Megan McArdle: The Covert Republican Party Activist So Covert She Endorsed Obama
The notion that Megan McArdle is some sort of "Republican Party activist" is just nuts.
In “Project S.H.A.M.E.: Megan McArdle, a Covert Republican Party Activist Trained by the Billionaire Koch Brothers,” Yasha Levine and Mark Ames document, in ridiculous detail, the fact that Megan McArdle has ties to the Koch Brothers and supports many of their policy objectives. That those ties mostly consist of her having attended a training course, having done some work with the Cato Institute, and being married to Peter Suderman, another libertarian writer, is irrelevant because, damn it, there are a lot of bullet points.
Oddly missing from the discussion is that fact that she was constantly touted as one of the “ObamaCons,” conservative and right-libertarian types who voted for and actively endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. Perhaps that just shows how clever she is?
Megan’s been doing this blogging thing longer than I have, and I’ve been at it just short of a decade now. Even in the early days, she always came across to me as well to my left—a New York liberal on social issues but with a libertarian bent on economic issues. The notion that she’s some sort of ”Republican Party activist” is just nuts.
(Note: This was written yesterday morning but didn’t publish for some reason.)
Another example that proves that rich people are not really Republicans. An NYC, DC Ivy Leaguer is almost guaranteed to be a supporter of Democrats before Republicans. And since she works around very liberal people, it makes complete sense that she would slowly drift to the left.
I more interesting aspect of the election is how many of the Paleocons really hate Romney. Maybe the neo-isolationist have realized that their natural allies are the CBC and CHC because none of those groups want to spend any U.S. tax dollar overseas.
A statement about who she voted for on 08 doesn’t seem to me to outweigh the two or three dozen other very strong facts from the SHAME article. I realize she is a commenter but still…
The only reliable classifications for Megan are ‘frequently wrong’ and ‘a general waste of time reading ‘, IMHO.
This is just the Internet cocoon in action.
Out on Main Street in Realityville people wouldn’t know Megan McArdle from Megan Mullally. Seriously. Nobody of consequence ever has heard of Megan McArdle, much less spent any time reading her, and while libertarianism of course is de rigueur on the Internet and in the Internet’s backyard, college and university academia, it’s merely vague and irrelevant noise to the overall body politic.
The other salient point is that in media-Internet-academe circles there are a lot of “conservative” poseurs. For the simple reason that there’s a lot of narcissism in those circles and one quick and easy way to garner attention if you’re a liberal is to pretend to be a conservative (a lighting rod) or some sort of libertarian-conservative amalgamation (a concerned intellectual, or whatever). Goes with the territory.
Project SHAME
The title itself sounds like the work of teenagers having smoked too much weed.
“Naked Capitalism” isn’t renown for its editorial soundness, but this one hits new lows.
I guess they are trying to compete with Tucker Carlson’s crusade against Media Matters.
@Murray:
It is hard to take seriously anyone who refers to Reason magazine as right-wing. The writers at Reason have usually quite hard on mainstream Republicans.
However, one of the criticisms of McCardle is that writers should not make predictions. If one makes a lot of predictions, one will make lots of misses. Those misses seem to give the nitpickers on the internet something to write about.
I saw the original in my feeds. I did glance over it, and it struck me as self-refuting. If you want to write a convincing hit piece, avoid all the hallmarks of a crazy screed. Trying to get 1001 things you hate into one article is a big red flag.
@john personna:
What is amazing is the same type of article could be written about Chelsea Clinton, Al Gore III, or Vanessa Kerry. When someone begins an attack on a person by attacking their parents, it usually goes downhill from there.
The reason I stopped reading McArdle’s had nothing to do with her political positions. It had to do with the laziness of her thinking and the lack of any basic fact checking before she put pen to paper. I generally read everyone at the Atlantic but when she was there I soon realized that when she was writing about something I happened to know about she was often wrong, and wrong in the most elementary ways. In the kind of way that often occurs when some fairly smart person has a clever insight about something they know only a little about, then proceeds to have a debate in their heads where they reinforce the clever insight and make their imaginary opponent say dumber and dumber things.
