The stain of Bush won’t wash out even if the GOP tried. Back when the President looked like a winner the hero worship among his party reached Mussolini levels, and if the GOP ever missed a chance to bend over for the President I must have missed it.
But the great thing is, they’re not even trying.
It was just like the old days. President Bush and House Republican leaders strode purposefully out of the White House to the waiting microphones, where the president celebrated their mutual views on housing, energy, war spending and terrorist surveillance bills taking shape in Congress.
“These are dear friends of mine who are committed to doing what’s right for the country,” Mr. Bush said last Wednesday as House leaders looked on, sharing the presidential limelight.
[…] [T]op House Republicans say they are willing to stand against Democratic initiatives they see as flawed, even though they might have some natural election-year appeal.
More of this please. I don’t think that DC Republicans have any idea how much even ordinary Republicans in the erstwhile base hate George Bush’s guts. The Constitution may not be a suicide pact, but lately it seems increasingly like GOP membership is.
Notorious P.A.T.
I don’t know. Maybe the elephants are aware that thousands of Democrats will vote for them in November as a petulant protest against not giving Hillary the nomination. So, they can do whatever they want and get away with it.
incertus
Please tell me Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is there. I’m about to attend a meeting with her opponent, Annette Taddeo, and anything we can use against Ileana will be awesome.
Dennis - SGMM
“Trust us: it feels really, really good when you cut off your nose to spite your face.”
cleek
Trust us, it feels really good to turn over control over your uterus to spite your ideological peers.
superdestroyer
President Bush (along with Hastert, Delay, Frist, etc) have destroy the Republican brand beyond salvage. The real quesiton is what will the U.S. be like as a one party state.What effect will all of the former Republicans have when they start voting in the Democratic Primary. What will happen to politics will the Democratic Primary is the real election and the general election is a moot exercise?
Zifnab
Where else do they go? Democrats tried to play the “Republican-Lite” card all through the 90s, and they lost the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Republicans are too proud to back down. But even if they weren’t, how would they change? They can’t go back to the Gingrich “Reform” platform because half the proposed reforms are just roll-backs of old GOP policies. They can’t run off and become faux-liberals, because every time a Republican jumps ship on an issue, the Club For Growth and Evangelical base eat the candidate alive.
It’s get hanged together or get hanged separately. Might as well go down in style.
Dennis - SGMM
True that. One-party rule bothers the hell out of me though. Despite that, I can’t see any alternative to marginalizing the Republicans until they either come to their senses or are replaced by some new party.
RSA
I think some will adopt the McCain model: cultivate a reputation as a moderate maverick, but only in non-election years.
cleek
oh fer fuck’s sake. not this again.
dj spellchecka
what a photo-op. all that was missing was the bowl of kool-aid.
Dennis - SGMM
Maybe. The Republicans have spent so much energy on perfecting a top-down model with everyone moving in lock step to commands from above that acting independently is inconceivable to most of them. Their leadership seems to prefer the option of ruling in minority Hell to serving in bi-partisan heaven and that won’t change until most of the current crop of Republicans is cycled out of office.
Davebo
Unfreakinbelievable.
From Time.com
Link
Are these people living on planet earth?
Zifnab
If you think the Democratic Party would in any way resemble “one-party rule”, all I can say is that you haven’t been watching the Democratic Party for long. They’re about as fractious and divisive party as you could ask for.
I don’t know if you’ve been watching the Dem nomination process, but we’ve basically been watching the left-wing / right-wing conflict played out in miniature. There won’t be any shortage of corporate shills – Rockafeller pandering to the Teleco Companies and Biden beholden to the banking interests and Feinstein / Lieberman more than happy to prop up the military industrial complex in the name of protecting Israel – to fill the place of the GOP hacks.
So long as the inner nomination process of the Democratic Party remains relatively free, the grassroots can clean house on its own party.
Chuck Butcher
What will be disconcerting is who will be left as Republicans after the election. Who wins as an (R)? That is something to consider, particularly if you are an Obama President.
superdestroyer
zifnab,
About half of the Democrats in Congress are running for reelection withouth any opponent compared to only about 1/8th of the Republicans. I fail to see any evidence that the Democrats are any more fractious and divisive than the Republicans. Many moderate Repulbicans have had to face primary opponents. Other than Lieberman, that just does not happen in the Democratic Party.
