(Salon) -- One of the responses we inevitably receive at Salon Dot Com after writing columns about how Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz are self-defeating tactical morons is that we’re threatened by them. They scare us and so we get defensive, and write columns!
This isn’t really the way it works. Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz would certainly be frightening if they were in actual positions of power. But the whole points of columns like this and this and this is that Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton won’t ever attain higher positions of power, because they’re possessed by self-aggrandizing instincts that backfire against whatever cause they’re hoping to advance. The penchant for marginalization among Real Conservatives is one of the few things liberalism has going for itself these days.
The people who should frighten liberals are the more mild-mannered ones, the non-grandstanders, the ones who are legitimately interested in building support for damaging legislation. The conservatives who aren’t tactical morons.
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