It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of the various wingnut boycotts and the reasons for them. GM is the latest. Here’s the explanation from Dear Leader:
Limbaugh reassures any GM workers who might be listening that the boycotters aren’t angry at them. “They don’t want to patronize Obama. They don’t want to do anything to make Obama’s policies work!” he explains. “This is an untold story, by the way. Of course, the government-controlled media is not gonna report anything like this but there are a lot of people who are not going to buy from Chrysler or General Motors as long as it is perceived Barack Obama is running it, because people do not want his policy to work here because this is antithetical to the American economic way of life.”
In other words, buying American is now an act of treason. But that should not be taken as a slap in the face to American auto workers. Got that?
I first became aware of how complicated it was to be a conservative during Ben Domenech’s brief fiery ride across the landscape:
Any red-blooded American conservative, even those who hold a dim view of Patrick Swayze’s acting “talent,” knows a Red Dawn reference. For all the talk of left wing cultural political correctness, the right has such things, too (DO shop at Wal-Mart, DON’T buy gas from Citgo). But in the progressive halls of the mainstream media, such things prompt little or no recognition. For the MSM, Dan Rather is just another TV anchor, France is just another country and Red Dawn is just another cheesy throwaway Sunday afternoon movie.
Oh, for the simple times of hating France and Dan Rather! Now, both major American donut makers are off-limits, granite countertops are strictly verboten, you can’t buy American cars, and field mice, bear DNA, and volcano-monitoring have replaced Islamofascism as the greatest threats we face. Anyone who doesn’t know what “where’s the birth certificate” means is suspect.
Billboards that make no sense, protests that take their cue from contemporary sexual slang, self-contradictory messages about consumerism…At some level, isn’t this all beginning to resemble some kind of huge, conceptual art piece (the kind that real conservatives don’t want the NEA to fund)? Is it fair to say that modern conservatism has now jumped the embalmed shark?
TenguPhule
No. For the shark is the wingularity and it’s naked.
Can’t have nakkid sharks running around the place.
Bill E Pilgrim
Ah for the days when any criticism of the government brought accusations that you “wanted the country to fail”.
Now it’s not a bug, but a feature.
TenguPhule
This has been another edition of Rush wishing America to fail, version 2.10.
JGabriel
Oh, the Unbearable Lightness of Avoiding the Wingularity!
.
Bubblegum Tate
I first heard about the GM boycott last week, but it was less about “we don’t want Obama’s policies to work” and more on the “defund the left!: tip:
Bootlegger
A toothless, nekkid shark and they’re jumping it in a Titan rocket. In other words there is no way they can miss and there is nothing in the water to hurt them if they did. Which is exactly what a decade of ad hominem, straw men and tautology gets you. Your arguments can’t be refuted because they are true by definition, your opponents (the shark) are evil but also weak and easily defeated.
More purity! I need more purity!!
Mike S
That Bengi Piece is quite funny.
That right there explains his connection to Redstate. He lives in a real life version of “Idiocricy.”
JGabriel
Shorter Rush Limbaugh:
Stay classy, GOP!
.
Bill E Pilgrim
“the government-controlled media” just cracks me up.
So what is it they imagine exactly, that the media changed hands in one giant transaction on January 20? Because last year and for the the previous seven, the media was trying to undermine everything the glorious gummint of George W was trying to accomplish, according to them.
DougJ
It’s even crazier. He wrote that while Bush was still president.
Delia
Nevermind. They will suck their special teabags as they sit ensconced in the wingularity outside of normal Time and Space forever.
TenguPhule
She canna take mooch more of it captain!
The wee bairns were never designed to take that kinna load!
EconWatcher
I keep thinking we’re probably lucky that Kerry lost in ’04. The disasters that we now confront were already coming down the pike, and I doubt they could have been stopped (although undoubtedly W made them even worse in his second stint). But the failure of the Iraq and Afghan wars and the economy would have been blamed on the stuffshirt from Mass. and his party. He couldn’t even defend his stellar military record, for goodness sake. This wingnut crew would have eaten him for lunch and would now be calling the shots as we confront our worst crises in half a century. I don’t know if we’re going to get out of this mess, but we’ve got at least a fighting chance with Obama.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
I dunno. Is it safe to say that we can stop pretending that the crazy, stupid people are just a couple of blogarticles or Sunday talk shows away from taking over the country again?
geg6
It all makes perfect sense.
To the residents of the psych ward, that is.
TenguPhule
No, because almost half of the voting public thought Sarah Palin should be on heartattack from the big red button that says “Do not push”.
Bill E Pilgrim
@DougJ:
He did?
About GM and Obama?
Blue Raven
@Delia:
I’m coming to the conclusion they’re making tea from salvia divinorum.
Face
I dont get this. I thought Red-Blooded Americans(TM) bawt nothing but Red-Blooded American Trucks(TM), but not from Ford (b/c they supported gays and gay advertising, or something). Now Chrysler is 86’d, Pontiac kaput, and Hummer now the possession of those slanty-eyed mongrols.
So where in the fuck does the Red-Blooded American(TM) buy a fucking truck?
cleek
“They don’t want to patronize Obama.”
it’s not Obama’s money, you shithead; it’s our money. and if GM really fails to recover, we lose it all. if they do recover, there’s a chance we’ll get some of that money back.
GOP: Gagging On Partisanship
Indylib
@Mike S:
If they are the frakkin’ majority then how the hell did Obama get elected ? Did thousands of them sit home and pout because McCain wasn’t wingnutty enough? Idjits!
Bill E Pilgrim
@EconWatcher:
If you look at Paul Krugman’s article today he gives another set of reasons why that might be true.
TenguPhule
Yes, the doublegood plus liberal media was always in the pocket of
EastAsiaObama.alhutch
I love the fact they don’t seem to realize this type of boycott will decimate largely republican owned (per Nate Silver) Chrysler & GM dealerships (especially in rural areas) that desperately need these manufacturers to come back strong (and soon).
Without Rove faxing out the talking points each day, it really is “Lord of the Flies” on the R side. Funny stuff.
TenguPhule
From Japan.
Viva Toyota!
NonyNony
Remember just last week all those statistics being bandied about about how most car dealerships were owned by Republicans?
I wonder how the guys who own GM dealerships feel about Limbaugh and the other mouthbreathers telling people to boycott their dealerships. I wonder, in fact, if they advertise on local radio stations that carry Limbaugh (and the other mouthbreathers – Hugh Hewitt was pushing this meme recently too). Or on local radio stations that are owned by the same people who own the local talk radio station (after all, media consolidation means that fewer people own more of the dial right now).
Wouldn’t it be interesting to forward them some MP3s of Rush’s little “suggestion” here along with a note that the local AM radio station they advertise with is running a guy who thinks they should be boycotted? Just as a thought experiment, I wonder if an organized propaganda campaign targeted at GM and Chrysler dealership owners could actually get Rush to apologize to someone. (Probably not, but it might be worth it anyway).
Is that anything like “peak wingnut”, or is it possible that they could keep jumping the shark? Because I doubt we’ve seen the bottom of this yet…
PaminBB
So they are all buying Fords now? According to Open Secrets, Ford has been contributing to Democrats.
Maybe public transportation will look more attractive? Or maybe they’ll just Go Galt finally.
PeakVT
Limbaugh reassures any GM workers who might be listening that the boycotters aren’t angry at them. “They don’t want to patronize Obama. They don’t want to do anything to make Obama’s policies work!” he explains.
Midwest Republicans are going to be beaten bloody with this.
Comrade Dread
It should be noted that Barack Obama’s stated policy on this matter is to restructure GM, bring it back to profitability and resell it to the private sector recuperating as much public money as possible as soon as possible.
Now, one can oppose the government bailing out failing industries to begin with (a position I lean towards), but the deed is done.
Therefore opposing his policy now means that you wish GM to remain unprofitable (thereby sucking up tax dollars or having the government shut it down permanently and losing any chance at recuperating tax dollars) or that you would like a profitable GM to remain in government hands indefinitely.
