That they will completely ignore:
Right now, nobody is listening to them and nobody cares what the GOP thinks. As painful as that must be for Republicans, it does provide them with an opportunity to do some thinking, so that when their time-out period is up and they rejoin the class, they will be able to come in with a new approach, some new thoughts and something of a fresh start.
While this line of thinking might sound a bit like trying to turn lemons into lemonade, that’s what life can be about; turning adversity into opportunity.
As long as Republicans were in power, while they weren’t in the mood to make changes, they also weren’t in a position to do the rebranding and retooling that parties are sometimes required to do. That can only be done when that party is out of view.
It’s easier to say that Republicans need to change than it is to say what they should change. But maybe Republicans should take a page from the Democratic playbook.
It would be unprincipled, intellectually bankrupt and pointless for the Republican Party to move from the right to the left on issues or overall positioning. But, on some issues, maybe they would be best off being silent.
I’ve pointed this out repeatedly, but the best play for Republicans is to just be quiet, let the public get tired of the Democrats, and let everyone forget why we hate and how much we hate Republicans. But they just can’t do it, and, as such, we have Dick Cheney with his 19% approval rating and the equally popular Rush Limbaugh out running their mouths 24/7.
Instead of simply sitting back and giving the Democrats enough rope, they have decided that they need to turn the volume up to eleven. The only upside to the sad state of Republican affairs is that “fascist” has replaced “defeatocrat” as the wingnut slur du jour. Variety counts, you know.
Nicole
Actually, the best play for the Republicans would be to get some ideas that aren’t focused solely on how to make old rich white men even richer. But I don’t think they’re capable of that, either.
cleek
never expect silence from a man whose job requires him to be loud.
they all need to keep the rubes riled enough to keep the checks coming, and they need to be controversial enough to keep themselves in the public eye.
ideas about governing ? policies ? Obama’s got that gig sewn-up. the GOP can only play spoiler, right now.
TenguPhule
Please stop helping the enemy, John.
We want to drive a stake in the monster’s heart, not give it advice on what it did wrong so it can do a better job next time.
TenguPhule
If the sheep only see the sheep skin, the wolf gets free run of the flock.
Same party, new flavored shit.
Comrade Kevin
They’re turning the volume up to 11 in an attempt at masking the smell of the giant turd they laid on the country.
ImpureScience
This is a good thing. They had from 1994 until very recently, we should get at least as long.
gnomedad
@TenguPhule:
John is a demoncrat now. Any good advice from him gets crossed off their list of options
Colette
Sound advice – but instead, they are doing this:
Liz Cheney compares her father’s defense of torture to Al Gore’s fight against global warming.
Poor Dick would much rather be fishing, she said, but he felt it was his duty to defend the Bush Administration.
Cpl. Cam
When the defacto leader of your party is Rush Limbaugh’s ego that whole “laying low” thing can be tricky.
gnomedad
@Colette:
I saw a comment somewhere that being out of power must be driving Cheney
crazycrazier.And via Sully, Jesse Ventura: “You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney, and one hour, and I’ll have him confessing to the Sharon Tate murders.”
ComradeDread
Republicans aren’t interested in any advice that doesn’t flow from dittoheads. They really aren’t.
They have successfully convinced themselves that their failings were: earmarks and marketing: Those darned Democrats just make themselves look cool and hip to the stupid youths and if we just got more actors and rappers, we can convince them that the GOP is cool too.
It’s really kind of sad.
AhabTRuler
Fixeteth.
Warning: Consuming Shit(TM) may kill you, or at least make you wish for death. [back]
Dennis-SGMM
This overlooks the fact they are at present on the far right and eyeing the suburb of Looneyville as their next residence. For them to move back to the right would be a move to the left.
As for being unprincipled, they stated their principles categorically and then categorically abandoned them as soon as their party was firmly in power.
Intellectually bankrupt? Asking to be put back into power on the basis of tax cuts and “budgets” composed of vaguely labeled circles seems at least to be an overdraft on their intellectual bank account.
blogenfreude
Reublicans will always be trying to run your sex life. They can’t help themselves. Professional Christians (like Carrie Prejean) can’t handle their own sex drives, and they want to make sure you’re as miserable as they are.
BDeevDad
It’s physically impossible for Limbaugh to shut his trap.
Barry
John: “I’ve pointed this out repeatedly, but the best play for Republicans is to just be quiet, let the public get tired of the Democrats, and let everyone forget why we hate and how much we hate Republicans.”
