• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

In after Baud. Damn.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Fight them, without becoming them!

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Mobile Menu

  • 4 Directions VA 2025 Raffle
  • 2025 Activism
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2008 / How Much Better Off Would We All Be

How Much Better Off Would We All Be

by John Cole|  February 7, 200811:17 am| 25 Comments

This post is in: Election 2008, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.

FacebookTweetEmail

If this attitude had been on display the past seven years against Bush:

Ace has some lengthy and thoughtful comments on why McCain will indeed continue to screw conservatives from here on out. Read it all, and tell me it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Yeah, I’ll still vote for the little [expletive deleted]er in the general election. But you know what? I’m going to keep bashing him anyway. And I’m going to make especially sure I bash him, by name, within 60 days of the election — in honor of his past assaults on free speech.

I love the Republican party — but I love irony more.

The damage Bush has done to conservatism (*see the note below) FAR outweighs whatever transgressions the right think McCain has committed (really, Bush’s lone successes for conservatives have been Alito and Roberts, deals McCain helped to broker), yet there was little to no substantive criticism of Bush. What if conservatives had unleashed the venom they now fling at McCain on this administration when they were:

1.) Doing a crappy job prosecuting the war in Iraq
2.) Failing to direct adequate resources to Afghanistan
3.) Passing the Prescription drug Plan
4.) Passing bloated and unbalanced budgets
5.) Writing special legislation for Terri Schiavo.

And on and on and on. What if, rather than deriding anyone who pointed this stuff out as having BDS, they punished Bush and company for their transgressions? Had they done so, had they actually stopped drinking the kool-aid and paused the “Democrats are worse” chorus, we might not have this situation:

Substantial attention has been paid to the historic unpopularity of the Bush presidency, but relatively little attention has been paid to the accompanying collapse of the Republican Party’s credibility. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll reveals that Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle every issue of any significance, including — by a now fairly wide margin– “the U.S. campaign against terrorism”

The basis of McCain’s support this election cycle was correctly pointed out by the Bradrocket yesterday, as he laughed at the “conservatives” who, after spending months flinging poo at John McCain, now expect him to come lick their boots AFTER he has won the nomination despite their best efforts:

In other words, he’s succeeded largely because he’s convinced a sizable number of people in this country that he has nothing to do with all-out lunatics like you guys. If he’s come this far without your help, then there is no upside to him coming out and giving the finger to subprime borrowers who have just lost their homes, as you’d prefer him to do. Sorry, guys, but your ideology has become political poison in this country, even in the damn Republican primaries. If you want people to vote for you in the future, maybe you should stop wearing your sociopathy so overtly on your sleeves.

Pretty much.

*Note- Conservative and conservatism are now meaningless terms, as conservative now means Crazy yahoo who loves him some Bush and goes along unflinchingly with whatever dumb ideas the NRO, Hewitt, and Malkin now claim are “conservative”.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Open Thread
Next Post: Open Thread »

Reader Interactions

25Comments

  1. 1.

    mark

    February 7, 2008 at 11:25 am

    Re: your second block quote …

    Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle every issue of any significance, including—by a now fairly wide margin

    … “the U.S. campaign against terrorism”, I think you meant to include.

  2. 2.

    brendancalling

    February 7, 2008 at 11:29 am

    I love the taste of schadenfreude in the morning.
    It’s better than any coffee, more exciting than even the finest Peruvian marching powder.

  3. 3.

    T. Scheisskopf

    February 7, 2008 at 11:59 am

    I think the money shot is buried down deep in this thing, when the author opines that voting for Hillary will mean that the Dems will then own the war.

    They are just desperate for someone to take that pig off their hands, ain’t they? You can bet that if Hillary is elected, within days those mad bastards will become the new voices of “reasoned criticism of the war”.

    After 8 years of lining up to sniff Dear Leader’s war farts and calling them ambrosia.

  4. 4.

    LiberalTarian

    February 7, 2008 at 12:01 pm

    *Note- Conservative and conservatism are meaningless terms, as conservative now means Crazy yahoo who loves him some Bush and goes along unflinchingly with whatever dumb ideas the NRO, Hewitt, and Malkin now claim are “conservative”.

    Fixed.