She’s wrong about as often as Dick Morris.
The fact that she supported Obama is merely the broken clock idiom in action.
McMegan, aka Jane Galt, isn’t a problem because she supports team Red or team Blue. It’s that she’s a sloppy thinker.
Wow. Based on that evidence alone I may have to change how I was going to vote.
Tough to call her an Obamacon when she didn’t even bother to register and vote.
Maybe she had gastritis that day.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/12/23/gastritis-broke-my-calculator/
@Rob in CT:
And lazy. And ill-informed. And self-absorbed. And lazy.
Who cares who she votes for? She’s an extremely sloppy writer and thinker, and when she paints herself into a corner she tries to lie her way out of it. It’s a repeating pattern. She’s not worth reading or paying any further attention.
Wow. Considering how left-wing you are, that makes her practically a Communist!
I like their mischaracterization of why she hated working for PIRG. It wasn’t because they assigned her to a neighborhood filled with poor people. It was because they sent her to that neighborhood to get donations for PIRG so that, when she failed, they would have an excuse to fire her and not give her the balloon payment they hold out so they can get away with paying sub-minimum wage to their volunteers.
When discussing McMegan, this proud moment of hackery should never go unmentioned. McArdle was participating in a WaPo online discussion about healthcare, and at one point, when challenged to back up her claim that European pharma companies made 80% of their money in the US market, she gave the following now-classic answer:
Anonymous: You said that medical innovation will be wiped out if we have a type of national health care, because European drug companies get 80% of their revenue from Americans. Where did you get this statistic?
Megan McArdle: It wasn’t a statistic–it was a hypothetical.
If she is a covert operator, the Kochs are wasting their money. She hurts their cause with her shallow analysis. She is my go to example for a Glibertarian. Shallowness obviously is not a deterrent for being a successful mainstream “economic”‘ blogger, case in point the Neo-Gliberal Matt Yglesias.
I will point out that none of these bloggers are actually trained economists (not that it matters, economists are mostly wrong these days too), none of them have worked in biz or finance, and none of them really understand markets and how they work (read the Big Picture for someone who DOES understand markets). They have liberal arts degrees and took an econ course, their only experience is in writing and made a name for them selves for talking a little econ when all their peers were just talking politics.
@MarkedMan:
Wrong and ignorant – ignorant is not a personal slur. Ignorant means that you have not yet been educated about a particular subject matter. I am totally ignorant about chemistry. I do not blog about chemistry.
McArdle is extraordinarily ignorant about economic facts yet she blogs about economics in a hilariously inept manner. For a boatload of money at a “prestigious”magazine. (My dear lord, she actually used to work for The Economist. How the Hell did that happen?)
Much more damning, though, is her response when presented with factual information that negates her “analysis”. She will never admit that she was wrong. Never. When presented with iron-clad evidence she retreats into personal excuses – a la “I had gastritis.” F*cking pathetic.
If you cannot acknowledge an error, you are absolutely useless as an analyst.
If you dig in and refuse to admit that your premise or your conclusion was factually wrong, or that the numbers that you based your argument on were inaccurate, you totally cease to be worthy of any attention.
The main problem with McArdle isn’t her politics. It’s that she’s dumb as a brick.
Dr. Joyner –
I voted for Reagan twice. By your logic, I guess that means that I will vote for Romney.
Not likely.
@Bernard Finel: “And lazy. And ill-informed. And self-absorbed. And lazy”
Wait a minute — are you saying that a self-styled “libertarian” is actually… self-absorbed? How could that be? How could that possibly be?
James, while she supported Obama in 2008, she didn’t vote for him. She had just moved to DC and didn’t register in time, so was unable to actually cast a vote.
Oddly missing from the discussion is that fact that she was constantly touted as one of the “ObamaCons,” conservative and right-libertarian types who voted for and actively endorsed Barack Obama in 2008.
