US politics: Can someone summarise what's going on with the GOP?

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The sad fact is that the wheels have come off the W wagon. He is stuck in place reliving the Air Force-China disaster that started his administration -- except now he has been in office five years and should not be playing little league or even minor league. Perhaps he intends to hide behind his oval office carpet defense -- he's an optimist who delegates. At this point I'll refrain from comparing his "delegation of duties" to Ken Lay's current defense.

We have seen this White House overcome significant obstacles before. We have seen them come from behind and beat a determined Democratic opposition in 2004. We have also seen this White House defy history twice by seeing the GOP pick up seats in Congress during 2002 and 2004. Now we're left to wonder if this White House can play well at elections, but is hopelessly inept at governing.

Sure, *we" can all say 'uh-duh' at this point, but the important thing is noting that the cheerleaders are starting to admit it.

Nancy Pelosi epitomizes this problem. To understand her politics, think Huffington Post without the flashes of wit. Here is a typical Bush-bashing, cliché-ridden quote of hers: "The emperor has no clothes. When are people going to face the reality? Pull this curtain back!" Pelosi dismisses people who disagree as hoodwinked or stupid. She's not exactly Hillary Clinton herself, though. A five-minute interview is usually sufficient to exhaust her knowledge on any subject. And she can flop around like a fish. When Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., proposed a pullout, or "redeployment," of U.S. troops from Iraq in November, Pelosi's first reaction was to isolate him. "Mr. Murtha speaks for himself," she said. But after taking a drubbing from left-wing bloggers and her anti-war constituents, she announced that she supported Murtha after all. This shored up her image as Washington's answer to Barbra Streisand, and set up Dick Cheney to paint the Democrats as defeatist and unsupportive of our troops in Iraq.

Reid's flaws are mostly a mirror image of Pelosi's. A Mormon convert who grew up in a working-class family in a small town, he doesn't dabble in Hollywood politics. Reid voted for the Iraq war resolution, and is anti-gun-control, anti-gay marriage, and—most shocking for a Democratic figurehead—anti-abortion. But as a leader, he's colorless and erratic. Most of the time, he's a study in gray, except when he livens it up with a spasm of random aggression. Reid has called Alan Greenspan a "hack," Bush a loser and a liar, and, in one off-the-mark, vaguely racist-sounding rant, charged that Clarence Thomas' opinions were poorly written. (You can criticize Thomas' opinions for lots of things, but Slate's legal correspondent, Dahlia Lithwick, tells me they are quite well written.) After calling for more Supreme Court justices as brilliant as Antonin Scalia, he recommended that Bush nominate his undistinguished flunky Harriet Miers. Moreover, Reid's own pork-barreling and lobbyist-courting suggest that making him majority leader would merely replace the Republican hackocracy in Congress with a Democratic hackocracy. Reid has declined to repudiate contributions from Abramoff-linked Indian tribes, and his own family includes so many lobbyists that after some nasty press coverage, he had to ban them from his office.

He sure helped out Bush on that one! I thought that was a pretty crafty move.

Reid has declined to repudiate contributions from Abramoff-linked Indian tribes,

Sure. Why should he? The legal political contributions to officials in both parties from tribes "linked" to Jack Abramoff are not what the Abramoff scandal is about. That's small, small money and again, legal money. Those tribes paid Abramoff close to a hundred million dollars in consulting fees - that's where all the illegal stuff happened - where do you think that money went? Not to the Democrats.

The Bush strategy of always citing some future decisive event, generally an election, that will turn the tide and that we all must await patiently, has run its course. Now it is impossible to steer the public away from the growing perception that this war is one unholy (and ungodly expensive) mess and Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have bungled it very, very badly.

Katrina assisted in this change, big time, by exposing BushCo as total incompetants. You can't just lose an entire American city, while you fool around in Crawford like a goof, without the public noticing - thank goodness! Now the presumption is against them rather than for them, so they have to do something they haven't been able to do yet - deliver the goods.

This change in the public has been so rapid and so complete that the GOP Congress has their hair on fire trying to prove they aren't rubber stamps for Bush. Everything would be much more hopeful if there were a second political party the people could turn to, instead of just turning against the Republicans.

Lock step mumbo jumbo and keeping your notes straight on TV talk shows are fine when you are trying to make the point that you should be running things, but leaving the cruise control going over the cliff is a whole other thing. Hatchet yes men like DeLay, Hastert and Frist were great getting the party on the same monotone note, but they definitely do not seem to help much when things got weird.

Maybe being completely incompetent is the GOP's goal, that way when the whole thing really crashes they can "drown the government in the bathtub". It is the only thing that makes sense to me.

Hewitt

Greenwald

Karnick

Podhoretz

Geraghty

Tapscott

Kessler

Ed Morrissey

Bainbridge

Barber

And on and on...

Viguerie in the Washington Post

Pro:

Tapscott

Bainbridge

Anti:

Ed Morrissey

Kesler

Excerpting from http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0615/p02s01-uspo.html

No highway spending is more controversial than bridge work. Senator McCain points with incredulity to a $200 million earmark being sought by Young for the Knik Arm Bridge (a down payment on a cost that could reach 10 times that much) and to the $175 million Alaska is attempting to secure for the sister project, a span that would connect Ketchikan with Gravina, home to only a few hundred people.

One impetus, rarely mentioned, is that the bridge would create an easy route for timber companies to log Pacific rain forest.

More fun -- Barnes panics, Frum panics at Barnes.

A new era, a new time -- and Michael Steele has found the way:

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

The RNC's first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party's image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times.

Having been elected to the job that the Bush White House and its political guru, Karl Rove, once denied him, Mr. Steele is running the show his way. To those who claimed he can't make the trains run on time, he has this message: “Stuff it.”

He stiff-armed an attempt to get him to elaborate on his public relations effort, saying he would be an idiot to give his opponents too much information, but indicated the Republican Party needs to break out of being considered a regional party.

”There was underlying concerns we had become too regionalized and the party needed to reach beyond our comfort” zones, he said, citing defeats in such states as Virginia and North Carolina. “We need messengers to really capture that region - young, Hispanic, black, a cross section ... We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings.”

But, he elaborated with a laugh, “we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.”

It's gonna be fun.

Sarah Palin and Ronald Reagan to a disco beat.

ok since i saw that story i was trying to remember this republican hip hop dude from the early 90s...maybe he stumped for Bush I against clinton...

dude wore like denim button downs and a bandana skullie that was the stars and stripes....this is driving me nuts and i couldnt find it on google

We at the RNC want a messenger with attitude. He's edgy, he's "in your face." You've heard the expression "let's get busy"? Well, this is a voter who gets "biz-zay!" Consistently and thoroughly!

alan keyes? xpost

republican party finally shitty enough to let black man be in charge

"off the hook"

"urban-suburban hip-hop settings"

"getting jiggy with it"

Can someone gif that fingerpointy picture on some dancing hammerpants, plz?

i half expected him to say they're going to rastafy by 10 percent

TWO SIMPSONS REFERENCES, THANKS

or, whenever he thinks of sarah palin he wants to superman dat ho

/sub-custos

The Republicans in Congress seem to have been purged of almost all vestiges of ideological impurity in the last election, excluding Maine. Consequently, they appear to have decided that the best thing to do is hold fast to that purity and either force the Democrats to come to the hard right position or else run the country without their assistance.

Not hard to see which of those two options the Democrats will eventually go with.

Which is going to shit all over whatever this Steele guy thinks he's going to accomplish.

i can't think of an explanation of what they're up to that isn't either mindless or cynical. mindless in that there are a lot of people in that world who really do believe a lot of crazy bullshit about life, the economy, etc -- there really are people who think that a job in the public sector is not a real actual job, somehow. cynical in that if they can rack up no votes and basically hope for national failure and misery to increase they can come back at some point in the future when public confidence in obama drops off.

Hahaha I feel like they've actually been trying this for 6 years, only sort of by accident: the most effective connection I've personally seen between the GOP and urban minorities has to do with military service.

(It really is a ripe audience for them in other ways, to be honest, but the image problem that keeps them from capitalizing isn't one that can be solved via public relations, it's one that could only solved by actually having a party that contains some of that audience's characteristics in the first place, especially in terms of being youthful.)

> run the country without their assistance.

At which point, the Dems will schism and we're back to the good ol 2 party one party system.

that said, even tho steele will provide copious lols, he isn't exactly wrong. there's tons of young people, non-white young ppl even!, who'd totally eat up a msg of "get your shit together, gov't fuck off, your parents are bankrupting u" if the GOP wasn't wasting its time indulging the anxieties of fat crabby superstitious faghating racists maybe they could get somewhere with that. oh well!

xp to nabisco, word to your mother

I think the Dems will schism only if Obama's approval gets below about 52%.

how are they not already schism'd? the blue dogs did more damage to the stimulus bill than spector or the maine pair did

unless you two mean something else besides 'schism'

I don't exactly follow voting demographics, so just let me know if I'm totally off-base with this, but ... the one area where I feel like I've seen Republicans really succeed with young minorities is with a lot of Latino groups in the Southwest, where it seems like they can make good connections with community leaders via business and have that effect trickle down through a group -- but then (hahaha word, goole) the rhetoric around immigration can sour this just as easily.

I mean, the thing Republicans are constantly whining and banging their heads about -- "our message of personal responsibility and freedom from oppressive governance and individual opportunity SHOULD appeal just as much to lots of young urban minorities" -- this is totally true! There are plenty of young urban minority populations whose thinking seems relatively compatible with the GOP on a lot of these issues -- the party just doesn't know how to connect those populations with the social bugbears of a lot of the rest of the base.

Steele doesn't seem to be aware that his party is full of bigoted morons.

It's simple: Republicans are fucked until they recruit young men and women, who have no interest in joining a party with whose (pre-Dubya) fiscal policies they have some sympathy but don't like to see their gay and Hispanic friends ignored.

I will consider the Dems to have schismed if they lose so many votes from the left wing of their party that they cannot move legislation without bringing along a substantial number of Republicans to compensate. In which case the Republican leadership will succeed in moving the Dems to the hard right position.

That, and a big part of the "freedom from oppressive governance" they'd like to see is "plz to stop the cops fucking with us all the time and racial profiling and racist arrest/sentencing rates, etc." which is not a message the GOP is prepared to get behind.

yeah the problem is that the aspect of the gov't that minorities have a direct antagonistic relationship to is the police state, which is the one aspect of gov't the GOP is totally down with.

aimless those two sentences don't necessarilly follow. there are plenty of suck-ass "centrist" dems whose centrism is just as much an ideological fixity as a hard-right republican's, even though the two have nothing to do with one another. if a lot of hawkish or business-friendly or fiscally stingy democrats end up being a big problem to pelosi/obama, it won't be thanks to eric cantor! they do that shit all on their own thanks

ive said this a million times on every thread about GOP fantasies of 50% of the female or black or hispanic or youth vote but its worth repeating THE ONLY REASON WHY THEY GET A HUGE MAJORITY OF OLD WHITE MEN IS BY DOING STUFF THAT ALIENATES YOUNG NON-WHITES AND WOMEN IF THEY REACH OUT TO THOSE GROUPS THEY WILL LOSE A LOT OF THOSE OLD WHITE MEN

i mean even michael steele, who is as idealogically pure as you could hope for except on affirmative action, has pissed off a ton of shit-talking crackers on the internet

Haha I feel all Tom Frank saying this, but possibly this is the problem with effectively rallying around a party around sort of social / worldview issues, social class alliances, "values" issues, etc. -- you cannot effectively turn around and claim that your policy agenda is useful to all different sorts of people, because you've already staked yourself on a cluster of images and "values" that is not inviting to them.

the aspect of the gov't that minorities have a direct antagonistic relationship to is the police state

^^ this is not really true -- there are plenty of segments of minority communities in this country who'd be happy as hell to line up for 70s-style law-and-order mentalities, and a lot of them probably share a lot of other Republican values as well

i must admit to a similar wish for the GOP that rush and cantor have had about obama -- i wanted it to be as ridiculous and godawful as possible, so steele is kind of disappointing to me. he at least has a chance at the moment. i wanted katon dawson to win, that would have been awesome imo. my only consolation is that all the other whites-only-country-club type dudes are probably even more furious and miserable than they were on 11/5.

