Liberal Bloggers Take On Mankiw, But Why?

Warning - Name dropping set-up. Just read to the end, I'll keep it short.

Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias links to a post at The New Republic in which TNR's Jon Chait quotes another liberal blogger, Ezra Klein, on conservative economist and blogger Greg Mankiw. In the piece Chait refers to Mankiw as a, "poorly-informed pundit."

So you've got three stars of the left blogosphere in a coordinated attack on Mankiw. The thrust of the gripe: Mankiw is critical of Obama's health care reform and refuses to promote any of the as yet non-existent cost reduction measures. Here's Klein:

There are at least four ideas in the health-care reform debate that have the potential to deliver on long-term savings. Mankiw does not make mention, or even reference an awareness, of any of them.

Well, apparently Mankiw isn't the only one that hasn't addressed these since the bill that came out of the House of Representatives doesn't seem to address these either.

The director of the Congressional Budget Office recently said that in the House proposal he does, "not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount."

So why would these guys, who purport to care about meaningful health care reform, spend their time knocking Mankiw's take instead of working on the people that are going to, you know, actually craft and vote on the legislation?