This is an excellent idea:
A conservative faction of the Republican National Committee is urging the GOP to take a harder line against both Democrats and wayward Republicans, drafting a resolution to rename the opposition the “Democrat Socialist Party” and moving to rebuke the three Republican senators who supported the stimulus package.
In an e-mail sent Wednesday to the 168 voting members of the committee, RNC member James Bopp, Jr. accused President Obama of wanting “to restructure American society along socialist ideals.”
“The proposed resolution acknowledges that and calls upon the Democrats to be truthful and honest with the American people by renaming themselves the Democrat Socialist Party,” wrote Bopp, the Republican committeeman from Indiana. “Just as President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ galvanized opposition to communism, we hope that the accurate depiction of the Democrats as a Socialist Party will galvanize opposition to their march to socialism.”
Can’t these guys grow up enough to at least have the decency to call it the “DemocratIC Socialist Party.” Sheesh. At any rate, their efforts to date have been a smashing success (via):
Keep it up, guys. Keep it up.
Bulworth
Bopp. Heh, heh.
LD50
Actually, I would have been quite disappointed if they’d used the word ‘Democratic’. Nothing more annoying than half-assed wingnuttery.
Davis X. Machina
Caught by boner-pill-filter.
Retyped below.
MikeJ
Sounds like the quickest way to get a soc ial ist majority in this country,
sparky
must be hard running around in that sandbox all day, not to mention making all those spitballs. they need a time out and a nap.
Dennis-SGMM
Now that’s the kind of clear-headed, doable, policy idea that will sway the public. Inspired by this dazzling tour de force, I propose a resolution calling upon the Republican party to rename themselves The Clueless Obstructionist Party.
Huzzah!
Davis X. Machina
They’re going to do for soc1alism what Reefer Madness and the ODCP did for dope….
“This is your economy. This is your economy under a very mild version of social democracy.”
{Damn boner pill filter…}
Mr. Stuck
Wingnut bloggers are upwardly mobile again. First they took over the Mccain Campaign, then the House Republican Study Group, and now are at the gates of GOP Headquarters. I look for a Malkin Charge up the Ramparts and over the cliff.
Lev
I’m not really a Democratic Socialist, but I wish there were a politically relevent Dem Soc party in America, if for no other reason than that conservatives would be forced to admit that, in the grand scheme of things, American liberalism is pretty damn moderate (which it is).
Here’s what I’d like to happen: the GOP keeps taking water over the side. They become a tiny crank party, while the Democrats split into roughly equal-sized centrist and social democratic parties, neither of which is burdened with all the baggage that the GOP can’t shed. That would be a paradise, I think.
Calouste
Social Democratic parties are fairly popular in most European democracies.
But, yeah, it’s is still about the packaging and not the content with these guys, is it? “Once we find the right name to insult our opponent, everything will come together.” Which is of course how most eight year olds think.
4tehlulz
lol, I’ve seen College Republicans act more mature than this.
LD50
Bravo. A minority party bleeding support decides its path to salvation lies in antagonizing moderate senators from blue states.
I don’t think they’ll be happy til they’ve driven out every GOP senator that isn’t from Confederacy or Utah.
Okay, let the GOP-run states refuse aid. I’d love to see how those states vote in 2-4 years, after their employment rates reach 15%.
CatStaff
@Calouste: And to top it off, the Dems are going to assist with their own destruction by renaming their party. Those Republicans sure do have mojo. How could we have possibly let them go?
Warren Terra
The title of your post is deeply unfair to a practice that while private harms noone and is intended to be enjoyable or at least diverting. Although I suppose that, while it fails the first two criteria, the modern Republican party might inadvertantly at least qualify for the description of “diverting”.
Still, something like “the head-desking will continue” would seem more accurate; or is there a verb for what Homer Simpson does in that great video where he stumbles on a lawn from rake to rake to rake, stepping on the blades of each so as to cause their shafts to strike him in the face and learning nothing from each instance?