Here’s what she wrote right after the 2008 election (emphasis added) in a post titled “I’d Like to Vote Republican Again, Someday”:
“A lot of libertarians are feeling a little frisky nowadays. We sent the Republican party a message that we couldn’t be taken for granted. Now isn’t it time to press our claims
@wr:
My previous comment about McArdle…:
…may not have been entirely about Megan McArdle.
In fact, it may have been also perfectly applicable to another OTB front pager. (Not the author of this post.)
Except, of course, she didn’t actually vote for Obama:
“I’m not voting because I forgot to register.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/11/vote-though-it-pains-you/4310/
@Rafer Janders:
Let me try this again, this time without messing up the format:
Here’s what she wrote right after the 2008 election in a post titled “I’d Like to Vote Republican Again, Someday”:
Now, I’m no Englishtician, but the way I read that is that she’d identifying herself as part of Team Republican. She talks about sending the GOP a message that “we couldn’t be taken for granted”, and talks about staying “with the Republicans” and building a “common platform” with them. Maybe she’s not always in sync with all GOP positions, but she’s certainly an ally, and far more on their side than she is on that of the Democrats.
I love the happy ignorance contained in the above statement. If she is truly interested in a little clarity on this point, she should take a listen to the Koch/Walker prank tape. Not only have the brothers got a firm grip on his ear, they bought his balls as well.
@Rafer Janders:
I’m pretty sure it’s called Englishtarian.
I think that’s what we call those fancy, proper speaking folks, here in the Heartland(tm).
@de stijl:
For an example, see here:
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/philadelphia-fines-business-owner-for-cleaning-up-vacant-lot/#comments
I’d hate to think that either side would want to claim her. The woman is a lazy thinker, doesn’t bother to check her facts, and shows the intellectual discipline of Mr. “Liberal Fascism”. Sloppy thoughts, sloppy research, and sloppy analysis.
She of course thinks that she’s “smart” and is writing something worth reading. No. An econoblogger worth reading was Tanta over at Calculated Risk. Or whoever it is writing at Naked Capitalism. McArdle is only good for a laugh.
McMegan should be known for one (and ideally only one) thing. The “McMegan” is a term used to describe an error of one order of magnitude, always in the direction that benefits your argument.
Example:
“I don’t know why my wife is unsatisfied, my penis is almost 30 inches long”
@Rafer Janders:
Golly, please don’t tell me that Doug got snookered by another story on the Right Wing Wurlitzer / “Libertarian” Outrage-of-the-day Factory that turned out to be untrue?
That would be shocking!!11!Eleventy!
Perhaps he will take this to heart and, perhaps, read up about confirmation bias, drink a beer , and think twice before posting things that make him look like a …, heck, you know where I’m going.
Actually, I find the Megan hate on the Internet to be overblown. Sure,like most bloggers, she gets stuff wrong and she is a sloppy thinker. But lots of bloggers are like this.
It doesn’t explain to me the level of vitriol aimed at McArdle, when to me there are right wing bloggers like Michelle Malkin who are much, much worse.
I think of McArdle as someone who engages, and at least persaudable, even if often wrong, whereas Michelle Malkin to me is completely beyond redemption.
@stonetools:
Fair enough, though “better than Michelle Malkin” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement.
@stonetools:
It doesn’t explain to me the level of vitriol aimed at McArdle, when to me there are right wing bloggers like Michelle Malkin who are much, much worse.
The reason McArdle gets so much hate is because The Atlantic decided to promote her from just a blogger to “business and economics editor” in 2010. Because of her glibertarian tendencies, bad math, sloppy thinking, and frequent lies, many people thought it a great injustice that she was given such a position over other, more worthy bloggers out there. A lot of people still like and respect The Atlantic, as opposed to the wingnut welfare outlets that employ people like Malkin.
@mantis:
I’d disagree, as the McMegan hate has been around since way before 2010. I’d say it’s a combination of being frequently linked by people who are well read in liberal circles (especially Yglesias and Ezra Klein), being frequently wrong and very tetchy about admitting it, and the 2×4 comment.
@stonetools:
McArdle and Malkin are not really comparable in my mind.
