The Schizophrenic Knight

In high school we did a stage-play production of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That's right, suck it, Spamalot, we were 15 years ahead of our time. One of the scenes we performed included the three-headed knight. Because I love that film, I knew all the words at the time, but my cohorts in the three-headed knight outfit didn't remember their lines. So at the last minute, I went out as the "Schizophrenic Knight" (I know, there's a difference between schizophrenia and multiple personalities, but I was in high school and under a deadline) and did the entire colloquy as a soliloquy.

I'm reminded of this when I see Michael Steele's performance the past couple days:

Yesterday, the Republican National Committee announced a “Seniors’ Health Care Bill of Rights,” in which they announced that they would “protect Medicare.” “We want to make sure that we are not cutting the Medicare program,” said RNC Chairman Michael Steele on ABC’s Good Morning America.

But on Fox and Friends this morning, Steele undermined his new argument that Medicare is a sacrosanct program that must be protected by calling it “a very good example of what we should not have happen with all of our health care.” Asked to respond to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) argument that “if you like Medicare and you don’t want to make any cuts to it, then you’re basically defending a single payer system,” Steele launched into an attack on the program, implying that it would be better if it were privatized.

The winger id has become so inundated with this contradictory language and truisms that are in complete conflict with one another that I'm sure this makes sense to somebody. Being Republican means that two sentences like "Medicare is a disaster! Long live Medicare!" are perfectly coherent side-by-side.

This is basically why Republicans are irrelevant in national politics. They speak in some kind of Windtalkers code that you need a secret unscrambler ring to decipher, and most people just don't want to do the work. However, Democrats have failed in explaining their policies as well, so people have nothing to go on but results. And they're not seeing much of that out of this Administration, either.