Instapundit's double standard: Extremists and the Major Parties

[BurtWorm]

Another brilliant post from Glenn Greenwald:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/

As I explained in the C&L post, my belief that Reynolds has an obligation to either denounce or defend Coulter’s comments is largely based on the fact that Reynolds routinely lectures Democrats on what he claims is their obligation to denounce "extremists on the Left" – even when the extremists in question are totally fringe and inconsequential figures who have nothing to do with Democrats, and – unlike Coulter here – don’t have huge throngs of followers and aren’t invited to be the featured speaker at the most important political events of the year. I specifically cited this post from Reynolds self-righteously taking Democrats to task for their grave moral failure in remaining silent about that oh-so-significant, long-standing icon of the Democratic Party, Ward Churchill.

In that regard, compare Reynolds’ Churchill sermon to Democrats ("I keep hearing that there's a silent majority on the Left that doesn't agree with these things. I keep waiting for it to stop being silent."), with Reynolds’ excuse for his silence about Coulter from his post today ("I tend mostly to ignore Coulter."). Isn’t that the very definition of a double standard?

Republicans have been playing this game for years. They wildly inflate the importance of fringe, extremist figures and then -- every time one of those individuals makes an intemperate remark or comment that can be wrenched out-of-context and depicted as some sort of demented evil -- they demand that Democrats ritualistically parade before the cameras and either condemn those individuals or be branded as someone who is insufficiently willing to stand up to the extremists "in their party."

If that’s the game that is going to be played - and we’ve been playing exactly that tired, corrupt game for several years now – it ought to at least be two-sided.

[OzarkDem]

1. They should be required to respond for Coulter

But then that would require them to admit they're all bug-eyed crazy extremists, too. As it is, I don't see how any of these so called conservative pundits consider themselves to have any degree of professionalism or credibility.