P.S. as with others upthread I am vexed by your continuing sinister deployment of posts crafted to inspire commenters to get filtered for using the dreaded word so-ci-al-ism.
JGabriel
Umm …. isn’t that kind of like talking about a gay faction of the Log Cabin Republicans, or a religious faction of Regents University, or an urban faction of the NYC Caucus?
I’m pretty sure what they mean here by “conservative” is actually “pig-ignorant, radical”. Of course, one could say that “pig-ignorant” and “radical” are just as redundant when talking about the GOP, but that would be glib.
.
LD50
Steele never fails to bring the funny:
Yeah, perish the fucking thought that the GOP should be judged by its actions.
Lev
And it was only this year when Republicans finally started referring to the Democratic Party in their platform. One step forward, then two back, I suppose.
I wonder if they’ve really thought this choice of metaphors. It was the socialists who mainly opposed the fascists in WWII.
blogenfreude
I’ll say it again – all the GOP has left are sociopaths, the home-schooled, and the clinically insane.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal
They are hoping that the cacophony of cowbells drowns out reality.
It’s all they gots left. If the Republicans came out with their own brand of amplifier I bet the volume control would go to 100. The problem would be that all you would hear is the deafening sounds of flatulence and cowbells.
Tonal Crow
This kind of candy-assed “opposition” makes a mockery of the GOP. No more “rebukes”! Flush the traitors from the party, and boot them from congress! And “Democrat Soc ialist Party”? It is to laugh! Call them what they are: “DemonRAT pecker-puffing whale-loving dirt-worshipping homo-loving God-hating anti-American Volvo-driving latte-sipping global-warming-scamming troop-hating terrorist-loving chickenhearted dirty f*cking hippies!”
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal
Deleted, keep on walking…
Nothing to see…
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal
Oops, forgot the closing bracket in my name and got modded for it…lol
That’s what I get for working on my car and not blogging. ;)
Sorry John!
Just Some Fuckhead
Not to get carried away, but this is how realignments happen.
JGabriel
Dennis-SGMM:
I think that one’s losing to “The Torture Party”.
.
SGEW
A sudden thought:
This is all going according to Bernie Sanders’ master plan.
28 Percent
FAP!
Dennis-SGMM
Someone had to do it.
Dennis-SGMM
@Tonal Crow:
A real manly, homo-hatin’, terrorist-torturing, party would burn those three Senators at the stake in front of the Capitol. Wimps.
El Cid
What about requiring all members of this new faction to scream out “YEEEE DOGGY!!! SOUTH GON’ RISE A’GIN!” before every public statement?
Lev
Somewhere, Halperin is reading this and coming up with a reason why this is good for John McCain.
Brachiator
This pretty much puts to rest the GOP’s denial that Rush Limbaugh is their leader. This kind of mindless wordplay is the kind of thing that would be a long riff on that blowhard’s radio show.
It is just … all kinds of sad and strange … that this is the best that a supposed major political party can come up with.
By the way, the current issue of The Economist has an excellent piece on “Obama Derangement Syndrome”
But here the GOP is moving from the politics of personal destruction to Republican political suicide.
Bubblegum Tate
I never thought wingnuts could be so damn entertaining.
Dennis-SGMM
@El Cid:
Just require that all media replace the word “conservative” with the word “wanker”.
SGEW
@Dennis-SGMM:
Naw, a real “manly” politician would try to beat them to death with a gutta-percha cane.
Anything less is pure wimpitude.
Peter J
Republicans starts calling Obama a socialist, people see what Obama does and agree with it. I wonder whats going to happen with the general view on socialism…
The republicans are going all in betting that Obama will fail.
The Moar You Know
So.
This is it. Really. This is all they have – this and a “budget” that has some circles and lines.
I always thought there was something behind all the bluster. But this…this is just pathetic. I honestly feel sorry for them.
I knew this guy in high school. He’d been huffing paint and smoking weed since he was 7. His ultimate ambition was to be a heavy metal guitar player and he sucked even at that. He got fired three days in from the first job he ever had. He ended up a genial, longhaired, guitar-playing hard-core Jesus freak.