So you’re either advocating as slow bleeding of tax dollars, a massive bleeding of tax dollars, or continued government involvement in the auto industry. All of which should be verboten to conservatives as I used to know them.
Though I know the modern conservative retort would probably be to say I talk like a f**
joe from Lowell
See, fellas, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and you’re the eggs – but it’s nothing personal!
I guess that alienating all of the Latino and Asian voters wasn’t enough. They need the entire industrial midwest to hate them, too. GM? Are you freaking kidding me?
The next Rush Limbaugh is going to make his name by accusing the actual Rush Limbaugh of being a Democrat mole.
TenguPhule
Pretty soon they will redefine white people as those descended solely from the original colonies.
Zifnab25
Buy Japanese, Support America!
*sigh*. What is the end game here? I mean really. Do they have some overarching plan? Or do they really think if America fails under Obama like it did under Bush, the whole country will slap its forehead and announce “we should have been more conservative!”. Have they considered the Krugman philosophy might gain a bit more traction maybe? I mean, when have you heard of a country getting taken over by communists because it was just too damn economically sucessful?
** Atanarjuat **
[facepalm]
And the wingnut purification strategy of repelling moderates continues…
At this rate, the GOP won’t stand a chance of regaining control by 2010 — or 2012, for that matter.
I’m really beginning to see that the ultimate Republican White Hope is for our nation to fail so that voters will turn away from Democrats, who are now the status quo. How fucking pathetic.
-A
joe from Lowell
Republicans are the Iraqi Sunnis of American politics.
They monopolized power for years, and listened to their leadership put out massive amounts of propaganda telling them that they are much more numerous than they really are, and that they are by definition the most authentic expression of their nation’s culture.
Except they’re not, and it’s going to take a few years of getting their asses kicked for them to realize it.
Dork
@PeakVT: Shorter Rush: Trust me, those blue collar workers who probably trend Red will soooooooooo rather lose their job, then their house and car and standard of living, then see a Democrat succeed.
Wow, this thinking is truly insane. Only a fat fuck making $100+ mill a year could dream up this fantasy.
SpotWeld
GM, (like all the US auto manufactures) just dropped or spun off a bunch of dealerships.
So that means the reamaining dealerships are really hoping to a avoid a backlash since they are the ones most likely to stick out thier necks buying up the closed dealership’s inventory (since the alternative is to sell the new cars as used)
So your dealership doesn’t close, you decide to invest in the company by buying up some discounted stock and try to keep your head above water in a really iffy market.
What does the right-wing do. Undercut your sales for a very debatble poltical point.
America First indeed.
(BTW, if your dealership didn’t close, it’s because you’re a dirty Democrat sympathsizer)
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@TenguPhule:
Get a clue. They lost by almost ten million votes, to a black guy with a muslim-sounding name.
We don’t have to check the wind direction every time they fart.
AhabTRuler
Field Marshal Haig, what a surprising pleasure to meet you!
SGEW
Double Hirst reference, ftw!
I showed this post to my friend who knows very much about art and very little about crazy right wing politics.
She didn’t get it.
Jager
When Rove took over the republican party, all the intelligent, level headed conservatives fled to the hills.
Whats left are morons with an r behind their names. (see the entire California republican delegation if you need examples!) If you ever get the chance read Rove’s candidate handbook (I have a copy of the 2004 edition) any deviation from the “book” and you were in exile, forever. What’s left of the party is the wingnut fringe, no original thoughts, no ideas, no nothing!
SpotWeld
I have to add, GM is dead.
It was a barely animated corpse since at least 5 years ago.
The economic downturn, the credit crisis. They didn’t kill GM, they only blew away the smoke and mirrors that was giving it the sembalance of life.
So all the goverment ownership has down was take the emgerncy position of managing GM into a slow and less distruptive contraction into a smaller entitiy (which may or may not be still called GM when this is all over). The alternative was a market-damaging collapse followed by massive layoffs (without cushioning retirement packages) and a further crash in the overall American (and possibly global) economy.
This is like Bush’s approach to Katrina. “All the folks we care about will get out okay, so we don’t need to do anything.”
Cheryl from Maryland
Oh yeah, loved the Damien Hirst reference. Does that mean the wingnuts are jumping into formaldehyde? Which would explain a lot!
Alan
As a former longtime fan of Rush’s I’m surprised he’d advocate a boycott. He used to look down boycotts. More surprising, he feels the need to boycott. Does he no longer believe government influence will automatically run the company into the ground? Isn’t that one of the core principles of conservatism?
Rush must feel desperate.
TenguPhule
And 30% of voters are mush minded idiots who can change their minds like their undies.
Permanent GOP majority ring any hubris bells?
Michael
Cue me up the Lee Greenwood…..
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@Alan:
Rush is preaching to a shrinking, more and more shrill and incoherent choir.
The winguts’ moment is over.
At this point, every move they make just works them a little deeper into the quicksand they made for themselves.
Jeezum Crow
Only the lower 5. Them sissy pinkos north of Maryland don’t count.
EconWatcher
I’m with TenguPhule, if I understand his or her point correctly. They may be nuts, but that doesn’t mean they can’t win again, even soon, if Obama can’t revive the economy. Knock on wood every time you suggest that wingnuts are committing political suicide. Crazy and incompetent does not disqualify you for highest office in this country.
TenguPhule
Only as long as we keep throwing anvils to them out at sea.
Remember, the monster always comes back at the end of the flick unless you make sure.
Blue Raven
@TenguPhule:
Limbaugh’s hometown is Cape Girardeau, MO. The irony…
Litlebritdifrnt
@Alan:
Alan excellent point, that is Rush’s mantra “the government fails whenever it tries to run anything” so why the need for a boycott at all? Never mind, silly question, I am trying to make sense out of a blithering idiot. BTW he was almost foaming at the mouth today, I’m surprised he didn’t have a coronary on the air.
TenguPhule
Exactly.
Individuals are smart. People are stupid.
kay
They can’t use the credit system. either, with this logic, because Obama bailed that out, too. Why doesn’t that count?
I’m sure I rely on commercial paper, in some attenuated, hard-to-understand way. What do we boycott there?
Do they hate Ben Bernanke? He said he printed and passed out a trillion dollars to prop up credit markets. That’s okey-dokey with the free marketeers?
I can’t keep up with who they hate. I’ve decided I like and trust Bernanke. Perhaps that’s naive. I’ll ask a Limbaugh listener for the straight scoop.
NonyNony
@Alan:
How long did you listen to Rush?
By the time I stopped listening to him in disgust in the early 90s it was apparent that he didn’t really believe in much of anything outside of Rush Limbaugh. If he looked down on boycotts it’s because he got paid good money to look down on boycotts – his corporate sponsors in general would not want to encourage such thoughts in the plebes.
Now, of course, he at least assumes that his corporate sponsors would want GM to fail utterly. After all, if somehow GM manages to turn around, get out of bankruptcy and become a successful corporation again, that would mean that sometimes government really was the solution to a problem, and that would probably be bad for business in some way. So now BOYCOTT!
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@TenguPhule:
Ger serious man. Are you not able to see that the political landscape has shifted?
Are you seriously going to sit here and argue that what we should be worried about today is that these marginalized idiots with their shrinking party and regional electoral influence and their total lack of direction and leadership, dearth of ideas, and absurd posturings are poised to strike and take over again?
WTF? Too many coconuts have dropped on your noggin.
Litlebritdifrnt
Also I’m guessing that Rush will stop playing all those Chrysler ads he has made and give all the money back right?
AhabTRuler
w00t! Washington Post.com just asked me to Fan them on Facebook! I’m so lucky!
flounder
Isn’t the word “verboten” verboten because it sounds French or elitist or Nazi Democratic Socialist?
TenguPhule
Always in motion, the future is.
The GOP is currently dying. The trick is to make sure it stays that way.
Or as I understand the old fogies used to say, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”
Comrade Dread
Permanent Democratic Majority!
