Sometimes the truth hurts

The Conservative talking heads are buzzing that apparently Tom Coburn is now bedfellows with Nancy Pelosi. The headlines all say "Coburn defends Pelosi," obviously trying to imply that he is siding with Pelosi politically. And many have fallen for it.

This was the most complete article on the conversation in question that I found. You can read it for yourself, but in summary, what happened was this:

Some "questioner" (though we never really got what the question was) started ranting about "all the evil people in Washington" and Coburn said there are a lot of good people in Washington "whose biggest problem is that they don't know what they don't know." And went on to say that Nancy Pelosi is a "nice lady."

And that's it.

No defense of policy or politics. Just that she's a nice person. And people are lapping it up as though it's a proclamation of reregistration.

All he said was that Nancy Pelosi is nice, but wrong - and then went on to detail what she was wrong about. Okay, that may be uncomfortable for us to hear, we like to think of our enemies as soulless baby eaters. But he said what I could say about many liberal Democrats I know - they're nice people, just wrong. And this is supposed to mean he's crossed over to the dark side? Does your back hurt from jumping to those conclusions?

When you are right on the issues, you don't need to go off on personal attacks. That's why the left's biggest defensive position on Obamacare is that people who oppose it are rich, cold-hearted racists who don't "care about people." The left's primary strategy is to demonize their opponents personally, not politically. Hello, Sarah Palin? And that's what Coburn's larger point was.

As far as Coburn's remarks regarding Fox News, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and saying that was made in the heat of the moment. Then again, when Fox News now employs Glenn Beck - who to this day has yet to take back his erroneous statements saying there is no difference between Republicans (who stood in solidarity against Obamacare and nearly every major policy Obama and Pelosi have proposed over the last year) and Democrats - can you really blame him?