Oh, the Hypocrisy!

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

~Daniel Patrick Moynihan

In an article bemoaning conservatives' apparent disconnect from reality, Paul Waldman writes these two paragraphs and puts them next to each other, apparently unironically:

Ascribing the most nefarious of motives to our political opponents is standard fare, of course. But basing your political arguments not on what those opponents have done or have proposed to do but on what they "would" do, frees you from the need to keep a hold on even the slightest tether to reality. Who needs evidence of the other side's evil, when you can just imagine what lies in their hearts?

Imagination also has its psychic rewards. Take the Tea Partiers. The vast majority would probably say that Barack Obama, that vile socialist, has raised their taxes. The truth, however, is that Obama cut taxes for 98 percent of working families with the stimulus bill. You could argue that those tax cuts weren't a good idea, but you ought not to be able to argue that they didn't happen.

So to sum up: Paragraph 1: Basing your arguments on what your opponents would do frees you from reality. Paragraph 2: Tea Partiers would say that Obama raised their taxes, but it's not true.

Waldman's only justification of this is Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips refusing to admit that most Americans' taxes decreased under Barack Obama. Does Waldman bother to mention a New York Times poll where a majority (52% to 42%) of Tea Partiers say that the amount they pay in income taxes is fair? No, there's no sign that Waldman even looked at it.

I am sympathetic to the argument that conservatives' reliance on straw men comes at the expense of facts. But that doesn't mean that liberals should emulate it.