The laughs from America’s favorite comedy troupe just keep on coming:
A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”
When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”
***Two other resolutions — to urge Republican lawmakers to reject earmarks and to commend them for opposing “bailouts and reckless spending bills” — are also on the agenda, but language that would have denounced Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican turned Democrat, and Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for voting for President Obama’s stimulus package has been dropped.
Steele didn’t want the special session to be held at all. The RNC will hold its regular summer meeting in July, and all matters could have waited until then. But the special session is being viewed by some in the party as a “comeuppance” for Steele and an implied criticism of his performance and behavior in his first 100 days in office.
Maybe they could build an effigy of Specter and denounce that.
And just say it again. They are meeting, according to the Politico, to call the Democrats names, to call Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins names, to fap about spending bills, and to give their chairman his “comeuppance.” For that, they are calling an “extraordinary” meeting.
Too funny. And I honestly didn’t know anyone used the word “comeuppance” outside O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Lupin
Can we rebrand them as the Republican National Front?
They’d actually like that, I think.
Zifnab
What’s the saying? “The only way to win at baseball is by crying”? No, that’s not it. Give me some time. It’ll come to me.
Michael
You beat me to it.
Sadly, I’ve burnt my Kos diary for the day, otherwise, I’d put it up there for mockery and derision.
cleek
GOP: emotional maturity is elitist posturing
Wag
this is good news for McCain
Zifnab
Could we change it to “Democrat Party Socialists”? Then it can boil down to DPS, and will better describe the damage output this kind of stupid is dealing to the party.
NonyNony
And next month they can rebrand the Democrats as the “National Poopy-head Democrat Party”. The ads will consist of prominent Republicans assuring the country that Democrats are a bunch of smelly poopy-pants who let girls into their clubhouse and therefore have cooties and will give anyone who votes for them cooties too. Then they’ll take their ball and go home. Or go Galt. Or something.
I like that they feel like they need a resolution to call their opponents names. I’m also kind of liking the fact that the Republicans appear to be going out of their way to rehabilitate the word “socialism” and make it acceptable to use again.
Ash Can
Then just WTflyingF is this resolution supposed to, you know, accomplish, anyway? (Other than to make these people look like drooling morons, that is.)
lilysmom
The Geriatric Out of touch Pinheads
The party of constant sorrow
Lev
I realize that this is cathartic for them, but they can’t actually think this will help them, do they? They don’t really think that the only reason they’re getting their asses kicked is for lack of the proper epithet, do they?
But don’t worry: Gary Sinise is going to change all that. Sinise/Palin 2012!
geg6
I know these idiots have jumped the damn shark so many times lately that it seems they couldn’t get any more stupid, but are they truly serious with this? I mean, they think they get to name MY party?
I am not kidding on this. If one single asshole one single time has the temerity to actually say this to my face, I’m going John Cole on them and literally punching him/her in the neck. Hopefully, you guys will visit me in prison. But it will be worth it. I’ve truly had it and this will honestly be the end of my rope with bullshit like this.
Michael
The Party of Hee Haw
http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/060601/142736__heehaw_l.jpg
R-Jud
W/r/t the Office Space reference in the post title, aren’t the Republicans ultimately more like Milton? They don’t realize we’ve fired them and they constantly mutter about burning the place down. Also, they are often fat and sweaty.
Hunter Gathers
Please tell me this will be televised. It should be a train wreck of stupid.
Balconesfault
Come on … this is really from the Onion, right?
Mike S
So I guess the message is “We’re not the party of no, we’re the party of immature children.”
If there were any adults left in the GOP I’d feel sorry for them.
MattF
A moment of silence, for the death of parody.
Pockmark Notorious
I don’t know about any “comeuppance”, but I do know about the Comuppins!
http://www.myspace.com/thecomuppins
You’ll get yours.
~Pock
MTmofo
First of all, notice how they refuse to use proper English and say DemocratIC. I guess they’re trying to double down on that little jab.
Secondly, since Steele is being ‘uppity’ they feel the need to give him a comeuppance. And what era did “O Brother” portray? Yeah, back when racism was overt.
Michael
Is this Peak Wingnut?
sum gai
@ R-Jud: Hey, I’m fat and sweaty but don’t ever call me a Republican!
Zifnab
@Mike S:
See, the Democrats are the Mommy Party. And the Republicans were the Daddy Party, until daddy started hitting the bottle a little too often and then lost his job at the factory to one of those crazy illegal immigrant negro Islamofacists from god knows where (he didn’t show his birth certificate). Now they’re the Homeless Guy on the Street Covered in Tin Foil Screaming About Black Helicopters and the Gay Zionist Conspiracies Party that still hasn’t had a restraining order filed against him by his sympathetic but horrified relatives.
