The editors of the Washington Post have done their latest weighing in on the battle over the sequester, and, as Jonathan Chait writes on Wednesday, they are still doing that thing that the Beltway media do when they've spent too long inhaling their own flatulence -- pointedly preferring one side's policies (in this case, President Barack Obama and the Democrats), pointedly decrying the other side's intransigence (in this case, GOP lawmakers), and then declaring that both sides are equally at fault for the impasse. "Yet neither party has staked out anything like a serious negotiating position," write the editors. "Both sides are obviously playing a political blame game," they add, seemingly without recognizing that their whole editorial is an attempt to win this "game."
It's all basically nonsensical. Matt Yglesias likens it to a sort of vapor-lock that afflicts the intellect when you decide that constantly re-reciting tropes about "seriousness" becomes easier than producing actual thoughts:
Once you embrace the Principle of Seriousness, the way is clear for rigorous BipartisanThink. If the parties fail to agree because one party is being unreasonable and the other party is failing to cater to their unreasonable demands, then the apparently reasonable party is in fact failing to be serious. After all, a serious proposal is one that stands a chance of passing. Reasonable proposals will not pass a Congress in which one party is being unreasonable, so by definition the Principle of Seriousness allocates the blame equally to both sides. Balance is restored to the Force.
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