I don't quite understand the model of politics underlying the backlash-to-the-backlash over the CBO report. The theory is that though the GOP's initial spin on the report was wrong it's meta-right because the lies will be used to power effective attack ads in the fall -- and in politics, what's true, and what voters can be tricked into believing is true, are two equally valid categories for inquiry. You see this model of politics all the time -- particularly during elections, when the press gives wall-to-wall coverage of gaffes not because anyone believes the gaffe was important, but because they believe it might end up in attack ads. Beneath that model of politics lies an assumption that an important scarcity in politics is "lines that can be used in attack ads," and so every time one party or the other finds one of those lines, it's a big deal. This seems to me to wildly underestimate the creativity of the people who make attack ads.
Why is there a multiplicity of things politicians might say but a deficit in the methods to say them? Sounds like a supply dysfunction in the ability to deliver political information. Keep at it Ezra, you are getting damn close to the secstag problem. Ezra is, in fact, one of the few bloggers looking in the right place. Ezra would profit from looking at this research. Ezra would also profit by learning about a well established theory of information flow.
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