Yeah -- Cubans LOVE law and order.

hey guys it isnt republicanism's complex relationships with issues that impact on non-whites that lead to their overwhelmingly white party its that they are actively hostile to non-whites

IF THEY REACH OUT TO THOSE GROUPS THEY WILL LOSE A LOT OF THOSE OLD WHITE MEN

funny that the party of financial wizardry and free trade is very zero-sum in its thinking about everything else

cos if we don't TORTURE those muslims we picked up somewhere nine years ago then you want to give them THERAPY and SPECIAL RIGHTS and FRUIT SALAD all the time!!

(and it's not like dems aren't all about financial wizardry and free trade anyway lol)

I think that's what people have been getting at, E

xpost to goole

It all comes down to counting votes. If Obama stays strong and popular, then Congressional Dems will find a way to unite behind him and the votes will be there. They saw his coattails at work in the last election. They were impressed.

If those coattails seem to be fraying and shrinking, there will be more defections and discontent among blue dogs who have difficult districts to run in. Obama and Pelosi would have to make even more concessions to the blue dogs and hope to keep the left on board.

It mainly comes down to how they view Obama as helping or hurting them. Strong numbers for Obama will keep them in line. Weak numbers will stress out the center-right Dems and make things much harder.

eh i think that'll definitely be the justification we will hear if the blue dogs feel they "have to" part ways with the president. but frankly the public doesn't really care as much about exact details or even the ideological merits of a given policy, they want to see some shit get taken care of. legislative successes = successful presidency = higher approvals. "if those coattals seem to be fraying and shrinking" it will be entirely of the blue dogs' own doing

"urban-suburban hip-hop settings"

This is still cracking me up.

http://www.replacements.com/piecetype/images/formal_dinner.jpg

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/republicans_urge_minorities_to_get

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/28/cpac/index.html

http://slog.thestranger.com/files/2007/06/romneyglove.jpg

The past few days have been candyland (as it were).

that picture of Romney is incredibly sinister

well, if you are fudge

What's so sinister about a man donning the appropriate protection for packing fudge?

That Rappin Ronnie video is hilarious. Had no idea it even existed.

I feel like Ashley Judd is tied up just out of frame

I ask you, how can an editorial cartoonist compete with photos like that?

Michael Steele is now learning about call and response...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/02/gop-chairman-says-he-leads-party-not-rush-limbaugh/

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/02/limbaugh-fires-back-at-steele/

romney not even attempting to remain on the low

Those gloves come in handy in urban/suburban hip hop settings.

... bend over, limbaugh!

LOL Newt Gingrich

http://slog.thestranger.com/files/2007/06/romneyglove.jpg http://www.headbanger.us/gallerie_b/bilder/blink_182_enema_of_the_state_front.jpg

okay I am not reading 8 pages of material about Newt Gingrich ever

Yeah, that Matt Bai thing has been pretty well dissected over the weekend already. A lot of it is "look out for New Coke!" mixed with "somebody's got a Napoleonic Complex", only extra-packaged for NYT writers who like their narratives pre-chewed.

meanwhile, defensive, disingenuous cat is defensive, disingenuous:

Gov. Jindal defends message of his GOP speech
By MELINDA DESLATTE, Associated Press Writer – 2 mins ago

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal defends the speech he made in response to President AP – Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal defends the speech he made in response to President Barack Obama's address …

BATON ROUGE, La. – Widely panned for his national TV address, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal offered his first defense of the speech Monday, saying he sticks by the message, while acknowledging shortcomings in his delivery.

"Look, I get that people thought I could have spoken better. I get that. That's fine ... What's important to me is the content. I'm a policy guy. You guys know that. I've always been a policy guy, always will be a policy guy. The ideas are important. The substance is important," Jindal told reporters in the state Capitol, a day after returning from a family vacation.

...

Jindal called "a diversion" the claims that his criticism of government spending was hypocritical because he continues to push for hurricane recovery spending, particularly money to repair levees in the New Orleans area damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The governor said the federal government failed to design and build the levees properly, so the federal government should repair them to the promised standard and help the state recover from the resulting damage.

"I think that is a simple concept: You break it, you buy it," Jindal said.

And despite the repeated criticism over the last week, the Louisiana governor refused any suggestion he might hire a speechwriter.

Are you kidding me? This idiot is only FIVE years older than me?!

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19517.html

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

Pussy niggas and pussy hoes it's one in the same

David Frum sez enough with the Rush hysteria:

Here’s the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

I can understand the "where's my party?" frustration with Frum (Frumstration?), but I'm kinda surprised that he's surprised at all of this. I thought he kinda drifted toward Sullivan-land already, but not quite I guess.

Well remember, he's trying to build the New Majority!

...dot com

He's drifting towards David Gergen Land -- a useful tool of the left because, as a handmaiden to power, he speaks with conviction.

I saw Douglas wossname was part of that site as well, wasn't he the guy offering McCain tin-eared economic advice?

cpac poll results:

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/4260/results.th.png

so, look forward to them calling for downscaling the defense budget any day now...

Oh and what happens when just over half of your college-age attendees are white nationalist/vdare/stromfront types

and even better when you let the vdare founder set up camp in your booth.

"I met the world's first self-proclaimed "Republican rapper" on the second day of the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference. He is Hi-Caliber, a former construction worker from New Jersey who told me that after just 10 minutes of listening to right-wing radio shock jock Michael Savage ranting about "Islamofascism" and illegal immigration, his "whole views on the world changed." Now Hi-Caliber records inspired battle anthems against President Barack Obama, who he denounces as a "socialist in the White House;" he attacks Nancy Pelosi as "phony baloney;" assails the liberal media; calls for a border fence; and warns darkly of the Fairness Doctrine."

rowland
Blumenthal is a goon.
http://www.tdbimg.com/files/2008/10/17/img-author-photo-max-blumenthal_094041843113.jpg

Can someone summarise what's going on with the GOP?

http://www.esnips.com/nsdoc/b459d31b-b4e6-44b1-bcf0-016ff39905d4

they're acting a fool so the dems will underestimate them in 2012

if Limbaugh would run for president in 2012 it would be soooooooooooo fucking awesome

they're acting a fool so the dems will underestimate them in 2012

― JtM Is Ruled By A Black Man (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Tuesday, March 3, 2009 2:36 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

much more sinister than the truth, i think

Meantime, the wonderful legal mind that is John Yoo.

Yoo: the next Hamilton.

The Felonist's Papers.

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/3268/fairness.th.jpg

WRT Bobby Jindal -- I almost get the feeling that Republicans BELIEVE their own nonsense about people voting for Obama because of his race and think they can counterattack by getting "their own" minority candidate.

er, thought, anyway

if Limbaugh would run for president in 2012 it would be soooooooooooo fucking awesome

is this such a crazy idea anymore? he's just proven that every other republican leader in the country is his bitch. if he wanted the nomination, he'd get it.

be careful what you wish for, folks.

That's probably true. And then he'd seriously get his ass handed to him by Cool Barry Smooth. I can't think of any GOP figure with the political and oratorial chops to be a real threat right now, but Limbaugh would be even more lol than most (with the possible exceptions of Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin.)

xp to iatee

i mean, it's very funny i suppose to think of someone as dense and loathesome as limbaugh running for president. and i'm all for obama and the dems making the GOP out to be limbaugh's bitch considering that as of now the general public finds him to be a repugnant buffoon.

but that said, i really don't want someone to invoke Godwin's Law here if y'all catch my drift.

> it's very funny i suppose to think of someone as dense and loathesome as limbaugh running for president

I said the same thing in 2000. Not 2004, though.

I said the same thing in 2000. Not 2004, though.

which is my point, really.

limbaugh's a better communicator than any major GOP figure. could possible own anybody in a debate, even smooth barry, because he's been practicing all day, every day, for a couple decades

he'd also be a worse president than any major GOP figure because he's never had to compromise before

I guess his mouth wouldn't survive a year of omg-u-gaffed politics though

Limbaugh's show doesn't count as a debate in any way shape or form. As soon as he's challenged by someone who isn't forced by the format to back down, he'll get eaten alive.

neither do the presidential debates really count as debates

it's more the talking unscripted while seeming 100% sure that you know what you're talking about - he doesn't 'um'

an unmarried (divorced?) convicted drug addict would never fly in bubbaland once primary season kicked in for realz

I think that Limbaugh would be a hoot to run (against) b/c of his, er, lifestyle. It wouldn't be the same as Bush in 2000, because Limbaugh wouldn't be a (at the national level) blank slate with a famous name. He'd have a real history to run on and against.

No but he does have that high pitched insane laugh.

xp

even the most lol optimistic observers have written off the next two years as a world of shit. many folks are giving Obama the benefit of the doubt right now. that might change over the next few years, especially if there's no real improvement in the economy by 2012. it may very well be that things are so fucked that it may take at least a full four years for Obama to set things right, but that's more than enough time for Limbaugh to sharpen his knives. and he gets to practice his debating skills and talking points every day across the nation. it doesn't matter that Limbaugh really doesn't bring much to the table intellectually (neither did Dubya like duh), just thumping on his tub is dangerous enough.

It also seems bizarre to be talking about Limbaugh in 2009; say what you will about the guy, he's had remarkable longevity for all the feet that have gone in that mouth (no weight jokes implied).

an unmarried (divorced?) convicted drug addict would never fly in bubbaland once primary season kicked in for realz

if it gets to that point, i will bet hard currency that Limbaugh finds Jesus and gets the ultimate "get out of jail free" card for bubbaland.

an unmarried (divorced?) convicted drug addict would never fly in bubbaland once primary season kicked in for realz

I'll believe that GOP voters care about the personal histories of GOP politicians when I see it

even the most lol optimistic observers have written off the next two years as a world of shit. many folks are giving Obama the benefit of the doubt right now. that might change over the next few years, especially if there's no real improvement in the economy by 2012

otm. if the economy is fine in 4 years, we're fine in 4 years. if it's not, pretty sure obama's not gonna have approval ratings in the 70s.

Yep. That's why it's important to say 'fuck bipartisanship, we're doing the work with or without you' right now, because the worst cynics at the GOP really are ready to fuck the country over if it means reacquiring power. Hey, isn't that Newt Gingrich on the cover of NYTM?

Limbaugh as president = the GOP version of Hope and Change.

That might go for both parties, but I think the GOP has a higher %age of worst cynics.

xp to myself

Limbaugh would lose any "debate" against virtually anyone on a national scale 'cause 15% of the audience would love whatever he said, 10% would feel uncomfortable, and 75% would despise him. Who remembers his short-lived TV show? It was short-lived for a very good reason.

perhaps in the meantime, the eagles and donovan mcnabb will win a Super Bowl (preferably in 2011 or 2012). i am pretty sure that donovan wouldn't mind helping out Cool Barry Smooth and reminding the nation just what Limbaugh said about him in 2003 ...

mcnabb was quite possibly was planning this the whole time, it would explain a lot

i do basically agree with libcrypt, though. limbaugh simply isn't as likeable as either reagan or dubya were -- i don't know that four years would be enough time to for him to somehow convince the 75% or so of the populus who find him absolutely repulsive that he's really fit to be President.

not that i found dubya to be particularly likeable, mind you -- nor that i would've voted for reagan even though i might've found him likeable on a personal level. but limbaugh's entire schtick is being confrontational and talking shit not only to & about liberals but also to & about moderates -- which is not exactly a recipe for success (nor was it how reagan or dubya won their elections).

Perhaps I'm gullible for believing the recent NYT mag bit on Rush, but I really do buy their contention that Rush owns up to being in the business he's in for the $$$. He loves the good life, and he loves fat, fat wads of green cash. Running for President? That's quite the cash-negative proposition, innit? Rush doesn't want to rule the world. He just wants to eat it.

but i'm sure that he wouldn't mind being THE kingmaker in the GOP either. he also loves his fat, fat ego as well as his fat, fat wads of green cash.

yglesias:

But the sad thing, if you actually care about the country, is how tepid this conservative civil war really is. David Brooks is one of the highest-profile reformists. And so he has a lot of notional disagreements with Rush Limbaugh. But though he used more restrained rhetoric about the stimulus bill, he ultimately agreed with the operational Rush agenda—vote no. And now he’s back with more restrained rhetoric than Rush’s about the budget, but he ultimately agrees with the operational Rush agenda—vote no.

Even in victory, by contrast, progressives are having intramural arguments about actual stuff—strategy in Afghanistan, carbon emissions policy, bank nationalization—not whether or not people should watch Rachel Maddow.

http://d.yimg.com/img.news.yahoo.com/util/anysize/400,http%3A%2F%2Fd.yimg.com%2Fa%2Fp%2Fap%2F20090304%2Fcapt.d5f81ec7d95242668da40bbdaecc9313.politics_foils_ny124.jpg?v=2

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090304/pl_politico/19596

...