He has WAY more going for him than the GOP has right now.
The Grand Panjandrum
JMM says Junta Party and I would tend to agree.
Mnemosyne
@Warren Terra:
Actually, it was Sideshow Bob who did that. Given that Bob also ran for mayor of Springfield as a Republican, the metaphor is even more apt than you thought.
ETA: “Attempted murder, now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?”
Peter J
crap, I used the s-word and now the spam filter thinks I’m trying to sell boner pills…
“Republicans starts calling Obama a so(boner pill)t, people see what Obama does and agree with it. I wonder whats going to happen with the general view on so(boner pill)m…
The republicans are going all in betting that Obama will fail.”
Left Coast Tom
You’d think someone in the GOP would see a problem with the Democrats not having an effective opposition party.
freelancer
@Warren Terra
That is actually a pretty good metaphor for what they seem to get theirselves out of bed to do everyday, but it was
actually Sideshow Bob, and not Homer.
TenguPhule
How do you tell them apart?
blogenfreude
@Lev: Dude, you hit that out of the park.
gnomedad
At least this will slow down the trolls by sending their comments into moderation.
TenguPhule
Enjoy another day of hell with your spam filter, John.
JK
I can accept this idea only if Democrats reciprocate by renaming Republicans the Tin Foil Hat Party.
Dr. Squid
If they want to get a “truth in advertising” thing going…
I propose that the GOP be forbidden to use the name “Republican” for their party, as the conservatives that run the party hold monarchist tenets that are against the existence of an American republic.
If we really want truth in advertising, simply refer to them as the “Old Party”.
LD50
Here’s your answer:
Soylent Green
Some relevant Firesign for the oldies:
We’re marching, marching to Shibboleth,
With the Eagle and the Sword!
We’re praising Zion ’til her death,
Until we meet our last reward!
gnomedad
If we called them the Neo-Confederate Party or the Secessionist Party, would enough of them embrace it to provide some entertainment?
TenguPhule
I prefer “Baby Eating Child Rapist who hate America and Skull Fuck Kittens Party”
Donald G
Oh, man. This from the rank and file who did nothing as CheneyCo. turned their own party into the Nazionalsozialistischenrepublikanischepartei. Yet another example of Republican projection, I fear.
Jay McDonough
If Republicans can rename the Democratic Party, I guess it follows suit that Democrats can rename the Republican Party.
I vote for Republic Douchebag Party.
JC
I don’t have anything witty to add to the already brilliant comments.
I’m stunned by how dumb these people are.
Leelee for Obama
@gnomedad: I think it’s definitely worth a try!
I can always move back to NY, right?
Seriously, Obama got a great poll today out of the AP-not the friendliest group for him. Pickler must’ve blown a fuse!
Left Coast Tom
@gnomedad:
According to a GOS-paid poll, Texas Republicans are evenly-split on the question.
DKos Poll
I think we’ll soon be able to drown the GOP in a bathtub.
TenguPhule
That’s not saying much. Puppies that haven’t been housebroken are more mature then College Republicans.
Jay B.
OK, let’s say the country is the jury from 12 Angry Men. Henry Fonda represents the Dirty Fucking Hippie side, in that he advocates for compassion, good judgement, verifiable facts and how a passionate voice for sanity can be an effective one. He fairly quickly shames/convinces another group to support his argument, the poor guy who came from the projects, the Spanish guy, the union guy/coach, the egghead. These are roughly the normal Democrats. Eventually, he wins over the apathetic types (in the movie played by Jack Warden). Now he’s up against the real opposition, roughly the Republican types — the banker, the agitated Reagan Democrat (Lee J. Cobb), the asshole wishy-washy business cad and the bigot. Finally, he cracks the banker through logic, the majority browbeat the feckless business guy, the Reagan Democrat discovers that really, he just hated his son and they tell the bigot to just shut the fuck up, at long last.