McArdle fake-tries to be a Economics Blogger. The political content is usually played as the secondary consideration but oddly every post goes like – Gosh! this thought just occurred to me – it TOTALLY meshes up with the folks who are trying to thwart what what the Democrats would prefer. How crazy is that!
You know that, more times than not, McArdle leads with the “Economics” story when she is really going after the political implications of the story. That is not a bad thing. It would be perfectly cool if she were straight-forward with her stuff.
Pretending to be analytical when you’re really political is a scam , a dodge, etc. Getting paid for it is pretty sweet though. Kudos!
I’d be super offended except for the fact that she’s so obvious. McArdle’s not a total Team Red shill, but she falls for their crap almost every time. Even when it’s so obvious that she should know better; that she still falls for it tells us that she is useless and you have no need to ever read her stuff.
On the other hand, Malkin is just a straight-up Team Red shill. In her heart she probably doesn’t believer half the crap she says on FNC, but she is absolutely convinced the the D’s will – someday / somehow – put her and her cohorts in a UN concentration camp in Idaholaska because Dems are Stalinist-Fascists.
I think the piling-on is excessive. I read McArdle warily, but I read her and often find value. As an example,
Is College a Lousy Investment?
I could be critical of that if I wanted to put on that hat, but it does hit a lot of the real concerns and changes taking place.
@de stijl:
If wishing were to make it so!
@Moosebreath:
I’d disagree, as the McMegan hate has been around since way before 2010.
I see. That’s when she really showed up on my radar, so I may have jumped to a conclusion erroneously.
@de stijl: ‘
she is absolutely convinced the the D’s will – someday / somehow – put her and her cohorts in a UN concentration camp in Idaholaska because Dems are Stalinist-Fascists.
Yes, but would she write a book defending them for doing so?
@mantis:
As an authoritarian, she probably would to curry favor with the winning team. MIchelle don’t truck with losers.
@stonetools:
You said it. I find her interesting if a bit frustrating at times. Sometimes the points she’s making get missed because of some and easily avoided dumb mistake. But the level of hatred for her is jut way out of proportion. There are popular bloggers out there who flat out lie, misdirect and spew vitriol who don’t get a tenth the hate.
As I often say when I read these Koch Brother hidden conspiracy things, I’m very underwhelmed. One point worth making: the Koch Brothers supposed bete noir is global warming. Yet this is another Koch-supported “shill” who … accepts global warming.
@de stijl:
I think I want to take this back. On further thought, I don’t see Malkin as a straight-up authoritarian who is going to throw in with whichever team “won”.
Given the content of the majority of her posts, I would actually posit that there is some sort of martyr / victim thing going on with Malkin. Not to a Pam Gellar degree, but pretty close to that same sort of delusion.
If she didn’t feel as if she were being oppressed by someone who was “evil”, her world would spin out control. Being the one threatened is her safe place (which is pretty effed up in my mind, but I don’t run this screwy world).
Obviously this is armchair psychology – take it with a big grain of salt.
@mantis: “The reason McArdle gets so much hate is because The Atlantic decided to promote her from just a blogger to “business and economics editor” in 2010. ”
This. A prominent and formerly respectable magazine gave her prime real estate to BS.
Badly.
James, go to Balloon Juice, and search for ‘Megan McArdle’. Read on her many errors in basic arithmetic and basic reading. Then go to Susan of Texas, and repeat.
Many errors, all swerving right.
And then see if you can find any of her errors which swerve left.
And then, for your own sake, please stop lowering yourself by defending Megan.
I’ll second that. I’m a fake economist too but this really irks me. Not that I don’t agree with her economic arguments (though I rarely do) but the fact that it’s essentially political philosophy masquerading as economics.
Hmm. I wasn’t aware that the Megan-hate was so prevalent. I simply stopped reading her when I realized that she was such a BS’er (BS = indifference to whether something is true or not as long as it advances one’s point). It’s worse than a waste of time to read her as you literally have no idea whether any of the ‘facts’ she marshals are true or not.
