I wonder more and more how I voted for this party, and gather more and more evidence that I really was just drinking Kool-Aid. Red State, today:
There have now been three polls in Missouri taken during or after Michael J. Fox appeared on St. Louis television screens. One was taken in its entirety yesterday.
The result?
Jim Talent is ahead for three polls in a row by three points in two polls and by two points in another, something that he hasn’t seen in some time.
Maybe Michael J. Fox trying to convince Missourians of facts that are actually lies played as effectively as Alec Baldwin threatening to leave the country if George Bush were re-elected.
This is the same Red State that yesterday featured a video of a talking fetus explaining why you should be against embryonic stem cell research while proclaiming Rush was right to smear Michael J. Fox. Because, as we all know, a fetus is the same as a stem cell.
The Other Steve
Just leave the country? John McCain has promised to commit suicide if Republicans lose control of Congress.
The Other Steve
Oops, I meant threatened, not promised. Politicians don’t make promises, just threats.
Anonymous Jim
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Bender
Funny, I wonder the opposite whenever I read Kos or DU (or 90% of the comments here). Maybe, and I’m just riffing here, maybe hyperpartisan blogs written by out-of-the-loop halfwits who happen to have computers are not the most accurate indicators of the feelings of most Americans who belong to either party?
ImJohnGalt
Riiiiiiiighhhhht.
You voted the Democratic ticket, then went and read Kos, and wonder how you ever could have voted for such a bunch of liberal loons.
Thanks for your concern [troll].
sdc
Did anyone watch that ad??? It was hysterical. They probably didn’t mean for it to be funny…but it came off like an SNL spoof. I have to go watch it again…
The Other Steve
This yahoo article says the opposite of redstate
Who to believe… hmm.
jaime
RedState can choke on it.
They posted two front page posts with the title HAROLD FORD JR SCREAMS RACISM. About that stupid ad. I actually signed up to politely tell them, no, in fact its the opposite. If he did cry racism, could you tell me where and when he said it?
and I get
And was banned a post later. Now they are convinced the Fox ad backfired. Why? A Rasmussen poll of 500 Likely Voters showed movement towards Talent.
The Other Steve
I’m no fan of DU, but I post at kos a lot. Which one of my posts do you disagree with?
capelza
Lordy..I haven’t been to DU in a couple of years, literally. They are the left wing mirror of Free Republic. I like to think they cancel each other out.
When Red State first started I went there, it seemed like the mirror of Kos in the best ways, briefly, then something happened to them. Something really ugly…now they just seem like FR, only with better graphics.
Did anyone at RS mention that Fox also did an ad for Specter in 2004?
jaime
I did. I posted it, but their M.O. is to ignore it and when challenge, expel and delete the person who posted it.
mrmobi
Last night on Countdown, Olberman showed the ad Michael Fox did for Specter. It’s remarkable for a couple of reasons. It shows that Fox is really just interested in furthering stem cell research, it doesn’t matter to him which party supports that research, just that it gets done.
Secondly, it shows how much his disease has progressed in just two years. Michael Fox is a classy guy. I wish him lots of luck. For devoting 10 years of his life to helping find a cure for a dread disease, he gets ridiculed. Nice. Republicans have a lot to be proud of, eh?
How does Rush Limbaugh get away with the scummy things he does? Has our national dialogue descended to such depths that reasonable people condone making fun of the sick? I’ve never liked the big fat idiot, and it outrages me that he pays no price for demeaning our political life the way he does.
jaime
I got banned twice from DU and I am as liberal as anyone. The first time that homosexuality wasn’t natural in the sense that a penis goes into a vagina to make babies. I apologizzed profusely as soon as I saw how people took that.
I also got banned for promoting a website and radio show of a fellow I assist who practically was on their front page weekly. Both times I asked why I was banned and I got nothing. Now if I donated, it would have been a different story.
RSA
That fetus has a future in public speaking, given the constraints of projecting one’s voice clearly through the amniotic sac.
I did like the fetus’s last line, concerning “Americans like me”. A sadly neglected issue in stem cell research discussions is the hypothetical citizenship of the fetus.
jaime
Can I claim a tax credits for my sperm…excuse me Spermatozoan Americans?
Ted
John, what do you expect? Those people are obsessed with conception, birth, and death. It seems like everything in between is just limbo for them.
jcricket
With supporters like RS, LGF and Powerline, along with the 14% of Republicans that think their party is “too liberal” (really!), I think bans on contraception and IVF are next. Poll after poll shows that those are losing issues (anchors) for the Republicans, but the “base” doesn’t care. Rather than move back towards what they constantly call “the sensible middle”, they’re moving towards purging gays from the party & staff of the party and purging those whodo not support extremely unpopular (as defined by just how few people support these views when polled) views because of ideological purity issues.
It doesn’t matter that support for ESC research started at 78% and goes up to 83% after people learn more or get more involved. It doesn’t matter if IVF gets used more each year and you’re opposition means attacking all middle and upper-middle class parents. It doesn’t matter that nearly 80% of the public is totally comfortable with the wide availability of contraception or that you might be pissing off everyteenager or unmarried couple. Who cares about all future voters and the fastest growing segment of American adults (unmarried couples), who are “growing” even faster than the Mormon Church. Ideological purity is all that matters.
I for one actually welcome this. Let’s let the Republican party move right and have Pat Buchanan join back up. Keep up the race, immigrant and gay bashing. Keep attacking science, every regulation and every tax. It will only serve to highlight for 75% of America, there’s only one party that’s a sensible choice.