"The Administration is enabling me,” he wrote in an email to POLITICO. “They are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence. An ever larger number of people are now being exposed to the antidote to Obamaism: conservatism, as articulated by me. An ever larger number of people are now exposed to substantive warnings, analysis and criticism of Obama's policies and intentions, a ‘story’ I own because the [mainstream media] is largely the Obama Press Office.”

...

David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager last year and a member of his inner circle still, will publish an op-ed in Wednesday’s Washington Post chiding Republicans for being “paralyzed with fear of crossing their leader...”

the republicans are letting themselves get hella played here

"bitch-slap politics"

genuinely cant believe that the leader of the gop apologized to rush limbaugh

The poll had bad news for the Republican opposition. By a margin of more than 2-1, Americans trust the Democratic Party over the Republicans to get the country out of the recession. Views of the GOP are near an all-time low. And more than half of all adults say that Republicans in Congress have opposed Mr. Obama's proposals more to gain political advantage, compared with 30% who say Republicans have done so because they are standing up for their principles.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123612000246123253.html

can somebody find the daily show graphic of rush, coulter and the lil republican kid with TWO AND A HALF MEN underneath - i probly laughed for a str8 minute at that

The Corner has run aground posting debates about "Rush."

[url=http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWQ1YzVkNGE1YjkwNjg2NDdlOGM0ZTBjYjhiYjkzZWE=]Like this tool[url]:

When commentators bring up Limbaugh's private life in contrast to Obama's picture-perfect image, they only emphasize the superficial. I don't think Limbaugh would sit for 20 years listening to a white-supremacist preacher G-D-ing America. I don't think, like a Moyers, he would care all that much to learn who on his staff is gay. As is not the case with a Bill Maher or Michael Moore, those around Limbaugh like him, because they sense he is, for lack of a better word, a regular guy. That's why he can go on about his mansion and plane since his audience senses it is more caricature than snootiness. And if you did not actually hear conservative elites tsk-tsking Limbaugh's weight, marriages, and past addiction, then you would have to invent them doing so. We saw all that with Palin and the demonization of her multiple pregnancies, blue-collar husband, twangy speech, and Idaho B.A. Yet the reason why a Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush was elected twice — and not George Bush primus — was precisely because they could resonate with the middle classes in both a cultural and social sense, an ability that transcends money but has everything to do with attitude. What scares many is not the sometimes slobby but authentic image of a blunt-talking Rush Limbaugh, but the polo-shirted pre-packaged personas of an Obama, John Edwards, or John Kerry.

Aw, K.Lo:

Rushing [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

An e-mail: “The Dems must be having a good laugh about our arguing over Rush vs. Steele while they try to enact… (their) agenda. Let’s stop.”

I tend to agree. Sure we should be arguing about tone and always having internal debates, as we always do here. But in this Rush controversy, I can’t help but to think that we’re not only distracting ourselves but playing into the other team’s hands. We’re sitting around debating whether or not having Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the conservative movement or the Republican party or whatever CNN tells me today is the case is a good thing. How about just making sure the whole team is at work—parsing and pushing back against excesses and outrages in the Obama-Pelosi-Reid budget, etc., instead of throwing arrows at an effective member of the team, who plays a wildly successful role? Let Rush do his job. Are we all doing ours? Your role may be teaching your children well or working for your congressman. Whatever it is, good luck for a good day!

http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2007/04/12/care-bears.jpg

haha it's like a mobius strip

xp

I can’t help but to think that we’re not only distracting ourselves but playing into the other team’s hands.

Someone nominate K-Lo as Strategist Maximus.

Ninjette of the Obvious

never thought CPAC would be such a comedy goldmine

Extremely refreshing to read Frum in contrast:

Leaders are measured not only by what they say, but by what they do and how they live. When conservatives agree to be represented by Limbaugh, they are accepting the whole man. They may wish it were otherwise, but it is not otherwise. If it makes us cringe to hear Limbaugh described as others see him – well, good. A cringe is the spasm that accompanies a first recognition of reality. And if there’s one thing we conservatives could benefit from, it is a much more substantial diet of reality.

immediately after the election when everyone was talking about the GOP "spending time in the wilderness", i bet they all thought "oh, you mean like a corporate team-building retreat? with a ropes course and trust exercises and nature hikes? i guess that sounds ok."

no, bitches, it's like lord of the flies! so satisfying.

ya rly

wait does that make Limbaugh Piggy

they can't kill him they need his glasses!

And to think it all started because Limbaugh, who has the mental age of a junior high student on social matters, wasn't invited to George Will's Obama dinner party.

never thought CPAC would be such a comedy goldmine

― One of the Most High Profile Comedy Directors of the 90s (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, March 4, 2009 11:34 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

really??

well I don't remember it being so funny in years past, let me put it that way

The whole anti-Limbaugh maneuver seems clever (force Republicans to either repudiate their base, or splinter and bicker over the value of Limbaugh), but it also makes me a little uncomfortable. The guy is an entertainer, and I wonder if he really has as much cultural power as the White House is suggesting. So doesn't the whole effect come off as a cynical attempt to marginalize Republicans? I'm not against marginalizing Republicans, per se, but is a Culture War being waged by the Democratic Party substantively different than Culture Wars being waged by Republicans?

No. However, I don't know that engaging in a Culture War is an inherently bad thing.

The guy is an entertainer, and I wonder if he really has as much cultural power as the White House is suggesting.

Um, yes?

wait, when did the white house say anything about limbaugh? did i miss something

mordy, the democrats arent saying anything the republicans arent basically agreeing with

Hell, Gibbs has had plenty to say over the last few days alone, Elmo!

It's Politico, so take or leave it. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19596.html XXP

i mean, its not like theyre using their podiums to spread lies about limbaugh and the party--for christs sake, the head of the fucking GOP just apologized for calling a radio host an enterntainer

I am okay with culture wars because some of the culture in this country is fucking stupid and dangerous and past its sell-by date.

Classic Shakey post.

no, bitches, it's like lord of the flies!
― i'm not going to pay a lot for this muffler (elmo argonaut), Wednesday, 4 March 2009 16:39 (15 minutes ago)

lol

like, really I should tolerate a culture that doesn't understand science, evolution, global warming, economics, basic political theory, etc.? fuck that

(note that I am speaking in the context of my country, ie, as a citizen - I'm not into going out and exterminating hapless tribal societies or whatever)

I think they understand basic political theory, hence the previously-mentioned stances on science, evolution, global warming, economics, etc; the problem is that playing the short-game only takes you a short distance.

SMC OTM it's definitely NOT ok for people like Mike Huckabee to be on the "news" talking about how "oh we just really don't know" when backed against the wall re: empirical scientific evidence. fuck that noise.

Limbaugh-fandom is a cultural thing inasmuch all is culture etc, and to that extent what the WH is doing is culture war. But I think the WH is doing this to identify Republicans with Limbaugh's political views, knowing that Limbaugh is polarizing. And he's polarizing not primarily because of his history of drug abuse or racism or multiple marriages (though those all help). He's polarizing because he's that loud guy in the room who ends up insulting a whole bunch of people and pissing a lot of people off. The WH wants Americans to identify Republicans with boors, rather than as the ordinary guy you'd rather have a beer with. That's not culture war as I understand it.

lol that is totally culture war

is limbaugh dead yet?

― One of the Most High Profile Comedy Directors of the 90s (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, March 4, 2009 12:06 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

genuinely cant believe that the leader of the gop apologized to rush limbaugh

Steele is a Hail Mary pass in an empty suit, ie, even less "the head" of the GOP than Tim Kaine is the 2nd Democrat. The GOP is leaderless as far as one can tell.

(unless it's still Reagan)

I think they understand basic political theory, hence the previously-mentioned stances on science, evolution, global warming, economics, etc; the problem is that playing the short-game only takes you a short distance.

The "smart" ones are only realizing this now, confirmed by the latest polls.

yeah I was thinking that it was culture war by the end of that post, s-banned myself for it.

I guess I'd say there's issue-based culture war, like on an issue like abortion or evolution, and personality-based culture war. What the WH is doing re. Limbaugh is personality-based culture war (Limbaugh=asshole, Republicans=Limbaugh, you do the logic). This is less odious to me fwiw.

limbaugh has enormous cultural power, in the negative. something like 60% of the country doesn't like him at all.

that VDH post alfred quoted is just amazing. like less than a fifth of the country has any respect for limbaugh, obama's approvals are hovering near 60, but let's listen to another lecture about who's really the center of the country and who needs to worry about alienating regular people. regular people who are white conservative men. who don't know who kevin smith is.

ie real Americans

Roffles:

Met with Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack from Riverside County's Coachella Valley. While a social moderate, Sonny Bono's widow is a solid conservative. Talked to her about Obama's $780 billion stimulus legislation. She's outraged that the plan has "$1 billion wasted on a magnetic-levitation train from L.A. to Sin City" - all at Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's doing.

After expressing my doubt that the Las Vegas line was actually in the bill's language, Bono Mack directs her staff to "get him the bill, it's right there, show him." A few minutes later, a staffer emerges with a copy and quietly says "it's not in the bill."

Regrettably nothing further in the article than that, but even so.

:D :D :D

"culture war that's sort of more about etiquette and agreeability than about 'values'"

(note that I am speaking in the context of my country, ie, as a citizen - I'm not into going out and exterminating hapless tribal societies or whatever)

― One of the Most High Profile Comedy Directors of the 90s (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, March 4, 2009 12:06 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think you should - it would be a bold new level for shakey mo collier

I got in trouble on one of the Israeli threads for suggesting a similar sentiment to Shakey about cultures I don't like.

The reason the sentiment's problematic, I think, is that it doesn't really address what the alternative is to "tolerating" -- engaging? pressuring? criticizing? fighting? exterminating?

blapping

edumacating

altho would settle for "excluding from political discourse"

but seriously the point about someone like Huckabee having prime airtime to expound what is basically nonsensical gibberish shouldn't really be happening. In every body politic there are gonna be minority points of view, when the minority is completely out of touch with reality and dangerous to the stability and functionality of the body politic, then they should be effectively marginalized. Which, to be fair, the Republicans mostly are at this point. And their only marginalizing themselves further. Give em enough rope says I...

BUT when the minority is out of touch etc

As a minority, I am deeply suspicious of arguments in favor of marginalizing minority viewpoints. However, fuck Huckabee.

it is a conundrum

how may viewers does Huckabee get a night? "prime airtime"

THESE NEWSWORKS DON'T MATTER -- it's all gibberish.

I don't want to marginalize them. These guys' influence on what's called "the conversation" is at its lowest ebb; that's enough for me.

Yeah, I still have the same problem with that attitude, which is: in a society where we're pretty fond of these ideas of pluralism and free expression and liberty of opinion, how precisely do you propose to "effectively marginalize" viewpoints? And, indirectly, the people who come along with them? Still missing a mechanism. Plus what you're saying is pretty much precisely what Republicans tend to whine that "liberal elites" think about their base, a whine that has historically been really powerful and effective for them, and whatever the merits of the argument it kinda depresses me when they're made correct.

look the electorate basically marginalizes voices that it doesn't want representing them. There's your mechanism.

As a minority, I am deeply suspicious of arguments in favor of marginalizing minority viewpoints.

I think this is a healthy response. Which may be why I'm more okay with the Democratic Party trying to marginalize Limbaugh as opposed to marginalizing white middle-class men (or whoever his constituents are). I would be fine if someone tried to alienate Abe Foxman (please do, actually), but I'd be much more uncomfortable with people trying to alienate Jewish concerns. Etc.

Of course, leaders of groups do represent, to an extent, the will of that group. So alienating Limbaugh or Huckabee may inevitably be alienating their constituents, and of course these people are entertainers, so you'd have to separate out how much Limbaugh is the product of an authentic political movement and how much he's just this entertainment device used to placate listeners into accepting some vapid conglomerate agenda. I've got no idea how to parse these questions tho in a valuable way. Which is probably why it's a good thing I'm posting to ILX and not trying to make policy (or ethical decisions) for the White House.

and as far as protecting them, the Constitution is pretty explicit about protecting minorities rights and views and was in many ways designed expressly to ensure their protection (sorry I've been reading the Federalist papers)

you've just answered your question! you can't ever 'effectively marginalize' anyone, you just have to keep having the same argument and keep winning it. sometimes you lose it, tho

xps i don't think what the dems/WH are doing with rush is 'marginalization' at the moment, ha

(note I'm referring to POLITICAL minorities here, not say minority ethnic groups or whatever)

x-post

anyone to the left of Rachel Maddow is 99.9% invisible in the MSM. (because the Dems don't acknowledge any such person exists)

How many of you listen to Limbaugh?

funny the official gop isn't talking much about david koresh and timothy mcveigh either

xp

i dunno dude, alexander cockburn's daughter is on house md

I've listened to him in the past, but not with any frequency in the last 5 years. I was more exposed to him in highschool (I went to a radically right-wing politically highschool).