Morbo
Ronald Reagan was the last conservative president. Exploded the deficit? No, no, no, can’t hear you! Bush? There is no one in this house by that name; don’t make such crude references to the hair on people’s nether-regions, you uncivil liberals.
By all means though, buy Fords. If nothing else, it might be good for my poor Lions.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Supreme Court stalls Chrysler-Fiat deal
EconWatcher
ThymeZoneThePlumber, economic fear and desperation pushed this country to the left. If it continues, it can push us to the right. And one really good talker rising from the ranks can make all the difference in an instant, from a political party in the tank to a party in power.
After the ’92 elections, people talked about the Republican party being dead. I remember like it was yesterday. Like I said, knock on wood, my friend.
Bill E Pilgrim
@flounder:
“Verboten” sounds French? Talk about reversing history, oy.
Got it right with the second try. Plus I know you’re kidding but yeesh.
NonyNony
@ThymeZoneThePlumber:
I’m actually VERY worried about that. Because if things don’t turn around, people will start to look for an alternative. And in our political landscape, the alternative will be to go with the Know-Nothings for a few years.
There is a possibility that the Democrats can screw this up. And something I’ve learned watching politics for my adult life is that if it is possible for the Democrats to screw something up, there’s a very good chance that they will.
Rick Taylor
Conservatism jumped the shark when McCain selected Palin to be his Vice President, and conservatives at all levels insisted she was perfectly qualified, as evidenced by Alaska’s proximity to Russia.
binzinerator
@ThymeZoneThePlumber:
It is safe to say we should have stopped by April, 2003. By then the evidence was there for everyone outside the government that there were no WMDs and that the crazy stupid people had already taken over.
Bushism really was a coup. What was everyone expecting? Broadcasts from jungle fatigue-clad colonels or tanks circling the Capitol? Arrests of congressmen? Executions of reluctant generals? That someone would be literally carrying a cross and literally wrapped in a flag?
They did not recognize it when it came but it was a coup nevertheless.
Michael
Yeah, Dick. I am too. You can explain why you were buying Chrysler bonds at 43 cents on the dollar last July, you stupid fuck.
Hope your fiduciary E&O coverage is up to date.
binzinerator
@cleek:
GOP: Gagging on Teabagging
The Moar You Know
Between this and the presentation given by our 401k management at work today, I can say something I didn’t think I’d be able to say for another few decades:
I don’t understand what’s going on anymore.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
All we have to do right now is stand back. There’s nothing we can do that is more effective than what they are doing.
The best spoofs on our list can’t write stuff any crazier than they are actually saying at this point.
David Hunt
It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to believe he’s exactly that. It’s not really in Rush’s interest for the Republicans to be in power. Now that he’s the voice of an entirely minority party, he doesn’t have to provide cover for anyone’s policies. He’s free to sit back and do nothing except attack Democrats, which is what he’s best at, and I suspect that it’s just about the only thing that makes him happy. At least happy on a professional level. There’s a joke in there about his personal habits, but I’m not touching it.
gnomedad
Cue up “The first man makes a move, the n***** gets it!”
Also, at the risk of going Godwin, Rush is in “burning down the Reichstag” territory here. Screw the country as long as he can profit from the chaos.
LD50
And your shit’s all retarded.
steve s
“There’s that fag talk we talked about.”
Anton Sirius
@** Atanarjuat **:
At this rate? The GOP is already dead. Kaput. An ex-viable party. They’ve joined the choir invisible. They’re pining for the Fords.
Which, frankly, makes their Reagan worship more explicable. It only makes sense that a zombie party would want a zombie leader.
Ash Can
Good fucking grief, who the hell listens to this horse’s ass anymore? Who hasn’t he alienated at this point?
No wonder Clear Channel’s financials are going to hell in a handbasket.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@binzinerator:
I’m not very impressed with the political analysis here.
Mostly it amounts to, hey, the stupids won before!
That was then, this is now. That’s the first thing. Things have changed, voter turnout is up, and the GOP has worn out its welcome with moderates. The country has been taught what happens when you let people who hate government take over the government.
The second thing is, all dismissal of this notion rest on an underlying worldview that is just totally anti-democratic. It depends on thinking that people are just stupid and can’t ever be counted on to vote intelligently. I just simply don’t believe that. For a variety of reasons.
Third and last, the GOP never really rode a big wave of party identification, they rode a wave of independent dissatisfaction. That wave is still there, but the dissatisfaction has pointed its arrow toward the right and away from the left. It’s the right that the middle doesn’t trust right now, and every day that goes by widens that gap.
I am not seeing any near term comeback for the potatoheads. At all. And even if I were worried about one, I would rely on what got us here, where we are today: Good candidates, good ideas, good organization. We have them beat in those departments. That’s not going away any time soon.
Ash Can
@Anton Sirius:
And on your subject of stiffs, that done killed me dead. Love it.
TenguPhule
Richard Nixon.
And then this asshat Reagan came along.
And that’s why the pine for his undead corpse.
History always repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second as farce.
Tim P.
At times like this, it makes me smile a grimly cynical smile to think of John Cole’s original Peak Wingnut post.
TenguPhule
People voted for George Bush twice.
I rest my case.
TenguPhule
Luck is not a viable long term plan.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@TenguPhule:
Okay you win, America is doomed.
What else you got? I mean, that is your argument, right?
So what are we doing here, just biding our time before the crazy people win again?
I don’t think America is doomed, I think it is on an upward path. I think that democracy works. I think the American experiment is still the best thing out there.
And I think you are an albatross around its neck, frankly.
Steeplejack
Modern conservatism, at least as practiced by the Republicans, is the embalmed shark.
TenguPhule
And the only way to keep it that way is to not rest on past laurels and keep beating the opposition to death with a hammer.
Ash Can
Sadly, TenguPhule is right. People don’t remember the lessons they learn, and over the long run backsliding happens. It’s up to us to keep reminding those with shorter memories just what their own best interest is.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@TenguPhule:
I think that the way to keep it that way is to keep working our butts off to support good candidates, raise money, organize at the grass roots, and foster good ideas based on sound judgment and good information. In short, what got us here from where we were in 2004.
While we do that over here on the mainland of reality, you can swing your hammer and sing hawaiian war songs over there on your island.
:)
TenguPhule
No, that’s the strawman in your head talking to you.
I’m saying, don’t belittle the enemy’s capability to recover and counterattack. It’s the exact same attitude Rove and company had to the Democrats and it came around to bite them in the ass.
They’re in disarray right now. And that’s the time to finish them off, not give them a chance to regroup and possibly find a charismatic bullshitter who can convince enough people that the shit is actually gold again.
TenguPhule
Unfortunately this part is the one that’s so hard to do and most vulnerable to Republican/Corporate sabotage.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
In other words, to campaign for better policies and candidates. Unless you think there is another way to “keep reminding” people what the right direction is.
Not to go around like chicken little every time some Republican jackass brays at the moon and frightens the barnyard again.
gbear
@ThymeZoneThePlumber:
I agree with TenguPhule@49. We have to keep tossing anvils out to them. there is no time for smugness or complacency on our part.
Although I’ll also say that in a sane world, Rush would already have been banished from the planet for suggesting a boycott of GM. His ratings should have dropped 80% the moment it left his mouth.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
Courage, man. Your opposition is Rush Limbaugh and Michael Steele and Senator Grassley.
It’s not like we are the 2008 Detroit Lions going up against the late ’70s Steelers here.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
I guess my phrase “working our butts off” sounds a lot like “smugness and complacency?” I know I have made that mistake myself, thinking the former was really the latter. They sound so much alike.
My bad. Really, I am just not making myself clear at all.
I should have said “smashed them all like maggots, and killed their pets” or some such unambiguous TenguPhulean expression.
You guys sound like Republicans when they talk about terrorists. I am not afraid of terrorists, and I am definitely not afraid of Republicans.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
His ratings are relative. He preaches over and over to the same choir that has been addicted to him since 1992.