  5. 5.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    February 7, 2008 at 12:01 pm

    *Note- Conservative and conservatism are now meaningless terms, as conservative now means Crazy yahoo who loves him some Bush and goes along unflinchingly with whatever dumb ideas the NRO, Hewitt, and Malkin now claim are “conservative”.

    With the rise of the internets I think the weakness of the unreasoned and irrational defense of obviously wrong and mismanaged policy, has been the Achilles Heel of the Right. It should be as plain as the nose on ones face that we should all be skeptical (at a minimum) of those in elected office. As much as I loves me some Magical Unity Pony I plan to keep my B.S. detector turned up to full power. The last thing this country needs is another lying shit pile in the White House. Obama seems to be an honest guy. So far. But you still have to have your eyes open.

    Treat them all like proctologists–if they have both hands on your shoulders during the prostate exam–BEWARE!

  6. 6.

    Tsulagi

    February 7, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    Let’s see, the really smart Patterico always thinking about ticking time bombs takes some time out from wetting his pants to say of Ace’s post…

    Read it all, and tell me it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

    Among the “all,” Ace writes…

    The fact is that McCain’s real path to victory lies with white men who are uncomfortable with Hillary’s explicitly sexual politics and Barack Obama’s quieter, but still real, racial appeals.

    So apparently shorter Patterico and Ace would be McCain’s real path to victory lies with white men who are uncomfortable Hillary has bigger balls than they do and are sure Obama has a secret reverse KKK agenda.

    Yes, that would be today’s typical Party of Bush man. Really smart, really strong.

  7. 7.

    Innocent Bystander

    February 7, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    Hammer applied correctly to the nail head.

    I’ve been amazed by the complete lack of accountability that the RW bloggers and pundits have given this administration. They accuse us of BDS, but they act like a collection of battered wives by their acceptance of every criminal act this administration and their Congressional rubber stampers foist on the American people. Disregarding the warnings leading up to 9/11 – who could have known? Illegal wars – OK! Fiscal irresponsibility – why not? Incompetent execution on disaster relief – no problem! Oil @ $100.00/barrel – Mission accomplished.

    Seriously, if the tables were reversed and Democrats were the architects of this governing disaster, there’d be about 10 people left in Washington calling themselves Democrats.

    By not holding their political party to basic standards of responsible and decent behavior, they can take credit for the coming implosion and extinction of the concept of conservative governance.

    They always were better at complaining and bloviating from the sidelines than actually getting anything done, anyways….

  8. 8.

    4tehlulz

    February 7, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    Treat them all like proctologists—if they have both hands on your shoulders during the prostate exam—BEWARE!

    Is there something you’d like to share with the group TGP?

  9. 9.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    February 7, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    Is there something you’d like to share with the group TGP?

    My proctoglogist. You can trust him. He’s from the government AND he’ll respect you in the morning.

  10. 10.

    Zifnab

    February 7, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    *Note- Conservative and conservatism are now meaningless terms, as conservative now means Crazy yahoo who loves him some Bush and goes along unflinchingly with whatever dumb ideas the NRO, Hewitt, and Malkin now claim are “conservative”.

    Your journey to the dark side is complete.

  11. 11.

    jcricket

    February 7, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    Greenwald’s point is so important it bears repeating. Republicans have succeeded not because they actually help America, but because Americans think Republican policies help America. Think also for a moment the reality of tax cuts not raising revenue, tax cuts for the rich not helping the poor, massive military spending not necessarily making us safer, etc.

    When Americans stop believing the GOP, and the facts were already lined up against that party, it signals GOP electoral disaster.

    Imagine, if you will, that the Democrats actually seize this historic opportunity and start “reframing” things so that the American public buys into the Democratic platform (or what it will become if they were not so timid). And then realize, because the facts are on our side, that reality plays out so that Americans see the positive results of supporting the Democratic agenda.

    It would radically remake the playing field. People who are proponents of the policies that exacerbate income inequality, piss-poor/inefficient healthcare systems and never-ending war will seem as grossly out of touch as those who clinged to the notion that the world is flat or the universe revolves around the sun.

    I’m not really saying this is likely, because Democrats are too damn timid to do anything like positively articulate a real liberal agenda. Read: not a strawman socialist Republican version and not the
    “centrist/bipartisan” GOP-rollover version either.

  12. 12.

    jcricket

    February 7, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    With the rise of the internets I think the weakness of the unreasoned and irrational defense of obviously wrong and mismanaged policy, has been the Achilles Heel of the Right.