Especially since the major GOP hope is that the Democrats fail at fixing the economy. If the economy still s*cks in 2012, they’re in the presidency, barring extreme stupidity.
Cpl. Cam: “When the defacto leader of your party is Rush Limbaugh’s ego that whole “laying low” thing can be tricky.”
It’s been pointed out that Rush’s incentives and the GOP’s differ – Rush could have a great several years, while the GOP’s vote share decreases. He just needs a few million devoted fans. Some GOP politician stated that ‘20% of the market is great if you’re Chik-fil-a, but lousy if you’re a political party’.
SpotWeld
I think Rush and Glenn Beck have trained the GOP to the thinking that silence = opposition.
If you are not giving the pundits new material to echo and amplify then your silence is proof of opposition. (Again, this happens on the left too, but the pundits on the left just don’t have that much sway on political policy as those on the Right do).
JimPortlandOR
Well, let’s see:
Repubs have overwhelming media access (see: last weekend’s orgy of GOP octogenarians on weekly news show): CHECK
GOP Guys that like the sound of their own words, even if what they say today is 180 degrees from last week/month/year: CHECK
Nobody in the Grand Obsolete Party with any national following that is above 40% in favorability: CHECK
Not one solid idea among the Rethugs that a majority of the public supports: CHECK
Conservative and GOP Leaders that think they can rule again by just being against everything and using ridiculous phrases to characterize the Dems: CHECK
This isn’t a national political party anymore. It’s a clan/klan gathering of the least informed, least principled, least rational folks that reflect the probably perpetual 20% of the population that is stuck in a time frame from the past that never existed and was never coherent.
Indylib
I don’t think the wingnuts are capable of sitting down and shutting up for any length of time. They still think this whole fight is a partisan battle fought out in the daily newscycle. When the media world is your chosen battlefield, where the only thing that matters is whether or not what you said makes it through the day as an intact meme, sitting down and shutting up would be seen as abject, unequivocal surrender.
Ninerdave
Please cry moar GOP.
Martin
I don’t think keeping quiet will do it. The public wants a party that will govern, and even “small government” is governing. These guys aren’t interested in governing at all. They just want to turn things off and hope for the best. They’re ceding authority to parties that the public doesn’t trust and doesn’t have any control over. If the GOP stays quiet and comes back with that same attitude, it won’t do any good. At some point they need to show that they are interested in the job we are voting them to do.
Balconesfault
@cleek:
Exactly. That is the curse of having a media dedicated solely to promoting a single party.
Abortion Takes a Lie!
Typical liebrals trying to censer republicans because you can’t beat them otherwise we will win. Speak up conservatives !! because only you can stop the socializers from making us into a Swedish country with free pot and govenrment-sponsored hwalth care.
jrg
Never going to work. Even if you were able to quiet down the GOP politicians (which is unlikely, as hating gays and believing that taxes are socialist/facist/communist is a requirement to win primaries in the south), you’d still have to deal with the Rushs and the internet trolls, who either have monetary incentive to keep whining, or don’t have the good sense to know that the lie, lie, lie, scream, scream, scream strategy has become counter-productive.
Dennis-SGMM
Someone should also tell them that having a beauty pageant winner mouth some of your slogans does not mean that your message is starting to resonate with young voters.
Notorious P.A.T.
Mmm, Sweden!
dj spellchecka
i’m unclear if giving up on the fantasy theory of “trickle down” is moving to the left or abandoning principles..but they really need to come back to the reality based world on that issue if they want to get anywhere with the bill paying public
asiangrrlMN
Yeah, don’t say anything and don’t change your positions. Good luck with that, GOP.
As for Liz Cheney, yeah, speaking out against global warming is EXACTLY like speaking out in support of torture. Except, one guy has been working tirelessly for the past eight years to better the environment (and, might I add, has a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award for his efforts), and the other spent the last eight years working tirelessly to destroy our country.
Yup. I see how it’s exactly the same.
#23, if you are not a parody, yeah, the libs are really silencing the cons. That’s why we see Newt, Rove, Cheney, McCain and the rest of the Republicans dominating the teevee machine’s talk shows.
P.S. I cringed when Ventura got elected, but he wasn’t half bad. One thing with Jesse–he will always say what’s on his mind. What does it say when Shep Smith and Jesse Ventura are the reasonable talking heads on the matter of torture?