One of the thing about one party rule will be how few election will be competative. The fight will probably end up like the races in California to draw the district lines so that no race is ever competative.
Zifnab
At this point? Invading Myanmar, throwing off the regime, and forceably administering aid is, at this point, about the only humane thing left to do.
What are the other options? Leave the refugees to starve and die? Turn over aid to a regime that will just horde or sell it for their own profit? Resume diplomatic efforts so the thugs can drag their feet and the refugees can keep starving to death?
I’m not saying the absolutely corrupt Bush Administration should be the rescuers. Or the pathetic warmongering at Time should be forgotten. But seriously, every now and again – Bosnia and Kosovo, Ruwanda, Germany circa early 40s – military action is the right fit for the problem. This looks like one of those times.
Davebo
The citizens of a country have a responsibility to ensure their government recognized their human rights.
dr. bloor
Let them eat principles!
Garrigus Carraig
You’re all set. You’re booked on a flight to Bangkok Monday morning to await further instructions. Let the flight crew know who you are; they’ll have a “Teach yourself Burmese” book with your name on it.
Zifnab
I wish that were an actual option. Sadly, “Army of One” isn’t exactly an effective strategy in practice.
nightjar
Genocide can be inflicted in passive ways like hording food and starving people in large numbers. It’s how Stalin nearly exterminated eastern Ukraine circa the 30’s. And I’m one who believes the US is best able and should intervene in on-going genocide. The problem is that Bush is prez and he would surely fuck it up, especially letting American business interests come in and exploit the Burmese. AS well as in any other way that was humanly possible. But the question remains of letting 100’s of thousands perish from passive genocide, or not?
nightjar
easternUkraineCalouste
I see a good case can be made that Cuba and Venezuala should have invaded the US after Katrina.
jake
Win.
Garrigus Carraig
I was being snarky, but serially, coercive military intervention is a bad idea. There seems to be an idea out there that a country (say, the U.S.) should deploy its military to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. Where did this idea come from? Somalia? Doesn’t it depend upon the U.S.’s ability to project power globally? And isn’t that ability, our bloated military, our M.I.C.C., a bad thing for the U.S.?
If we stick with this huge military, we are just as likely to stumble into an Iraq as we are to save a Kosovo. The question is less whether we should save the Burmese than why the heck are we even able to?
Oh, and we’re not able to, by the way.
Dennis - SGMM
China is the only country with enough influence in Myanmar to be able to persuade the junta to allow foreign aid and foreign aid workers. At this point, China seems more interested in polishing its image for the Olympics than it is in highlighting its close ties with yet another dictatorship. Absent Chinese intervention, the people of Myanmar are going to suffer and die by the myriads. It’s doubtful that the U.N. could act quickly enough, particularly if the use of force is required.
The Bush administration’s sole focus on the Middle East has allowed the Chinese to forge ties with the dictatorships of Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar, among others. Last month the Chinese flew a planeload of small arms and ammunition to Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe. I’m sure that’s not the limit of their activities. It would be helpful if the next administration could both walk and chew gum in foreign policy.
4tehlulz
Yeah, I’m sure the Chinese won’t mind anyone overthrowing an ally in a bordering country.
Retard.
Zifnab
Two words for you. “Blue Dogs”. You can follow that up with the Democratic Leadership Council.
As it stands, the Democratic Party is very much in lock-step at the moment because the GOP is composed with a pack of douchebags who can’t even get a vote on Mother’s Day right. That is, ultimately, only temporary. Many Democrats supported the Iraq War despite knowing full well that it was illegal and pointless. While I’ll admit the push for a more Democratic coalition isn’t exactly sweeping there have been a few challenges in the primary system itself. Other than the most notable Lieberman / Lamont race, there is the recent contest between Al Wynn and Donna Edwards in MD-04 closely watched by the DKos community.
Primary challenges are harder than the already difficult task of ousting an incumbent. That doesn’t mean they can’t happen or that they won’t happen.