How many of you listen to Limbaugh?

not even if you paid me

Tbh, why listen to someone so onerous?

I don't think I've listened to an actual Limbaugh program since high school fwiw. Obviously I still see plenty of what the guy says, see youtube clips, etc.

Tbh, why listen to someone so onerous?

he's funnier than The Corner.

^^^truthbomb

In general, I prefer reading to listening. You can read at your own pace. Also, The Corner is WAY funnier cause you get to use your imagination about how K-Lo is reading her own posts.

my best friend works in construction for a dude who plays limbaugh all day every day so i get regular updates on what el rushbo's got to say

oh do tell

does Rush know who Kevin Smith is?

funny the official gop isn't talking much about david koresh and timothy mcveigh either

nice goole, i'll tell Matt Taibbi, Chomsky etc to put on their orange jumpsuits now. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck, liberals slay me.

wtf are you on

no-one needs to listen to limbaugh on a regular basis to know that he's a bombastic, lying demagogue; no more than anyone needs to go swimming in a septic tank to know that it's full of and smells like shit, or listen to every grateful dead bootleg before deciding whether or not they suck.

Also, The Corner is WAY funnier cause you get to use your imagination about how K-Lo is reading what K-Lo is doing to herself while posting.

goole's post is just as idiotic and hateful as any Limbaugh quote I've ever seen.

no-one needs to listen to limbaugh on a regular basis to know that he's a bombastic, lying demagogue; no more than anyone needs to go swimming in a septic tank to know that it's full of and smells like shit, or listen to every grateful dead bootleg before deciding whether or not they suck.

stfu

xp That is not a good use for my imagination. ::pukes::

"wtf are you on"

I think the idea that the only people to the left of Rachel Maddow are people more violent than the Weather Underground is what he's on about.

nice goole, i'll tell Matt Taibbi, Chomsky etc to put on their orange jumpsuits now. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck, liberals slay me.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, March 4, 2009 1:26 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, noam "there's no such thing as anti-semitism today" chomsky, there's a guy who never gets any media attention

look the electorate basically marginalizes voices that it doesn't want representing them. There's your mechanism.

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with this when it turns out my way -- but you're talking about not having Huckabee on national TV, so this really doesn't answer the question. Huckabee's already been electorally marginalized; he's still going to be a part of the conversation.

This is a semantic debate, I guess: obviously there are ways that centers of power (like the White House or a TV network) do some gatekeeping and can make certain decisions about what viewpoints need to be shunned, etc. But it always strikes me as a kind of bad energy (and a wasted, counter-productive one) to want the discourse free of people with bad opinions, especially when they're shared by significant minorities. I suspect it's much better for everyone when "bad" arguments are getting made and heard, because it's really much better for the people who hold them to feel like they're contributing something to the conversation than being purposefully marginalized by more powerful entities who disagree with them.

goole's post is just as idiotic and hateful as any Limbaugh quote I've ever seen.

uh taking off-the-cuff hyperbole as a scathing indictment of the state of America's political left is probably hysterical overreaction...?

well nabisco not to get all Morbzy on you but seriously why does someone like, say, Bill Kristol - who's been wrong about essentially everything over the last 10 years or so - still have a position at the Washington Post/as a pundit on news shows, and someone like Chomsky never appears on mainstream media anywhere ever. (I am not a huge fan of Chomsky or anything, but he's been right about more shit than someone like Kristol has, for ex.)

x-post

Chomsky radicalized himself in ways Kristol never did. If you call America an Imperialist country and say that the CIA is a terrorist organization, you're going to be marginalized from American media. This is a no-brainer. No matter how often you're right.

Kristol said equally batshit things imho

altho yeah he didn't bite the hand that feeds the way chomsky did, maybe thats all there is to it

bill kristol's inaccuracies and outright lies are more useful to the powers-that-be than anything chomsky has ever written, and that's why kristol keeps on writing on prominent op-ed pages.

xpost

well nabisco not to get all Morbzy on you but seriously why does someone like, say, Bill Kristol - who's been wrong about essentially everything over the last 10 years or so - still have a position at the Washington Post/as a pundit on news shows, and someone like Chomsky never appears on mainstream media anywhere ever. (I am not a huge fan of Chomsky or anything, but he's been right about more shit than someone like Kristol has, for ex.)

x-post

― One of the Most High Profile Comedy Directors of the 90s (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, March 4, 2009 1:32 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

kristol is a media "guy"--a magazine founder, a longtime editor, political pundit, etc. he grew up, professionally, in the media industry and probably has dozens of high-placed friends and contacts. chomsky didnt--he comes from a different world. and asking why kristol has a column and chomsky doesnt is like asking why chomsky has a tenured professorship and kristol doesnt.

bill kristol's inaccuracies and outright lies are more useful to the powers-that-be than anything chomsky has ever written

This makes it sound like there's some conspiracy. It's really not that complicated.

I guess it would just be nice if people were marginalized for, you know, being demonstrably wrong (as Kristol and Huckabee have been) as opposed to marginalization just happening when you make the wrong people uncomfortable.

shakey in this case "the wrong people" = a majority of american citizens

This makes it sound like there's some conspiracy. It's really not that complicated.

well, my post does make it sound more conspiratorial than it really is i agree.

I guess it would just be nice if people were marginalized for, you know, being demonstrably wrong (as Kristol and Huckabee have been) as opposed to marginalization just happening when you make the wrong people uncomfortable.

You can argue that this happened in the last presidential election.

Not to mention the fact that, as far as I can tell, Chomsky savors his outsider status. I'm not sure he'd want to be as apart of the media establishment as Kristol is. I don't know if he has those kinds of conversations. (I think Stanley Fish at the Times is a good example that a well-known academic can have a column of some sort if he really wants it. No matter how shitty it is.)

wtf i read a matt taibbi article just the other day, how is he marginalized?? and noam chomsky is somewhat well known and read himself i understand. neither of these people have tried to run for anything as far as i know.

the point is everybody on earth knows there are points farther off the edge of the map of official politics, in any direction. it's not unique to the democratic party or to liberalism globally and you're not the first person to have discovered this. sorry the only radical nationalist people i could name are in jail, i'm very sorry if you took that to mean i think leftists should be, because i don't. the gop doesn't talk much about david duke, there, is that ok for your delicate sensibilities?

god talking to you is so fucking pointless

I guess it would just be nice if people were marginalized for, you know, being demonstrably wrong (as Kristol and Huckabee have been) as opposed to marginalization just happening when you make the wrong people uncomfortable.

― One of the Most High Profile Comedy Directors of the 90s (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, March 4, 2009 1:36 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also btw change the names and this could come straight out of a freepers keyboard after don imus got in trouble

"I have a fucking tenured professorship!"

If you call America an Imperialist country and say that the CIA is a terrorist organization, and are left-wing you're going to be marginalized from American media. Cf. say Pat Buchanan, who wrote a book on why we didn't need to fight WWII.

Imus? when the fuck was he ever right about anything

lolz Buchanan, yeah he's a weird one

we just plain don't have a liberal media, is the thing

"marginalized for making the wrong people feel uncomfortable" is the exact same rhetoric limbaugh fans use when he gets called out for being a racist fuck!

I remember fondly when Bill Buckley was marginalized for saying the HIV-positive should be tattooed and put in camps...

why does someone like, say, Bill Kristol - who's been wrong about essentially everything over the last 10 years or so - still have a position

or Lil Tommy Friedman?

wtf i read a matt taibbi article just the other day, how is he marginalized?? and noam chomsky is somewhat well known

For my purposes, MSM = TV. Nobody but amateur pundits reads about the substance of politics.

god talking to you is so fucking pointless

― cindy (goole), Wednesday, March 4, 2009 12:38 PM (5 minutes ago)

How often does Tom Friedman appear on TV?

Taibbi has at least been on the Daily Show, if not more.

amateur pundits are the only people who read rolling stone, its true

ha i don't read rolling stone, i read the internet

I think the point about Kristol (and Buchanan) being essentially establishment figures gets this right. I don't think it's really much of a grand conspiracy.

pat buchanan also is a former presidential candidate which goes a long way no matter how wrong you are

hey morbz for an example "from the left" see the now 100% irrelevant nader still getting airtime to call obama an uncle tom

Plus wasn't he Nixon's press secretary? Or was he just a speech writer? Either way he's not some Washington outsider.

I get why Kristol is an establishment figure, no mystery there. Buchanan tho, I dunno enough about his history (i mean pre-80s McLaughlin Group, which was when I became aware of him)

Also, Matt Taibbi has been writing for RS for how long? Since 2005? Before that he was editing an expat magazine in Russia? The guy has not been on the scene long comparatively.

oh right. The Nixon administration. The gift that keeps on giving!

for real, if you a far-left thinker who wants a column in the ny times here is my advice - go work in the newsroom for 20 years and network your ass off.

Or have your dad be a former editor at the Times.

and was Reagan's communications director in the second term.

(xxpost)

Not to derail this thrilling conversation, but from Ann's latest column:

THE CAL RIPKEN PRESIDENT
February 25, 2009

As Obama prepared to deliver his address to Congress on Tuesday, the Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner, Fox News' Bret Baier and Charles Krauthammer all gushed that history was being made as the first African-American president appeared before Congress.

Even Gov. Bobby Jindal, whom I suppose I should note was the first Indian-American to give the Republican response to a president's speech, began with an encomium to the first black president. (Wasn't Bobby great in "Slumdog Millionaire"?)

we just plain don't have a liberal media, is the thing

We do. It's just not TV media. Once upon a time, this would be dire, but while TV media will still be the most prominent form of media, it won't be nearly as prominent as it was even 5-10 years ago, especially if people drop cable to cut back on their budgets this year.

They call it Wingnut Welfare for a reason!

I'll admit I'm one of those "Kill Your Television" peeps that thinks that economic downscaling of the news end of cable and broadcast news isn't really an awful thing.

The only time TV news is useful is to get out bulletins in case of a local emergency, usually weather.

w/r/t whether the television media is liberal or conservative, or what, (and if you went on freep right now and told them we didn't have a liberal media, they'd be aghast), I remember reading this:

Robert P. Vallone, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper, “The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the Beirut Massacre,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49, no. 3 (1985)

television is television-biased, not liberal nor conservative biased. the latter two swing back and forth depending on what helps television more at the time.

/ninja-of-the-obvious

Really? I can't recall television ever being particularly biased towards left-wing ideas in the past oh say 30 years.

Anyway, the study found that Israelis thought the Beirut coverage was more Arab-biased, and the Arabs thought the coverage was more Israeli-biased. And the more educated the respondent, the more certain he/she was that that coverage was biased against them.

If we were going to extrapolate, it'd probably be no coincidence that people on ILX think that television has absolutely no left-wing bias.

Alex, I'm talking about television everywhere, not in the U.S.

I didn't make that clear, granted.

I don't mean this is some big Foucauldian way, but there are really few appeals you can make to someone's being "demonstrably wrong" that aren't, in the end, about what makes a majority of people uncomfortable, or makes a class of gatekeepers uncomfortable, or whatever -- when it comes to a democratic national conversation about issues, there is no way to swoop in and unilaterally declare a metric of wrongness. If there were, the disagreements would not exist in the first place. I don't even mean this philosophically, it's just ... inevitable.

American television has a sensationalism-bias for various cultural and financial reasons. this usually plays into the hands of the republicans, but it doesn't always. (esp. recently)

goole was otm upthread when he said the only way to marginalize anything in a satisfactory way is to just keep having the argument, over and over, and to keep being right.

Okay, it's not like I actually know much about it, but is it really weird that Thomas broke rank from Scalia, Alito and Roberts on the medical warning case AFTER Obama was elected?

Thomas has recently been more unpredictable in his rulings pre-Obama. Unless a pattern emerges, I wouldn't read anything into the medical warning case wrt Thomas.

Re: Supreme Court, it seems to me like those guys don't agree with each other as much as the media right-wing V. left-wing narrative would suggest. They all seem pretty iconoclastic.

Thx guys. Still very encouraged by this ruling.

REGULATE THAT SHIT LIKE WARREN MOTHERFUCKIN G!