It was easy to stop reading her on the Atlantic. All of her posts fall under her own top mast. I don’t often read comments in the Atlantic but don’t remember her posting comments on other Atlantic writers blog posts. So she was easy to avoid.
That bit about clearly labeling all posts by author would be a great help here at OTB. I’m thinking of the “Quick Takes”. Hey, does anyone know if there is a way to get blog posts only by certain authors at OTB? Or, and this is the holy grail, to get everyone but a certain author? Maybe as an RSS feed?
@Hal 10000:
Accepting exceedingly well-evidenced scientific conclusions is not something a decent, intelligent person should be overly proud of.
But does McCardle support policies that might actually do something to mitigate global warming? That’s a totally different question, and that’s the one that matters, not what she feels in her heart.
@de stijl:
“In fact, it may have been also perfectly applicable to another OTB front pager. (Not the author of this post.)”
As I read your post I was thinking the exact same thing.
@stonetools:
“I think of McArdle as someone who engages, and at least persaudable, even if often wrong, whereas Michelle Malkin to me is completely beyond redemption.”
McMegan’s readers have different (and higher) expectations than do Malkin’s readers. No intelligent person reads Malkin with the hope that they will come away more enlightened, and Malkin isn’t trying to enlighten those that aren’t already in her camp. She just wants to feed red meat to the circus animals. McMegan, on the other hand, tries to engage reality and she is attempting to enlighten and persuade her readers.
Given the objectives that both bloggers have, McMegan is a hopeless and frustrating failure. It would be like coming to OTB to read thoughtful commentary and getting the blogs that are posted over at Ricochet.com.
Had no idea who McArdle was when I saw the S.H.A.M.E article the other day and I stopped reading after I noticed it was a reprint of an Aug. 6, 2009 article – hardly worthy of the “outing” hype – and discovered via skimming that she was apparently being blamed for her parents.
I assume from the comments that I haven’t missed anything. But shouldn’t S.H.A.M.E. be ashamed of recycling a 3-year-old screed.
@stonetools: “Actually, I find the Megan hate on the Internet to be overblown. Sure,like most bloggers, she gets stuff wrong and she is a sloppy thinker. But lots of bloggers are like this.
It doesn’t explain to me the level of vitriol aimed at McArdle, when to me there are right wing bloggers like Michelle Malkin who are much, much worse.”
I think that some of it is due to the fact that she’s one of the Bright Young Things, who is supposed to be writing in the age of Internet accountability, but who is as dishonest and corrupt as any 5
60 year old hack.
@James Joyner
I’d love to find what NYC social liberal stances she actually has.
You better actually support your assertion here. What social liberal stances does she actually have because in all the years I’ve read her, she comes across as a person who only cares if a policy would benefit her personally unless you yank her teeth in the comments.
I mean, she doesn’t support gay marriage for instance because she thinks we just don’t change institutions because MAYBE there might be a reason why, but she can’t explain why exactly or make a case for it, just that maybe we don’t know! Of course this does not stop her from writing anything else she doesn’t know enough about. This is what we call concern trolling James. This is her profession. She will concern troll issues by pretending to maybe thinking about it and then invariably shift rightwards by the end or give such a mealy-mouthed endorsement of a liberal that no one believes her. She clogs up the valuable time on the Internet to argue by throwing out false hypotheticals and poor reasoning so people waste time arguing her bullshit instead of arguing about the actual topic at hand.
What she is, is a professional concern troll, which you’ve fallen for hook, line and sinker.
Libertarians have a tendency to disown her on economic issues btw.
Also, we’re still waiting for Part II of her exhaustive Elizabeth Warren takedown.
Also, we’re waiting for our pizzas for a family of four via order of magnitude error.
@swbarnes2: I support a stiff carbon tax, and have for years. I was lukewarm on cap and trade, which I don’t like as well as a carbon tax, but might be the best we can do. I’m against renewable subsidies, though I might be persuadable on nuclear, which has unique regulatory requirements (imposed by the government, as they should be), and hence cost problems.