Pragmatism without principles is murderous.

So my old college pal Jon Chait has responded to my criticism of his endorsement of raising the Medicare eligibility age, America’s worst new idea. I’ll get to batting that around in a moment.

As the kerfuffle was happening, however, this has become less of an academic argument. Ezra Klein writes that raising the Medicare eligibility age could become the centerpiece of a deal, based on what “smart folks in Washington” say.

Since Jon Chait has never met a concession he didn’t like, he comes out with an endorsement of raising the Medicare eligibility age as part of a long-term deficit deal. So his cover for what is universally regarded as a terrible idea surely led deficit scolds seeking to use the problem to weaken the safety net to give each other high-fives.

Let’s look at Chait’s reasoning. I would probably start with the fact that he’s not 64 or 65. My parents are, and until my dad reached Medicare in November, they were paying $2,500 a month on the private market for health insurance. So I’ll be happy to provide him with their phone number so he can tell them how it’s “tolerable” for them to spend two years more than they expected doing that.

But soft! Here are his actual reasons.

There’s an argument that if the Supreme Court strikes down the ACA, it signals the court is so radical it would also find a reason to strike down Medicare for all. I find it nearly impossible to ever think this Court would ever be that activist. Not only do I think a majority of the justices have enough personal integrity to reject such a naked power grab, but more importantly I think the Justices are smart enough to properly fear the ramifications for the Court from such move.

I don’t think I’m a stupid person, but sometimes I read what seem to be really stupid things. At least that’s how I felt after reading a post by Jonathan Chait, entitled “Mitt Romney Lies a Lot, But He’s Not a Liar.” Yes, that really is the title, so let it sink in a bit.

I suppose we should be grateful that TNR’s Jonathan Chait voluteered to write an apologia for President Obama as a way to explain to those he identifies with “the left” why Obama’s not such a bad President and to remind the “left” there were extenuating circumstances that explain the President’s failure, or refusal, to achieve what the left wanted and the country needed.

Jonathan Chait is a typical Beltway-minded Very Serious Thinker, which means that in his crafting of an apologia for yet another cave-in by Obama to corporate America’s well-heeled (and campaign-contributing) titans, he likes to a) assume that Obama’s most prominent lefty critics have no idea how politics works in America when in fact they understand it better than he ever will, and b) play fast and loose with the truth.

I naively thought Obama’s offering to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would put an end to the “liberals are being unfair to Obama” genre, but Jonathan Chait (heh-indeeded by John Cole) published another one in the New York Times magazine today.

It’s full of problems, but I want to focus on this one — because it’s so obviously wrong.

The race is on to unload responsibility for the extremely unpopular health care bill. And Axelrod wants to make sure he doesn’t get the blame.

I’ve been on the offensive against Senator Graham for the past two days, expressing frustration with his mind-boggling hypocrisy and wholly apparent lack of integrity. I believe his participation in the crafting of climate change legislation was completely disingenuous, and I don’t think he ever actually intended to see it through to completion. His rhetoric throughout the process has been anything but helpful, and it was becoming apparent by mid-March that he was looking for an excuse to bail on the effort, blaming superficial process concerns for his lack of resolve. And as it turned out, that is exactly what happened yesterday. If Democrats have an ounce of sense they’ll never again take anything Senator Graham says at face value.

Now, that doesn’t at all mean that Harry Reid doesn’t share the blame for the Senate’s failure to address the issue this year. Those who blame Senator Reid for his decision to prioritize immigration reform over the climate bill make a number of good points. Senator Reid’s decision does in fact appear to be, as Senator Graham put it, a cynical political ploy designed to shore up his chances to maintain his seat this November. So yes, I think Senator Reid’s decision, which may have been implicitly backed by the Obama administration, was a plainly political move that played no small part in how all of this unfolded.