Rosali
Wait a couple of days to see how they react to Gov. Crist’s senate run.
Tonal Crow
Many of the GOP’s principles contradict reality. The more they embrace them, the further they trek into the flat-earther regions, and the more likely they are to become permanently lost there.
asiangrrlMN
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Tastes like chicken!
Beauzeaux
In Republicanland, the best way to dig yourself out of a hole is to dig deeper and faster.
Bernie
I don’t know if the “keep silent and let the Democrats screw-up” is a viable option. The reason the Republicans have had so much success in the past 30 (some would say 40) years is a focus on “cultural war” issues and a resentment of “pointy-headed” intellectuals.
But the cultural wars have very little appeal to those of us under 40 years of age and “pointy-headed” intellctuals now include anyway who is educated. Without those two issues they are basically just the country club party they have been for the past 120 years.
LD50
Funny, I don’t remember anyone ever saying that it would have been pointless for the Democrats to move rightward when THEY were out of power.
LD50
No, it’s not sad. It’s the GOP being made to suffer for their stupidity, incompetence, dishonesty and corruption. They deserve every drop of suffering they experience.
Bernie
I meant “anyone” not “anyway”. Damn this elitist grammer!
Fulcanelli
Hmmm. Free pot, government sponsored health care and I Am Curious Yellow playing down at the Bijou. Sweden doesn’t sound so bad except for the frigid cold and the gross food. See what 9 months of winter every year will do to you?
And blondes… Lots of blond women, too!
Mike S
They don’t have anything else. They fail at governing. They want to fail because they hate government. The only real function of government for them is as an avenue to enrich their friends. As far as they are concerned Iraq and Katrina were resounding successes because they were able to transfer billions, if not trillions, of dollars from the public to their chosen beneficiaries.
LD50
And we’re supposed to stop this why?
Colette
@Tonal Crow:
But since the earth isn’t actually flat, maybe they’re just trying to take the long way around and will end up back where they started.
Or in Sweden. Lutefisk for everyone!
GuyFromOhio
@Bernie:
… success which has since extinguished itself. Short-term gain, long-term loss. Pick any measure (polls, elections, demographics, funding) and the GOPosaurs are wading into the tar pits.
Keeping quiet isn’t enough. Moving left isn’t enough. What started with the Contract On America on Gingrich’s watch has finally consumed itself in the shadow of Palin and Joe The Plumber, leaving Rove’s footprints and Cheney’s fingerprints.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of patriots.
Brachiator
You’re right. They can’t do it. Because they spent years convincing themselves that they were the only legitimate party in the United States. And media people like Rush, Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity and others were (and still are) their biggest cheerleaders. But having driven themselves into the ditch of ideological purity, they are incapable of getting themselves out. And so they just keep on shouting louder.
Tonal Crow
@Colette:
With luck, they’ll spend a few decades in some seldom-explored caves beneath Antarctican mountains.
Tonal Crow
@Brachiator:
Clown shœs! Clown shœs! We want clown shœs!
Sasha
@gnomedad:
Please, O God, please let some dumb pro-torture schmuck try to talk smack to “The Body”.
Mark S.
The problem isn’t Rush, who is paid to bloviate for three hours a day and say outrageous things. The problem is that the supposed adults are afraid to ever cross him. I don’t really understand this, because you would think one of these jackass moderate Republicans could get a lot of free publicity by calling Rush out. Especially if the field is going to be crowded with people arguing over how many Gitmos they want to reopen.
Maybe I’m wrong, and I actually hope I am, because my suspicion is that the Right has already driven out all of the moderates. If so, the GOP won’t be coming back for a very long time, or might go away altogether.
SpotWeld
It’s like Rush is Audrey II from Little Shop of horrors.
Intially, his audience was small and the GOP though they could get some customers out of his very special novelty. So they fed him some juice attention.
Now Rush has grown and he’s popped up a bunch of mini-Audrey IIs. And they all demand some “plant food” out of the GOP. So much of it now, they have to start sacraficing each other to keep him fed and happy.
Time to call the Ghostbusters?
Elie
It is a weird thing to observe them — so completely out of touch. Its like observing some weird reclused, lost tribe found in some way back isolated jungle…they have been running their world from their context forever and suddenly someone shows them an airplane or photograph and they can’t grok it.