He ranted his way right through an election that his side lost by a landslide. He’s yesterday, not tomorrow.
slippytoad
Limbaugh and his asshole movement can gag on my fat one. He and anyone who listens to him ought to be brutally ashamed that they want America to fail. What a bunch of fucking children.
DougJ
We can also publicize their craziness. They’ve been this crazy for quite a while, but they mostly got away with it. Credit the Daily Show, Olbermann, blogs, and others I’m forgetting for making it harder and harder for them to say crazy things without consequences.
TenguPhule
No, your phrase, “All we have to do right now is stand back. There’s nothing we can do that is more effective than what they are doing.” does.
steve s
People who make these really testosterone-stuffed comments about how we have to kick the GOP in the face and then shoot them and chainsaw them and all these other comments like this should remember, Obama didn’t win like that. He won while being better, smarter, calmer, organized. Not while being more violent and aggro.
Calouste
So what are they going to call the new, smaller General Motors?
Colonel Motors?
Da Bomb
The best way to describe the Republican Party…
The Republican Party is no more
The Republican Party is expired
The Republican Party has ceased to be
The Republican Party has expired
I think it was John Cleese who said it best, but of course he was describing a parrot.
TenguPhule
See metaphor, definition of.
Brachiator
@Bill E Pilgrim:
For a Nobel winner, Krugman’s column is strangely discombobulated. First of all, he speculates on the weird idea that it might have been OK Fine that Gore lost (not Kerry), but then he goes on to view everything through the very narrow prism of the economics crisis.
Dubya was a disaster on all fronts, and Gore was the superior candidate (although I wonder if he really had the fire in the belly to want to be president).
He also focuses on PM Gordon Brown’s role in trying to stabilze British banks, which is OK, but he talks about the Bank of England, but strangely omits the UK’s actions in shoring up the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was the big move and the more appropriate analog to the US role in offering various bank bailouts.
But it’s just weird that Krugman ignores the rage of the British public at members of parliament who have been abusing their expense allowances while the rest of the nation sputters, or the political in-fighting that has seen some of Gordon’s allies resign and seek to topple him.
The UK Daily Mail offers the most fun read of Brown’s problems (Charles Clarke tells Brown: ‘It’s time to go’)
As near as I can figure, Krugman is once again indirectly bleating that Obama hasn’t gone far enough in dealing with the financial markets, but it’s a damn long way around to make this point.
anonevent
@Calouste: Since the general in this case was used to mean broad and encompassing, Limited Motors would be more appropriate.
Fulcanelli
@ThymeZoneThePlumber:
This is the key to success. If you’re dumb you suffer.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t keep a sharp eye on him, but Limbaugh is going for broke, throwing everything but pedophilia and alien abduction accusations at Obama because he knows damn well how high the stakes are. For himself.
He doesn’t give a flying fuck if he’s wrong because he doesn’t have to. Either way he has more money that he’ll ever need. He’ll never apologize and dittoheads will lap it up.
If Obama’s plans succeed his ratings will stay solid as will his paycheck as the AM talk voice of the opposition and if Obama’s plans fail he gets to bellow “I told you so” at the top of his lungs. So what?
His Achille’s Heel is irrelevance. When GOP shitheels stop rearing up on their hind legs and kowtowing and apologizing he will be on his way to irrelevant. And it’s already started and will continue.
When Democratic candidates question the patriotism and begin clubbing GOP candidates like baby seals in the spring of 2010 with Limbaugh quotes and how they apologized and kissed the ring of a frickin’ drug-addled talk show host that goes on sex-vacations in the Caribbean because he can’t stay married he will be irrelevant.
We shouldn’t be asleep at the switch, but can we knock off the hyperventilating? Sound off like you’ve got a pair about our guy for a change, instead of this drug-addled loser.
snds4x4
Ah, this reminds me of the good old days of the 60’s. Everything turned topsy turvey, good was bad, black was white.
I would love to have someone more intelligent than I do an essay comparing the current political climate changes to the political climate changes of the 60’s.
Mike G
Flush (and Hannity) had payola endorsement deals with GM. I’m guessing this was terminated from the way he’s talking now.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/rush-limbaugh-and-sean-hannity-are-gms-bitch/
DonkeyKong
Conservatism has become a giant multi level Kruger and Dunning Effect.
The phenomenon was demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, then both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999.[1][2]
Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” (as Charles Darwin put it).[3] They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,
Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill. Not an option in this case.
The authors draw an analogy with anosognosia – a condition in which a person who suffers a physical disability due to brain injury seems unaware of or denies the existence of the disability. This may include unawareness of quite dramatic impairments, such as blindness or paralysis.
asiangrrlMN
I agree with everyone, so can we all shut the fuck up now? I kid, I kid.
I don’t give a damn what Rush Limbaugh says except for the fact that a certain amount of the population does and the fact that the traditional media does. I don’t hyperventilate over him, but I am disgusted that he still gets a free pass to say whatever the shit he wants.
I am not confident that people are smart enough to vote for their best interests. I am not confident that the Republican Party is dead, nor that it should be. I want an intelligent oppositional party because I don’t think a one-party system is the way to go.
I never thought W. would get elected after taking the presidency the first time around. I am not stupid enough to think that a Tim Pawlenty could not be elected if he positions himself correctly (even though he is NOT a moderate except in demeanor). If the Republicans were to get a smart, well-spoken, temperate guy (and, it would probably be a guy) who sounded reasonable and thoughtful, they could take back the presidency and the Congress.
In addition, we have enough Blue Dawgs who are quite willing to help fuck up the overarching Democratic vision, as it were. In other words, Democratic success is not a guarantee, even if we work our asses off to get our candidates elected. We just need to be vigilant and keep an eye on the current cultural climate and do our damnedest not to let the talking heads muddle our message.
CalD
I think I’ll start referring to Rush Limbaugh as “Moose.” No particular reason. I just like the sound of it.
Moose Limbaugh…
Just kinda rolls off the tongue.
binzinerator
@ThymeZoneThePlumber:
I’ll agree with most of the above. I amy disagree about what was taught, or how well.
My point was people were fooled in 2004. And I’d argue that they let the stoopid overrule their better judgement in 2000 too — I know, Gore actually won but it really shouldn’t have been that close.
I am not saying people in this country are stupid. I’m pointing out most of the people indeed can be — and were — suckered some of the time. That is not an un-democratic worldview. It’s one that comes from 1) Lincoln’s own adage and 2) simple observation of the past 8 years.
Aw bullshit. They rode of wave of complacency and then a wave of FUD. Both of which needed people unwilling or unable to critically think in order for them to succeed.
The whole Rovian 50+1 strategy hinges on an extension to Lincoln’s observation: They can win if they can fool enough of the people enough of the time. That worldview, not mine, is the un-democratic one.
I will note that if there wasn’t enough stoopid the goopers made every effort to make it harder to discern the stupid from the truth. In effect as a conscious strategy they made it harder to be non-stupid. And they counted on complacency as an ally here. They already knew how useful that could be.
No near term, no. But the media never ceased catapulting the stupid. I don’t expect it to ever stop but what I think is hasn’t changed much is how pervasive it is, how mainstream it is. And it’s that way because obviously enough people accept it or are complacent about the truthiness of the ‘news’ they get. And that’s not good.
The whole gooper strategy of undermining Obama’s initiatives, the goal of wanting him (and naturally the country) to fail does not seem to me to be an automatically losing strategy. If Obama fails he will face, as he said, a good chance of having one-term presidency. And the goopers will pitch themselves as having something better. And at that point it’s going to be harder to winnow the truth from the lies for most people. Who’s the better choice?
Will enough people actually figure it out? I dunno. The goopers have proved all they need is 50 + 1 and they have an incredible FUD machine it make it very difficult to discern any truth upon which to base even intelligent decisions. (Undercut democracy by undercutting the reliability of the information people needed to base their decisions on. How’s that for an un-democratic worldview?)
Although people seem to have figured out what happens when you let people who hate government take over the government I know they still don’t believe what happened was a coup. So until they realize that’s what one looks like (that’s how one looks in this country), I’d say the likelihood of a repeat hasn’t diminished.