Garrigus Carraig
Also, AFAIK, genocide is not “killin’ a lot of people”, but an attempt to wipe out an entire ethnic group. Not to belittle the junta’s carnage, but that word gets tossed around a lot.
jake
Once the Kool-Aid attacks the speech centers there is no chance the patient will recover:
Keep in mind the above statement was made by a ranking member of the GOP. You know, the party that wants to make English the official language of America.
Zifnab
There is a very, very slight difference between the military dictatorship of Myanmar and the elected government of Louisiana. I know the differences are subtle and hard to explain, but hopefully they don’t completely escape you.
That said, if the governments of Venezuela and Cuba had been more proactive in delivering aid, I doubt that the Katrina refugees, at least, would have objected.
Zifnab
cbear
OMFG–This is the funniest thing I have seen in a year.
Just plain freaking hilarious.
(h/t Howie Klein)
nightjar
I agree this is the best way force the Hunta in Burma to stand down and feed it’s people. Again, we run into the Bush utter incompetence for diplomacy, and the Burmese Generals are notoriously belligerent to outside interference. From what I can gather from the news, the situation is potentially very catastrophic. One thing about paranoid totalitarians, what they care most about is survival of the status quo, or their own sorry butts, so maybe just a threat of invasion might loosen them up some.
Dennis - SGMM
Among them are:
Peace
Prosperity for any but the wealthy
Freedom of choice
Privacy
Freedom of speech
Freedom from religion
Universal Health Care
Secure retirement
A balanced budget
Jobs
Infrastructure
Ending Poverty
Affordable Education…
b-psycho
Other than the case of Germany, which the US ended up involved with anyway because of Japan — who attacked us — happening to be aligned with the Nazis, the rest are humanitarian issues, not military issues.
Considering how crappy the result tends to be, I’m surprised whenever someone with no self-serving motives seriously endorses the US continue being the world’s policeman. Unless a situation directly involves US national security, there is no reason whatsoever for US intervention, the rest of the world would much rather we butt out — for damn good reason.
nightjar
We always hear how unorganized the dem party is with all it’s squabbling factions. But it’s really the Repubs who have the deepest chasms between their various voting groups. With dems, the squabbling is between camps who basically have the same ideology and fight over priorities for their individual causes. With GOOpers, there are deep intellectual divides between themselves involving religion versus militarism versus business interests versus xenophobia and so on. And they only come together when they’ve been out of power long enough whereas getting power is their single minded goal. Now that they’ve had that power for awhile and screwed the pooch, chaos is what’s left. The dems don’t have it so bad after all.
Fledermaus
Vote Democrat! We’re our own opposition party.
Dennis - SGMM
That’s a good thing because at present Bushco could only muster two troops of Boy Scouts and the sodden habituées of a few VFW posts for an invasion force.
jake
… Yeah. I guess that’s right.
maxbaer (not the original)
Among them are:
Peace
Prosperity for any but the wealthy
Freedom of choice
Add a vote against motherhood. Probably baseball, hot dogs and apple pie as well.
maxbaer (not the original)
Oops, bad blockquoting.
w vincentz
I need to do further research, but if I remember correctly, doesn’t Myanmar have substantial natural gas resources controlled by French company, Total, and another French one based in Thailand?
bago
Yeah, getting laura to bitch out burma over the hurricane while george
fiddled whileplayed guitar while new orleans drowned was pretty fucking epic.Dennis - SGMM
No one could have anticipated that tying up all of our ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan would leave us unable to act if there should be trouble in the rest of the world.
w vincentz
On the topic of the corrupt GOP, I just read something at McClatchy about an FBI ethics probe seeking the records of 2004, Condoleeza Rice as part of the investigation of Scott Bloch. I don’t expect this to hit the MSM but I’ll stay tuned.
Downpuppy
Its a top & bottom thing. Republicans at the top all get along*, and issue their orders to their respective minions, who can’t stand each other.
Democrats are, at this point, very united at the lower levels no matter what the squabbles are among the leaders, who we don’t listen to anyhow.
