US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

Don't think anyone here will disagree with you on that, Morbs, Perrin link or no.

ya rly, although honest and heartfelt thanks for witholding the Perrin link

i'd be very very interested to know just how much and in what ways this mob is being prodded and paid by organized established political players

the answer may be less than we think, but it may be more

"if you control the mob, you control the country"

It's prodded, yes, and organized slightly, but these deep pockets of rage have always existed.

Last week's New Yorker boasts a profile of the Tea Party and that delightful charmer, Dick Armey.

sure, but it's all about mobilizing that rage. the usual ingredients, at least since the 1953 iranian coup, are:

- cash
- a few well-placed semi-undercover operatives
- a whole bunch of people who feel tired and powerless and disgusted

and no i don't mark all this down to some conspiracy, but i suspect there is leadership and coordination here that comes from well outside the grassroots (maybe this is mentioned in the newyorker article)

I think part of the dynamic we're seeing - and it's one of the reasons I support the President's incremental approach - is one where the right-wing populists, people who generally are puerile, incurious, emotional and self-entitled, are feeling frustrated that they've been basically proven wrong and are having difficulty swollowing that and moving on. They repudiated Bush and Cheney in 2008/2009 but now that the Republicans haven't really changed, just shifted personnel, the Teabaggers et al are trying to find reasons why they were more right to be 'conservative' than to admit that the libruls were generally right. They're going to lose generationally on gay rights. They're economically retarded wrt health care insurance reform. They're painting themselves into a sclerotically ideological corner and at some point, hopefully in 2012, a majority of the independants will prefer the sane, if ponderous approach of Obama to the loony, out-of-touch, obscurantists yipping and whining on the right. Regardless, I will either feel immense pity or downright contempt for whomever gets the Republican nomination in 2012; s/he will either be a partisan Kool-Aid drinking fool or a deeply compromised person of out-sized ambition. Just look what the combination of party lunacy and ambition has done to McCain.

McCain's facing the first real primary fight of his life. Did you see the twaddle he said at the DADT hearings yesterday?

Via Sullivan, this is McCain in 2006:

"The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to."

The guy is nothing but ego, now, if ever he was anything else.

What really worries me is that occasionally I have had vague sympathy with old school liberal Republicans and without a credible, viable opposition the Dems are going to get more bloated, more corrupt and more vain. When the major opposition party is nothing but fire-breathing flat-earthers, the Republic is in serious jeopardy.

The guy is nothing but ego, now, if ever he was anything else.

in fairness there is no politician of whom this statement is not true

any liberal Republicans left? Are Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, and Charles Percy dead?

rip fiorello laguardia

in fairness there is no politician of whom this statement is not true

Point taken, however facile that is - the devil's in the details.

a deeply compromised person of out-sized ambition

M White, in fairness there is no presidential candidate in memory of whom this statement is not true.

I note that both you and J0hn are apparently uninterested in the nuance of the degree of self-regard and shamelessness exhibited by candidates. I, however, do. In fact, and yes, I basically agree with you, I find that is one of the most interesting things about politicians and people in power - what will they not stoop to do?

"The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to."

The guy is nothing but ego, now, if ever he was anything else.

― Mit der Kattzheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens (Michael White), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 10:44 AM (46 minutes ago)

he's not quite as lax on torture though, hm

I note that both you and J0hn are apparently uninterested in the nuance of the degree of self-regard and shamelessness exhibited by candidates.

yeah for me this is almost an aesthetic exercise - the degree exhibited is more a question of self-control, isn't it? i.e., if one politician (the guy I vote for) manages to persuade me that he's actually less power-mad than the other guy, that says less about him than about 1) his powers of persuasion and 2) my need for a kind of political narrative

however facile that is

feel free to quit bein a dick to me whenever, dunno if this is news to you but people can disagree abt shit w/o being assholes

(k3vin I think from a sort of Greek tragedy standpoint McCain's position on torture is also essentially ego-originating - because it impacts him so personally, he cares. we're all like that to greater & lesser extents, but the selling point for a politician is that he's above just thinking about how he feels, above caring about stuff in which he has or has had a personal stake)

but let's not forget: McCain caved on torture.

the selling point for a politician is that he's above just thinking about how he feels

surely not though? There's at least as much political hay to be made from being the opposite type of politician.

