Scot Lehigh

goes sighing after the soothing syrup of compromise in today's Boston Globe column.
He has the entirely unoriginal and neoconish notion that if those darn democrats and republicans down in Washington could just get together and compromise with manly bipartisanship, the budget deficit would get solved overnight.
THEY would have to swallow tax increases...
WE would have to chow down on "entitlement reform"...or so he argues more or less.

Usually this is where I snark off about Scot and his neconish notions, but today I will only add that sometimes compromise is in the worst interests of the Nation and our Progeny. Operationally speaking it is hard to compromise with politicians whose base requires them to wallow in increasingly paranoid eliminationist fantasies...But then that should be obvious to everyone at this point.
More importantly I'm just gonna add the counterintuitive point that in a deep jobless recession, worrying about the damn deficit really ought to be put off to another day.
Getting people back on the job, paying taxes and spending money is an of itself a strong deficit reduction tactic.
Full bellies make better decisions on the deficit, getting stampeded into some grand desperate plan to reduce Federal spending now is a formula for disaster. Stern measures are taken more easily in phat times.
But
Then
Humble Elias isn't an economist, but then neither is Scot Lehigh

I finally figured out what the hell is wrong with Scot Lehigh

he didn't watch enough television when he was a pup!
This is no joke folks, without thorough exposure to TV's first anti-hero, Doctor Zachary Smith a kid grows up with a dangerously simplistic view of humanity.

Lord no wonder Scot fell for Romney's bullshit...it's like he had no defenses at all!

Moreover, without "Batman" a child can grow to adulthood shorn of any sense of satire or appreciation of parody.

When was the last time you laughed at anything Scot Lehigh wrote? I mean, think about that.

And what of "Gilligan's Island" the supreme and eternal childhood re-run? A priceless archive of dog-eared vaudeville turns, all apparently overlooked by young Lehigh who was no doubt reading "Commentary" sans a shred of insight or pleasure.

I mean, no wonder he is such a pompous stiff in the public prints.

Frankly to me, the lack of a sense of humor, as evidenced by today's earnest laugh-like essay on the perils of television is in itself a dangerous form of mental torpidity.

Dangerous...

Frankly Scot's only hope is to start watching "Star Trek" re-runs...or maybe "The Fugitive"...dat one had class as well.

Scot Lehigh is agin' the fabled megaprimary...

(I'd link to the column but the Globe wants money for yesterday's opinion, which strikes me as a counterintuitive thinking)...and fair enough this is a worthwhile debate topic, from the process of front end loading primaries to the persistent centrality of the New Hampshire Primary.
That having been said, let us not forget that Scot Lehigh wants to sell newspapers and therefore a long devisive primary schedule is preferred with a divided and fractious democratic convention if possible.
Otherwise how can he and all the other pundits fill up column space in the spring of '08 with stillborn fantasies of "brokered conventions" and "late announcing candidates"?
And another thing, a long drawl out political brawl in the democratic primaries plays endlessly to Scot Lehigh's preference for some moderate republican man-on-horseback to rescue us all from those awful chaotic democrats.
A quick end and bloodless end to the selection process undercuts this vital meme.
Mind you, democracy's best interests might not be well served by a megaprimary, but don't confuse that with Scot's own personal agenda.