    I think of Republicans as creationists (and not just because some of them actually are). If you remember talk.origins from the USENET days, and then have followed any developments since then, it’s easy to see why science is “winning”.

    Creationists were nutty all along, but it took the magic power of the Internet to bring them all together and put them out there for the public to see. In response to this, scientists have gotten better and better at creating resources to disprove creationist “theories”, day-light the attempts to roll-back science education, provide a foundation for legal challenges to backwards school boards, etc.

    The political landscape is the same. When it was all big-money v. big-money Republicans had some pretty big structural advantages (K-Street, Scaife, Limbaugh). Now that they’re competing on a “level” playing field (Internet), they’re losing the war quite badly.

    Or as one of my funny co-workers often says: “Consistency is only a virtue if your aim is good.“

  13. 13.

    Dennis - SGMM

    February 7, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    Frank James, writing on the Chicago Tribune’s politics blog quotes RNC spokesman, Alex Conant:

    “With all due respect to the Clinton ‘machine’, should Barack Obama win the nomination, I’m sure Republicans will have plenty of arguments to level against the Senate’s ‘most liberal’ member.”

    That’s right boys; shout to the world about how different Obama is from you. That ought to work out real well.

  14. 14.

    Charity

    February 7, 2008 at 1:03 pm

    jcricket says:

    Imagine, if you will, that the Democrats actually seize this historic opportunity and start “reframing” things so that the American public buys into the Democratic platform (or what it will become if they were not so timid). And then realize, because the facts are on our side, that reality plays out so that Americans see the positive results of supporting the Democratic agenda.

    It would radically remake the playing field. People who are proponents of the policies that exacerbate income inequality, piss-poor/inefficient healthcare systems and never-ending war will seem as grossly out of touch as those who clung to the notion that the world is flat or the universe revolves around the sun.

    I’m not really saying this is likely, because Democrats are too damn timid to do anything like positively articulate a real liberal agenda. Read: not a strawman socialist Republican version and not the “centrist/bipartisan” GOP-rollover version either.

    There is nothing I can add to this that is either more relevant or truer. George Will called the Dems “their own worst enemy” today. True that, Mr. Will.

    Now I feel like the battered wife: “Maybe this time will be different!”

  15. 15.

    Punchy

    February 7, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    “With all due respect to the Clinton ‘machine’, should Barack Obama win the nomination, I’m sure Republicans will have plenty of arguments to level against the Senate’s ‘most liberal’ member.”

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this exactly–word for word–the title they pinned on Kerry in 2004? So they just keep recycling the term, as transparently bogus as it is, so the media can keep repeating it?

  16. 16.

    jcricket

    February 7, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    There is nothing I can add to this that is either more relevant or truer. George Will called the Dems “their own worst enemy” today. True that, Mr. Will.

    Time and again the polls show that the American public is solidly on the side of the actual Democratic agenda (e.g. healthcare, birth control, abortion rights, proper role of military, taxes, public schools, government program allocation).

    Democrats need to realize that they don’t need convince people that the Democratic agenda is “right”, they just need to convince people they’re already Democrats.

  17. 17.

    jcricket

    February 7, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this exactly—word for word—the title they pinned on Kerry in 2004? So they just keep recycling the term, as transparently bogus as it is, so the media can keep repeating it?

    YES. (SASQ)

    Republicans have been recycling the same ideas for nigh-on-50 years now (Democrats are tax-and-spend, soft on crime/war, hate religion). If it ain’t broke, they figure, don’t fix it.

    All the while they have perhaps not realized their coalition is increasingly fragile and reality is catching up to them – you can’t actually fool people forever, it just seems that way.

  18. 18.

    reid

    February 7, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    jcricket: I haven’t read the Greenwald piece you’re referring to, but you’d think the Democrats could, if not sell people on their positive agenda, at least use some of their money and airtime to plainly spell out just how bad Republican policies have been. There’s certainly plenty of ammo available from the last 8 years.

    I listened to a little bit of Romney’s speech at CPAC, and it reminds me how sickened I am about how the far right has been able to demonize liberals and progressive policies and spin their own self-serving policies into gold. Granted, only the true believers take it deeply to heart, but even the mainstream starts to believe things like “tax cuts = good” and “Democrat = tax and spend = bad” when it’s repeated as conventional wisdom. It’s not enough to weakly defend themselves from the lies; go on the offensive and show how all of the shit we’re in today is a result of Republican right-wing idiocy! The press (for the most part) hasn’t done anything to shine a light on it, but $100M in ads this year could open up a lot of eyes, or at least begin to shift perceptions. Dammit, hire Cole to explain this if necessary!

