More Farts To Sniff

Perlstein:

The Timesman replied with such passion that his voice squeaked: “It is the market speaking!”

His next point he managed to deliver more calmly: “The market spoke in 2010. And they gave the Republicans a majority. Everyone knew in 2010 what the Republicans stood for, and they won.” But to my ears, it landed with a screech.



In the book I’m working on now, I write of how Republicans nationalized that election around the message of the Tea Party movement. Hundreds of articles reported uncritically—“just writing what’s going on”—what adherents said “Tea” stood for, literally: The letters T, E, and A were an acronym for “taxed enough already.” No newspapers, ever, bothered to interject that that made little more sense than the claim, habitually flagged as false in news reports now, that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.