*Their business model was based on everybody in leadership being crooked enough that they can be blackmailed to stay in line. That model breaks down real fast when they’re out of power.
Dennis - SGMM
More idiocy:
Archbishop Naumann went on to ask, “Where will we, your clergy, find the children to molest if everyone is getting an abortion?”
jrg
Link. The GOP is screwed. I’ll bet that some very incriminating evidence on the drives they recovered.
How much do you want to bet that the GOP will be screaming about the timing of information released by this investigation?
How much do you want to bet that they will call this a partisan witch hunt with “convenient” timing, while neglecting to mention the repeated instances of obstruction of justice, stalling, and the fact that the Bush administration had no congressional oversight before 2006?
NR
Bush’s approval is down to 60% among Republicans – saw that in a recent poll.
NR
And that’s even more remarkable when you consider that that’s just the people who stayed in the party!
Bob In Pacifica
I was listening to the CBC yesterday. They’re back to calling Myanmar Burma. Why can’t Americans call it Burma? I like Burma better.
w vincentz
Thanks for putting up the link jrg.
Watch this story to be squashed by the MSM.
Ain’t it a shame when the FBI has to investigate the Office of Special Counsel?
Dennis - SGMM
Say the words: “Executive privilege.”
RSA
Right. Next up, excommunication of politicians who support capital punishment, also against Church teachings in almost all cases. Somehow I don’t see that happening.
El Cid
If the current political situation harms Republicans as badly as it seems (and as I hope), the next stage seems logical to be a Republican revolt by moderates and non-Southerners against the radical right-wing Southern wing which has dominated the party’s direction for 30 odd years (emphasis on “odd”).
This being effectively a two party system, there will always be an incentive for someone to challenge the dominant party, and if that becomes the stable property of the Democrats, they will still be vulnerable to the sort of re-fashioned moderate conservatives which are being sold under Cameron in Britain.
On the plus side, such an internal abandonment of Dixie-led right wing extremism by the major conservative party will only be good for the country.
On the other hand, they may choose to disregard this clear incentive and get even nuttier and more revanchist.
cbear
In related news–
Darwin Award Winner:
November 2007, Russia) Late one night, Eduard entered the apartment of a 30-year-old handicapped man, who slept peacefully as Eduard quietly cleaned out the valuables. Eduard was preparing to leave when suddenly the man woke up.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes! The dark shape of some goon was standing next to my nightstand!” recalls the burglary victim. “I cried out and he attacked me, who was defenseless, with his fists! I had no choice. I hit him between the legs with my crutch, and he leapt out the window. Thank God I live on the first floor, and he did not die from the fall.
“I didn’t understand at first what had fallen out of his pants. When I looked closer, I realized that it was a testicle, a man’s testicle! I put it in cold water, and rushed to the phone.” The handicapped man dialed the emergency services several times, but “the doctors hung up on me when I told them I had ripped a burglar’s balls off!”
Half an hour later, the blood-covered thief was found by a passerby, who called the police. “An unconscious man was lying on the sidewalk,” said the police investigator. “When the medics revived him, he started screaming hysterically, ‘Give me back my balls!'”
Eduard’s genitals were so traumatized that doctors had to amputate the entire scrotum to prevent gangrene. In the hospital, the burglar filed a complaint against his victim. He said, “I will never forgive him!”
jrg
That won’t help when an internal memo hits the press that extols the benefits of the Iraq war to the Bush administration’s 2004 presidential campaign. Citing “Executive privilege” will make the Bush crime syndicate look even more guilty.
The man is a traitor, and there is documentation somewhere in those 5 million missing emails that proves it.
Darkness
So… this would be politics and that would be all well and good if these guys paid taxes. You want to be a political organization, you have to pay for the right.
Dennis - SGMM
Condoleeza Rice? They will no more turn over those records than they will turn over the records of Bush’s annual physicals. You know; the ones with the notes about the widely-spaced longitudinal striations on the presidential penis.
superdestroyer
el cid,
There is not enough white republican non-southern moderate to sustain a political party. Look at how weak the Republican parties are in states like Mass. RI, Maryland, Conn, etc. and you will see that if the Republicans have to depend on moderate whites, it will be out of business today.