Warner/McCain/Graham/Powell to Bush: "Drop dead." (aka, the US, torture and the Geneva Convention, fall 2006)

feel free to quit bein a dick to me whenever, dunno if this is news to you but people can disagree abt shit w/o being assholes

Sorry, J0hn, that was not only uncalled for but really directed at someone else here at work who's been exasperating me all morning.

It's not that I'm uninterested in evaluating who's Less Awful, just bored with it.

What seems facile is saying it can't be different (always a matter of degree, yeah; degrees that matter).

I have never said it can't be different, and I try never to be too self-assured about anything under the sun, but I have been studying politics and history since I was a child and not just those of the US, and it has left me with a somewhat jaundiced though not hopeless view of human behavior and politics. The stories of the weaknesses, temptations and pratfalls of the powerful are nothing new in any culture.

Evil is interesting, guys.

Sorry, J0hn, that was not only uncalled for but really directed at someone else here at work who's been exasperating me all morning.

no sweat Michel it's not like I don't snap at ppl too! xxoo jd

does anyone post on these boards who's actually studied political science? cos i've been knocking around this theory for a while, and i have no idea if this is old ground or what. anyway here goes:

politicians in an electoral system, if they're successful, have to have (what boils down to) two qualities, that i've shorthanded in my head as "juice" and "weight".

"weight" is all the off-camera governance stuff: administrative skill, experience, negotiating power, ability to command others, dispute settling, time in the trenches of one org or another, policy chops, broader theoretical education, etc. but also even less quantifiable personal attributes like drive, emotional stability, "cool under fire," commitment to principles. this is what people like to think they're getting when they pick a candidate to support -- and coming up with ways of indicating these qualities is most important in a primary situation, when the candidates are most ideologically similar

but there's the pop element. "juice" is basically anything about that politician that is unique to him or her that gets and holds attention/affection/admiration in a mass sense. physicality, the celebrity element, the voice, personal history, all that. this is where "identity" resides, and it doesn't have to be fair. hillary is a woman. that's important. obama, you may have heard, is black. you'd get these weird arguments during the election that obama's blackness was an unfair advantage because it made attacking him a little trickier for a bunch of old white conservatives, and because he had a ready and willing base of support in black america (after dicking around with bill clinton's temper for a while).

anyway, where am i going with this? john mccain's primary made me think of all this again, cos it seems to me that the thumbnail sketch of mccain that everybody knows -- "honorable maverick who was tortured as a POW" -- is not weight, it was juice. the feckless national media always considered it very "weighty" but it wasn't, it's a hook. being black in america is no picnic, historically, and neither is doing time in the hanoi hilton, but, lo and behold, in 2008 these ARE "positives" ie, political advantages, of a kind. mccain has always been weight-less, he has always been all-story, all-character. conservatives hated him cos he was "moderate," but that's not even accurate; i don't think it's even accurate to say he was incoherent. he ran on personality, kept winning on personality, and that's how he legislated. i don't think his selection of palin -- the most all-juice, zero-weight figure imaginable -- is or was a headscratcher at all.

so basically i can't stand the guy, he's a clueless fraud and i'll be happy to see him fight and lose, or maybe win, even tho the other guy is a huge nutbar. and i doubt a democrat can win that race in AZ, and if one does it'll be another ben nelson. but whatever, fuck you, john mccain.

it occurs to me i can't even remember if i've hashed out this theory on these threads before, lol

"Alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art," - Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), on what he claims will follow in the wake of repealing DADT.