People are a lot easier to con when they want to believe in the con. People are susceptible to another con when they refuse to believe they’ve been conned — or just how much they’ve been conned out of.
It was obvious the whole WMD threat was bogus within a week of invading Iraq. Certainly within a month. And what did that mean? Everything. Everything hinged on this. Everything that Bushism was and is hinged on not following this realization to the ends. On not recognizing the import of it.
People still don’t want to believe it — they still are in denial about how badly they were conned and how like complete suckers they joined in on it. They still won’t believe how badly they got fucked when they eagerly agreed to exchange their privacy, their system of justice, even their principles against torture for worthless promises of security.
You doubt this? Then why are we even having a debate about torture today? Why on earth is such a thing even debatable? It wasn’t before Bushism.
And just to be clear, 9-11 did not change this. Bushism changed this. Or rather, acceptance of Bushism by enough people changed everything. Now, we have a debate on torture. And when enough say “NO!” then we get a debate whether it works or not. Which is to say, whether that justifies torturing anyone.
Beg your pardon TZ but only stupid people think the merits and the legality of torture is a topic for debate. It ought to be like debating genocide. At best it’s stupid people who want it. How many Americans would that be?
I don’t believe the American people are inherently stupid. (They were fucking stupid, just enough of them, for far too long. Can’t even argue that.) But while that has seemed to change they are at best still in a state of denial. (And as the torture ‘debate’ shows, some are still fucking stupid.)
I think this means the American people are still vulnerable.
Enough of the American people did not recognize what Bushism really was when it came strutting with buzzwords Jesus and the Flag and because they are still vulnerable to the con it may be that just enough will not recognize it when it comes again.
And that kind of radical extremism that is Bushism will come again. That is a certainty. Because it already worked once. 50 + 1 works. It’s no longer theory.
sloan
Um, yeah.
I work with a winger who believes (and I am not making this up) that those little spiral florescent light bulbs are part of a plot to destroy the US economy with communism. Because of Al Gore or something – I really don’t understand it. He constantly accuses me of “buying into the propaganda” and I honestly have no clue what he’s talking about.
He also believes buying Cool Ranch Doritos will destroy traditional marriage because the parent company, Pepsico, is secretly working to advance the GAY AGENDA. For real.
I am also treated to frequent sermons on Muslim birthrates here and abroad. It seems the ISLAMOFASCISTS are about to establish a caliphate in Southern California. Who knew?
Of course he hates all unions and government, but the best part is he has a union job with the city. He loves the benefits and wages, and since his employer has flex days he’s able to work for me on the side. He sees no connection whatsoever between his high standard of living and the fact that he is a UNION GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE.
I have no idea how to communicate with someone like this. His entire reality is based on talk radio and chain e-mails. His own real world experiences have no bearing on his world view. It’s just bizarre.
gbear
@Calouste:
That’s going to be their division for ethanol-powered vehicles.
gbear
No one is going to hit Obama with a full force firehose (outside of their dreams).
gbear
@sloan:
Your co-worker picked up that piece of nonsense from Michelle Bachman and her “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act.” I SO wish I was joking.
Wile E. Quixote
@ThymeZoneThePlumber
And those who do not learn from history get fucked in the ass like a bitch. Get off of your ass and go to your library or to Amazon.com and get your hands on Rick Perlstein’s excellent Before the Storm and Nixonland. Go read them and then go look at the Wikipedia entries for the 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976 Presidential elections and the 1964, 1966, 1968, 1972 and 1976 Congressional elections.
In 1964 Lyndon Johnson won the presidency with one of the most lopsided margins in history, 61 percent to Barry Goldwater’s 38 percent. He won 486 electoral votes to Goldwater’s 52. The Republicans also lost 36 seats in the House of Representatives and two seats in the Senate to Democratic candidates.
So everyone figured that the Republicans were down and out if not actually dead. Nixon had flamed out in after his loss to Pat Brown in California’s 1962 gubernatorial race, decrying media bias and declaring, piteously, that “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more”. The chattering classes and villagers of the time told everyone that it was over, that history could close the book on the Republicans. The conventional wisdom was that if the Republicans ever nominated a conservative again they’d lose and that the Republicans had been relegated to the status of a permanent minority party.
So how did that work out? Well in 1966 the Democrats lost 48 seats in the House and the Republicans gained 47 (one of the seats belonged to the notoriously corrupt Adam Clayton Powell, Jr, who the House refused to seat). In 1966 the Democrats also lost three seats in the Senate, and a former actor and General Electric pitchman named Ronald Reagan, who had wowed conservatives with his “Time for Choosing” speech at the 1964 Republican Convention, was elected governor of California, defeating the formerly popular Pat Brown who had caused Richard Nixon such anguish in 1962. Not a bad showing for a party which only two years before had largely been written off.
In 1968 the Democrats lost five more seats in the House and another five in the Senate to the Permanent Minority Party. And Richard M. Nixon, who had lost the 1960 Presidential election and the 1962 California gubernatorial election (and whined about it) became the 37th President of the United States. And no, Nixon wasn’t helped by the third-party, American Independence Party candidacy of George Wallace and General Curtis LeMay (Party slogan: “We hate negros and love the Bomb. Let’s blow shit up!”).
Even if the states that had gone for Wallace had all gone for Hubert Humphrey and the Democratic Party (A counterfactual whose assertion is almost as ridiculous as “what if Poland had not only successfully resisted the Nazis and Soviets in 1939 but then went on to conquer both Germany and the Soviet Union by 1940 and had then fielded a baseball team that won the 1941 World Series”), Nixon still would have had a majority of electoral votes, 301 to 237. Although if this had happened the popular vote total would have been 10 million votes in Humphrey’s favor, and wouldn’t that have been pretty?
Fast forward four years to 1972. Richard M. Nixon, the candidate from the party that had been relegated to permanent minority status back in 1964 won re-election against Democrat George McGovern, 520 electoral votes to 18 (17 for McGovern and one cast by a faithless elector for Libertarian candidate John Hospers). In the popular vote Nixon’s margin was 60.7 percent to McGovern’s 37.5 percent and almost 18 million more people voted for Nixon than for McGovern.
Nixon’s defeat of McGovern in 1972 was by a greater margin in the Electoral College and with a larger popular vote total (Which admittedly was partially due to the adoption of the 26th Amendment in 1971, which lowered the voting age to 18 and increased the number of eligible voters.) than Johnson’s defeat of Goldwater only eight years earlier in 1964. Remember, 1964, the year when the Republicans had been relegated to that “permanent minority party” status. Not only did Nixon thoroughly kick McGovern’s ass but he did so despite the fact that he had:
Decided that the best way to deal with the incredibly unpopular Vietnam clusterfuck was to jack up the bombing and expand the clusterfuckery to Cambodia and Laos.
Decided that the best way to deal with the economic clusterfuck that the Vietnam clusterfuck was causing was to take the United States off of the gold standard and impose wage and price controls.
Threw the conservative wing of the Republican Party under the bus by signing the SALT I and ABM treaties and working towards a policy of détente with the Soviet Union.
After throwing Republican conservatives under the bus by signing SALT I and the ABM treaty dragged them out from under the bus and fucked them savagely in every orifice they had, and a few more that he created on the spot, by visiting Red China and reversing over 20 years of American foreign policy. After which he threw them back under the bus and drove back and forth over them a few dozen times just for good measure by endorsing the Equal Rights Amendment and signing Title IX.
Now, Democrats like to whine and claim that Nixon’s defeat of McGovern was because of Watergate, but Jesus, go read Nixonland, even if Dick Nixon hadn’t been a paranoid, criminal old bastard who ordered the Watergate burglaries and the other illegal actions that marked his administration he still would have beaten McGovern like a prison bitch. The Democrats were stunningly incompetent in 1972, it was as if they’d not only learned nothing from their debacle in 1968 but had then gone on to say “Hey, remember the strategy that the Republicans used in 1964 when Goldwater was running? I’ll bet that we could make that work.”