The Republicans have purged their ranks and enforced a conceptual and theoretical framework so bizarre for so long that they really are stumped. They are not faking this…they have no preparation for dealing with reality — remember, competent governance was/is not a construct that they believe in or can provide. They can only sing tribal songs and prepare for battle, get folks all hopped up on emotions such as fear and hate, superiority – stuff like that to distract while a few high priests take all the money. There is no other meaning and no other angle.
Personally, while I believe in principled opposition, I donot think that they will ever provide it, and I am happy to say goodbye to this group. I just want to figure out how to keep throwing them anvils. I do want to continue their entertainment value which is huge — who knows who will spill out of the Klown Kar next and what they will say when they squirt us with crazy foam and tweak each others’ noses ?
So John C., please shut up and let them do what they do so well.
demkat620
On HArdball right now, Frank Gaffney is embiggening my headache. If these enhanced interrogation techniques are so benign and work so well, Frank, it’ll be okay when other countries use them on our guys, right?
Sick, twisted, fucks like Gaffney, need to shut up
Seanly
The Republicans can’t be silent – they are always on TV. Last night, Anderson Cooper had on 2 Republicans to talk about Dick Cheney & his continuing stupidity. Then after they agreed on all but one point, AC said something about how wonderful his show is for always having opposing view points. Why not have on a DFH to say that Dick Cheney should be on trial in the Hague?
James K. Polk, Esq.
I regularly frequent cigar message boards which are populated almost exclusively by wingers. They are not dumb or mean, persay, but many are completely tone-deaf with respect to their behavior and the animus that it generates.
They seem to be segregating into two camps:
1) The Believers – These guys are the 20%ers. They love Dick (Cheney), see nothing wrong with torture, and pretty much echo exactly what the foamer radio station outrage de jour.
2) The outcasts – Never vote for “liberals” because they are “liberals”. They might break from the orthodoxy on some key issues, but remain true to the cause for the most part.
The camps are fighting, sure, but there have been no real wedges driven between the two.
After the outcasts have decided that the Democrats’ spending is too much to bear (give it six months), they will kiss and makeup.
They don’t have to moderate, they just have to ride out the storm long enough for the glibertarians to get back on the bus.
Crockpot
Mark S.
The fact that people like John Cole are no longer associated with the GOP lets you know they’ve been busy pushing moderates out for years.
I’m in the same boat. Always independent but used to vote (R ) more often than (D). No more. Gonna be a LONG, LONG time till I trust a (R ) with my vote again; if ever.
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.: I agree with Mark S. that Rush really isn’t the problem. I mean, he’s just a highly-paid whore who will say whatever you tell him as long as the money is good. The fact that he can spout his crap with immunity tells you that the GOP agrees with him, to a certain extent. Or, they realize that their base is basically the ditto-heads and to cross Limbaugh means crossing their constituents.
The GOP needs to grow a pair, stand up to their base and to the old guard, welcome in the true moderates, come up with a viable alternative to whatever Obama suggests, and then, maybe then, they will be more than a regional party.
Yeah, I know, I know. It will never happen.
Fulcanelli
Maybe it’s just that the other 75-80% of the country has let go of it’s end of the tug o’ war rope made of phony cultural and ideological issues and fantasies and has moved on without them in the hopes of figuring out how to fix the fucking mess they created over the last 30 years and well, nobody’s told them yet.
Tonal Crow
@Fulcanelli: This.
EconWatcher
I keep saying it, but I hope we don’t have to eat all of this triumphalism in the 2010 elections. I think the President is doing a pretty good job trying to confront the economic meltdown he inherited, but things will likely still look ugly by the mid-terms. And American voters are not known for their patience (or, much of the time, for their good judgment). Why are you guys all so sure that the crazies will not be running the asylum by January 2011?
JGabriel
John Cole:
I think they’re doing that as a prophylactic: i.e., they fully intend to rule as fascists next time they gain power, and therefore want to rob the word of its meaning.
That way, when they are criticized as fascists, they can shout out, as they’re doing now, “No, you liberals, you’re the fascists! Nah Nah Na Nah Nah!”
.
binzinerator
@ComradeDread:
No, it’s pathological. I’m serious. The recurring theme here is deception. People who lie all the time even when they don’t have to are sociopaths.
The republicans’ keep telling themselves that they will win if only they can hit upon the right presentation, in other words they define success when they can find a lie that a majority of people will fall for.
