John Rogers- I Miss Republicans
There used to be a time I thought there might be a resurgence of those Republicans. Now, I realize they are all long dead. Or, as it is these days, endorsing Obama.
And for double fun, notice that one of those “sober” Republicans mentioned in that piece- John McCain. How things change. That was also four years ago when a hundred billion sounded like a lot of money.
SamFromUtah
That’s a damn good blast from the past. If those Republicans still existed, I might well be one of them.
This blast from the more recent past is my favorite.
BettyPageisaBlonde
John Rogers has some of the best political commentary I’ve read. I understand why he does it sparingly, but goddamn, I could read a whole lot more of that.
The Crazification Factor is still one of the best posts ever.
SamFromUtah
The Crazification Factor is still one of the best posts ever.
Seconded. Whoever hasn’t read that really needs to, to understand why McWorse’s support can’t go below 27%.
DonnaInMichigan
Why should I care?
I’m going to hell, anyways.
According to the gospel of Saracudda Palinocchio.
EddieInCA
Chuck Hagel’s Wife will Endorse Barack Obama tomorrow morning:
salon.com/wires/ap/2008/10/06/D93LC03G0_obama_lilibet_hagel/index.html
kommrade jakevich
That was awesome. Based on his definition, all of the real Republicans now work at the Government Accountability Office (AKA Those Meddling Kids).
Of course, no one pays them any attention unless they do something really embarrassing, like buy scary stuff from the DoD Rummage Sale using fake I.D. But they’re still there.
DonnaInMichigan
Personally, I think they should rename the Republican Party…the Rovian Party. It suits them better.
Palin-McCain = Nail-meet-coffin.
Again, why should I care…I’m going to hell.
.
Joshua Norton
A few hundred billion here, a few hundred billion there – pretty soon it adds up to serious money.
Alan
My father was one of those Republicans described at the link. He was, partly, a rocket scientist. And he was the reason I’ve been registered Republican since ’82. He didn’t live long enough to see the GOP taken over by the Religious Right. He died in ’78.
Look at the GOP now. The stupidity is directly related to the influence the RR has over the party. Yes, I’m not as smart as my father–I’m slow with the uptake. ’06 was the last time I voted a straight GOP ticket.
Comrade Fwiffo
If we’re gonna list all-time favorite Kung Fu Monkey posts, this one has to make the grade.
Ed Marshall
He described himself as an agnostic libertarian big on the social contract.
Just thinking out loud and wondering this seriously…Are there still serious economic libertarians out there? Any "minarchists" out there have to be having some soul searching moments or they don’t know what the hell they are talking about. Is there anyone left out there watching the commercial paper markets pull into their shells and saying "this is the market at work, after we burn the whole country down to ground, we’ll be headed to Dow 30,000!"?
dslak
@Ed Marshall: I think a libertarian who still had some integrity on these matters (i.e., one in a handful) could say that a lot of these problems were made possible because of distortions in the market created by certain types of regulation.
I’m not saying that it would be a good argument, and it would be rather difficult to prove (impossible to disprove, though).
Mike D.
I find this topic intriguing and would like to subscribe to the thread, but until I’m reasonably sure the page won’t be condemned to Outer Darkness sometime after the hundredth reply, I’m not going to get emotionally involved. (Insert your favorite SF series that dropped dead without plot resolution here, then weep and rend your garments.)
N.B. "Lost" is what happens when they _don’t_ throw the switch after twenty episodes. Like Elvis in Vegas, as a pharoah, belting out "How Great Thou Art." Am I right?
Edit: if the preview doesn’t look like the posted comment, in what sense is it a preview? FYWP.
Ed Marshall
Like what?
The commercial paper market (which has to exist in modern capitalism), is seized because a bunch of people who had say $5 million in assets decided to cover $100 million dollars in bad bond debt and did it because it paid 2% on $100 million and figured they would never have to cover it anyway. You have $70 trillion dollars in imaginary money covering that $7 trillion that’s held in mortgages.
I know you aren’t trying to put this theory forward as your own, but who really even wants to try this?
dslak
@Ed Marshall: I haven’t seen anybody try it, but it sure beats the "This all happened because Democrats made the FM’s give mortgages to minorities" argument, which I actually have seen people try.