PS - Yes, I know this case will have little to no effect on food and drug regulation

Um they vote together like 85+% of the time. They aren't that iconoclastic.

AmericanWestern televisionmedia has a sensationalism-bias for various cultural and financial reasons.

fixed.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I can't think of a single decision of consequence in the last two years in which Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts -- often joined by Kennedy -- did not rule together.

I mean, that's what they do. Bush didn't put Alito and Roberts on the court just for shits and giigles.

There's also lots of unpublicized unanimous decisions.

A Little Perspective, Please [Rich Lowry]

While some conservative bloggers plunge into depths of despair that Rush Limbaugh gave a speech at CPAC not up to their standards and the White House congratulates itself over its supposed cleverness in elevating Rush, can we all take a deep breath please? Barack Obama and the Democrats have the initiative. Until such time as their policies are perceived to have failed, it doesn't matter too much what Republicans do. Yes, they obviously should endeavor to be sober and creative—replenishing their policy arsenal for the day when the public is seriously paying attention to them again—but the big question in American politics right now is how Obama handles the financial crisis and the economy. In the grand scheme of things, everything else is commentary

whenever someone on The Corner gains some perspective, I cry a little on the inside

And then the conch shell is taken away from him or her and dropped off the cliff, and everyone lols

end of lols

xpost

Some real lolz going on at Freep today. Apparently Rush challenged Obama to a debate and all the Freepers are totally psyched.

Meanwhile, all 41 Republican senators have signed a letter threatening to filibuster Obama's judge picks unless he nominates pro-lifers, re-nominates some Bush selections and gives them each veto power over picks from this state. This after this same bunch of jokers threatened to nuke the filibuster when Democrats threatened it, and demanded "up or down votes" on all judicial nominees.

Oh well, I can take comfort in the fact that Our Liberal Media will spend some time pointing out the hypocrisy here.

Collins and Snow and Specter signed this? Aren't they all pro-choice?

A good general yardstick for the breadth of MSM discourse through the last 3 decades has been the "left-right" pundit chairs held on PBS's MacNeil RIP / Paddington Bearher NewsHour. Never moreso than the current blobs Mark Shields & David Brooks: two sets of large intestines with eyes.

Yep.

President Barack Obama should fill vacant spots on the federal bench with former President Bush’s judicial nominees to help avoid another huge fight over the judiciary, all 41 Senate Republicans said Monday.

In a letter to the White House, the Republican senators said Obama would “change the tone in Washington” if he were to renominate Bush nominees like Peter Keisler, Glen Conrad and Paul Diamond. And they requested that Obama respect the Senate’s constitutional role in reviewing judicial nominees by seeking their consultation about potential nominees from their respective states.

“Regretfully, if we are not consulted on, and approve of, a nominee from our states, the Republican Conference will be unable to support moving forward on that nominee,” the letter warns. “And we will act to preserve this principle and the rights of our colleagues if it is not.”

In other words, Republicans are threatening a filibuster of judges if they're not happy.

The letter is an opening salvo in what could be a partisan battle in the Obama years. Democrats regularly complained that Bush nominated conservative judges without consulting them, then the Republican-controlled Senate ran roughshod over them even if the nominees lacked support from homestate senators. Obama’s lawyer Gregory Craig has begun his outreach with senators about potential nominees, and several Republicans have warned Obama that the quickest way to squander bipartisan goodwill is to nominate far-left judges

Paddington Bearher NewsHour

^^classic morbz

i think thats a pretty good strategy on the republicans part

m@tt, have you ever seen Sleepy Jim blink those button eyes?

He doesn't have eyes!

So, back to judges: will Spectre-Collins-Snowe allow a nuclear bomb to get dropped through the roof?

CHEER UP SLEEPY JIM . . .

http://www.geocities.com/chataholic2a2/The_Monkees3.JPG

O should let them filibuster. The republicans have a lot of open senate seats to defend in 2010, and if they're viewed as obstructing a popular president the Democrats will get to 60 seats pretty easily.

what else can they do? Old cranky people tend to become obstructive if they don't get their way.

Former House Republican Majority Leader Tom Delay, speaking on MSNBC Tuesday night, summed up frustrations with using Pelosi as a proxy, urging his party to go after President Obama directly, even if it means locking horns with the most popular political figure in the country.

“This whole notion that we’re not going to take on Obama but take on Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid will get you nowhere,” The Hammer told Chris Mathews.

“That’s a minority mindset of playing on the ball field of the left. You need to stand up and fight. And that’s what Rush is doing and why people are gravitating towards him and support him.”

Delay’s remarks dovetailed with ongoing internal Republican discussions, which culminated Wednesday in Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) instructing members to ditch “triangulation” when criticizing the president’s budget — by going after Obama directly.

oh man lookin forward to that

Fun for your friday:

http://gawker.com/5165001/five-most-off-the-hook-video-job-applications-by-young-republican-patriots

Elizabeth Drew summarizes the events of the last two months.

I can't read the whole thing now, but the Drew article looks great. Thanks, Alfred.

Re: Rush Limbaugh. I kind of feel like the general election would have been a more interesting debate if Limbaugh's narrative was the dominant GOP theme (e.g., admitting that we're in a deep recession, but arguing that it isn't a historical crisis, and that Obama is overstating the country's economic problems to create a climate of fear in which he can ram through a hard-left agenda). I mean, the elements were there: McCain saying that, despite the economic crisis, the "fundamentals were still strong," hamfistedly saying that Obama's policies were "socialist," and so forth. But Limbaugh frames the argument in a very different way. I hate Limbaugh, BTW (and, FWIW, I'm an Obama fan). I just think this line of argument would have been better than McCain's tsunami of blunders.

it's all love, but i don't really get you, daniel. having this debate in 2009 is interesting enough for me thanks

Yeah better for whom? John McCain?

Yeah, better for McCain (tho I didn't want him to win), but also a better debate/discussion. It's okay that it is taking place in 09, tremendoid. It's just that now it's mostly Rush Limbaugh -- who is (correctly) painted as a bellicose clown -- who is making the argument.

'democrats are overstating the economic problems' does not sell very well to people going through economic problems. which was and is a lot of people.

"but also a better debate/discussion"

For whom?!?!?

The country.

Bullshit.

Because Limbaugh is obviously wrong? Yeah, I agree he's wrong. But there's a lot of worthwhile discussions where I have strong feelings going into them.

The best thing for the country was assuring that a Republican was not sitting in the Oval Office on 1/20.

I agree.

Daniel, the problem was that the GOP didn't and doesn't have a coherent POV on this crisis to begin with, so there's not a real 'side' to argue with. It's not a argument between big and small government, between regulation and non-regulation. It's a matter of how much really big government and and how much regulation - so the only discussions that need to be had are democrats vs. other democrats.

Nobody outside the Beltway gives a shit about Rushbo vs the White House, except Rush's fans.

Iatee: Well, the moderate wing of the GOP agrees that, in the economic crisis, only government is big enough to get things moving again, so in that respect, you're right; it isn't about big v. small gov't, and so forth. OTOH, there's the conservative wing of the GOP, many of whom seem to have a POV similar to Limbaugh's.

Alfred: You're probably right. My view is probably warped from being surrounded by so many Limbaugh's fans. But you know what? My in-laws -- from the staunch evangelical wing of the GOP -- have come to love (or at least respect) Pres. Obama. Can't really say why, but I'm thrilled to avoid the tense conversations at family gatherings (for now).

Or f---k it, maybe I'm just wrong. Happens all too often, regrettably.

yes, but at the moment the conservative wing of the GOP isn't just wrong in the normal "oh they have stupid ideas that will fuck up the country" way, it's wrong in such a basic and objective way that their ideas aren't worth talking about or considering when we're not in an election and have to deal with them out of necessity.

Nobody outside the Beltway gives a shit about Rushbo vs the White House, except Rush's fans.

yeah but cable newz dudez are doing all they can to blow that shit wide open. here's hoping the white house plays the high road from here on out. giving Limbaugh a platform other than bickering with that feckless Steele is just bad business imo.

(but mostly because i can't stand to hear his voice and all the sudden it's everywhere and i haven't even tuned into his show.)

it's wrong in such a basic and objective way that their ideas aren't worth talking about or considering when we're not in an election and have to deal with them out of necessity.

Probably right. Some conservative strategists are plotting the politcal counterattack along the lines I mention above (with many variations, obv.).

More along the same lines, from Charles Krauthammer.

K-ham is one of the smarter ones, though (maybe that's why he went over to George Will's for drinks and lamb with Obama); there's a sense that he knows his ideas have no currency.

He is one of the smarter ones, but I can't stand him. So smug.

Now I'm trying to think of the right-leaning commentators who I sort of like. Ramesh Poneru, maybe.

This is really more "positioning" than a counter-attack, don't you think? It doesn't hope to change what's done; it hopes to make the speaker seem wise after it's done. Which is probably what I'd be doing if I were a Republican: just continually registering that the plan violates my core principles about government. If the plan works, you're sort of hosed anyway; if the plan fails, you now have "empirical evidence" that your core principles about government are correct.

I'm trying to find points of comparison between that and Democrats with Bush, or Iraq, but it gets complicated.

xp K-Lo?

"I'm trying to find points of comparison between that and Democrats with Bush, or Iraq, but it gets complicated."

Well there was the problem with Dems lacking core principles. . .

Oh yeah. A lot of what the GOP is doing now is positioning, waiting to see if they can eventually blame the Democratic Party. There was an SNL skit on this, I think (bunch of GOP Senators laughing about them becoming irrelevant ("Ha! It's like we don't even exist!").

(xp)

Isn't K-Lo Kathryn Lopez? Ugh.

Kathryn Jean Lopez

Yeah yeah. Her.

She's a real party animal. Her and Bork, woo boy. Wild.

Top House Republican Calls for Spending Freeze

WASHINGTON (AP) - The top Republican in the House is seizing on the latest spike in unemployment to call for a freeze on government spending and to urge President Barack Obama to veto a $410 billion spending bill.

Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the jump in unemployment to 8.1 percent and the loss of 651,000 jobs in February is a sign of a worsening recession that demands better solutions from both parties.

Boehner criticized the spending bill as chocked full of wasteful, pork-barrel projects. The Senate postponed a vote on the bill until Monday amid the criticism.

Boehner said he hoped Obama would veto the bill. He urged the president to work with House Republicans to impose a spending freeze until the end of this fiscal year.

http://incredimazing.com/static/media/2008/01/07/ddb7f6a6ae3b584/wtf.jpghttp://incredimazing.com/static/media/2008/01/07/ddb7f6a6ae3b584/wtf.jpghttp://incredimazing.com/static/media/2008/01/07/ddb7f6a6ae3b584/wtf.jpg

There's a classic Friday afternoon story for you.

Same fucking economic bullshit the Republicans peddled from 1900-1932. And beyond.

These bubbleheads seem to be counting on a coalition of former Dixiecrats, John Birchers, and come-to-Jesus right-to-lifers to put them back in the seat of power. Good luck with that, Mr. Boehner.

He urged the president to work with House Republicans to impose a spending freeze until the end of this fiscal year.

Hmmm....I can see it now...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Obama, in a dramatic turn away from his previous statements about the economy, announced at a nationally televised press conference that he will push for a freeze on government spending until the end of the fiscal year.

"I agree with my colleague John Boehner that the only way we can begin to dig ourselves out of this crisis is to start treating the disease rather the symptoms. The economic crisis only a symptom of the disease - government spending", President Obama said.

"Today, we heed the wisdom of President Reagan - who needs government, anyway? What good has it ever done? As of today, I am indefinitely suspending all three branches of our federal government", Obama declared. "I am going to hang 10 in Hawaii and get out of everyone's hair, and I can I only hope that my friends in Congress will do the same. I wish the citizens of the United States good luck in replacing the current fossil fuel-based energy infrastructure with clean energy sources, establishing universal health care, and providing some sort of social safety net for unemployed workers."

The Dow soared immediately after the press conference, setting a new record high of 14,943 by the time the closing bell rang.

http://meaningfuldistractions.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/obama-smiling.jpg
President Obama after the press conference, on his way to Hawaii

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/03/06/cellphone_photo/?source=refresh

my favorite response to that:

Later Malcolm will review older pictures from the last Republican Depression That FDR Was Responsible For and wonder why all the poor guys begging for bread were wearing such spiffy suits and nice hats.

That Salon.com article led me to a rightwing blog I'd never heard of before: Kathy Shaidle's Five Feet of Fury. Shaidle is not a nice person.

What, bad Canadian poet alert?