These people are sociopaths. They love the game of deception. It’s a personality disorder. It’s effin’ textbook.
El Cid
Yeah, but I, and the country, would be better off, if the Republican Party would honestly say what it wanted to rather than tactically being silent just for the purpose of gaining office again so that they can rampage us into the shit with their silent, unexamined crazy thieving ideas again.
Really? A political party’s ideas for where they want to take the country are so hated that they need to keep them secret? Maybe that’s a hint that they should change their ideas rather than conduct some Leninist bullshit.
Mike G
But, on some issues, maybe they would be best off being silent.
All the Repig party has left is doubling-down on TURN RUSH UP LOUDER. Flinging poo in a desperate quest for attention is next.
Asking them to be silent is like asking a hyperactive five-year old on a sugartoysfeartoysfearmommy bender to do yoga.
Sasha
@Mark S.:
I used to think that the Cheneycrat/wingnut fringe was controlling the GOP.
I now realize that the Cheneycrat/wingnut fringe is the GOP.
Sad really.
asiangrrlMN
@Fulcanelli: Yes. I agree. The country is moving past the GOP.
@EconWatcher: I am not totally convinced, because, like you, I know the American people are not known for their (our) patience. However, I think many independents and moderates have really opened their eyes as to what the Republicans have wrought over the last eight years. I think it would take a massive fuck-up on the part of President Obama and the Democrats to be out of power by 2011.
scav
I think they certainly must have blown past 11 by now, no?
The pin on the meter has been mangled, shredded, torn off, and is bouncing off somewhere under the speakers — getting lost amidst the cigar butts, dush, ashes and shards from the shattering whine-glasses at their tables…….
Fulcanelli
@binzinerator: WIN. I’ve been saying this for years.
Like a pack of delusional chefs making a reduction sauce to ladle over their heaping plate of tired, worn out, failed ideas, GOP leaders and right-wing talk radio have gradually boiled off all the sane conservatives, leaving nothing but a bubbling pan full of stupid and they’re convinced all they need is better PR. Oh fucking please.
JenJen
Speaking of the GOP, this has got to be the funniest photograph of Norm Coleman (former DFH!) you’ll ever see.
ComradeDread
I wouldn’t go so far as to call them sociopaths. But they are a mass of contradictions and are having trouble reconciling them all.
On the one hand, America is the greatest country in the world and Americans can do anything, on the other hand, we’re bogged down in two unwinnable wars, our economy is in the toilet, and we’re indebted to Communist China for the foreseeable future.
On the one hand, they cling to American exceptionalism, and on the other, the honestly believe that Americans are all so abysmally stupid that we can be fooled by Democratic PR, and those who weren’t are evil because they envy what their neighbors have and want the government to give it to them.
On the one hand, we are a Christian nation and on the other hand, we are a nation that is persecuting and trying to stamp out religious faith.
On the one hand, they firmly believe in smaller government and fiscal responsibility, on the other hand, none of their leaders have done anything more than pay lip service to those beliefs. This has led to some crazed obsession with earmarks as the reason they lost, though getting rid of those wouldn’t reduce the budget at all.
It’s no wonder they’re acting bizarrely given all of the contradictory beliefs they try and hold simultaneously.
binzinerator
@Abortion Takes a Lie!:
Darn those *#@& DFHs, trying to foist their damn patchouli incense stink on the republicans! They need to keep their fragrant hippie odors to themselves.
Then again, maybe the wingnuts crave that — nothing can incense a wingnut like a dirty fucking hippie’s incense. Wingnuts live to be incensed, after all. They thrive on it.
asiangrrlMN
@JenJen: He can bite me. Ass. Jerk. Concede, already, Coleman! You fucking lost! I need my second senator.
EconWatcher
asiangrrlMN:
Hope you’re right. But I still have nightmares from 2004. Admittedly, Kerry was a stuffshirt and a dud. But it was just so obvious that W was destroying everything in his path. How a majority could have pulled the lever for him in 2004 still just baffles me–and leaves me with little confidence that we as a people have really learned our lesson. I think with a continuing breakdown in the economy, or even a relatively smallscale terrorist attack–(Can you hear the media? “Cheney was right!”)–and we’re in the arms of Sarah Palin.
Brachiator
@Mark S.:
Rush is a bloated version of the monstrous child that would make people disappear or wish them into the corn field, in that famous Twilight Zone episode.