On the other hand, I think the pure libertarian response would be "And now institutions have learned that CDS’s which are not underwritten are a bad idea, and will avoid investments that involve them in the future."
What happens to all the innocent victims of the fallout is unaddressed, but whatever is done for them wouldn’t be done by the government.
HumboldtBlue
Wow, so Rogers laments the loss of rigourous intellectuals, of scientists and serious students of politics and policy in the modern GOP and harkens back to the good old days.
Isn’t it cute to see him ask those serious questions four years ago? Awww, it’s OK Mr. Rogers, the same shitheads you laud in your post allowed themselves to be bought by a con man named Reagan. Remember what happened after that shitbird left office? Remember the opening of the culture wars, the strategy of calling your political enemies your actual enemies and then acting upon it?
You don’t remember ol’ St. Ronnie of the Clusterfuck, a man who found no moral or ethical problems in backing murderous regimes in Central America? A man who armed those murdering bastards with weapons paid for by sellling arms to the Iranians and, at the same time, made sure that Saddam Hussein had all of our left over WW1 and WW2 surplus GB, VX and mustard gas?
You don’t remember those "good Republicans" who ensured that Pinochet had his torture chambers, sorta like Saddam, a man born of and nurtured by the first piece of shit we called President Bush? You don’t recall any of that, huh?
You don’t recall those educated scientists and weapons’ developers who used the Vietnamnese people as their testing ground? The fellas who not only got us to the moon, but took what they learned in WW2 and developed napalm as a weapon of the first resort and not one of mass destruction?
Fuck you and your blast to the past. Fuck you and your lament about the dearth of serious "Republican" intellectuals, economists and leaders. In other words, fuck you Mr. Rogers, and the bomb-laden trolley you rode into town on, and the willfully-ignorant asswipes who trailed you.
Ed Marshall
Yeah, that would be a hell of a lesson!
Ed Marshall
Eh, from a minarchist point of view though, what would they propose to make sure that the entity underwriting the CDS was fully capitalized?
I’m imagining some futures market where everyone guesses at how much money various hedge funds have and whoever makes more money gets something like an S&P rating out of it. This makes me want to tear my eyeballs out.
DonnaInMichigan
Farking Funny:
Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott took the stage moments ago as one of the introductory speakers at a rally here for Sarah Palin. After delivering brief remarks in support of Palin, Sheriff Scott flipped the switch and used Barack Obama’s middle name in order to incite the crowd of thousands of people who have already gathered here.
“On Nov. 4, let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened,” the law enforcement officer said.
UPDATE: Palin campaign spokesperson Tracey Schmitt issued the following statement on Sherriff Scott’s remarks: “We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric which distracts from the real questions of judgment, character, and experience that voters will base their decisions on this November.”
After Sheriff Scott left the podium, local radio host Mandy Connell took the stage next. She too drew a loud ovation when she said Obama “hangs around with terrorists.”
jonrog1
RE: HumboldtBlue
I am being attacked from the LEFT. ON JOHN COLE’S BLOG.
If you had told me this four years ago, I would insist we had gone to crazytown.
Little did I anticipate that we would, indeed, go to crazytown together.
lilysmom
Want to hear an equally good one? Hugh McColl, Jr., the retired chairman and CEO of Bank of America, just published a piece in the Charlotte Observer endorsing Obama. He is not a flaming librul.
The world has turned upside down.
greg p
This is my favorite Rogers post and one of the best things ever written about "Supporting the Troops."
Ed Marshall
Oh, I was a consumer of your blog circa 2004. I hope you didn’t think I was attacking you. Just the entire worldview has shifted under people feet that what you wrote just four years ago seems incredibly dated.
I didn’t even have you in mind when I started talking about libertarians, but at least the whole concept sounded somewhat sane at the time…and it wasn’t!
Common Sense
@greg p:
can’t.. stop.. laughing…
jcricket
Until 10 years from now, when they invent a new "financial weapon of mass destruction" and proceed to "learn" a new lesson. Along the way earning millions in bonuses, lobbying to eliminate all regulation and oversight over their magical new money-making scheme and eventually fucking the rest of us over.
Moral hazard is, IMHO, a completely useless crock, insanely over-diagnosed and weak as a regulatory mechanism.