The current Republican party is the bigot in the middle of his bizarre harangue about “those people”. The rest of the country/jury is now looking on with a mix of contempt and horror at the insane jabbering of the crazy guy/party who is asking everyone else “well, don’t you know about them?”
Michael D.
I am convinced that the more right wing factions of the Republican Party are becoming dangerous. I mean REALLY dangerous.
henqiguai
@Warren Terra: #14 –
Well, how about testing the filter by using some synonyms (if this has been tried, my apologies…)
Bolshevism
Fabianism
Leninism
Maoism
Marxism
collective_ownership
collectivism
communism
state_ownerhsip
Or German – sozialismus; Chinese/Korean/Cyrillic, though, while way cooler, were somewhat problematic…
Ash Can
@LD50:
Yep.
Mike in NC
Would those be sorta like Nazis who wore swastika armbands? Talk about redundant…
JGabriel
Michael D.:
Much as I enjoy the mocking and the schadenfreude, I fear you are correct.
.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@Michael D.:
They weren’t dangerous when they were running the country?
Now they’re dangerous?
El Cid
@henqiguai: Reportedly the spam filter is looking for spambots trying to place spam ads for the erection drug [email protected], not the word “[email protected]”.
I don’t know of any words which contain “[email protected]” inside them, other than that word itself.
El Cid
@ThymeZoneThePlumber: 8 years of Reagan II: The Bush Junioring was way more damaging to the nation than a few white supremacists firebombing houses or shooting guards of armored car trucks or even truckbombing a building. Just sayin’. Timothy McVeigh killed and/or hurt a lot of people, but not as many as sitting on your ass blowing off terror warnings did on 9/11/2001, or blowing up Iraq, or letting the entire national and world economy and banking system slide into the toilet.
gbear
@Lev:
My vote goes to calling them The Tiny Crank Party.
gbear
I liked when Barney Frank refered to them as The Republicanistical Party on Hardball. Tweety had just gone apeshit on Darrell Issa for using the term Democrat Party.
PS: Barney, quit slouching. You look like a witty potato sack.
Tonal Crow
@Dr. Squid:
“Ghastly Orc Party” sounds pretty apt these days….
NonWonderDog
@henqiguai:
«Социализм» seems to work just fine…
I wonder if soft hyphens work to get around the filter:
Viagra gives me a hard-on for Socialism.
EDIT: HA! Take THAT, boner pill filter!
John, you have the most useless spam filter ever invented by man. All you need to do to get around it is add a ­ in the middle of the word.
Tonal Crow
I can see it now:
Press: Pres. Obama, the GOP is drafting a resolution to rename your party as the “Democrat So cialist Party”, and to censure the three Republican senators who supported the stimulus package. How do you respond?
Obama: When the GOP becomes a serious party of serious ideas — as it was in Lincoln’s day — we’ll have something to talk about. What they’re doing now is just, you know, kindergarten politics.
Soylent Green
Lemme try that:
Boehner-pill-izzum = socialism.
Edit: hey, it works!
PaulW
I think someone needs to give that RNC group a little history lesson.
1989: nearly every Eastern European Warsaw Pact country drops Communism. THE BERLIN WALL – symbol of Soviet socialist oppression – COMES DOWN. This is after the entire 1980s decade of Reagan and Thatcher promoting pro-capitalist ideology.
1991: The Soviet Union collapses after a failed coup. By this point China has accepted pro-capitalist reforms (unfortunately, not pro-democracy), and the only country left that’s openly Communist is Cuba (well, the only one we can remember here in the U.S. Maybe Albania stayed Commie for a few more years, but hell that’s Albania, who cares?). By this point, socialism has gone from being a scary demonic substitute for Communist Hive-mind scifi takeover horror films to a rather quaint way Sweden, Denmark, France and Germany run their health-care systems.
1991: That was 18 years ago. We are right now getting college freshman coming in THAT DO NOT HAVE ANY PERSONAL RECOLLECTION OF COMMUNISM OR SOCIALISM. To them, Communism and Socialism were things they studied about in 10th grade World History. In other words, they learned boring stuff about how Communism and Socialism FAILED.
