In retrospect it amazes me just how improbable the modern Republican coalition really was. Cooked up in the mix of interest groups who voted Republican from Reagan through Bush 2 are business cons who absolutely depend on illegal immigration and nativists who will never rest until they end it, you have fiercely anti-Catholic evangelicals and Catholic partisans. Some credit goes to the guy convinced imperialist big-government Trotskyite communists-turned-neoconservatives, Libertarians, panty-sniffing sex crusaders and William F. Buckley to pull the same lever for any meaningful period of time. The job called for some brilliant, evil sick fucks; too bad the GOP ran out of the brilliant kind.
For anyone who thinks that John McCain will bring back the old mojo, I suggest you start drinking now.
Lee
I’m going waaaay off topic….
I used to scan Drudge occassionally, but never again as he was the one that broke the media embargo and imperialed Prince Harry. He probably gets millions of hits per day and is not going to miss my one.
JR
This was actually no great “trick” at all, it was only a more or less concious recreation of fascism. Studies of the political phenomenon have pointed out that fascism arises from the combination of the Four Horsemen: Corrupt Government, Big Business, Religion, and the Military.
Same as it ever was. The fascists were rooted out of Europe but hid in dark corners in America.
4tehlulz
The thing about Donahue is that he nothing more than the media’s house papist, brought out to denounce Democrats. I doubt more than 10% of American Catholics know who he is, and of those, only a few care what he says.
That said, I suspect that Catholics are not going to vote as a monolith against the Democratic nominee — then again, they never really did.
Also, Drudge is a scumbag.
Bob In Pacifica
To add to the Four Horsemen of Fascism, add control of the media. I remember a sweet line from Mussolini about controlling the newspapers. The CIA and much of the media were merging in the fifties.
So expect the basest and vilest of smears directed at Obama, and expect them to work.
Remember the picture of Rosalyn Carter and John Wayne Gacy? The Windsurfer? The Doofus In The Tank? Wear a raincoat for the rest of the year because you never know when they’ll throw more shit at you.
TheFountainHead
Actually, I think when the proverbial history book is closed, we’ll have come to discover that the post-Vietnam to pre-Iraq period was one fraught with sub-groups of American society attempting frantically to identify and define themselves by their subgroup rather than their larger class, as Americans. I’ll give Mark Penn credit for noticing this, though his implementation of this microtrends theory into a national political campaign that could have been recognized as a sea-changer two years ago does boggle the mind. Ironically, to some degree, it’s Howard Dean who has been screaming (c wat i did thar?) all year long about the need to embrace Americans realizing that we are just that: Americans.
jrg
The GOP nomination is all but finished, and we’re still hearing internecine attacks like this between Republican camps?
Ouch. My prediction is that all this mudslinging will suppress the overall number of voters in the general election, but the left and leftish moderates will still show up in droves, because they are so (rightfully) angry over attacks on their patriotism.
With the antics of jingoists like Jack Kingston and bigots like Donohue and Hagee, McCain is going to have a devil of a time trying to get moderates to show up at the polls and vote Republican (unless he’s running against the pro-anti-war, pro-anti-NAFTA juggernaut, Billary).
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Just add this to the long list of crap that drives Republicans apeshit when it’s applied to a Democrat, but rings out in deafening silence when it infects their own.
The press has already been satisfied by the McCain disavowal of Cunningham’s “red raw meat” (which was requested of Cunningham by McCain directly, but whatever) and will not feel the need to call McCain out on the carpet to “reject and denounce” Hagee.
It is as it always will be, IOKIYAR.
PK
I think the real problem is the two party system. Two parties are not enough to represent all the varied nutjobs and their friends.
TR
Greenwald nails it there. Hagee is just as offensive as Farrakhan, and McCain went out of his way to get Hagee’s endorsement, while Obama’s been sprinting away from Farrakhan.
And yet it’s Obama who the media insists has to repeatedly reject/denounce? WTF?!?
srv
Well, you have to give them props for keeping the Two Minutes Hate going for the last 14 years or so.
gypsy howell
You can add a Fifth Horseman (or should we just call it a Fifth Column?) to that group – The Media
MJ
Tim you should take a good honest look at the modern Democratic coalition too it is just as improbable.
Jake
Thank the No Oversight No Responsibility All Fear All The Time Administration for giving all of the above a way to push their own agendas. Think of the Buc-con jizzfest when Bush got in office and multiply it by a thousand when that sucker announced he was going to war. They probably needed CPR when he tried to suspend labor laws to “rebuild” New Orleans after Katrina.
Hate furriners, brown people and heathens? Then the guy who’ll lock them up forever and destroy a country full of furrin brown heathens is a dream come true.
Want to grind some faces? Here’s the PATRIOT act, just for you. gLibertarians lapped up laziness and greed disguised as allowing the free market roam like a wild pony.
And then there’s the Oh Noes Unmarried Sexors n’ Ghey Marriage crowd. If you paid attention to that scary crazy shit in 2003 – 2004 if the Islamofascists didn’t chop off everyone’s heads and destroy civilization, Teh Ghey were going to fuck everyone up the ass and destroy civilization.
The only group I can’t really explain are the Buckleys, I’m not sure how to explain the Buckleys. Why they weren’t repulsed by that slack jawed stammering shifty eyed train-wreck from Kennebunkport, and at least they had enough sense to eventually say fuck it. But like the rest of the faithful, they must have gotten something from the bAdmin. A fatter stock portfolio, I reckon.
PotD.
Andrei
Let’s not forget… the GOP won the 2000 election by a court decision, and even if they did win, it was by a rather thin margin of 0.01% or so. In 2004, they pulled out a 2% win.
In other words, their entire strategy has always been razor thin. Don’t give them more credit than they deserve.
MNPundit
He can’t do it. He can’t hold them together.
Hot Damn.
SteveinSC
The Donohue/Hagee thing is side-splittingly hilarious. Insane McCain has not only embraced Hagee, but when offered the opportunity, he planted a wet one on his face. Most people in this country think Farakhan is a looney just like Elijah Muhammed. It’s hard to get too cranked up for that, since even the rightwing can hardly contain their guffaws. But for mcCain, this is serious business. Hagee trumps anything vis a vis Farakhan. McCain’s foolish error in not disavowing Hagee will gain him little from the evangelicals (vide Huckabee’s poor showings) but will hurt him badly with rightwing Catholics (e.g the Pat Buchanan types).
Geoduck
I’ll believe it when I see it. Unless McCain has a total mental/physical meltdown on the campaign trail (which is far from impossible), he could still easily win this.
John Spragge
Seems we have an opening for some kind philanthropist to fund a coalition for religious tolerance, which can run some ads deploring the prominence of hate-spitters like Hagee, with lots of pictures of the bad guy, including some of him standing on stage with an unidentified politician who looks just like John McCain. Someone could run those ads in September and October this year, in “Reagan Democrat” areas of the country.
Delia
But it was ever thus with the fascists. Mussolini had his blackshirts stage a march on Rome and intimidated the King into putting him into the government. Hitler was already losing popularity in January of 1930 when the Nazis bamboozled the senile President Hindenburg into making him Chancellor. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini gained power through strictly constitutional means, though they pretended they did. Just like the Bush League.
I must say though, neither of them were quite the bunch of doofuses of our crowd. Imagine a presidential candidate hooking up with a winger pastor who makes a specialty of pissing off all the Catholics in the country. I mean, we knew that the goopers were going to play to fear and prejudice this year, but really. Wasn’t the battle plan to get at least the non-brown Catholics to vote for them? Just how were they planning on getting votes this year?