August 8th, 1974. I was eight years old and I can still remember the day because of the way the adults around me were talking about it. After two years of scandal and investigation Richard M. Nixon, the 37th President of the United States announced his resignation.
Nixon’s speech was delivered at 6PM, Pacific. History shows that the speech lasted less than 30 minutes. The import was amazing, people were driven out of their houses and away from their TVs and were walking around dazed in my neighborhood in San Jose asking each other if they had heard the news, asking each other if they had really seen what they had just seen, if the President of the United States had really resigned, asking each other what it meant.
Nixon was succeeded by his Vice President, Gerald R. Ford, who had been appointed to the office in 1973 after Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s first VP, left office over charges of corruption. During Nixon’s last two years in office his approval rating had dipped as low as 23 percent as Vietnam dragged on and the scandals mounted.
Ford, who had served as House Minority Leader from 1965 to 1973 came into office and immediately faced declining approval ratings. Things only got worse a month later, in September of 1974, when he issued a full and unconditional pardon for Richard Nixon for any and all crimes he committed against the United States while president.
Ford’s pardon of Nixon was almost universally condemned and was one of the major reasons why the Republican party lost 49 seats in the the House of Representatives that year, giving the Democrats a 290 vote majority, enough to override a Presidential veto or submit a Constitutional amendment. The Republicans also lost four seats in the Senate, giving the Democrats, once they revised the Senate rules regarding cloture in 1975, a filibuster proof 61 vote majority. It is however interesting to note that Barry M. Goldwater, the candidate who in 1964 was regarded as having destroyed the Republican party and relegating the party’s status to that of permanent minority, handily won re-election in his home state of Arizona with 58 percent of the vote, the largest margin of any of his senatorial campaigns.
In addition to the controversy over the pardon there were other issues as well, the economy was in the toilet, and America’s foreign policy was a mess and the Vietnam war was finally winding down. America was an incredibly bitter, disillusioned and divided place; a far cry from the way things had been ten years earlier when LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, defeated Barry Goldwater and then pusheed the Voting Rights Act through Congress and declared the Great Society.
In 1975 Saigon finally fell to the North Vietnamese communists. Newspapers all over America showed the picture of people scrambling to board a helicopter on the roof of the US Embassy. The pardon of Nixon, the fall of Vietnam, the problems with the US economy, the Mayagüez incident, the continuing problems of America’s cities including the near bankruptcy of New York City all combined to hurt Ford as did reputation for stupidity and clumsiness that a young comedian named Chevy Chase savagely and hilariously parodied on a new late night comedy show called Saturday Night Live.
Ford ran for President in 1976 but faced criticism from the right-wing of the Republican party who were upset about the loss of Vietnam, signing of the Helsinki Accords, negotiation of the Panama Canal Treaty and his support for abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment. He was challenged for the nomination by Ronald Reagan, who had ended his second term as governor of California in 1974 and who had been hugely popular with conservative Republicans since his speech at the 1964 Republican Convention. Reagan finally withdrew at the Republican National Convention in 1976 after being narrowly defeated by Ford in the convention’s first ballot.
Ford was opposed by a largely unknown former governor of Georgia, a former peanut farmer and US Navy officer named James Earl Carter. After the Democratic National Convention that year Carter led Ford by 33 percent in the polls, but then the two candidates started a contest to see who could do a better job at shooting himself in the foot. Carter angered conservatives by proposing a blanket pardon for Vietnam era draft dodgers and then made everyone say “WTF? TMI!” by admitting to Playboy that he had “lusted in his heart” after other women.
Not to be outdone Ford went on TV during the second presidential debate and asserted that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. After about a week of “WTF?” on the part of pretty much everyone the Ford campaign issued a weasel worded “clarification” of what Ford had “really” meant but by then the damage was done. Ford also sent out well known charm school laureate, Kansas senator and Republican VP candidate Bob Dole to debate Walter Mondale. Using the charm he was well noted for Dole asserted that Democratic presidents were responsible for all of the wars in the 20th Century and said that military unpreparedness on the part of Democratic presidents had cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
So November of 1976 rolls around. In one corner you have Jerry Ford, widely perceived as a bumbler, disliked by the conservative wing of his party, suffering from his pardon of Richard Nixon, the economy a perception of lackluster leadership and the taint of Richard Nixon. In the other corner you have Jimmy Carter, a relative unknown who did silly things like stand in front of the American Legion and announce that he supported a blanket pardon for draft-dodgers and who had these lust problems in his heart that Americans perhaps understood and even condoned but really, really, really didn’t want to know about.
So how did all of this turn out? Well you’d think, given the economy, lukewarm support from the conservatives in his own party, a strong challenge in the primaries by an incredibly popular conservative, a general perception that his leadership was lackluster and bumbling, embarrassments such as the Fall of Saigon, the Mayagüez incident and the loads of boat people who were beginning to land in the United States, oh and that whole being part of what was regarded at the time as the most shameful administration in American history and his pardon of Richard M. Nixon that Jerry Ford should have experienced an ass-whipping that was at least equal to that of Barry Goldwater’s 12 years earlier. And you would of course be completely and totally WRONG!.
In the 1976 Presidential Election Jerry Ford, despite his handicaps lost to Jimmy Carter by less than two million votes and by an Electoral College total of 297 to 240. Four years later Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan, 489 electoral votes to 49 and by a popular vote margin of 8 million votes. Four years after that Ronald Reagan delivered an absolutely brutal ass-whipping to Walter Mondale, winning re-election with 525 electoral votes to Mondale’s 13 and with a popular vote margin of almost 18 million votes.
Now, you might have found this post long-winded, wandering and occasionally even somewhat foul-mouthed, disgusting, and when I bought up the mental image of Dick Nixon savagely fucking Republican conservatives, obscene, but the point that I’ve tried to make is that there have been times in the recent past when the conventional wisdom had said that the Republicans were down, out and gone and they have come back. There have been times in the recent past when people have declared, either ignorantly, stupidly or arrogantly that things are truly different now, that some candidate or event or trend has changed everything and that the Republican party has, or soon will, go the way of the carrier pigeon, the Whigs, the dodo or the dinosaur (so many metaphors to choose from). But somehow, despite these declarations the Republicans manage to come back. You ignore this lesson at your own peril and if you become complacent, well say “Hello” to President Palin and Vice-President Huckabee on 20 January 2013.
Laura W
@Wile E. Quixote: Yes, Wile E., that’s very interesting, but have you heard about my steamy BJ discount?
(obligatory ;-) needs to go here I suppose.)
Gus
What Wile E said. Also this.
Fulcanelli
Awesome post Wile E. I don’t know whether to prepare to Rapture or hide under my bed from these bastards. I think I’ll start carving wooden stakes. Seems we can’t kill them.
gbear
@Gus:
LOL. Amazon is stuck selling Hewitt’s book for list price, but just below that, marketplace is selling new copies for .73, or you have your choice of 12 vendors who will sell you a used copy for .01, or for list price you can get an autographed first edition. How collectible…
Elie
Fulcanelli:
I think we are watching the thrashing about that a person does in the last throes of death — losing oxygen and clinging to life with the last desperate effort. Everyone has heard “don’t get near a drowning person” — even experienced swimmers are and should be wary drawing near to them — offering a pole or some object that keeps the drowning person from grabbing hold in a way that can drown them both.
Even a shark, the most vaunted preditor of the deep, frequently attacks quickly, puts in a critical bite, then swims away to observe at a little distance to avoid the flailing, agonal, desperate activity of the mortally wounded prey.
We should do the same. Not mix it up with them, just let them flail and drown. Good-riddance.
Allan
A variant of this point was made about John McCain’s failure to connect with the general public in his speeches and especially in the debates.
Johnnyboy had a bad habit of half-heartedly referring to various touchstones of Fuckwadistanian meme-building, but failed to give them context and articulate their significance so that a non-Hannity/Limbaugh/Beck/Hitler listener would know what the fuck Grandpa was babbling about, except that he seemed to think he had just scored some kind of point. It was kind of like watching a stand-up comic walk out and blurt, “The Aristocats!” and then laugh at his own humor.
