Not out getting smashed and wrecking your good name? Lament about it here.
Archives for October 2006
Andrew Sullivan’s Reign of Terror
Sullivan has been raising hell in the blogosphere by dredging up hideous 80’s videos and thinks he has some candidates worthy of disapproval.
Sullivan is but a piker when it comes to bad 80’s videos though, as this Thompson Twins clip from 1983 proves once and for all:
You got nothing, Sully, and I got more…
When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?
If rumors surrounding Sen. George Felix Allen (R-VA) hold up, around the time she filed for divorce.
Emails began pouring in earlier today about a rumor on Capitol Hill about some trouble in Sen. George Allen’s (R-VA) divorce file. Josh Marshall and others cannot get a response from the Allen campaign.
It seems everyone is emptying their opposition research files today.
Update: A very reputable political reporter tells me this isn’t from Democratic opposition research and that it’s probably coming out because many feel Allen “crossed the line” when he started talking about Jim Webb’s novels.
Notice the update. Counting the Foley matter as the first, this would be the second time that faithful Republicans have kicked open a massive PR disaster for their party. That seems more than a little strange coming from the party that gave us the Eleventh Commandment.
Playing a bit with the analogy, if John Cole is teh ghey then it looks like DC has a rather busy closet.
Kansas Politics
To back up John’s post below, this recent editorial from the Johnson Country Sun pretty much says it all:
[W]hat in the world has happened?The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally.
You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election. They lose in low turnout primaries, where the far right shows up to vote in disproportionate numbers.
To win a Republican primary, the candidate must move to the right.
What does to-the-right mean?
It means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.
It means weak support of our universities, while praising them.
It means anti-stem cell research.
It means ridiculing global warming.
It means gay bashing. Not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.
It means immigrant bashing. I’m talking about the viciousness.
It means putting religion in public schools. Not just prayer.
It means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.
It means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education.Note, I did not say it means “anti-abortion,” because I do not find that position repugnant, at all. I respect that position.
But everything else adds up to priorities that have nothing to do with the Republican Party I once knew.
That’s why, in the absence of so-called traditional Republican candidates, the choice comes down to right-wing Republicans or conservative Democrats.
And now you know why we have been forced to move left.
This isn’t losing Walter Cronkite and middle America. In regular times the Johnson County Sun would make Cronkite look like an acid-crazed flower child. A party that pushes the Sun Democratic has well and truly sent its reasonable people to the showers.
Disparaging
National networks now consider it unacceptable to criticize the government. Greenwald has the details (via Drudge, so keep a shaker of salt handy) and eriposte has a more comprehensive rundown.
From now on Bush followers can spare the outrage when people use phrases like ‘Dear Leader.’ In a free country, for example in the country that once sat between the Atlantic and Pacific, Mexico and Canada, networks do not feel pressured to turn away independent ads that might make the leading party uncomfortable. We don’t live there anymore. Same geographic location, different country.
***Update***
We might get back a bit of what we had if the GOP goes down in a glorious wreck this November, but I wouldn’t get excited just yet. Here’s a simple metric – count the days it takes each network to put up a graphic reading: Have the Democrats Gone Too Far? It doesn’t really matter what the actual topic is, since it is hard to imagine an area of government which the GOP has not pushed to ludicrous extremes. Inevitably the Dems will try to push some policy topic back into sane world and one of the David Broders will declare his feelings hurt.
I give FOX news about five hours since the very concept of Democrats in charge ought to offend them. ABC, which has recently declared its fealty to the crazy-right FOX News base, will take about a week. CBS? NBC? We know that it is only a matter of time before everybody invites Boehner and Mitch McConnell to tut-tut about how uncouth the Dems have become in their majority.
Gay-Bashing as Electoral Strategy
If you needed any evidence of what I was talking about in the post just below this, here it is:
The divisive debate over gay marriage, which played a prominent role in 2004 campaigns but this year largely faded from view, erupted anew on Thursday as President Bush and Republicans across the country tried to use a court ruling in New Jersey to rally dispirited conservatives to the polls.
