Stephen, there is such a basic disconnect between what Chait says you say, and what he quotes you as saying, that it’s hard to fathom how he thought this post could hold up to scrutiny. It isn’t even as if he quotes you out of context and then makes a flawed argument from his cherry-picked evidence — Chait can’t even be bothered to expend enough words to constitute an argument.

What’s left is a sandwiched quotation from your piece and 46-whole words of original thought. Actually, when you take out the proper names and titles, and another bit he pulls from you, it’s only 30 words — the bald assertion that you’re guilty of something like a tautology. And to anyone who bothered to read the block-quote, it’d become instantly apparent that that’s not the case. Your reasoning may be flawed, but it sure as hell isn’t circular.

It’s ironic, then that Chait would title his post “QED, Motherf*****” Since he hasn’t demonstrated anything at all and his reasoning isn’t so much circular as nonexistent.

And while I’ve got my logician’s hat on, let me suggest that the phenomenon Stephen calls “aggressively missing someone else’s point in the service of saying something superficially insightful,” is really just a special case of violating the principle of charity, and it isn’t the first time I’ve seen Chait doing it.

Weigel’s criticism, on the other hand, has some initial force, except, as you point out, Brown is an idiosyncratic Republican who often takes positions contrary to his party — exactly what Chris Coons is not. Nor was Brown the sacrificial lamb Coons appeared to be. Whether or not the Massachusetts Republican establishment thought of Brown’s candidacy as perfunctory (and I have no idea if they did) it is clear that Scott Brown never had any intention of phoning it in.

Indeed, that’s another thing that separates Brown from Coons. When there’s no incumbent or rising star, both parties have been known to run loyal functionaries who’ve waited their turn. But Brown was running against the status quo. Coons is a cog of the very overreaching Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda whose epic failure made Christine O’Donnell possible.

That’s why Scott Brown won. And it’s why Coons could still lose.

.