John Cole
@Michael: I hate you.
Also note the other thing to be gleaned from this report. Steele does not want this meeting to happen and thinks it is silly. That means Steele is the smart one out of this bunch. What does that tell you?
Senyordave
Upon further consideration, the Republicans have decided to rebrand the Democrats as the “Democrat Poopiepants Wee-Wee Party”. This will be a direct way to show the public the maturity of the Republican party leaders.
R-Jud
@sum gai: You’re right. My apologies to you, and to all fat and sweaty people everywhere.
jenniebee
They’re trying to shape preferences by changing the language? How very… politically correct of them.
Egilsson
Will this “special” meeting be open to the public and/or journalists?
Actually, I only care if John Oliver is going to go.
Please please, let John Oliver go cover this meeting…
MikeJ
As I noted on a previous thread, the republicans are simply going to make soçialism more popular.
** Atanarjuat **
Operation Ad Hominem!
I think this is fantastic news for the GOP.
Now, if only they could combine this effort with Red State’s Operation Leper, the purification process will be complete.
Once the Republican Party has achieved 100% Distilled Wingnut, the American public will vote straight-ticket GOP in every election starting in 2010. Success is guaranteed.
-A
slag
Welcome back to 1994. But instead of everything BAD=LIBRUL, everything BAD=SOCIAL!ST=DEMOCRAT! Luckily, I think they’re going to have some problems executing the double jump here. Because nobody cares enough to hate social!sm let alone Democrats.
ironranger
Wow. Every time I think the Republicans cannot get more ridiculous, they do. The R party is like a thwarted 5 year old yelling at his parent, “You’re a stupid poopyhead”.
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
The goal is not to make them look like drooling morons. It’s to make them look like frothing at the mouth crazies. That’s the way to win the wingnut vote, and we all know that the Republican Party is now the party of the wingnuts, by the wingnuts, and for the wingnuts. Let’s hope that it soon perishes from this earth.
The Grand Panjandrum
They just need a little Rex Kwon Do to be taken seriously and get back in the game.
Comrade Dread
Maybe it’s because I don’t have massive brain damage, but I can’t understand how anyone can think the reaction to this by Americans would be anything but contempt and ridicule.
I mean, it’s not like there are going to be vast swaths of American voters who will go, “Hmm… I never realized that Democrats like bigger government and more social spending until you started calling them the DSP.
JGabriel
Do we have a motion to rebrand the GOP as the Republ-ick Fascist Party?
NonyNony
@John Cole:
I’ve long thought that Steele was among the smartest in what passes for Republican “leadership” these days. This is a lot like being the world’s fastest turtle, but still it’s something.
Steele sees that the party has a problem and actually seems to grasp what that problem is (i.e. the GOP is seen as a bunch of racists and kooks who are out of step with modern Americans). But he can’t do anything to fix it – he’s the wrong man for the job. He doesn’t have the respect of the party base OR the machine and that means he’s completely ineffective at changing the party’s direction. What’s more, the guy who DOES have the respect/admiration of the party base (Limbaugh) actually has a vested interest in keeping the “mainstream” of the GOP fixed around the racists and the kooks (who make up the bulk of his audience and are therefore his power base). I’m not sure who the party machine respects these days – and from the look of things, the machine has probably been taken over by the base.
Zoogz
JC @23:
Even more spectacular, the following highlight:
…the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”
…The RNC will hold its regular summer meeting in July, and all matters could have waited until then.
When it comes to calling the Democrats names, you MUST hold special sessions! After all, two months could have gone by without the Democrat Socialist Party getting MAAAAJOR play in the FoxNewsosphere.
And besides, the dog whistles could change by then…
wasabi gasp
Man, I used to love The Little Rascals. Gotta pick up the boxed set one of these days. There’s that one episode where they baked a cake with mouse traps and whatnot in it…good stuff.
CalD
A member of the Republican National Committee told [Roger Simon] Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”
————————-
I’ll bet that anyone much under the age of 50 reading this is wondering right now what’s up with this phobia that Republicans (Republics?) seem to have of Swedish people…
PS: Thanks again for reading The Politico (so I don’t have to).
SpotWeld
They’re having an “extraordinary special session” specifically to call the opposition a bad name?
Or is this just a cover for thier effort to reanimate the undead corpse of Ronald Reagan?