Wednesday’s ruling, in which the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights and financial benefits as heterosexual couples, had immediate ripple effects, especially in Senate races in some of the eight states where voters are considering constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.
President Bush put a spotlight on the issue while campaigning in Iowa, which does not have a proposal on the ballot. With the Republican House candidate, Jeff Lamberti, by his side, Mr. Bush — who has not been talking about gay marriage in recent weeks — took pains to insert a reference into his stump speech warning that Democrats would raise taxes and make America less safe.
“Yesterday in New Jersey, we had another activist court issue a ruling that raises doubts about the institution of marriage,” Mr. Bush said at a luncheon at the Iowa State Fairgrounds that raised $400,000 for Mr. Lamberti.
The president drew applause when he reiterated his long-held stance that marriage was “a union between a man and a woman,” adding, “I believe it’s a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society and the well-being of families, and it must be defended.”
If you ask most honest conservatives off the record, they will tell you that the war over gay marriage is over, and gay marriage has won. Why then, is the President inserting this sort of rhetoric, setting the stage for more gay-bashing, more acrimony, more divisiveness?
For political gain- because it will whip up the base and they will come out and vote Republican.
All this bullshit about ‘activist judges’ or marriage being under ‘assault’ is just that- bullshit. Civil unions are here and they are not going anywhere, and nationwide gay marriage is right around the corner- perhaps another generation. Conservatives know this- Republicans know this- just like they know that two men getting hitched in no way threatens or cheapens traditional marriage in any way. It is all a charade, albeit a mean-spirited one. Wouldn’t it be nice if this were the reaction of the Republican party:
But, despite my reservations about courts going too far and the possibility of bad second-order effects, it’s hard not to be a little happy for thousands of gay couples who’ve just had a door opened to them.
That sort of attitude would, unfortunately, run contrary to the offical election strategy of villifying teh gay, and would drive away the Republican base- scumbags like Dan Riehl.
Still Not Getting It
Leon is still hopping mad, and still doesn’t get it. In another post, he takes me to task (or tries) for continuing to drink the kool-aid (and I won’t even address his lame attempt to claim that I have been brainwashed by the left-wing commentariat here):
I also feel compelled to point out something that John himself was once aware of, which is the ubiquituous use of predominantly black churches as PACs by the Democrats.
When you start with this kind of reasoning, you just gota know this argument is going downhill fast. I am still aware that churches have been used inappropriately in the past (and probably, to some extent, still) by the Democrats. And I am sure you will agree with me that behavior is inappropriate.
Now here is where it gets tricky, because this is the part that has eluded Republicans party loyalists for the past few years- just because someone else is breaking the law doesn’t mean we get a free pass for breaking the law. Someone elses transgressions don’t give the greenlight to the GOP for misbehaving. Let’s take, for example, torture.
Are there jihadists and terrorists out there who want to kill us? Yes. Will they cut off our heads on camera if it serves their purposes? Are they the very definition of evil? Yes and yes. Does that make it right for us to engage in torture? No.
You see- in this crazy world of ours, two things can simultaneously be wrong. Bob Ney is still a crook even though William Jefferson is a crook.
Leon continues on:
No, John, the non-sequitur is your link between a guy campaigning in a church and your assertion that the Republican party (or even the religious right) is seeking people to worship in a certain way. Also, what the hell do his positions on abortion have to do with worship at all? I don’t need to deny something, when it’s ridiculous on its face. Your point (as you know full well) had nothing to do with the connection between Kline’s religious values and his positions on abortion, your point was that he was on the verge of instituting some state religion.
Who is Phill Kline? Well, Phill Kline is a man whose religious beliefs are the foundation for his political beliefs, and it is his religious beliefs which have led him on a crusade to end the teaching of evolution and to ban abortion:
“Study Kansas history,” he said the other day, words tumbling out in an eager rush. “We were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement, the women’s suffrage movement, prohibition…. Then we got conservatism and recognized the importance of faith.”