The remaining 25% can enjoy their permanent minority status.
jaime
Here’s that jcricket was talking about.
biz.yahoo.com/bw/061025/20061025006291.html?.v=1
I’ve never had a rug pulled out from under me, but I would imagine that’s what the folks at RedState are gonna feel on Nov. 8.
matt
I really don’t think these people are republicans or conservatives in any sense that matters. They’re dishonest (politically at least) people with odd views of the world. The fact that they consider themselves conservatives just seems entirely incidental at this point.
If you read RedState and agree with everything there, I don’t think you’re drinking the “republican” Kool-Aid, you’re drinking an apolitical, world view Kool-Aid that doesn’t really fit into any particular political philosophy.
If I can get on my hyperbolic soapbox for a second, it seems like the republican party doesn’t even really exist anymore in any meaningful way. Now “Conservative” and “Republican” describe personality traits more so than any political philosophy.
Does that make sense to anyone, or am I babbling?
RSA
Careful, you’ll slide off. . .but I think there’s a certain sense to what you’re saying. These folks are attached to a particular label at this point in history, but it’s pretty much independent of what that label has stood for in the past.
stickler
Matt:
You are absolutely correct. The GOP was always a coalition of interest groups, and the social radicals infesting RedState are just one of them. But they think they’re not just a majority of the GOP, but a majority of the country (!).
During the Schiavo mess, I tried to point out to them that using the Congress to meddle in one family’s end-of-life trauma was radical, dangerous, and liable to be electoral poison outside the Old Confederacy. They banned me for my trouble.
But that’s exactly what they are: radicals. There’s nothing conservative about the kinds of things they want to use the government for.
jaime
Wow. Speaking of kool-aid. Everyone’s favorite Dan Riehl is now pissed that Texas School Districts are not teaching children how to take out armed attackers.
These people hold all the political cards in this country? Fuck.
Krista
Um…or married couples, too. Careful, you’re falling into the GOP mindset that it’s only teenagers and the unwed who want contraceptives. Most married couples still want to be able to determine when (or if) they have kids.
RSA
Riehl is talking about violence in schools, but I wonder why he doesn’t apply his incisive reasoning skills to violence in Iraq? Chaos, rule by force, . . . you’ve got it all.
Zifnab
“Conservative” is definitely more ephemeral today than it was ten or fifteen years ago. In that sense, its more of a personality type than a party affiliation.
But “Republican” has taken an even worse hit. Now it is little more than a bumper sticker you put on your car. A party you vote for because you just can’t stop hating the Democrats.
Strangely enough, from where I sit, it seems like the terms “liberal” and “Democrat” have morphed too. I know quite a few people who will be voting ‘D’ this November who, in any other year, would have been staunchly on the other side of the aisle. “Liberal”, in turn, has been so overused as a verbal smear that it can be applied to almost anyone. If you’re not 100% pro-life AND a war supporter AND a torture apologist AND demand more tax cuts AND desire an end to church-state seperation AND hate the gh3yz – if you don’t follow in ridge lock-step with the Rovean talking points of the day – then you’re tainted with liberalism. The result? More and more people, having been kicked out of the conservative sandbox because of their pet divergent beliefs, are now “liberal” to the point that its losing its meaning too.
jcricket
You’re right, I forgot about the new Republican mantra of pissing of any any all the possible constituencies (married couples, unmarried couples, teenagers, online gamblers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc.). Is there anyone the Republican’s aren’t attacking, outside of Dobson-ians and Norquist-ies?
But on the topic of “RedState” isn’t conservative, I don’t like that line of reasoning. If you can always pull the “he’s not a real conservative” card whenever a Republican/self-professed conservative does something you don’t like, then the word has no meaning. It has simply turned out that when you enact a strong conservative agenda, you get the situation we’re in now (two largely unwinnable wars, divided electorate, injection of religion into scientific decisions, bankrupting of the economy, destruction of the social safety net).
We’ve been told for the last 20 years that the modern Republican party is conservative. Every Republican politician runs as a self-professed conservative. To pull a “oh, but they’re not conservatives” card now is a wildly ridiculous attempt to move the goalposts. It’s what Libertarians and Marxists do all the time, and are rightfully derided for it.
I suggest people who are now ashamed to be called conservatives but won’t admit their liberals/progressives find another name for their political philosophy. Call it pragmatic libertarianism or something, but you can forget about reclaiming “conservative”. That ship has sailed. If anything, it’s likely that the notion of conservativeness is going to move farther to the right as the Christianists and RedStaters get further hold of the Republican party.
cleek
During the Schiavo mess, I tried to point out to them that using the Congress to meddle in one family’s end-of-life trauma was radical, dangerous, and liable to be electoral poison outside the Old Confederacy. They banned me for my trouble.
yesterday, i tried to get them to tell me if they really mean it when they say liberals are actively seeking to destroy America. if they did, why weren’t they rounding up liberals and turning them over to the FBI? surely, it’s their duty to assist the govt, to get rid of traitors?
they accused me of calling them chickenhawks. then they banned me.
Geek, Esq.
Erick Erickson is under the impression that Parkinson’s medication prevents people from trembling.
And he’s trying to lecture people about facts and lies?
Then again, this is the same guy who APPLAUDED illegal corruption in Kentucky–because it was Republicans doing it.
A member of the Tom DeLay Youth (I’m sure he’d take that as a compliment).
Geek, Esq.
Erick Erickson is under the impression that Parkinson’s medication prevents people from trembling.
And he’s trying to lecture people about facts and lies?
Then again, this is the same guy who APPLAUDED illegal corruption in Kentucky–because it was Republicans doing it.
A member of the Tom DeLay Youth (I’m sure he’d take that as a compliment).