The book I'm reading now shows the disjunction between serving as the visible face of a movement and the numerous chits this avatar has to collect if he wants to keep being the face.

there's no way that's a real quote

"Alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art," - Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), on what he claims will follow in the wake of repealing DADT.

massive lol

yeah i need to read more basically. more than blogs anyway, heyo

oh saxby, my saxby

he is a traet

does anyone post on these boards who's actually studied political science?

I majored in it in college - its quite a different field now (been taken over by statistics, mostly.)

GOOD

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2010/02/02/saxby-chambliss-military-should-keep-dont-ask-dont-tell/?cxntfid=blogs_political_insider_jim_galloway

In context, it makes a modicum of logical sense. It's still completely laughable, though.

"Alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art,"

Right there you have the divide between the Republican base and the youngs - that just sounds like Friday night.

can we also talk about how all of those things are already present in the military?

I dunno I've always been fond of political theory and history, primarily, so reading a bunch of polling data that's been compiled in a desperate bid to be taken seriously as a "hard" science is pretty bring by comparison.

anyway, what you describe isn't so much a political theory as it is a description of how American electoral politics and media interact. There's tons and tons of writing on that subject, of course.

x-post

anyway, where am i going with this? john mccain's primary made me think of all this again, cos it seems to me that the thumbnail sketch of mccain that everybody knows -- "honorable maverick who was tortured as a POW" -- is not weight, it was juice. the feckless national media always considered it very "weighty" but it wasn't, it's a hook. being black in america is no picnic, historically, and neither is doing time in the hanoi hilton, but, lo and behold, in 2008 these ARE "positives" ie, political advantages, of a kind. mccain has always been weight-less, he has always been all-story, all-character. conservatives hated him cos he was "moderate," but that's not even accurate; i don't think it's even accurate to say he was incoherent. he ran on personality, kept winning on personality, and that's how he legislated. i don't think his selection of palin -- the most all-juice, zero-weight figure imaginable -- is or was a headscratcher at all.

yeah, this. and tbh i think i was at one point (lol college) the sort of mccain apologist who would've thought he was a 'weighty' guy.

also, interesting to me is that the kneejerk conservative response (ie - cons i know personally) to lefty 'populists' is that they're all juice and can't Get Things Done, all pie in the sky, can't deal with the hard questions, etc., when now practically all of your Republican heavyweights are juicy juicy juice. even Cheney, who i think is widely considered to be an ugly unpopular dude who nonetheless will make shit happen fuck the haters, is all gas at this point

"Alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art," - Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), on what he claims will follow in the wake of repealing DADT.

lol has this man actually MET a Marine?

EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING

A family member who voted for McCain and kept up w Tea Party stuff pre-9/12 tells me 'The Tea Party has split but this hasn't been talked about in the news yet'. Certainly the era of a no-Republican Tea Party commanding national television support is passing before our eyes...

I minored in poli-sci, but no way have I maintained a scholarly interest in it.

If DADT is repealed, I am sure we will get a marvelous comedy film about a WeHo/Chelsea party boy's travails in the Army, a la Private Benjamin! Has Saxby Chambliss thought of THAT?

The Tea Party has split but this hasn't been talked about in the news yet'.

So someone doesn't watch the news then.

goole i like your theory

you could make a good ad&d style game with that as a starting point

the hilarious thing about SAXBY there is that he's treating being gay as not only dirty and dangrous, but FUN, like a wild night out.

as in, soldiers like to get crazy and do dumb shit -- get drunk, fuck around, be too chummy, get tattoos -- which is why we have rules. if we say it's ok to suck a little cock every now and again, damn, you never know what'll happen!!

xp yeah the tea party civil war as been salaciously covered by TPM among others, dunno if that counts as "in the news" tho

xp max you don't want to get me started talking about politics AND rpgs at the same time

i was going to say, i bet u were into turn-based rpgs, to be thinking about politicians in terms of at least two semi-quantifiable characteristics

roll for juice