Kline is a member of the fringe right who has made the Republican party their toy, and wish for all of us to live in accordance to their desires. He represents a group of people who are afraid that modern society is going to corrupt their children, end society, whatever, and the GOP has siezed upon that fear and exploited it for electoral gain (a partial run-down can be found here in this Kansas editorial endorsing Democrats). But what really has Leon upset is this statement of mine:
Modern Republicans don’t want a society in which they are free to worship as they choose- they want a society in which you are free to worship as they choose.
Given the authoritarianism of the current Republican party and the religious right (is there a difference?), given their attempts to drive the debate to frame everything in religious terms, given the excesses during Terri Schiavo, the prosyletization at the military academies- I don’t think it is hyperbole. I really do believe there is a radical group of Christians who wish to force their version of Christianity on all of us, and they have entirely too much power right now. I am not alone:
Paul Morrison, a career prosecutor who specializes in putting killers behind bars, has the bulletproof résumé and the rugged looks of a law-and-order Republican, which is what he was until last year. That was when he announced he would run for attorney general — as a Democrat.
He is now running neck-and-neck with Republican Phill Kline, an iconic social conservative who made headlines by seeking the names of abortion-clinic patients and vowing to defend science-teaching standards that challenge Darwinian evolution. What’s more, Morrison is raising money faster than Kline and pulling more cash from Republicans than Democrats.
Nor is Morrison alone. In a state that voted nearly 2 to 1 for President Bush in 2004, nine former Republicans will be on the November ballot as Democrats. Among them is Mark Parkinson, a former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, who changed parties to run for lieutenant governor with the popular Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius.
As I was writing this response, I see Dan has posted a remark, so I might as well include it here:
Leon, I’m not sure there is any longer much point in arguing with John Cole. That’s sad – most of us here have never had less than cordial relations with John – but no less true for being sad. I don’t know what we did to personally offend him such that he sees the need to open both barrels at this website with such regularity, but the bottom line is that (1) the Democratic party stands for modern liberalism in all its forms, and (2) John has chosen to advance both the short- and long-term interests of that party, including by engaging in the pretense that strictly political features present in the GOP (partisanship, rhetorical excess, corrupt officials, etc.) are somehow not present in significant force in the party of his choice.
You haven’t offended me personally Dan, and I generally think of you all still as friends. But you have chosen to enable and assist a corrupt (both morally and legally, btw) Republican party because the Democrats are ‘worse’ or the party of ‘modern liberalism.’ You refuse to take your partyy to task because the other guys are ‘worse.’ And the sad thing is, where that once was true, it no longer is- the Democrats may have a bunch of ideas that are ‘worse,’ but on the whole, the Republican party is where you go these days for corruption, sleaze, deceit, power-grabs, influence-peddling, cover-ups, excuse-making, and bad and failed policies. You all have spent so much time drinking the GOP kool-aid that there is literally NOTHING that the Republicans can do that you all can not find a way to explain away or excuse.
Am I sometimes tougher on the Red State folks? I don’t really think so, but I do feel a sense of betrayal by you all- you have chosen to sell yourselves and the soul of the party down the river for political expediency and political power. Sure- you make your token statements every now and then displaying your disapproval with the GOP. But they are just that- tokens, as the very next day you have a post up explaining why Nancy Pelosi would be the worst Speaker ever and that is why you have to vote for the GOP. I can almost see you winking at John Boehner when you write the posts.
It’s really no longer relevant what kind of government, what kind of ideas, or what kind of blogosphere John thinks he is promoting, because the fact is that he strives to bring about precisely the same results that Kos and Atrios do, and by means of the same methods of argumentation.
We know, Dan- we can all sing it in unison- “The Democrats are worse.” And I am really not sure if I want to take argumentation advice from you all, given Red State’s propensity to smear the past few months. In fact, if I were a front page poster at Red State, I would probably point out that Phill Kline has taken money from the Phelps family and, like a good smear merchant, neglect to point out that Kline returned the money.
Throw these bums out of office, start over, and I will be right there with you fighting all the bad ideas that Democrats are sure to have. Until then, some house-cleaning is in order. My roommates at Red State won’t help me clean, so I am breaking out the wet-vac and the power-washer and going to town by myself.