But the GOP is even more venally cynical. It’s a mutual admiration society. They use Rush’s microphone to enforce conformity, and to make sure that their message gets out.
The wonderful irony here is that the same Republican goons who go on and on about the evil liberal media use Rush’s access to hundreds of radio stations to make sure that right-wing propaganda is disseminated.
Zzyzx
So I was listening to Hannity on my drive home. “Why?” you ask. For moments like this. Someone called in and said that Hannity was focusing too much on Obama and not enough on important issues. In response, he went into a long defense of how these issues are important (Note: two were Obama is spending too much money and Obama isn’t spending enough money on missile defense.) and how he needs to be talking about this.
The caller got 20 seconds to respond but was cut off because, “We have to go to a break now. When we come back, my interview with Miss California.”
Yep, keep focusing on those important issues.
Fulcanelli
@ComradeDread: bizinerator is spot-on. The average hard-core, right-wing talk radio caller has enough clinically diagnosable sociopathic traits to wear the label. Don’t take my word for it or his. Look up the symptoms in the DSM-IV and take the AM radio in your car for a spin some weekday afternoon.
kay
It’s fun for me, because I really loathe Dick Cheney.
We hear him every day, now, and it’s recorded.
I’m really patient, he’s a nutjob, and he won’t shut up.
I think it’s just a matter of time before he says something actionable.
Colette
@JenJen:
Jesus H. Christ! He is the son of G-d! No wonder he thinks the kingdom is rightfully his, and those damned
jewssatanistscomedians are trying to steal it from him.Joel
@Colette: Al Franken is probably just teabagging him.
west coast
re: “turn the volume up to eleven”
everyone else’s only goes to ten…
magisterludi
Mebbe, just mebbe, in the event the dems crash and burn, there’s a serious chance the Greens start getting eyeballed.
If the dems fail, it will be because they are are too similar to the GOP- too many free(loading) marketeers in the pocket of their political donors. Another party altogether is in order.
Until there’s public funding for campaigns, though, little will change. The Supremes really showed the cravenness of our leaders with the “money is free speech” ruling. They institutionalized inequality.
TenguPhule
To be fair. in an infinite number of universes, the five year old might do it.
LD50
I dunno, I always kinda dug “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”, that was a cool song.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Sitting down and shutting up is not an option for two reasons: it’s worked for the last 20 years, and they don’t want their base to have a spare moment to think for themselves.
Tsulagi
Not gonna happen. Any Yankee-class wingnut worth his teabags knows the prime reason they’ve suffered at the polls is due to their continual victimization at the hands of the relentless and loud liberal MSM. Solution: Go louder. It’s simple wingnut math.
If they can just turn up the volume enough to be heard over the din of the MSM, then Bachmann versions of history, Palin’s window gazing derived expertise, numberless Republican budgets and the rest of the best they have to offer will be accepted as brilliant and embraced. Volume and repetition equals reality. That ex Co-Decider, reality maker and prime nutter mathematician Cheney could tell you that.
Shawn in ShowMe
Yeah, if the GOP just keeps quiet, continues to vote against any bill that could provide economic relief to the working class and small business, and lets Rush Limbaugh do all the talking they will be in a great position to uh..uh, let’s try this again..
Mike in NC
Is that the flat earth that’s 6000 years old and where Jesus rode a triceratops?
Colette
@Mike in NC:
Wait, I thought dinosaur bones were all created on the third day and secretly hidden by that tricky deity so we could find them 6,000 years later as a test of our faith in scriptural inerrancy over the evidence of our lyin’ eyes. That’s why the triceratops is the state dinosaur of Wyoming (and you thought that was Cheney, didn’t you?)
Kris
This post approaches something I’ve been boring my friends with — that FOX news, which surely helped Republicans for a decade, and made the dream of a permanent Republican majority seem reasonable by broadcasting the party’s unadulterated agenda into homes, is part of the crash. Because they can’t turn it off — they are the party that can’t shut up. Maybe if they’d just replace, say Hannity and the morning doofi with — I don’t know — footage of pandas and tortises.
Krissed Off
@blogenfreude:
Better? Or worse?
Mario Piperni
Reps have a single hope for regaining power. They’re praying the economy shows no sign of recovery before the midterm elections and, should there be a god, not before 2012.
bago
If a tracheotomy is performed in case of organ failure, and torture is defined as causing organ failure, don’t these two policy positions imply an official sanction of torture?
D-Chance.