She's a poet? Ha ha. Her blog writing seems primitive and blunt, in a very un-poetic way.

The Republicans have responded to their 2008 drubbing by doubling down. They seem to be campaigning not to win a national election but to be the favored faction of some future post-coup military junta.

That list of vile offscourings linked above are the sort of thing that got Ezra Pound in so much hot water, but I sincerely doubt Shaidle is as good a poet as he was.

btw M.V. otm

Funny to imagine Ezra Pound as a troll commenter, but you know he would have been if he'd been born 100 years later.

smug kid currently one of the frontpage bits at Yahoo:

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7630/smugkid.gif

article is worth reading just for the end bit:

He still has the zeal of a missionary. His voice rising to a wobbly squeak, he grabs any opening to press the cause. “Barack Obama is the most left-wing president in my lifetime,” he said.

Mr. Krohn buried his face in his hands. “Oh, Jonathan,” he sighed.

Hahaha!

Awesome. Maybe he can make friends with William Hague.

Has the looks of a young Krauthammer. Also has smug pundit face down already. God bless America.

Conservatism: it's so simple, even a non-quite-bright child can explain it.

Now, if only it actually worked.

haha i totally have to read that kid's book.

meanwhile, david horowitz is currently on Hannity stumping his book about 'radical professors.'

so, you know, welcome to 1988.

I wish Dave Chappelle was still around to do a 'When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong' w/ Michael Steele.

rip

Is Michael Steele trying to get fired?

If it's pissing off Tony Perkins, I'm good with it.

Has the looks of a young Krauthammer. Also has smug pundit face down already. God bless America.

omigod yes

http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1472092,gary-skokien-prostitutes-toy-guitar-031109.article

Inverness Police say former Cook County Republican Chairman Gary Skoien admitted having two prostitutes in his children’s playroom when his wife walked in on him early Sunday morning.

The allegation is in a domestic battery report from Skoien, 55, against his 36-year-old, 5-foot-4-inch, 110-pound wife. He said she beat him with her fists and an electric guitar.

I mean, I'd hate to think The Great Kat would marry a dbag like that, but still...

The Illinois GOP really is a treasure.

against his 36-year-old, 5-foot-4-inch, 110-pound wife

is this really necessary

I think they are trying to say, "punch fatties"

wait sorry "fatties beating you is legal"

The GOP will blame Blagojaveich for this I'm sure.

URL there kinda implies that dude is pimping out guitar hero controllers

gary-skokien-prostitutes-toy-guitar

in what universe does 110 lbs qualify a woman as a "fatty"

the implication seems to be that it's terrible to beat up a woman of that frame, but someone bigger...?

not that the newspaper is trying to say that, but i really question the logic of including a woman's measurements when reporting a crime like this

"The steamy allegation comes from Skoien's 36-24-36 wife who is, herself, a stone fox."

I thought the paper was saying "lol he got beaten up by a small woman"

"SEE PHOTOS of this shameful party official's bedmates on page 34"

Why is no one talking about the electric guitar?

wont someone please think of the electric guitar???

ha wow i completely read that backwards

I botched my joke, b/c at first I thought he had beaten her

i saw it was an a IL republican and i kinda assumed he was an abuser. my bad!

xp

I mis-parsed "battery report against"

and here I thought the IL GOP only beat themselves up

Worst detail: the whole time she kept taunting him, "Why are you hitting yourself, honeybunch? Quit hitting yourself", in a malicious tone of voice.

^^^new GOP mantra

You know, responsible prostitutes would have tried to intervene and defuse the situation

Prostitutes don't get paid enough to disarm crazed GOP wives wielding toy electric guitars.

First of all, who's your party leader?
A jon who beats women with an electric guitar?

oh shit, make that "gets beat with"

He gets beat with women?

Two at a time, yeah

this story keeps on giving

did they say what kind of guitar?

cuz like a danelectro or semi-hollowbody like an gibson ES-335 wouldn't hurt that much but god help you if it was a les paul...strats and teles would fall somewhere in the middle of the "guitars i wouldn't want to get beaten with" spectrum

Pretty sure it was a Guitar Hero guitar.

http://entrepreneurthearts.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/girl-with-guitar.jpg

in other news:

Is it too much to dream for a Jonathan Krohn/Victoria Jackson ticket in 2012??

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/12/victoria-jackson-is-crazy_n_174253.html

libs are really making 15-years-forgotten-comedy-dumb-blondes their scratching posts now?

yes, my entire worldview is based around victoria jackson.

definitely what I was saying

HuffPo should stick to posting Jake Gyllenhaal beefcake exotica.

now you're talking, bad boi!

victoria jackson is just getting tore up because she really is that stupid

she just sounds like Dennis Miller! i'm sure HuffPo will have some juicy Kevin Nealon quotes forthcoming.

nealon rules dude

can we please get back to confused prostitutes and short GOP wives beating up GOP husbands with Guitar Hero guitars? THANKS

GOP can't stop hitting itself

I'm just wondering what you say when your wife walks in and you're in the playroom with two hookers. "Let me explain?" "Come on, now, put the guitar down, you're being irrational?" Or else "yes, definitely, please batter me with medium-heavy objects, so at least I can have an assault charge on the record for the divorce and custody hearings?"

Basically I wonder if he was still hoping, as the guitar came at him, that there was some way he could convince his wife to keep the whole thing quiet, for career purposes.

where did the hookers go

I'm just wondering what you say when your wife walks in and you're in the playroom with two hookers.

Only one way to find out.

"Where's Tommy Habeeb?"

Oh wait, that last one seems to be borne out by the facts:

Skoien obtained an order of protection that prohibits his wife from having any contact with him or their three children, ages 5, 7 and 8, he said.

Slick move -- also guarantees us even better claims from her end in near future

Also they had Victoria Jackson on during the election just to attack Al Franken

Basically I wonder if he was still hoping, as the guitar came at him, that there was some way he could convince his wife to keep the whole thing quiet, for career purposes.

Famous last words.

Remember when Victoria Jackson was promoted as the new Diane Keaton circa L.A. Story?

I just remember the handstands.

wasn't that Sarah Jessica Parker (SanDeE?)

"sarah jessica parker denounces obama as communist"

"Here I am, guitar! Come get me!"

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2008/04/05/amd_jessica_la_story.jpg

in the interests of bipartisanship, Janeane Garofalo also sez Franken is a shit.

Janeane Garofalo also sez Franken is a shit.

Never heard this. Professional jealousy, maybe?

Didn't know SJP was a Republican. Can't bring myself to dislike her, tho.

SJP?? i thought she and Broderick were flaming leftists. i thought i'd heard my dad grumbling about em.

That's her in the picture above, yes? She's cute. (Off-topic, I know. Apologies.)

"Skoien obtained an order of protection that prohibits his wife from having any contact with him or their three children, ages 5, 7 and 8, he said."

Wow okay him, I get obv, but their children?!?! What kind of judge does that?

she beat him with a guitar

Of all the judges to appear before, she got the one who used a little toy guitar for a gavel.

He's got a charge against her for violent assault and battery against someone in the home, which it sounds like she doesn't dispute, and which he claims has happened repeatedly -- it doesn't sound all that shocking that a judge would put in an order of protection for the time being while other things go forward.

(Meanwhile she's got a police report, which he disputes, in which he supposedly admits to soliciting prostitution, totally outside the presence of his children, which he hasn't been charged with, and which isn't really a justification for assault, so ...)

more lolz

Steele is reportedly reaching out to several conservatives Thursday in an attempt to ease their concerns. He's also slated to sepak next month at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner in Evansville, Indiana, a major gathering of pro-life activists.

sepak
Function:
    verb 
Etymology:
    Middle English sepeken, from Old English sepecan to drink anal sweat
Date:
    before 12th century
intransitive verb 1: to grovel, often insincerely 2: to express contrition orally 3: to plead, often before an executioner

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/16/kiss-my-fat-ass-says-meghan-mccain/

lol

“Can I say ‘lighten up,’ or is that offensive too?” Ingraham asked.

pretty good line imo

That's...not right.

pretty good line imo

Great pun, but that conservative attack dog schtick of making hateful comments and then trying to play them off as jokes when they get called out on them is some weak, tired shit.

deficits don't matter, though, remember

There has long been an element of the Republican Party that has felt a need to distance themselves from people who stand up for conservative principles, whether those with principles have been Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh or whomever (sic).
The latest example is John McCain's daughter, who has said how embarrassed she is by having to explain Ann Coulter to her friends. If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter, both the Republican Party and the country would be in even worse shape than they are now, for there are extremely few articulate Republican politicians who can make the case for any principle. Certainly Ms. McCain's father is not one of them.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/the_republican_civil_war.html

There seemed, for an all too brief moment, that Michael Steele might have been the one to provide such much overdue articulation-- and possibly he still might, but only if he stays out of the Republican trap of trying to appease opponents by throwing supporters to the wolves.

Two to one says Steele then does just that with Sowell.

lolling @ the sepak definitions

If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter

Check out Ingraham's bio! Keith Olberman???

Laura Ingraham, useless idiot

No one is entirely useless.

Worse comes to worse, they can be cut up for bait.

lolz

just playin on her calling Meghan McCain a "useful idiot"

is that dude really naming sarah palin as an "articulate" conservative??

"The teachers' unions, >>>>>environmental fanatics<<<<<< and the ACLU are just some of the groups to whose interests blacks have been sacrificed wholesale. Lousy education and high crime rates in the ghettos, and unaffordable housing elsewhere with building restrictions, are devastating prices to pay for liberalism."

being black is bad for the environment waht

I think you have that backwards; being green is bad for black people.

teachers, clean air and rights are for white people i guess

xp oh i get it now

I think you have that backwards; being green is bad for black people.

But it's not easy being green!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FD_yDjkRGeI/R03i8pPlpOI/AAAAAAAAAKI/JBK3JUxIZZE/s400/kermit.jpg

the rightwingosphere flipping out over ezra klein's JournoList is lol supreme. sorry you weren't invited to the party losers!

(could have gone on the corner thread but this was higher, so)

"being green is bad for black people"

what is the argument here? morbid curiosity...

I suspect its along the lines of environmental policies negatively impacting the economies of black communities, do you really want to know the exact rightwing lunacy involved...

like, black communities would be rich and crime-free if they could only get around those pesky environmental regulations stopping them from developing small businesses. or something

maybe he means Africans and ddt?

I think the argument here is "specialist lobbies are sucking up funds that could be used to shore up our inner cities and setting restrictions that keep the inner cities from flourishing", if I'm reading correctly. I think it's largely a bullshit one, but I think that's the thesis.

fyi rachel carson was a grand wizard in the kkk

I geddit. Low paying factory jobs are more likely to be held by minorities and are the jobs stunted by regulations. As if without those regulations the jobs would go straight to minorities. lol k.

yeah, like I said: bullshit

fyi rachel carson went to my (high) school

no movie was filmed tho

Stupid enviroracists! If Garrett Morris Cleaning Lady can't mop up nuclear waste, how will we ever have a black First Lady?

Strange assertion that enviromental laws and health and saftey regulaitions are anti-black.

Black communities are FAR more likely to be located near toxic dumps and industrial waste and black children suffer a disproportionate number of health problems as a result. To say nothing of latinos and pesticide exposure. And physically dangerous jobs are damn near a birth right of poor people, among which minorities tend to be overrepresented.

hot karl: youtube, yeehaw!
The House GOP leadership deputized the top Budget Committee Republican, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, to prepare an alternative budget. The GOP budget won't raise taxes, gets spending and debt under control, and will result in a stronger economy with more jobs. House Republicans plan a major selling effort back home during the coming recess. Minority Leader John Boehner is already up on YouTube extolling the plan. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander foreshadowed the GOP's theme by saying the Democratic budget taxes, spends and borrows too much.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742266398778963.html

Joe The Plumber "horny"

^^^I hope Ed Meese gave him a good handjob

Bachmann keeps the lolz comin

They are flailing away:

• "Neither the president nor Democrats in Congress actually read the bailout-bonus bill"
• According to Obama, the nation's out-of-control consumer debt "is not the consumer's fault for borrowing it, nor Congress' fault for legislating it, nor the Fed's fault for enabling it, nor Fannie Mae's or Freddie Mac's fault for packaging it. This is all Wall Street's fault. It is also all George W. Bush's fault."
• The President wants to "re-inflate this bubble immediately"
• According to Obama, "Trickle-down economics from Republicans got us into this mess. Trickle-down government from Democrats will get us out of it."
• According to Obama, "Our economy is so complex that millions of Americans can't plan for it, but Timothy Geithner and a couple of other smart guys in Washington can."
• According to Obama, "Political greed is more noble than corporate greed."
• According to Obama, "We have to short-change charities that help people, so government can help people."
• "The Barack Obama experiment, conducted by this 47-year old man, is the riskiest economic wager the world has ever seen."
• "Obama has never built a business, created real wealth or produced tangible prosperity. His understanding of our economy is theoretical and academic."
• "Obama is a privileged young man who has not yet made many mistakes in his life."
• "Having a president who belongs to the Harvard elite and the community-organizer streets is not the same as having a president who has lived a long life among middle-class Americans and understands them."
• Obama acts and thinks like an inexperienced child.
• Chances are Obama will be a one-term President.

that castellanos piece was incomprehensible, I couldn't finish it - completely incoherent

Obama is a privileged young man

wtf, so being successful is now a bad thing

The GOP is busy compiling a whole new volume of the thesaurus just for "uppity".

