December 16, 2014 3:41 PM

Bearse: Left-wing Ideologues Hiding in Plain Sight

From the Right: Quorum Report’s conservative columnist Eric Bearse argues that liberals hide their own extremism while flogging conservatives for not being pragmatic

Why do liberals get a pass on the label “dangerous ideologue”? When Senator Ted Cruz implemented his strategy to shut down the federal government over ObamaCare – and more recently his strategy to defund the president’s executive order on immigration – he was vilified in the press, and the subject of disdain in cocktail parties across Washington. His ideology was extremist because he actually carried out the promises he made on the campaign trail.

But what about Elizabeth Warren? Here is a senator from Massachusetts who doesn’t really believe in capitalism. She is the preferred choice of the Obama ideologues, moveon.org operatives, Occupy Wall Street zealots and Seattle anarchists. She is a hard-left ideologue whose efforts to stop the bill to keep government funded was done out of principle, according to the media narrative. Because Cruz’s principles disagree with press sensibilities, he is a dangerous ideologue. Warren’s ideological principles just make her palatable for president.

One of the tricks liberals like to play is to pretend they don’t have an ideology, but instead are just about solving problems. In fact, they scorn ideologues on the right while denying they even have an ideology. This is the tactic employed at the blog formerly known as Burkablog, where politicians are divided into two camps -- people driven by ideology, and people who want to solve problems. The conservatives are ideologues, the moderates and liberals just want to solve problems. It’s how many on the left claim they are centrists – they deny their solutions have an ideological bent.

The complete column from Eric Bearse is available in the R&D Department.

By Eric Bearse