How the hell does the Republican Party think they can bandy about ‘Socialism’ as a 4-letter-word, as an insult, and think they can attract younger voters who think it’s an frickin SAT word? You gotta look at the polls showing the 18 and under crowd going 70 percent approval for Obama and realize just how tone-deaf the GOP is to ignore that evidence. There’s gonna be a correlation to all this sooner rather than later: if the GOP keeps going around labeling Obama a ‘Socialist,’ and Obama retains high favorabilities with the young’uns, how soon will the youthful voters equate Socialism with Coolness?
And even look to my generation, Gen-X, guys and gals who grew up watching ‘Red Dawn’ (and laughing half the time) and having our political awareness forged during the Reagan Years of Brit Pop, Hair Metal and ‘Back to the Future’ films? We may be conservatives for the most part, but we came of age watching Communism crumble (I was 19 when the Wall fell), and we came of age knowing the failures of a Great Society welfare system (the closest we ever got to Socialism) that really didn’t do our generation any favors. How exactly are the members of my generation going to react to a code word like ‘Socialist’ when we already know that’s a joke?
The only ones who are gonna get worked up by this are A) the Boomer generation and older for whom Communism and Socialism were indeed big threats in their day, and B) the conspiracy wingnuts who already view Obama as a threat to their gun collections. Nobody outside of those groups are gonna buy this crap.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Man, I’ve never seen a turd take so long to go down the bowl.
r€nato
buncha pussies. Why not demand that they call themselves the Democrat Socialist Commie Islamofascist NAMBLA Poopyhead Party? That’s what a real man would do.
r€nato
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
That’s because it took 30 years to pinch out that loaf. Of course it’s going to take a while to go down.
r€nato
@PaulW:
Paul, I went to high school and then college surrounded by Reagan Youth. It made me ill. If the younger generation goes socialist, I will consider that sweet revenge and I will also regret I was not born 25 years later.
…christ John Cole, there has GOT to be a better way to spam filter than this!
SGEW
@Tonal Crow:
This sentiment was summed up quite nicely the other day by Marc “Please Don’t Call Me Partisan” Ambinder, of all people:
Followed by his recent piece on Obama, which included this gem:
[I know Ambinder gets a lot of flak around here for his anonymous officials and his “please don’t argue, can’t we be friends?” schtick and his tendency towards false “bi-partisan” equivalence, but I still think he’s got a lot to appreciate.]
[edit: Actually, I just remembered that I’ve pulled that [REDACTED] gag a few times myself; mayhaps I see some of my own style in Ambinder’s writing (or vice-versa, FSM forbid!), so I’m more willing to cut him slack than others are. Huh.]
r€nato
Somebody, perhaps on this blog, recently said it best about the GOP:
They are well and truly fucked for the next few election cycles because all they have left is the South. This kind of commie pinko red-baiting bullshit still gets them elected down there, while making them look batshit crazy with nothing to offer the rest of Americans, many of which once considered themselves Republicans and are wondering what the hell happened to their party.
So long as guys like Chambliss and McConnell et al keep getting rewarded at the polls for this shit, they’ll maintain their death grip on the party until they all retire, die or are forced to the back of the bus. I’m betting on the first two and not at all on #3.
El Cid
@kommrade reproductive vigor: ROTFF
El Cid
SOUTH GON’ RISE A’GINN BUDDEEEE!!!!
b-psycho
Why does the spam filter read the word inside the word instead of, y’know, the complete word, since it doesn’t have any spaces?
Lemme test something here: Blevitrarius, meet Senzyteo.
b-psycho
Yup, it catches those too…
Left Coast Tom
I’ve found that it’s possible to rescue one’s own posts from the infamous boner pill filter by editing it within the indicated time window. So, if I screw up and type the name that the GOP somehow believes the Democrats will call themselves if the GOP holds it’s collective breath and turns blue, if I edit the post to read “Soc1alism” I’m no longer told it’s in moderation.
JGabriel
@El Cid:
Bob Dole.