"Having a president who belongs to the Harvard elite and the community-organizer streets is not the same as having a president who has lived a long life among middle-class Americans and understands them."

lol, like the Republicans have any cred there re. "understanding middle-class Americans". It's not 1984 anymore.

"Obama has never built a business, created real wealth or produced tangible prosperity..."

unlike GWB, McCain, etc... oh wait.

Obama is a privileged young man

wtf, so being successful is now a bad thing

I read it as "he has been living in upper middle class fantasy world his whole life"

so i guess a republican's dream president is someone who...what, scuffled a little bit but at least never lowered himself to helping those less fortunate?

they have a very 50s attitude toward wealth and status -- only ppl who rose thru the management ranks have the "right" to behave as if they are are not merely middle class any more, it's the only way to become comfortable-if-not-rich that isn't suspect. rich professors, rich artists, rich lawyers, rich computer programmers, rich administrators, these ppl are all fakers and parasites

Sarah Palin still unable to string words together into coherent sentences

"And there was that media slant this go round...And unless things change, the GOP had really better can stand together, 'cause we got that on the battlefield also. I call it like I see it and like I lived it on the campaign trail. Not complaining, but dealing with reality."

"Sometimes, the middle of the fence is really the most uncomfortable place to be"

Yes yes but still hot.

Ahhhhhhhh . . . "the McCain campaign, love 'em, you know, they're a lot of people around me, but nobody I could find that I wanted to hold hands with and pray." Blech. Still hot.

"but nobody I could find that I wanted to hold hands with and pray."

The dude has war injuries. Jeez show some tact.

Was looking for this...

http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/cowgirl/cowgirlgun.gif

found this along the way...

http://www.thepinupblog.com/files/Obama%20Cowgirl%20Womens%20Tank%20Top.jpg

obama just wrote the commodity futures modernization act

byron dorgan is really a republican

if money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down

http://pcd.dreamhosters.com/538/images/rrtr.png

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/30/murtha-corrupt-district/

Keep talking guys! No matter what else happens, just KEEP TALKING!

Yesterday's lobbyist story in the NYT did not endear me to Murtha.

Whenever I hear liberals gloat over the supposed death of the right, I tighten up, because those people and their offspring aren't going anywhere. In many ways, they are much more "American" than Obama-lovin' libs. Oh, you might counter, look at all those disaffected whites who voted for Obama. Surely real change has arrived!

Uh, no. Recall that Obama and McCain were neck-and-neck as late as September. The shit economy saved Obama's ass, even though he sided, and still sides, with the criminals who created this mess. That's when his HOPE dope broke wide, because what else can you offer powerless people you want to keep marginalized? How long that meth hit will satisfy the disaffected is unknown, but as with all highs, there's an inevitable crash. And then what do you offer?...

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2009/04/last-refuge-standing.html

In many ways, they are much more "American" than Obama-lovin' libs.

yeah, fuck this

those assholes do not define what my America is and neither does Dennis Perrin

plz read quotemarks. actually, never mind

I think he means they carry on our founding values of xenophobia, maintaining an arms cache and supporting genocide.

At least two of those are founding values for every nation on Earth; there's nothing uniquely "American" about being tribalistic.

How dare you go against American exceptionalism that way, HI DERE, you communist.

"our founding values of xenophobia"

You certainly seem to exemplify that in how you treat the rest of us.

If even David Horowitz thinks you're nuts...

Newt would've bombed N. Korea

keep the lolz comin guys

Uh, no. Recall that Obama and McCain were neck-and-neck as late as September. The shit economy saved Obama's ass...

no point refuting this really, but, this isn't even a little bit true? mccain was fighting up a steep hill the entire campaign. he had a brief window with his post-convention bounce, multiplied a little bit by its close proximity to the DNC and the novelty factor of palin, after about two to three weeks everything sank back to the long term projections.

McCain was fucked from day 1 that's some weird revisionism there

It's not total revisionism but it is basically making the RNC post-convention bounce seem more significant and durable than it ended up being, kind of like the 2004 bounce after the DNC and how that made Democrats think that someone with the charisma of a typewriter and the political acumen of Nutter Butter was going to sweep GWB out of office without them really even having to try hard.

but... he promised not to raise taxes! And he had a chestful of medals!

(btw the first time I heard that phrase "chest full of medals" I thought they were referring to, like, a hope chest or a pirate chest where he kept them stashed away in the attic lolz)

He does! He showed it to me.

I was -- admittedly -- totally wrong about the election. I hope it really is a generational shift, and we'll see a Democratic majority for the forseeable future. But it's always dangerous to write-off the other major party, as the GOP seemed to do for a large part of the decade.

He does! He showed it to me.

did he show you his etchings too?

I was -- admittedly -- totally wrong about the election. I hope it really is a generational shift, and we'll see a Democratic majority for the forseeable future. But it's always dangerous to write-off the other major party, as the GOP seemed to do for a large part of the decade.

I think it's part of the natural ebb and flow of a 2-party system; were our other political parties larger and more connected to the American mainstream, emphasis would be placed much more on coalition-building and there would be less of a sense of entitlement and complacency, if only because there would be more credible players to be wary of.

I think the breakup of the religious right that's going on right is significant for how the shift will play out. You've probably seen the data in the Newsweek article, but I've seen it on the ground too; I know lots of young evangelicals who have dropped out of politics, and instead are working really hard at charity, inner-city work. The old cranky blue suit church folks are dying out, literally; what comes next isn't clear, and there are big sticking points at bringing them into the Democratic coalition as presently constituted (mostly abortion), but they're not self-identifying as Republicans either.

the Republicans have painted themselves into a corner demographically, they're fucked for at least a couple election cycles.

i'm tempted to say that declarations of death are always premature -- the level of paranoia and hatred toward the obamas personally is really intense, so there's no lack of commitment on the right. and remember that everyone thought liberalism was finished in those happy days after 9/11 and 2-4 years after. two big electoral losses in a row, and democrats were 'suddenly' on the march again in 2006.

but i'm also tempted to say that the conservative flowering (doesn't really seem like the right word...) post-9/11 was somewhat artificial and their current problems seems more structural.

neither party is ever going to die, each needs the other and the system is completely gamed to have two parties.

http://www.mercuras.com/57thState/300x250_thief2.gif

basically obama (and the rest of us) has to hope that keynsian economics really is the right path and that nothing godawful happens in iraq, afghanistan or pakistan. either it looks like his policies have been vindicated in a couple years or it doesn't.

Yeah, Dan, I think that's right. Also, FWIW, I wasn't focused enough on the changing demographic patterns that played out in the election. McCain beat Obama 55-43% among white voters, but the voting strength of white voters fell to 74% (a big percentage, to be sure, but I think it's down significantly from prior Presidential elections). So Obama put together enough of that voting block, along with other demographic groups, to equal a big coalition. That's all a fancy way of saying the "angry white vote" was either less significant than in the past, or Obama peeled-off enough of that vote to neutralize it.

(xp)

goole otm. i laugh over on the Fox News thread about that coterie of douches screaming about socialism! communism! and FASCISM!!! to (1) morons & (2) gales of laughter from the right intelligentsia, center, & left

but last week a friend had lunch with her slightly right-of-centrist, not-stupid, rather well-to-do mother and she said it sounded like a Hannity-O'Rly-Beck roundtable. very disheartening...

I start with the assumption that 1) both the Hoover Republicans and the Stalinist Left were wrong in 1933, and that 2) FDR was basically right. Had he failed, his successor likely would have assumed power not by ballot but by fascist coup or Marxist revolution. Things are less politically dire now than they were then, but--if Obama succeeds--it will be he who, like FDR, will have saved capitalism from the capitalists.

if i'm wrong i'll stfu, but where were all these fuckers hissing & screaming socialism & fascism when Bush I reluctantly raised the marginal tax rate (followed by Clinton) which led to the budget surplus? i remember folks being pissed and all - hell, i guess it's what cost Bush Sr. the election - but where were the pitchforks and the crazy talk about rich folks being frog-marched to concentration camps? i mean isn't Obama's tax plan essentially rolling back the W tax-cuts to the level of the Clinton years?

I don't think the current wave of "fascism" and "socialism" cries are about tax policy. I think they're about increasing government involvement in private-sector market behavior.

Also, that most of the people making such cries are basically children.

Rep. Backmann says she's heard whispers of Obama and/or Congressional Democrats making youth service in Americorps mandatory, and will include mandatory re-education camps. I heart this woman. She is such a treat.

Actually I think the tax cuts are back to Reagan-era, if you can believe it...

Youth service in Americorps SHOULD be mandatory.

Rep. Backmann says she's heard whispers of Obama and/or Congressional Democrats making youth service in Americorps mandatory, and will include mandatory re-education camps. I heart this woman. She is such a treat.

if only Helen Chenoweth were still alive ...

Minnesota politics is a really odd lot, but more entertaining than your usual graft led crooks.

"their current problems seems more structural."

The GOP are running out of white people that believe their b.s.

Newt can sit his non-military serving butt down, there is no way in hell if the dude was president he would have opened up a shooting war with North Korea over a missile test. If that place ever ends up in a real shooting match, you will wipe Seoul off the map in like 15 minutes even with conventional arms. Newt might have opened a can of peanuts and watched 24 or something, but that is about it, he wouldn't be opening up a can of whoop ass.

How Rightbloggers Made 'Fascist' the New 'Socialist'.

I love that Runnin Scared column/thingie. He does like one a week and they're always hilarious.

and of course the government's "market involvement" isn't anything to do w/ socialism, it's just an intensified maintenance of the Fortune 500 oligarchy.

"eloquently and cleverly centrist and sober" from David Horowitz is quite a pullquote for O.

re Kerry and his piano-bench charisma, he came fairly close to beating Bush despite the self-sabotage and nonstop flubs.

lovin this whole PR problem Palin is havin with her daughter's baby daddy

yeah, that'll keep rank-and-file Dems' eye off the ball for another week. You guys are easy.

um congress isn't working right now and the president's travelling - what ball am I supposed to be watching again?

let's go back to the idea that Palin's family problems are being used to distract gullible Democrats from the fearsome machinations of the GOP thresher for a second

*I*, otoh, love how, after Steven's conviction was quashed, Palin suggested that Begich should resign. I realize the prosecution was criminally botched but it's funny to see the Republicans asking for fairness or something resembling decency in politics.

no, Palin's family problems are a convenient way for libs to avoid noticing that most things aren't changing, and won't be changed.

"most things"

What incentives do Republican incumbents have for Obama policies to succeed? It seems like the smart thing to do would be some sort of horse trading where Democrats would agree to campaign less heavily in certain areas in exchange for cooperation. If you are a Republican, how could you hope to be politically viable and still throw support their way? If they succeed, you get no benefit, and either way you are marked as a traitor.

What incentives do ANY incumbent have for Obama's policies to fail?

"I was in Congress when the economy ate everything you own; send me back!"

"I opposed this [policy i'm opposing] and I was right, it fucked us up. elect [the opposing party] and we will fix it."
it worked for Obama. who is to say it won't work for Republicans?

Obama doesn't have the luxury that Bush had of essentially not needing the opposition's support on anything.

Obama doesn't have the luxury that Bush had of essentially not needing getting the opposition's support on anything everything.

fixed

seriously, I will rep for Obama on a lot of things but the performance of the congressional democratic leadership over the last couple decades is completely nauseating

otm

"Poor Mr. Loopner, born without a spine."

"I opposed this [policy i'm opposing] and I was right, it fucked us up. elect [the opposing party] and we will fix it."
it worked for Obama. who is to say it won't work for Republicans?

