If unreasonable positions ensure that the other side gets equal blame in the centrist's scorekeeping and resulting media coverage, then they are inherently "can't lose" positions. This provides a basic floor which biases the entire process against being reasonable.If some sort of action is eventually necessary (as it is with budget issues, and most other governmental questions as well), then the unreasonable side - which by definition cares less (perhaps not at all) about real-world consequences - has an increasing advantage the longer that the issue remains unresolved, thus further motivating them to remain unreasonable. If they start at 50 percent (equal blame), things only get better for them over time, as the blame burden remains constant, but the cost pressure to do something rises much more accurately on the reasonable side.
In the process, argues Rosenberg, politically viable but unworkable political proposals get conflated with politically "serious," i.e. reasonable, ideas -- first among the MSM and with Washington elite, then among the wider public:
So why is the discussion dominated by a non-solution while a real solution can't even be discussed? It's because the "politically viable" sense of serious totally dominates over the "pragmatically effective" sense of the word, and because what is politically viable is circularly defined: extremist Republican non-solutions are politically viable because Republicans adamantly insist that they are, no matter how laughable they may be - and centrist bipartisan ideologues routinely and reliably endorse their false claims as matters of fact when they do so. The fact that they aren't even remotely serious, in the problem-solving sense, never even enters the picture.
And here Rosenberg sounds almost like Rush Limbaugh, who rejects bi-partisanship as an inherent political virtue:
Problem-solving and argument-winning have become two entirely antagonistic activities, and "moderate" "centrist" "bipartisanship" has become the creation of such profound confusion that the voting public won't catch on until it's far, far too late.
Today's Republicans are wrong and unreasonable. Any "middle ground" between their ideas -- the Paul Ryan budget, for example -- and reasonable progressive ideas is still wrong. We cannot afford to call "less wrong" a job well done. We have big problems and we must be right!
By Paul Rosenberg
March 22, 2013 | Aljazeera
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