  19. 19.

    Doubting Thomas

    February 7, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    I take great pleasure in this:

    Conservative and conservatism are now meaningless terms, as conservative now means Crazy yahoo who loves him some Bush and goes along unflinchingly with whatever dumb ideas the NRO, Hewitt, and Malkin now claim are “conservative”.

    After seeing the conservatives trash the name “liberal” to the point where liberals are cautious to use it and have basically replaced it with “progressive”, it’s nice to see that conservatives are getting their just due. It’s even nicer that, unlike the liberals, they did this to themselves. Schadenfreude is indeed the greatest gift of the German people.

  20. 20.

    Bruce Moomaw

    February 7, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    Schadenfreude has always been my favorite German dish — and, apart from the Mad Mayor’s incredible King Kong-style fall from the political version of the Empire State Building, the most delightful serving of it this year has been that Fox poll showing that actual GOP voters, given a straight choice, prefer McCain to Romney 2 to 1. We Democrats have all seriously overestimated the extent of nutball ultrarightism within the GOP itself, simply because (1) we’ve had a freakish administration that played to it in all respects, and (2) because of the inevitable megaphone effect produced by the natural shrillness of most political blogsites.

  21. 21.

    jcricket

    February 7, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    go on the offensive and show how all of the shit we’re in today is a result of Republican right-wing idiocy! The press (for the most part) hasn’t done anything to shine a light on it, but $100M in ads this year could open up a lot of eyes, or at least begin to shift perceptions.

    I 100% agree. The wing-nuts have the Moonie Times, Regnery and other Scaife-funded welfare. We’ve got Soros the liberal boogey-man, but where are the attack ads? All we got is mediamatters howling at the wind meekly. Whenever MoveOn does anything resembling an attack ad the Democrats freak out and apologize.

    My kingdom for Democrats who stand up and fight.

  22. 22.

    LiberalTarian

    February 7, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    Dude. My kingdom for Democrats who fucking stand up.

  23. 23.

    jcricket

    February 7, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    Dude. My kingdom for Democrats who fucking stand up.

    We’ve got Barney Frank, Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd. That’s all I could think of. Anyone else (sane) ever do anything for us?

  24. 24.

    Delia

    February 7, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    We’ve got Barney Frank, Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd. That’s all I could think of. Anyone else (sane) ever do anything for us?

    Not since Al Franken left for Minnesota.

  25. 25.

    Rick Taylor

    February 7, 2008 at 8:58 pm

    What if conservatives had unleashed the venom they now fling at McCain on this administration when they were:

    1.) Doing a crappy job prosecuting the war in Iraq
    2.) Failing to direct adequate resources to Afghanistan
    3.) Passing the Prescription drug Plan
    4.) Passing bloated and unbalanced budgets
    5.) Writing special legislation for Terri Schiavo.

    That’s the one silver lining of the last six miserable years. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point BDS was no longer an affliction restricted to the left, as even people like Peggy Noonan chimed in at what a miserable failure he was. I don’t know why they’re saying this now when nothing much has changed, but regardless it’s way too late for them to disassociate conservatism from Bush, or at least I hope so. They were cheer leading him and mocking those of us pointing out what a disaster it was for too long to disassociate the two by now.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - Deputinize America - Moorea 2024 2
Image by Deputinize America (7/14/25)
Donate

Recent Comments

  • Professor Bigfoot on Late Night Open Thread: Obama Speaks (Jul 15, 2025 @ 5:59am)
  • Baud on Late Night Open Thread: Obama Speaks (Jul 15, 2025 @ 5:58am)
  • MagdaInBlack on Late Night Open Thread: Obama Speaks (Jul 15, 2025 @ 5:58am)
  • montanareddog on Late Night Open Thread: Obama Speaks (Jul 15, 2025 @ 5:57am)
  • Baud on Late Night Open Thread: Obama Speaks (Jul 15, 2025 @ 5:55am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
No Kings Protests June 14 2025

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Feeling Defeated?  If We Give Up, It's Game Over

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!