As long as they keep reinforcing the walls in their bunker and draw the bubble ever-tighter about themselves, there will be a time in the near future when their language ceases to actually be English and will become a collection of farts, giggles and belches that are fraught with meaning to God’s chosen people alone.
BruceK
If you’ll excuse some mangling of metaphors…
Yes, it looks like implosion into a wingularity is all but inevitable at this point. The problem is, the hierarchs want to drag the entire country down through the event horizon with them. (Maybe they think that, like the old cheesy movie The Black Hole, there’ll be some sort of paradise waiting on the other side in which they are as gods and the rest of us will be their servants.)
That’s what we’ve got to be wary of: the collateral damage as they collapse, the real risk that too much of the country will be dragged in and torn to pieces before it’s all over.
Little Dreamer
I wonder how many of these fucktards have stopped long enough to figure out that if the country fails like their favorite radio comedian wants to happen, they can kiss the futures of their children and grandchildren goodbye.
Idiots!
Little Dreamer
@Allan:
fixt!
Gus
A small price to pay to piss off liberals!
Little Dreamer
@Blue Raven:
Is that sort of like Astroglide??
Little Dreamer
@ThymeZoneThePlumber:
Honey, I hate to say it, but I’m all for making sure the monster doesn’t come back to life. I know you think it’s a waste of time, but, considering you want the monster to not come back to life too, I would suggest you not take the news of it’s demise so lightly, it’s NOT DEAD YET! Yes, it’s dying, yes it’s acting as if it’s in the last throes, but… stranger things have happened.
Sorry if this pisses you off. You are fully aware that sometimes we disagree and I say so when I do.
Little Dreamer
@DougJ:
I agree Doug (sorry TZ) the more publicity about these crazy loons, the better.
Little Dreamer
@ThymeZoneThePlumber:
Sorry, I have to disagree again. You grew up in a family of Democrats surrounded by a bunch of Democrats. I grew up in a family of Republicans, surrounded by a bunch of Republicans and they certainly DID have party identification. Everyone my parents came in contact with was Republican (remember, this was in a mostly Democratic state). The money, the business contacts, the masonic meetings, all Republican tools for party unity. Before Clinton, being a Republican seemed like a sane choice to people my parents were close to. I’m not so sure what many of them would think now, although I know I still have some siblings who are probably hanging on to their party affiliation thinking this is a just a small rough wave which soon shall pass and they’ll be back on top again.
Little Dreamer
@gbear:
By my calculations, his ratings should have dropped 80% about twenty years ago.
SnarkIntern
@Little Dreamer:
That’s fine, but you are talking about your family anecdotally, and I am talking about the Republican strategies that put them in the driver’s seat for most of 40 years from 1968 to 2008.
They started with a set of messages designed to harvest middle of the road voters and move them toward the right in their voting patterns. Widely known as the Southern Strategy, but that moniker was more about the electoral map than the voter appeals. The voter appeals were about taking the Dem situation and turning into votes for the Republican candidates. They didn’t go after party id, they went after cultural id.
The created a coalition based loosely on a dislike for big, Eastern Establishment government, welfare, resentment over civil rights, perceived softness on law and order and defense, and “family values” issues like abortion, prayer in schools and similar “issues,” and manipulated a big swath of middle-ground voters their way.
What I am saying above is that this movie is now over. That middle swath was never in the bag for the cultural stuff, and it has been evolving and changing. Instead of moving with their demographics, the GOP has hardened and become narrower, and now that middle swath doesn’t belong to them any more. That middle voter has seen the Iraq war, and Katrina, and the futility of endless cultural harangues like prayer and flag burning and gay marriage, and moved on.
That coalition is not coming back.
I agree with DougJ about keeping a spotlight on the crazy, but at BJ, that spotlight amounts mostly to acting like the crazies are surrounding the wagon train and about to kill us all. Actually, they are the ones heading for extinction. Not us.
For some reason, the same people who bash the GOP for being fearmongers will turn right around and talk like fearmongers within our own party. Beats me why they do this, but I ain’t buying a ticket to that show.
muffler
The time has come to ignore them. If you turn your back and look in another direction they will stop talking. They are spoiled children who are use to getting their way. Treat them as such. Ignore them!
SnarkIntern
@SnarkIntern:
Not to put too fine a point on my brilliant post, but the thing is, the genius of that strategy was to harvest votes and cut across party lines.
Party id followed the votes, rather than the other way around. Southern Democrats, fed up with Johnson, the mishandling of the war, fear of the new Civil Rights version of America, welfare, and apparent hostility to “traditional values,” started voting for Republicans in national elections, and then later, in regional and local elections. Party id came slowly, but the shift in national election voting patterns happened fast. The same country that elected Johnson by a huge landslide turned on the Democratic party four years later. That wasn’t a party shift as much as it was a cultural shift.
Johnson was the key. Nixon just scooped up the mess Johnson created and ran with it. Johnson was able to get his Civil Rights Act but couldn’t sell it very well, especially since he got sucked into the unpopular Vietnam War.
By the time Nixon came along in 1968, the country was in turmoil and Nixon seemed like the guy who could turn it around. (Of course, the Dems cooperated by putting a trainwreck of a convention in Chicago that year and parading their failures and divisions in front of the world).
John Jeter
Goofy Ol’ Pachyderms.
Splendid One
Darn! I already have four Chevies and don’t need any more cars right now.
It’s not their country they’re worried about, it’s the wingnut world they’ve constructed in their heads. They’d rather the country go down, than change their constructs.
SnarkIntern
Yes, and please keep it up :)
Little Dreamer
@SnarkIntern:
Well, I agree with you about what they did to the party, but when my parents were hot and heavy Repubs (realize they are both deceased now) it had nothing to do with abortion or family values or any of that shit – it had to do with money. My family had the deep ingrained belief that Republicans were bosses/management and Democrats were serfs and never the tween shall meet. I realize that isn’t how it is, but that IS what they believed, and it was quite evident truth where I hailed from (Corporation obsessed Delaware) and my family didn’t like Democrats or converse with them. When you stated: “the GOP never really rode a big wave of party identification” – I see that party identity in a whole different fashion, based on money and power.
Little Dreamer
@SnarkIntern:
Remember what happens when you corner a scared animal. Dr. Tiller didn’t die from a gunshot at the hands of a man disturbed by his own nightmares, he died at the hands of a propagandized wingnut. They are not done, I’m afraid. I talked with you about this recently.
SnarkIntern
@Little Dreamer:
Good point, the stable foundation in those days was the moneyed conservatives. The money changers and the industrialists who thought they were so clever, scooping up those strange rightwing religious folks and those anti-government hillbillies and convincing them to vote against their real interests.
Little Dreamer
@muffler:
You talk as if they have normal response patterns. They don’t. Ignore them and they will pick up a gun and shoot people to make sure they have our attention again.
SnarkIntern
@Little Dreamer:
Yes, I agree with you about the disconnected crazies, the ones who think that the world has gone off and left them. They are dangerous, for sure. But they aren’t about to make a big electoral comeback unless we pull another Lyndon Johnson and fuck everything up and then walk away.
Which, in case nobody noticed, is the same thing that George W. Bush just did. Basically, just walk off the field of play after costing his team the game, and shrug it off.
Little Dreamer
@SnarkIntern:
Just because Bush did it doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of a repeat. Most people don’t get their knowledge of politics the way you and I do, they get it from Candy Crowley and Andrea Mitchell and Wolf Blitzer (I know how you hate him – good example)… they don’t see a lot of the shit you and I see because it’s not reported in the tv media. When things that get deeply covered in the blogosphere end up on tv, more often than not, the story gets twisted by people like Wolf Blitzer and Andrea Mitchell and Candy Crowley, et al. They are not as likely to spot a right wing meme becoming the media talking point the way you and I are. They can easily see a situation like GM falling apart completely, going into oblivion and blame it on Obama and NOT Rush Limbaugh/George Bush/Bailout money/court decisions, etc. They can take that blame into the 2010 or 2012 ballot box. We are by no means even halfway there.