It does not deter the crooks, the people who would rape the environment, etc. – the penalties are always too weak, diffuse and far off to stop people. And, moreover, we have short institution memories.
The best response libertarians every come up with is "true libertarianism has never been tried".
I’m fucking done with economic libertarianism. While it might be intellectually consistent, it’s a POS economic theory and deserves to be treated as such.
Ed Marshall
HumboldtBlue
Indeed. Peace, love, and let’s bring the 11Bravos home before more of them suffer because Antonin Scalia decided he knew Florida election law better than Florida, a state renowned for its lack of East Coast, elitist-educated lawyers.
SGEW
Antonin Scalia is aware of all election law traditions.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. OK, it’s not officially dead yet, but it’s close. Why aren’t you watching, you fuckers?
On-topic: it is amazing how far away 2004 seems now. As Chris Rock put it in his new HBO special, "Bush fucked up so bad he made it hard for a white man to run for President." And McCain, who I still had some respect for back then, is left holding the bag. Four years really is a lifetime in politics.
cain
Actually, this season is pretty damn good. The only person in there I don’t like is the person playing Sarah Connor.
What must be killed is Knight Rider. Jeezus.
cain
SGEW
And yet, it feels like yesterday. I remember clear as day the moment I considered the possibility of Barack Obama running for president (after his DNC keynote*). I was talking to my partner at the time, whose family was from both Kenya and east Africa, and it was pretty much the first time either of us had seen a politician on the national stage who touched us both personally. Not just because of his ancestry, ethnicity, and origin**, but because he talked about our country the way we saw it: or, rather, the way we wished we could see it. An America we could really believe in. We were very much fond of this good lookin’ guy with big ears and his awesome speech, yes indeed.
And then I said: "Can you imagine if this guy was President?"
We looked at each other for a bit, then laughed and laughed and laughed. Then we felt really sad.
Jump forward four years.
Can you believe it?
*Which made my mom cry. My mom hadn’t cried over politics since they killed King.
**Which, I have to admit, seemed to have been crafted just for us: Kenya, Kansas, and Hawaii. Like the two of us were some kind of weird-ass focus group.
SamFromUtah
Why aren’t you watching, you fuckers?
I’m doing my part.
I agree with Cain, too, that this season is good. And that Sarah herself is the weak point.
And it wouldn’t hurt if they had Summer Glau kicking more ass, but in all the show’s improved over last year.
merl
I ask my FIL all of the time what the hell happened to the Republican Party. He never answers. My father was a Republican and if he were told to be afraid of "terrorists" or anything at all he’d of been pissed.
And there is no way in hell he would have voted for chickenshit george bush. Or Crash McCain either.
NonyNony
Welcome to the funhouse. I’ve been an economic libertarian denier since the late 90s and trust me, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to be intellectually honest with yourself once you’ve done it. You can, for example, now use roads without being an utter traitor to your economic beliefs. And public parks. And state sponsored schools. Oh and have a government job (you wouldn’t believe how many state university employees I’ve known over the years who call themselves "economic libertarians." Liars.)
Stick with the civil libertarianism – it’s at least intellectually consistent.
satby
Damn, gregp beat me: Lions led by donkeys was the Rogers’ post I emailed back whenever I got one of those "support the troops" faux RW outrage emails.
Linking agin just ’cause it’s that good:
Scott H
The Republican Party is going the way of the Libertarian Party and, more recently, the federal government: anyone with any sense or competence has or is headed out of the door.
I finally left the Republican Party in 1996, after 24 years, and I registered as a Libertarian. I never joined the Libertarian Party, I don’t know many Libertarians who have, as it seems to me a little over-populated with Second Amendment fanatics and motorcycle helmet law obsessives – self-absorbed petulants with no where else to go. (And forewarned is not only forearmed, but completely armed. Trying to hang some of the fringe nonsense of self-described libertarians on me is a good way to get ones hanging arm snapped off at the shoulder.)
My point is that the Republican Party has been, is being, abandoned to reactionaries, religionists, resentful bigots – and the grifters who exploit them. I don’t know what happened to "our" Republican Party. Probably it never existed, no more that the Democratic Party and the Libertarian Party never lived up to their espoused ideals.
My name is Scott, and I am a progressive independent.