.
Betsy
Wait wait, I thought they’d just decided that “soc1al1st” wasn’t packing enough punch, so they were going to switch to “fascist?” I can’t keep up.
Betsy
@Left Coast Tom: I’m trying that, but my above comment is still stuck in the queue.
It basically said:
Wait wait, I thought they’d just decided that “soshalist” wasn’t packing enough punch, so they were going to switch to “fascist?” I can’t keep up.
Left Coast Tom
@Betsy:
I’ll have to notice next time this happens to me to see if there’s something else to it.
I guess if the GOP does really switch to fascist we won’t get caught in moderation on account of John’s own posts.
JGabriel
r€nato:
Here’s what happened to the Republican Party: they achieved their goals. The current economy is the natural result of the policies the GOP has been pursuing for the last 30 years.
The fact that so many of them are puzzled by this never ceases to amaze me.
.
Johnny Pez
Hmmm. Cia1is . . . Socia1ism.
It all makes sense now!
Different Drum
JGabriel nails it.
Peter J
The spam filter needs to get more potent. I guess it should talk with it’s doctor.
CMcC
New name: Repub Torture Party
Cat Lady
@gbear:
He’s my witty potato sack. It’s why we keep re-electing him.
Required Pseud
“The proposed resolution acknowledges that and calls upon the Democrats to be truthful and honest with the American people by renaming themselves…”
Oh ka ay …
Sauce for the goose.
The Rape The Public Again Party? Or is that kind of jarring? Okay, how about The Republic Of Stupid Party?
Either one works for me.
RememberNovember
Is somebody practicing satanic reanimation rituals on McCarthy and Cohn’s corpse?
Yeah FDR was a real socialist. If so then so was his ancestor TEddy. They remind me of the old guard Chinese communists more than anything. The PARTY is all!
JoeBuddha
Maybe they should take a tip from our friends overseas and call themselves the “Raving Looney Party” (Monster being a tad over the top. Or, maybe not…)
Jay in Oregon
@gbear:
Ooh, double entendre for the win!
Linda
Then bedwetting, obstructionists, just say NO to everything, Reslugs are sweating their balls off with FEAR that they are losers and dying out, all except for their domestic terrorists wing-nutO’s that must be watched.
HerrBerr
A conservative faction of the Republican National Committee is urging the GOP to take a harder line against both Democrats and wayward Republicans, drafting a resolution to rename the opposition the “Democrat Socialist Party” and moving to rebuke the three Republican senators who supported the stimulus package.
In an e-mail sent Wednesday to the 168 voting members of the committee, RNC member James Bopp, Jr. accused President Obama of wanting “to restructure American society along socialist ideals
as opposed to the oligarchical ideals along which it is currently structured.”“The proposed resolution acknowledges that and calls upon the Democrats to be truthful and honest with
kowtow toa
tiny miserably uniformed portion ofthe American people by renaming themselves the Democrat Socialist Party,” wrote Bopp, the Republican committeeman from Indiana. “Just as President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’createdgalvanizedan irrational hatred of hundreds of millions of peasantsopposition to communismby people who the republicans treated as little more than peasants themselves,Iwe hope that the accurate depiction of the Democrats as a Socialist Party will galvanize opposition to theirchanging more socialistic policiesmarch to socialism.”teapotdome
The Repubs should rename their party first. Two suggestions:
1. Whigs
2. Tories
jerry 101
Shouldn’t we at least get to be the Socia l Democrats?
Ah well, maybe this will finally get Bernie Sanders to join the Party.
jerry 101
@4tehlulz: Wait, there are still college republicans
I thought they went the way of the Dodo…
Greg
Fine. Can we call them “Banana Republicans”?
Alexandra
I have to say I really did love the “Democrat” -ic part of it. I think more official government time should be spent having one party rename the other one. Now that George Bush has solved all the country’s problems and all.
Allan
The Wanking Will Continue Until
Morale Improvesthe Republican Party is Delisted from Ballots in All 50 StatesFixed your title.