FIGHTING WORDS

Nathan Newman: "If progressives want a killer political response to Bush's calls for making the Estate Tax permanent, it's to keep the estate tax and devote the proceeds to long-term health care. The purpose is the same -- preserving assets for the next generation -- but ending the "sickness tax" would have far broader appeal than conservative wailing about a "death tax" that applies only to a a tiny percentage of the population." Sam Smith: "It was on this show that I got conservative journalist Marc Morano to admit he was a 'a la carte' socialist since he used Washington's subway system. 'You're a subway socialist,' I had told him. 'You're just not a healthcare socialist.'" David Sirota: "This blunting of the left’s ideological edge is a result of three unfortunate circumstances. First, conservatives spent the better part of three decades vilifying the major tenets of the left’s core ideology, succeeding to the point where “liberal” is now considered a slur. Second, the media seized on these stereotypes and amplified them - both because there was little being done to refute them, and because they fit so cleanly into the increasingly primitive and binary political narrative being told on television. And third is Partisan War Syndrome - the misconception even in supposedly “progressive” circles that substance is irrelevant when it comes to both electoral success and, far more damaging, to actually building a serious, long-lasting political movement."