MikeJ
When your enemy is shooting himself in the foot you don’t pick up your gun and aim at your own feet. You just point and laugh.
Brick Oven Bill
The Republicans are falling apart faster than the Democrats because the former Republican base are those people actively participating in the economy and experience society first-hand. These former Republican are not becoming Democrats, however. They are becoming Independents, and rejecting the framework of the two-party system, which they see as corrupted.
[Hint: look at the money going to the financial industry. See also Orszag.]
Democrats too are leaving the system, but at a slower pace. Some blue-collar Democrats become Republicans, as they see that, as productive members of society, their party has turned against them. But, in my experience, I have never witnessed a Republican becoming a Democrat.
This is why I am convinced that Cole is getting some money in exchange for his political re-affiliation. DougJ seems to be a believer. This is most likely due to the academic environment in which he resides.
Scott
How many years did it take the Democrats to get a clue about why they kept losing elections and start making changes?
The Republicans are going to have to lose spectacularly for the next several elections before they’ll have the slightest chance of ousting the crazies.
JGabriel
@jenniebee:
I think you mean “Orwellian”.
Punchy
“comeuppance” sounds about right for such the Uppidy Negro that Steele apparently is.
I knew the GOP were unapologetic racists, but I didn’t think they’d be unable to last 6 months with Steele at the helm. Might as well just nommy the local Grand Dragon for NRC Head and vote to make the pillowcase their symbol of change and get it all completely out in the open.
Gregory
@MTmofo:
Renaming the Democratic Party the first time didn’t lead to the results they wanted.
Balconesfault
@Brick Oven Bill:
Hell – we could do a role call. I quit calling myself a Repub in 1982, and finally accepted calling myself a Dem in 1994.
JGabriel
@NonyNony:
Token black gets elected to RNC chairmanship so the GOPers can say we’re not racist, but then has the power of the purse stripped from him and can’t get the party’s respect. Didn’t see that one coming. I mean, wow, who’d a thunk it?
.
jenniebee
Reagan was an amateur who didn’t have the balls to cheat death and stay in the game.
Newt Gingrich, on the other hand – and I have this on good authority – spent most of the last decade constructing a phylactery.
DecidedFenceSitter
@jenniebee:
Thank you, Xykon.
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill:
Wow. With clear-headed thinking like that, you should totally be a Republican party strategist. You’d fit right in with the current crop.
JC
@jenniebee: He is beginning to look a little more Lich-like these days, isn’t he?
Soylent Green
The Republicans are holding their breaths until all the states turn blue.
Hey, Cole, your secret is out. BOB is on to you. Does Limbaugh sign your checks himself?
dpbro
Mistakes were made by these guys in the past, and they rose from the ashes. Don’t get your hopes up just yet.
Those of us old enough to remember the requiems sung for the demise of the Party of No in the mid60’s. The terror of Dick Nixon and St. Ronnie were yet to come.
The politics of resentment is always lurking, waiting for the right moment.
bago
Quoth Lindsey Grahm: If we restrict ourselves to the Army Field Manual, we make a huge mistake.
OniHanzo
Hahaha that’s my all-time favorite dodge. When things go tits up for the Grand Ol’ Party, conservatives flee to the hills of being “an independent” or a Libertarian. “We reject the system and… um.. yeah, it’s all bad. There. Moral high ground found. Nyah!”
You can run, you little fuckers. But you can’t hide.
jenniebee
@DecidedFenceSitter: I considered linking to the latest strip, but figured that it’d just be confusing to non-readers.
Cat Lady
From the WaPo chat today:
Keep digging guys.
Fencedude
@Brick Oven Bill:
You do understand what blog you are on, right?
Mike S
@Brick Oven Bill: Shorter Billy. ‘No one leaves the cult unless forced or paid. Those that do leave the cult don’t really leave. They’re just part of a super secret faction if the cult.’
bago
What the fuck? Grahm does not know how to speak english. Quoth: “Is going to chill out the legal advices in the future”. He’s mixing up tenses, and has no concept of plurals or grammar.
Ooh! Someone telling Lindsey about the rule of law. Fun!
JGabriel
@Balconesfault:
But that just means you were never really
in lovea Republican.QED, as per Republican logic.
.
bago
Lindsey: “The Army Field Manual was never designed to defend the nation from high value targets.”
He actually said this.
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill:
That’s a pretty serious accusation, BOB. I’m afraid that if your evidence is merely John’s change in party registration, you’re not gonna find many takers.
But since we’re all familiar with the Republican penchant for projection, I suppose we should start assuming that you are a paid troll?
.
