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

omg what happened?

http://www.onedigitallife.com/images/bush_book.jpg
a goat became a hero after butting a car robber into submission. it was awesome!

ah i see in xposts were debating competing propensities to violence, not mere insanity, ok

but according to jonah goldberg all those neo-nazi types who get violent are really leftists and therefore basically democrats!

He looked so young back then. No grey.

nazi stands for national SOCIALIST

aka national OBAMACARE

"violent" is very close to "violet" which is a color that liberals like, ergo only liberals are violent

QED

I really wish that our country valued education more than indoctrination, because I feel like half of this nonsense would go away if we could get the majority of the population to adopt critical thinking as a virtue.

fuck man, I've taught critical thinking / baby logic, and it was the worst teaching experience of my life. If you have ideas about how to get this skill across I am all ears.

most of my ideas involve bats so I'm probably not the best person to ask

by the end of this particular semester I would have tried bats.

any bets on when jonah goldberg apostatizes? (this is the weird winger kid right?)

http://api.ning.com/files/e4L8LUmX9y8EnpdD-ty8D8TBxsRbrhPkea0UVbN04W-NkXsNTR6YAMa-K8fqk9kazVOCHvDHH0sZ9L44*OXFrME7mN7siPVw/winger4.jpg

Heaven isn't too far away.

Guys, if you value critical thinking, don't read Politico kthnks

i was picturing more like this:

http://hollywoodphony.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/281x211_stewart.jpg

Guys, if you value critical thinking, don't read Politico kthnks

yeah way ahead of you there

yeah I clicked on Daniel's link and then I had to wash my eyes and my browser's cache out.

lol.

All part of the plan.

"Our band was known to musicians, and a lot of musicians showed up to see me play - watching trying to figure out how I'm playing - we were like the 'hair band' [version of] Dream Theater -- That is why it's the great irony that we ended up on that geeky guy's shirt on Beavis & Butthead, because Metallica couldn't play what we play, they couldn't do it, they literally - technically couldn't do it. And I'll fucking challenge those chumps to that any day of the week, but we could play their music with our hands tied behind our back. And so, I was a little t'd off about that, but in the end, none of that shit matters..."

(off-topic but I lolled)

yeah, you never see geeky Dream Theater fans.

Kip Winger
2009-03-11 01:09:40 ET
It was hard to type through all the starbursts that went off when I saw her picture there on the page, but I just donated another $100,000 to SarahPAC because Sarah drives the moonbats crazy and nothing's more important to me than irritating libruls.
Hopefully Rush will come in high.(On the poll) I identify with his 3 divorces, multiple drug felonies, draft-dodging, and sex tourism.

If you want to read gross comments, read any story posted today about McCain defending Obama.

Defending Obama for what?

being a nazi

http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0809/mccain_gets_booed_bd923ffb-8729-487e-bfed-d1233f4b5895.html

Kip Winger
2009-03-11 01:09:40 ET
It was hard to type through all the starbursts that went off when I saw her picture there on the page, but I just donated another $100,000 to SarahPAC because Sarah drives the moonbats crazy and nothing's more important to me than irritating libruls.
Hopefully Rush will come in high.(On the poll) I identify with his 3 divorces, multiple drug felonies, draft-dodging, and sex tourism.

This guy's headed for a heartbreak.

wait, Obama's in the new Tarantino movie? crazy.

Ha ha, Alfred, he certainly respects it every bit as much as Bush or Cheney.

I like the question posed to McCain that led to the boos: "I would like to know how the Pres. is getting by, with all of this money? It's against the Constitution; doesn't he know we still live under a Constitution?"

Waht?

mcCain's referring to how Obama suspended the Constitution, replaced it with the Koran

interesting gathering of folks at the mccain thing

most won't make it to 2012 so...

I don't know if the death panels will be in full swing by then.

is anyone on this board right-leaning but not very shouty? I feel like shouty people are drowning out and maybe misrepresenting the right as all crazies (it can't be ALL of them?)

drowned out, the poor dears

I haven't voted for a Democrat in years, and certainly sympathize on a very superficial level with conservatism's impulse to want to slow down the rush of history, but...yeah, that's as far as I go.

i thought i was a libertarian in lol high school (T. Gore & PMRC weighed heavy politically in my formative years).

i tend to be fiscally moderate i.e. i'm still more or less down with capitalism - as long as it's prudently regulated etc

Don Weiner swings conservative, no? (at the risk of tipping off a witch hunt)

I think a lot of people who used to consider themselves right-leaning have discovered that now the mainstream of conservatism is pro-torture, for example, and now have no choice but to call themselves moderate.

http://911dayofservice.org/Share-Plans/

they want their country back

^yeah i keep thinking it's going to be harder and harder for these dickbags to recruit, but i'm probably very wrong about that

xpost

"I plan on REMEMBERING...watching the video's of that day, because they won't be shown on tv. I will watch the video of Obama bowing to the Sheik.--and the new video of Obama giving a special message for Muslims, commemorating Ramadan. THEN i will remember that Obama skipped the National Prayer Day ceremony, and that he didn't want to wear a flag pin, or that he attended a church where they said "G-d D--n the USA!" repeatedly for 20 years.

Yes, it will be a special day of REMEMBERANCE--not service in Obama's name..."

yep. probably very very wrong.

US politics is so fragmented that such tags don't mean much. Most Americans are classic liberals who make exceptions on classic liberalism on pet issues; gun control, abortion, TARP, regulation, taxes, etc... Some 'conservatives' are far less interested in preserving the status quo than in returning to what they perceive as a better past and as such aren;t really conservative as much as regressive.

"video's" Can I vent for a second? ATTN, FREEPER: SHUT THE FUCK UP, OXYGEN THIEF. OK, done.

Time-machine conservatives = reactionaries.

Strictly speaking, reactionaries were originally people who had no agenda and thus could only 'react' to events as opposed to causing them.

I think we're in the territory where their every action is a reaction to something else: it's all 'look what you made me do' with a sidecar of bigot.

can we start a sequel thread, please? if you're away from this one for two hours you have to load the whole thing to catch up and it's too much.

Yeah -- lock this.

Done and done.