The real question is what the U.S. will be like as a one party state when the former Republicans start voting in the Democratic primary. Will white progressives stop tolerating racist groups like the CBC when they are no longer needed to defeat Republicans?
jake
Bwahaha!
This ain’t a good year for the GOP.
Dennis - SGMM
Wait’ll they catch the RNCC after hours at the petting zoo.
jake
“Honestly officer, we were just acting out ‘My Pet Goat’!”
Notorious P.A.T.
That is pretty funny. Writte by the great James Adomian.
OriGuy
The Karen people are on line two.
Not to endorse the cockamamie idea of invading Burma, by the way, and it doesn’t appear to me that the junta’s response or lack thereof is related to ethnic conflict. Wrong region.
demimondian
And, so, we see supe once again start his race baiting…
go away, slugboy; we’re onto you.
el cid — superdestroyer is a notorious racist troll. His game is to always talk about the treat to the United States posed by inevitable implosion of the Republican party, due, it always turns out, to the threat posed by racists with (surprise!) melanin surpluses.
Chris Howard
The real question is what the U.S. will be like as a one party state when the former Republicans start voting in the Democratic primary.
All this talk of “one party state” is lunacy. Even if the Republicans went the way of the whigs, there would be something to fill the void. Maybe moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats, who knows? Now, I’d love to see the country move the center back to the left after its rightward drift over the past 25 years, but the idea that the Democrats will effectively rule without an adversary is just fantasy.
Soylent Green
“Presidential Penis” would be a good name for a rock band.
superdestroyer
demimondian,
When Americans have heard the racist rants of the Rev. Wright and the black audiences cheering him, many of them realized that the Democratic Party tolerates racist and bigots as long as they are not white. Remember, it took white Repubicans crossing over in the Democratic Primary to defeat noted racist Cynthia McKinney while the Democrats in Congress tolerated her.
So the question is while the Democratic Party be as supportives of race-based Congressional districts once the Republican Party competes its collapse?
rachel
Does anyone else wonder whether a guy who chooses “superdestroyer” for a handle is over-compensating?
superdestroyer
Chris,
What is the more likely scenerio, that the Democratic Party becomes the one dominate party with the Democratic Primary being the real election. Such a scenerio occurs today in several states and in most large urban cities. Or that the Republicans will recover despite the Democrats having 60 seats in the Senate, the 2010 redistricting of Congressional seats eliminating at least 30 Repulbicans, and with immigration accelerating under an Obama Administration.
A conservative Democratic/moderate Republicans Party will have the same problem as the current Republican party, the total inability to attract non-white voters.
Is there any scenerio where black or Hispanic voters would split between two political parties? No, thus the Republicans and any other conservative party cannot remain viable in the long term.
jake
Wonder? No.
Know? Yes.
Fulcanelli
FWIW, this is a good point. Here in RI The GOP is roughly the equivilent of the Blue Dog Democrat (Traitorus Caninincus) found elsewhere in larger numbers. I suspect some form of illegal cross breeding program is being conducted to disguise these creatures for their own safety elsewhere. At least here they have the balls to call themselves Republicans.
We in RI wind up with the Faustian bargain of having to elect Gooper Govenors, Mayors and local Congresscritters to prevent the old-style Democratic back room machine politics from completely dominating every branch of government. Witness RI’s support of Hillary in the primary, although Obama did better than I expected.
If Obama is the nominee RI will be Blue, no doubt about it, as the idea of a third Bush term is about as welcome as genital warts here in RI with the exception of the dittohead contingency. I also stongly suspect that Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos did effect our primary results.
As above so below… Bush pushed for and got tax cuts for the wealthiest people, we have a record federal deficit and the solution is cut benefits and programs for the less fortunate and go after the unions.
Our Republican Governor pushed for and got tax cuts for the wealthiest people, we have a record state deficit and the solution is cut benefits and programs for the less fortunate and go after the unions.
If only we Dems could be this organized.
BTW, gun ownership and sportsmen hunting culture is alive and well here in blue RI and isn’t going anywhere. And it shouldn’t either.