Michael
I’m reminded of the bathroom scene in Trading Places, when Eddie Murphy hears what Randolph and Mortimer Duke really think about him and his stewardship over Duke & Duke.
jamie
I dunno, I recall hearing “comeuppance” a few times on The Simpsons, though the most concrete example of a jerky kid getting his comeuppance is going to be George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Danndy.
SFAW
I must have more than a couple screws loose, because I keep waiting for you to say something about the bleedin’ Rethugs singing “Torremolinos, Torremolinos”, and you being served another bottle of bleedin’ Watney’s Red Barrel, etc.
What a silly bunt
El Cid
I think the GOP needs to publicly expel Snowe and Collins and Crist and lots and lots and lots of other people from their ranks.
JGabriel
Michael:
Or the party of Lord Haw Haw, aka Rush Limbaugh in his current reincarnation.
.
Laura W
@JGabriel:
Do they really make those?
I am going to have a very big sad if I find out that someone has been paying BOB to chat with me.
JGabriel
@El Cid:
I agree. It’s clear that the GOP’s problem is that it’s: Just. Not. Pure. Enough.
.
Dennis-SGMM
@Brick Oven Bill:
Among my keepsakes is an AuH2064 pin given me by the local Goldwater campaign for door knocking. Goldwater was the last Republican I supported.
Ah, youth.
Your experience of politics is as limited as your experience of consensual sex with another human.
Face
If you’re going to change the name to something ridiculous, why not just go all out and call it “The Dumbocrat Fascist Nazi Socialist Party of Fuckheads”
JGabriel
@Roger Moore:
Just thought that was worth repeating. It really is an important distinction.
.
Brick Oven Bill
No Laura; I am au natural. Just some underemployed guy ranting on this wonderful Internet. And even if I was paid for these words, which I am not, yours would still be for free.
PhysicsFun
O Brother Where Art Thou? – what a great movie! What other film can you think of that inspired horror at the brutal treatment and ultimate demise of a FROG? Do NOT seek the treasure!
bago
I am going to work out for hours today. I will be fueled by the rage of hearing Lindsey Grahm’s mealy-mouthed answers to reporters. That man is a walking example of the phrase “banality of evil”.
NEEERRRD RAAAAAAGE!
Screamin' Demon
Why not? It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
Fulcanelli
Lindsay Graham set a new standard today for the art of mealy-mouth political waffling and double-talk by a sitting US Senator. No easy task, for sure. He opened by going on and on about his professional experience as a prosecutor and I believe, a military attorney, and then he makes his arguments like a 2nd year law school dropout on a fool’s errand. He let a few stinkers rip in his closing arguments that are bound to haunt him for a while to come. I’m no legal scholar but it seems that from his closing comments Sen. Whitehouse is drilling down to make this more of a Constitutional violation issue, thus possibly derailing a lot of the legal hoo-ha being used to obscure the illegality. Any lawyers here that can clarify? Or am I off the reservation?
TenguPhule
And tomorrow no doubt it will go down again.
Robertdsc-iphone
Never has the Clown Shoes tag been more appropriate.
Alan
When the resolution was being passed around for review I wonder who the hell removed “Godless” from the name. This really pisses me off. “Godless Democrat Socialist Party” sounded so much better–not to mention true.
bago
@TenguPhule: He revised the Bush era argument of indefinite detention from “At the discretion of the executive” to “At the discretion of the executive and one member of the judiciary”. He then said “This is a war without end”.
I want to scream at the top of my lungs at these people. I would shout “1984 is a warning, not a manual!”, but it would probably come out “NNNPHHHEEENNNFFFFRRR ZZZHA WHGGHHR, NAAAUGHT EHMMANNUEL_exclamation_points_ELEVENTYONE_more_exclamation_points”.
Stupid script. Seriously, the AJAX script has an f’d regex in it.
The Moar You Know
@Brick Oven Bill: I want to produce your first album. Drop me a line here when you are ready.
Fulcanelli
@bago: It was never a declared war by congress. Thanks for playing, Senator Douchebag(R), now please go home and die.
TenguPhule
I’ll give even odds he one ups this by tomorrow.
Cyrus
@Brick Oven Bill:
Totally did not need to know that.
Whick
“Comeuppance”?
My favorite usage is rather dated, but watch The Magnificent Ambersons some time.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035015/quotes
Grumpy Code Monkey
Let me get this straight: the RNC is convening a special session to call the Democrats names.
It’s times like this I think Andy Kaufman faked his death, because this is performance art on a grand scale. Somewhere, someone in the Republican hierarchy knows exactly what he’s doing, and is laughing maniacally as we all fall into his trap.
