos and the Daily Kos "community" because they are too far to the left. They hate them because they represent an emerging power center within the Democratic Party that they don't control -- what's more, one that is now much closer to the public mainstream on the central issue of our time (the Iraq War) than they are.

Democratic leaders, not just backwater also-rans but people who actually have words like "Leader" in their title, are starting to take bloggers seriously as an effective source of political power. That is a threat to the established political order and one way to defend that order to is to put the fear of God into those leaders. Politicians are cowards compared to your average blogger (if, for no other reason, then they have a lot more to lose). The elites know this and will use that knowledge to their advantage. Be prepared for many more shots to come.

Interesting Times indeed.

Driving The Wedge

Steve Gilliard hits on a key point about the whole King Markos kerfluffle:

The idea behind this smear campaign is to scare pols away from Kos and his community organizing. Joe Lieberman is the victim of this, and this scares people.

On its surface, the recent attacks on Markos and bloggers in general appear to be about, well, Markos and bloggers in general. But the subtext of the attacks are many. One of the biggest is that the punditocracy enjoys the close relationship it has with politicians. Its part of what gives meaning to their sad little lives.

Then along comes YearlyKOS, with its significant number of prominent Democrats making the trip to Las Vegas to wine and dine bloggers (like they have wined and dined pundits for decades), and suddenly the elite pundits are afraid that they are going to lose their exclusive relationship.

So what is one way to prevent this? Make bloggers look toxic so that politicians will avoid them instead of woo them.

Which brings us to the next iteration of this struggle: how will the politicians react to it? Will they continue to woo the netroots? Or will they take their cue from the pundit brothers and sisters and avoid bloggers like the plague?

Harry? Nancy? Mark? How about it?