Great line of the day

Josh Marshall talks about political "orthodoxy":

In our society, at least in most of it, the word 'orthodoxy' comes with at least a loose negative connotation. We're open-minded, tolerant people. So to call one of a political party's bedrock issues an 'orthodoxy', as the Times does here, is at least to slightly prejudice the question . . . But why do Republicans need to give up these 'orthodoxies'...Why shouldn't they organize their voting around these issues that mean so much to them?
It reminds of the predictable-as-the-seasons articles you'll read every few years in the Post and other papers asking whether Democrats are going to give up their hidebound orthodoxies of supporting Social Security or the progressive income tax or civil rights. For many of us those are precisely the reasons we're involved in politics, so why should we give them up because some frivolous oped writer who doesn't know the first thing about public policy thinks it's the hip new thing to do?
How many Democrats would support a flat-tax, pro-privatization, anti-gay rights candidate for president? And why should they? Washington's beautiful people, the froth at the top of the politico-cultural mug, look down on everybody, right and left, who's really committed politically. It's a mild embarrassment, like loud clothes or poor table manners.

Emphasis mine.
And I think this is why so much political coverage from both Washington and Ottawa is just "horse-race" coverage or got-ya gonzo journalism -- because too many of our national reporters on both sides of the border are just too, too sophisticated (and too, too rich) to really care about any of the social or economic issues the candidates are talking about.
They act like nobody else should care either. So gauche!