Was watching the diaries on Daily Kos and this one popped up:

What if we had Chavez for President?

I immediately thought of all of Tom's posts about how the left just loves the crazy Commie dictator and so I tracked the comments in this wacky post. Apparently the guy posting it really believed we'd end up better off and a few people actually defended him but overall, the responses to the diarist were pretty much scorn. Seems the overriding sentiment is that Chavez is just another punk dictator who would cause great harm to our country.

What's funny is that, if you follow other diaries that this guy has posted, he almost sounds as if he's a Republican plant. Reminds me a lot of SDAI where he claims to have these centrist views and yet every time he comes down on the side of an issue, it falls heavily into the fringes of the right.

So just maybe Tom your finger on the pulse of the left has slipped a bit. Sure you'll find the few extremists that want government control of everything but if you follow the conversations daily you'll find heated debate within the factions and generally the consensus falling very close to what would be considered a reasoned and centrist view.

My limited exposure to the preeminent conservative sites has been quite a different experience. On those boards your extremists often take over the conversations with almost no dissenting viewpoints. It's difficult to read actually almost scary especially when one of these "blow away all the ragheads" posts starts attracting the Rambo wannabes and by the time you've read a page you are ready to go buy a gun to protect yourself.

Art