Posted 5:57 AM by Scoobie Davis

Extreme Compared To Whom?
The attacks on Nancy Pelosi’s supposed extremism are often as amusing as they are distorted. George Will on This Week tried to marginalize Pelosi by pointing out that voters in her congressional district overwhelmingly voted for Al Gore in 2000 (Psst George, more voters in the country voted for Gore than Bush).

Today the Moonie Times has an editorial on Pelosi that is pretty weak stuff. Examples given to illustrate Pelosi’s extremism are for her opposition to state-sanctioned school prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools (The Times doesn’t say whether Pelosi favors the teaching of the "Reverend" Moon’s sexual purification rituals to public school children).

Ben Fritz of Spinsanity has a great column on the right’s attempt to demonize Pelosi. The previously mentioned editorial by the Moonie Times is not the only time the Times editorial page went after Pelosi—Fritz also points out the Times’ Balint Vazsonyi’s paranoid fantasies: “Exactly 40 years ago, the 'Manchurian Candidate' was a movie," [Vazsonyi] writes, referencing the film where American soldiers are brainwashed to become assassins by communists. "Could it be that Thursday it will become reality?"

This nasty piece of character assassination deserves comment. The Manchurian Candidate analogy is nothing new with the paranoid right. During the election of 1992, assorted wingnuts such as Bob Dornan and Rush used the Manchurian Candidate analogy to describe Bill Clinton because he had toured Moscow when he was a Rhodes Scholar. It is also worth noting that Vazsonyi also accused Bill Clinton of treason because of the Moonie Times’ journalistic hoax regarding Clinton’s November 2001 Georgetown speech (for links on the hoax, see my 11/12/02 post, “Glutton For Punishment”).

I agree with Spinsanity that there is more heat than light generated on Pelosi supposed extremism. My take on the matter is that most of the critics of Pelosi’s supposed extremism view Pelosi’s House counterpart Tom DeLay as mainstream. Now that’s extreme.