Current CV is that opposing the current policies are tantamount to contributing to the problem they are attempting to address, especially since the offered alternatives are what CV feels put is in this position in the first place.

Life doesn't strictly follow CV but it can be a good indicator of how people are leaning, along with polling numbers; Obama is currently riding an approval rating close to double of what GWB had and is likely to stay there, if only because he's actively trying to do something rather than swanning off on vacation every other week.

Wouldn't this current popular support only come into play if elections were being held right now, and not a few years later after the policies begin to take effect? How much support could a Republican get a few years down the line saying "I broke with my party and went with our hated enemy, who was right all along, but I'm still one of youse."

That is entirely dependent upon who is in the Republican Party at that point; do you really think they're going to be a viable political force if they don't change anything from where they are right now?

Basically, if it turns into the party of Megan McCain, you will see them taken more seriously; also, a lot of the things about them that make them particularly repellent, (ie, the batshit social stances) won't be there; it wouldn't actually be the end of the world if they did win more seats if the conservative party that wasn't running on a platform that denies citizens rights.

It's akin to what happened to the Democrats in 2004; they HAD to become something besides the Party of Semi-Reasonable, Charisma-Free Automatons in order to take advantage of the massive screw-ups handed to them by the Republicans; likewise, if the Republicans are going to leverage more power to themselves via cracks in the Democrats' armor, they need to do some transformation/rebranding of their own first.

I'm totally aghast at the idea of the current Republican party regaining political control. I am agnostic on a future Republican party regaining control because I don't know what it looks like yet.

The model you see a number of people on the right invoking is David Cameron in the UK, ie somebody who comes out and at least says that times having changed it's better to at least recognize that and take certain things as popularly supported and read. (Of course, this is something that is being looked at from a US perspective; people in the UK probably look at it somewhat differently.)

I only really know David Cameron by name, so I have no sense of how politically appalling I'd actually find him.

From what I can tell, Cameron is seen to be (but probably only is from the perspective of people actually on the right) the big/necessary break and adjustment from Thatcher -- comparative noises are being made in some spots over here that the sooner the right gets over Reagan the better.

"I am agnostic on a future Republican party regaining control because I don't know what it looks like yet."

I think it's safe to say that it'll still be filled with batshit crazies.

Unless Glenn Beck, et all, decided to move to Alaska and join the American Independent Party or whatever.

given the last few transformative Republican movements, I'm not optimistic that the next one will be an improvement in terms of fiscal policy.

Beck's a libertarian

the big problem for american republicans in retooling a la david cameron is that the party is in thrall -- to a greater degree than the tories ever were -- to a sort of revolutionary ideology. they've done nothing but get more ideologically rigid since reagan, to the extent that they scream "socialist" and "fascist" at simple things like a 3 percent marginal tax increase on 2 percent of the population. so when you get people like charlie crist and jon huntsman making mildly moderate noises, with views that constituted mainstream republicanism as recently as bush-the-elder, they're immediately attacked and shouted down as traitors by the unhinged true believers. what i'd like to believe is that the unhinged people are just going to marginalize themselves more and more, but i don't take anything for granted.

I think you mean a reactionary ideology, but otherwise I basically agree.

The drift towards the Xtian right over the last several decades isn't going to go away that soon but the inherent contrdictions of 'God, Gun and Greed' isn't either.

Who are the frontrunners right now in terms of party leadership? Any of them look hopeful?

Beck's a nothing actually, but I was just using him a stand in for the more right-wing crypto-christian crazy elements of the party. Maybe Bachmann works better. I don't spend a lot of time focusing on these folks, thankfully.

It's not even ideology though, really. It's 'true believing' without the pesky problems of even having something akin to a coherent collection of poltical tenets based around interaction with the real world and facts and icky stuff like that.

xposts

xxxpost
tipsy otm.

re: Beck & libertarianism -- he sort of seems like these guys that go around loudly parroting libertarian talking points when it comes to the economy but turn into big pussies when it comes to everything else. am i missing something?

To me it looks like the infantilization of the discourse of the 'Right'.

my best hope is that the beck crowd, or these kind of dudes:

http://washingtonindependent.com/37360/scenes-from-the-real-america

...are basically a political constant in american life. the real hard core right wing types that aren't going to change their minds and aren't going anywhere either.

at the moment, they are the only ppl the GOP has left. there's a new poll out showing, again, that obama remains very popular. the jonah goldberg was crowing that it showed obama to be HIGHLY POLARIZING because the GOP respondents really hated obama, democrats really like him, and independents lean toward the president. the thing he skipped over tho, is that the amount of GOP identification is way down, like below 25%. so basically, all the center-right types who might be inclined to like obama... aren't republicans anymore!

in the meantime, we have to hear from the true hard-right types cos that's the only sign of life over there. if the GOP ever grows again those kind of people will look marginal again just as a mathematical matter.

"the jonah goldberg" hah, started as "the corner" but i kind of like it

next fun litmus test moment: will the right turn on gates & petraeus over the new troop-rich and toy-light pentagon budget? signs say yes! will congress cave? absolutely!

is that kid like the benjamin linus of GOP?

re: Beck & libertarianism -- he sort of seems like these guys that go around loudly parroting libertarian talking points when it comes to the economy but turn into big pussies when it comes to everything else. am i missing something?

"He’s called himself a “rodeo clown,” but he insists his own outrage is no act. A “libertarian, big time,” he compares the moment he heard about the first round of bailouts to “another 9/11.”" from here: http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/encounter/55857/

The second GOP candidates adopt a David Cameron-esque accommodation to gay marriage will be the moment the GOP experiences an increase in young swing votes.

Hell, sometimes I shudder to think of how many points over I'd swing on the political spectrum were gay/gender issues removed from the table.

yeah i guess he could claim some states' rights safe ground, but when these so-called libertarians aren't wringing their hands and crying foul (& maybe he dooes and I've missed it) when it comes to drug laws, separation of church & state, reproductive rights and same-sex marriage issues I'm sort of inclined to think they're just distancing themselves from the old guard in name only...

I am kind of disappointed no one has posted a headline along the lines of "Palin sees Stevens without 'taint'" yet.

It's akin to what happened to the Democrats in 2004; they HAD to become something besides the Party of Semi-Reasonable, Charisma-Free Automatons in order to take advantage of the massive screw-ups handed to them by the Republicans; likewise, if the Republicans are going to leverage more power to themselves via cracks in the Democrats' armor, they need to do some transformation/rebranding of their own first.

That's true. OTOH, it's useful to note the date above: 2004. It only took a few years -- and, admittedly, the ascent of an astonishingly talented Democratic leader -- to propel the party to where it is today. So you can't write off the GOP in 2010 or 2012 (not that any of you are; just sayin').

Don't go by me, tho: I'm on vacation, kinda drunk, and mostly trying to figure out how I forgot that Family Man was a top 10 single from H2O (thanks for the 411, Alfred).

That's true. OTOH, it's useful to note the date above: 2004. It only took a few years -- and, admittedly, the ascent of an astonishingly talented Democratic leader -- to propel the party to where it is today. So you can't write off the GOP in 2010 or 2012 (not that any of you are; just sayin').

I'm not saying it can't happen or that it won't happen quickly; I'm saying it will HAVE to happen in order for them to regain control. I'm also putting forward the opinion that some of their more odious tendencies will have to change if they want to recapture the majority; the possibility exists for the creation of a non-repugnant Republican party and I hope it happens as I'd rather live in a society of reasonable people who disagree rather than a society of polarized loonies.

It only took a few years -- and, admittedly, the ascent of an astonishingly talented Democratic leader

ha u mean howard dean right

The second GOP candidates adopt a David Cameron-esque accommodation to gay marriage will be the moment the GOP experiences an increase in young swing votes.

so not gonna happen

xp

i kid i kid, but "50 state strategy" (what i know of it anyway) kinda squared the circle between "stick to our guns!" and "moderate, DLC style!" options for a losing party -- get on the ground everywhere, field and support candidates that are the ideological left of their local area, take advantage of any fuckups the opposition makes

the GOP could totally do this if they had the discipline, but the outcome would be more dick lugars and olympia snowes, not more santorums, so today's GOP would be no happier...

Yeah. I think this part -- "some of their more odious tendencies will have to change if they want to recapture the majority" -- will be the most interesting thing to watch. The GOP needs to be more inclusive, and that may force it to break with its more rabid core/base. I'm just not sure it can break its dependence on that core constituency (and, to be fair, that core constituency is a big enough group to be a powerful force, whether inside the GOP or in a third-party). The caveat is that if Obama's economic policies fail (not have mixed results, but flat-out fail), the GOP will have a path back to power that allows them to rebuild their coalition.

(xp to Dan).

The caveat is that if Obama's economic policies fail (not have mixed results, but flat-out fail), the GOP will have a path back to power that allows them to rebuild their coalition.

I don't want to admit that this is true (even though it is)

Oh it's very true. The question is what the character of a resurgent GOP would be like in such a case.

is Reagan dead yet?

Michael Reagan is alive and loves you.

Haha. Grover Norquist -- that compelling speaker -- has a singluar vision of what he would do if he was President for a day:

Q: You’re president of the United States for enough time to make only one executive decision. What is it?

A: Put Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill.

More seriously, Politico has an interesting roundtable on why the GOP is failing so badly at the moment.

i think i'm allergic to politico

Oh it's very true. The question is what the character of a resurgent GOP would be like in such a case.

The assumption is that an Obama failure would allow the Republicans to rebuild on their existing base without having to ditch any of their odious prejudices. Ugh.

The key question is how folks feel about the policies of the Democrat party

Grover you are such a fucking retard

http://www.bearst.com/images/grover2.jpg

I can't help but hear his lisping creepy voice yelling at "Damien" every time I think about Grover.

Tea party antics

Re: Man holding a "Real Americans Only Bow Before God" sign

Fuck you, man.

i love all this horseshit about this "not being a Republican thing"... where were these 'non-partisan' folks and their outrage when Bushco was flouting notions of smaller govt., sober spending, balanced budgets, etc.?? this whole "protest" was the brainchild of the right-wing blogoshpere, adopted by petulant congressional republicans and then hyped by Fox News

It's spin to distance themselves from Bushco. The time to do that was many years ago, dudes.

actually paultards have been doing this teabag shit 4 years

i think it's kind of cute to watch the right instantly launch into a replay of the left in it's most fringey-whingey impotent mode. they've been out of power for what, 90 days?

Right wing is banking on encouraging grass roots t3rror1sm, having some bogus shit go down over the next couple of years in strategically planned events. Fox News channel of course will have most in-depth coverage of said events, will take time to endorse 2k12 Republican candidate under "We Told You So" platform.

I gotta remembered I posted this so I can check it again in 2k12....

Hey did people dress up like Indians at these tea parties? Cos I saw footage of some colonial pants wearing fools and was just wondering...

Results 1 - 10 of about 18,300 for "rick perry" treason. (0.17 seconds)

ok so i was away from the news for a day - texas is going to secede? what?

actually paultards have been doing this teabag shit 4 years

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Thursday, April 16, 2009 4:31 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah see at least that's consistent w/their political leanings. whereas nascar dudes getting hot about gov't spending all of a sudden is a bit lol whut

also fwiw all those crazy sign carriers i think really are just bizarro versions of anarchist giant puppeteers, in some ways. like, i think their shit is reprehensible, but hey, this is america, etc.

xxp haha holy shit!! it'll never happen but yea wau

'got to man, this is america'

ok so i was away from the news for a day - texas is going to secede? what?

― the shep (shepard smith ha ha) (daria-g), Friday, April 17, 2009 12:26 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah it was pretty lol from the capitol seat here i gotta tell ya

lol at contessa brewer mocking the "secede" chanters

apparently it was just fish-in-a-barrel time at the knoxville tea party...

http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h77/therealRaincrow/Teaparty09/NoEarmaks.jpg

Yeah, the portland teabaggers were just depressing, and out in force from the suburbs.

joeks4u

1) "This Texas secession thing must be gaining traction. Tonight I heard Lou Dobbs say we need to start shooting Texans who try to sneak across the border."

2) "I'm all for letting them leave, but only if they agree to make W. their king."

3) "Sarah Palin has offered her daughter's hand in marriage to Rick Perry's son in an effort to unite the kingdoms."

where were these 'non-partisan' folks and their outrage when Bushco was flouting notions of smaller govt., sober spending, balanced budgets, etc.??

The current record for single-year federal budget deficit was set in 2008, at $455 Billion. Obama expects this year's deficit to be around $1.75 trillion, and hopes to cut that in half by the end of his term.