Safari

I tuned into “Fresh Air” with, um, aaaah, um, Terry Gross on MPR last night for a bit…

…and heard what sounded, at first blush, like a typical “lefty goes among the conservatives” story; Gross was interviewing some kind of “mainstream”/lefty journalist about his visit to the Value Voters Summit.

The better news – the part that made me actually stay tuned for most of the episode – was that it was David Weigel of the Washington Independent, one of precious few generally good reporters in the entire Sorosnet “Center for “Independent” Media” chain.

Weigel has an interesting beat…:

Is the conservative right undergoing a transformation? Journalist David Weigel thinks so. Weigel covers the Republican party for the online magazine The Washington Independent, where he’s written about tea party protests, anti-health care activists, the “birther” movement and the recent Values Voter summit.

I’m not sure what’s the most interesting thing about the interview: that the left thinks they need to study conservatism like it’s an anthropology experiment?  That Terry, um, uh, Gross seems to eager to pass on the current A-list of anti-right slanders (lookit all those racist teagaggers!)?
But Weigel’s interview is interesting; it seems that Weigel, almost alone among the media and left (pardon the redundancy), notices what we tea-partiers have figured out, something I noted in my speech to the Minnesota Tea Party last week; the right seems to be focused less on individual issues – life, immigration, security – and more on the contitutional first principles that need to link us.

It’s actually good news.