It’s always fun to read the hypocrisy in Liberal Blahgistan.
First, we have the Booperson Tribune with a sad, sad tale. A couple of nutcases shot and killed a young child whose family had stopped near their property to let their child take a leak on the side of the road. Outrage, and this time not fauxrage… the couple should never be allowed breathe one lungful of air outside a prison cell ever again as far as I’m concerned. But, Booperson author Stevie D can’t resist the “political” angle by labeling the couple “conservative” and the boy and his family “liberal” despite the total lack of any such description or politics in the story. The fact that the couple shot and killed a kid for coming near their property was enough proof that this was conservative vs liberal and that those eeeeeevil conservatives and their guns struck again. After all, liberals would never, eh-eh-eh-EHver do or wish such a thing to happen in that situation.
Cue Wankette, where a story about a protest ride by off-roaders through a National Monument area garners the following comments: And the BLM just let it happen, instead of shooting the miscreants… these clowns illegally rode their little bulldozers for the specific purpose of breaking the law, and didn’t even get shot… Death penalty for ALL of them. And melt down their slob-cycles to make gay-marriage double-headed dildo vibrators. To which the message board echoed: And two-stroke engines should be banned outright. followed by These things can’t roll over fast enough.… I wish my park ranger relative would just shoot these ATV-tards on sight.… Anybody who can’t keep their “toys” to established and legal trails should be knocked off of them at high speed by a baseball bat.… My local cops get mad when I shoot at ATV-tards (thanks grampa) for scaring my horses. … Guns are mentioned in the Constitution; ATVs are not. Fire at will!… And scavenger birds would eat like kings off of the bloated corpses, making it a win/win scenario!
Yes, guns used to protect property is bad… unless it’s liberals shooting and murdering conservatives. Then, as the commenter said, “Fire at will!”.
WereBear
They don’t have any problem with dissonance because their minds are compartmented.
I had suspicions, but they were gloriously filled out and confirmed by The Authoritarians by Dr. Bob Altemeyer.
They process each thought as something alone and unconnected to other thoughts. And that’s why they have so much trouble with actual thinking.
I figure they had a free ride for decades. Stranglehold on the media, aggressive whining and fussing as though this was the most important issue in the world, and a generally complacent public who didn’t realize how much of the good life had been laid down for them by the New Deal, GI Bill, and other beneficial government programs.
Their rallying cry was always, “But we haven’t tried our ideas yet!”
When they finally got to do the Full Monty, the public realized that not only did this Emperor have no clothes, he was pretty freakin’ ugly, to boot.
LD50
Except, of course, only the reverse ever actually, like, happens.
Jay C
@D-Chance.:
OK, let’s see if we got this right: Somebody actually shooting a kid for pissing on their “property” is the moral equivalent of some asshats posting belligerent crap on some blog? ‘Miright??
Fair and balanced, yeah, that’s the ticket…..
Dave
Can you elaborate on “get tired of the Democrats?” I get that no victory is ever complete, but I’d be curious to know exactly how you think that’s going to happen.
I’d also like to know how it’s feasible for a political party to be “silent on some issues.” Which in particular? And insofar as political representatives are allegedly supposed to govern with the consent of the people, how is it ethical for them to remain silent? There is much about your advice for Republicans schtick that I don’t get. I’d call it trolling, but I get the sense you mean it.
Comrade Dread
Eventually, it is assumed, based on the past, that Democrats will get corrupt and begin to do really stupid things. By this time, it is possible (if Republicans were bright enough to keep a low profile) that voters will forget exactly how bad Republicans were previous and give a new crop of them power ala 1994.
And then Republicans will get corrupt and do stupid things and make the Democrats seem like stalwarts of good governance and the voters will put them back into power.
Dave
@Comrade Dead
I don’t think John is actually talking about cycles of power. It sounds like he’s talking short- and medium-term strategy.
Anyway, I don’t actually care, but I think John’s wrong that radio silence would help Republicans. Still, rather than make assumptions about why he thinks that, I’d like to see why he thinks he’s right.
Little Dreamer
@James K. Polk, Esq.:
Perhaps you missed the memo, the problem is not how to get those who identify as Republicans to agree with each other, it’s how to get those who no longer agree with Republicans to VOTE for them.
The party is over!
Little Dreamer
@Dave:
With our own Blue Dogs being a part of our big tent, one never can tell what stupidity the left will lower itself to one day.