Matthew Y. rightly points out that there's little point in having wonky policy debates which are reported to fill the air at his new place of employment. Often the conservatarians, on one of their usual moral high horses, chastize us left-leaning bloggers for doing nothing but criticizing Bush, blah blah blah. But, as Paul Krugman pointed out in his Buzzflash interview, there is no policy to debate. As he said, at least back in the Reagan/Bush I years, or hell even during the reign of King Newt I, there was some pretense that there was a genuine debate about how to solve very real problems and very real unfair inequities. Conservatives and liberals might disagree somewhat about the nature of the problems, but it was more the solutions that were being argued about. Of course, it was mostly bullshit but at least they bothered to come up with it. Now, they just do what they want to do, proclaim it "compassionate," and don't even try to justifiy it.
So, as Matthew points out, why bother messing up the lovely partisan rancor with any high-minded policy debates. They're just a distraction, frankly, and will be until we have some grownups in charge again.