Rick Taylor
@John Cole:
To be fair, when you originally proposed peak wingnut, it sounded plausible to me. How could they possibly get any nuttier than they are now, was how I thought. Well, the RNC could officially vote to rename the Democratic party the “Democrat socialist party.” They might start tossing anyone out of the party who so much as voted for a needed stimulus bill. They might propose capital gains tax cuts and a spending freeze in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the depression. Wingnuts everywhere might start sending in teabags to Washington in a symbolic act commemorating the Boston tea party. But at the time that simply wasn’t in the realm of possibility, and if someone had told me that’s what they’d do, I would have laughed at them.
Now I’m scared. I know better than to predict peak wingnut; it’s only been a few months and I’m sure the worst is yet to come. But what could they possibly do to top what they’ve done so far? I can’t even imagine.
Persia
@Cyrus: Of course he says it to a woman commenter, too. I bet I know where his hand is. Even though I don’t want to.
binzinerator
@John Cole:
That we still haven’t reached Peak Wingnut?
LD50
Game, set, match.
LD50
Have we finally identified this guy?
asiangrrlMN
Comeuppance is a perfectly fine word. Why, I was reading Dickens just the other day, and Scrooge totally got his comeuppance, bitches!
I like the Democratic Socialist Party. Where do I sign up? Of course, it’s so precious that the widdle Republicans believe that they can demand the majority party to switch names to what they (the eensy-teensy minority party) want to call them (the big, hunka hunka burnin’ love majority party). Aren’t they the cutest?
I know the Dems were in the wilderness for some time and had a rough time dealing with it, but the GOP has devolved at an astonishingly rapid pace. Three fucking months, and they’re already incoherent. Suck it up, bitches!
asiangrrlMN
Motherlovin’ moderation!
Comeuppance is a perfectly fine word. Why, I was reading Dickens just the other day, and Scrooge totally got his comeuppance, bitches!
I like the Democratic Soc ia li st Party. Where do I sign up? Of course, it’s so precious that the widdle Republicans believe that they can demand the majority party to switch names to what they (the eensy-teensy minority party) want to call them (the big, hunka hunka burnin’ love majority party). Aren’t they the cutest?
I know the Dems were in the wilderness for some time and had a rough time dealing with it, but the GOP has devolved at an astonishingly rapid pace. Three fucking months, and they’re already incoherent. Suck it up, bitches!
demimondian
@asiangrrlMN: You’re young — and you don’t remember the first few years after Reagan’s landslide in 1980. It was very ugly being a Democrat then — there was a lot of denial among us in the party about how badly we’d done.
And the Republicans have it much worse than we did: first, in 1980, we held on to the House, and, second, in 2000, we had the whole Bush v. Gore fiasco to distract us. The Republicans don’t have either of those to fall back upon.
Give them time. They’ll be back — without Cheney, to boot.
grumpy realist
Hell, even the Communists in Russia didn’t try to rename the other party; they simply called themselves the Bolsheviks (Big party) and the other side, with immense stupidity, allowed themselves to be tagged as Mensheviks (Little party).
Guess what? They soon were.
AhabTRuler
Yes, but because of a lot more reasons than their name.
Wile E. Quixote
@dpbro
No kidding, I’ve been re-reading Rick Perlstein’s excellent “Before the Storm” (buy the book, bitches!) and it ends with the utter defeat of Barry Goldwater and the Republican party at the hands of Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats in 1964. Of course then “Nixonland” starts up with the Democrats losing seats in the House, Senate and local elections in 1966 and then losing the presidency in 1968 and despite four years of war and economic stagnation losing the presidency again in 1972. Bear in mind that even after six years of Dick Nixon, his resignation in disgrace in 1974 and the incompetent presidency of Jerry Ford Jimmy Carter only won by two points in the popular vote. I won’t consider the Republicans down and out until they’re dead, their heads have been cut off, their mouths stuffed with garlic and they’ve been buried at a crossroads under four million tons of concrete during a full moon.
Grumpy Code Monkey
As usual, Glenzilla cuts through the bullshit:
demimondian
@AhabTRuler: Indeeed. Remember that you’ll get further with a smile and overwhelming force than you will with a smile alone.
Jay in Oregon
@jenniebee:
Not one, but two fans of Order of the Stick? I knew I liked this place.
Josh Hueco
I wouldn’t mind some soshulizm in Texas. At least the streets would be paved.
SFAW
But remember: it takes a fascist to get the trains to run on time.