SnarkIntern
@Little Dreamer:
Ah, grist for another conversation.
As you know, I don’t think those meatheads you are listing there actually influence votes. I think they are panty sniffers, looking for what attracts a certain audience to their little booth. And they can draw a little crowd. But it’s a little like going to the state fair and thinking that the carnies are running the world because they get all that attention.
Cable tv is just the carnival. It’s not the real world, by a long shot. Not even close.
Little Dreamer
@SnarkIntern:
Wanna take a crack at guessing how many voters get their political information from blogging (percentage wise)? I’ll bet the numbers aren’t as high as you think they are (I haven’t looked, not even sure where to look, but, I know lots of people who wouldn’t dare spend time in places like this for their political knowledge).
I am certain a large percentage of voters get their info from the teeeeeee-veeeeeeee!
SrirachaHotSauce
@Little Dreamer:
They might get information from tv, but there is no evidence that they get opinions from tv, nor is there any evidence that the way the information is styled affects opinions, or voting.
Most of the styled tv information is aimed at people whose opinions are already shaped. Fox News is not out there influencing legions of new voters to be crazy. They are pimping crazy to the voters who are already crazy.
Tv news has a reputation somewhere south of car salesmen and child molestors.
Wile E. Quixote
SnarkIntern, I’m, willing to bet that you live in a liberal urban enclave, such as my home town of Seattle and have never read Perlstein. Go read Perlstein, especially “Before the Storm” and then come back and talk to us. Make sure you read all the way to the end of the book. Sorry SnarkIntern, but I’ve heard this “it’s all over for the Republicans” bullshit before. It was all over in 1964 and then Nixon pulled out the Southern Strategy and hey, Republicans somehow, despite the fact that all sorts of people had written them off, somehow managed to come back and win the presidency in 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 (with a little help from Scalia) and 2004). They also almost won in 1976, amazing for a party that was mired in scandal and running a lackluster candidate.
Now you can blather all you like about “the movie being over” and cultural id and demographic changes dooming the Republicans. If you read Perlstein you’ll find that he directs quite a bit of mockery at those pundits who back in the 1960s said that conservatism was dead, that demographic changes meant that the Republican party would command an increasingly small share of votes in future elections and that America had entered a new age of consensus, indeed the subtitle of “Before the Storm” is “the unmaking of the American consensus”.
They said this because it looked as if conservatism was dead. The Republican party was in disarray and being run by a bunch of completely fucking insane wingnuts who were going out and accusing Eisenhower of being a communist and preaching about the fluoridation of our water supplies (Does anyone think we could get a fluoridation meme started over at Red State?). If you weren’t drinking the Republican Kool-Aid (made with non-fluoridated water to preserve the purity of your bodily fluids) Republican talking points sounded every bit as strange, deranged and ludicrous as they do today.
The only Republican president elected since 1932 had been the very moderate Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican party outsider who ran as a Republican and then disappointed conservative Republicans by refusing to dismantle the New Deal, repudiating the batshit insane conservative strain of conservative anti-communism, appointing Earl Warren (Eisenhower later admitted that he wished that he hadn’t.) and then backing up his decisions by using federal troops.
Who could imagine anyone but a complete and total troglodyte voting Republican after hearing Pat Buchanan’s speech at the 1992 convention. But hey, after listening to Barry Goldwater’s speech at the 1964 election nobody would have said that four years later people would be voting for Nixon. But in 1968 Dick Nixon came along, sounding fairly moderate and stressing the idea of “law and order” and tapping his lapel so that everyone was reminded of the secret plan to end the Vietnam War that he carried with him in his breast pocket and he won the election. In 2000 George W. Bush came along, sounding fairly moderate and not pressing the cultural war hot buttons and talking about something new, an idea called “compassionate conservatism” and lo and behold, with the help of the Supreme Court (And Al Gore’s complete and total fucking incompetence as a candidate, and no, despite what liberal dipshits might think it’s not Nader’s fault. Gore fucked up!) this synthetic, blow-dried good old boy from Texas became President and fucked things up so spectacularly over the next eight years that America was willing to elect a black man to fix things.
If there are differences between now and 1964 it’s that I don’t see a Reagan or a Nixon on the landscape. Reagan wowed conservatives with the “A Time for Choosing” speech and impressed a lot of moderates as well. Go watch the speech some time. The liberal response to this was that Reagan was just a dumb actor reciting lines that someone had fed to him. But that dumb actor went on to defeat Pat Brown two years later and that dumb actor wiped the floor with every Democrat who ever ran against him. Which says that either he wasn’t that dumb or that the Democrats were a bunch of fuck-ups. Wait, what’s that you’re saying? That it’s the fault of the voters for being fooled by the dumb actor and voting against their interests and not seeing the purity and justice of the Democratic cause? That the Democratic party did not fail but that it was failed by the voters? You know, I’ve heard that somewhere before.
But there’s no Reagan on the landscape, nobody in the wings that conservatives love and that moderates could tolerate. There are a lot of Reagan wannabes out there, especially since the Republican Party has deified the guy (Remember, Republicans, the third and fourth commandments don’t apply when we’re talking about Reagan, go ahead, worship him before God and knock yourself out creating idols. God’s OK with it, cause you know, it’s Reagan.) but none of them have any credibility or charisma.
There’s also not a Nixon on the landscape. After reading “Nixonland” I had a new respect for Nixon, it’s not that I disagreed with Hunter S. Thompson’s obituary for him where he said that
but Nixon could play a long game. Disgraced after losing to Kennedy in 1960 and Pat Brown in 1962. Mocked as a whiner after declaring “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more!”. Nixon spent the next six years collecting markers. He went all over the country campaigning for Republican candidates at the local, state and federal level. He didn’t force himself on anyone, he merely told them that if they thought that his presence would help he would be there, and Republicans appreciated this and in 1968 Dick Nixon had a lot of markers that he could call in.
So that much has changed, but despite that I still don’t buy your triumphalist bullshit that it’s all over for the Republicans. Harry Reid doesn’t seem to think so, he’s as eager to please them as ever, as are loads of other Democrats such as the loathsome Patty Murray (Rolling Stone recently exposed her as being Frank Blethen’s whore on the inheritance tax issue.). Maybe I’m wrong and you’re right and if the Democrats manage to win the next five presidential elections, keep the House and Senate, get a Senate Majority Leader who isn’t addicted to the taste of Republican cock and actually propose and implement some bold policy initiatives such as tightly regulating the financial sector or cutting our massive military budget and ending our role as global cop I’ll concede the point. But I’m not going to do it just because Barack Obama got elected.
DanSmoot'sGhost
Load of crap, dude. First of all I remember 1964 pretty well, I was in college at the time. Nobody said “it is all over the for the Republicans.” And Johnson went from big winner to big loser in about two years flat.
Completely different time, different world, different country, different everything.
Totally inapt comparison.
What would be apt would be to recognize the size and scope of the recent shift, and be realistic about what it would take to shift that back. it will probably shift back, but not soon, and not quickly barring some unforseen huge event that neither you nor I can predict.
Barring that sort of anomaly, there is not going to be any near term Republican comeback. And even if such a thing were possible, what possible gain can there be to sit around and wring hands and sweat big flop sweats over the possibility and talk like we should be afraid of it?
Bunch of bullshit.
DanSmoot'sGhost
I’ve joked about such a possibility but never predicted it. I predict two terms for Obama, and have no idea what will happen after that until I see what the GOP morphs into in the next six years or so. Or if a new party emerges, which is not outside the realm of possibility.
Anybody who tries to predict further out than that is in Amazing Criswell territory. In other words, full of crap.
DanSmoot'sGhost
Really? I voted for Humphrey. I sort of remember the time.
Wile E. Quixote
@DanSmootsGhost
Dude, get off of your smug lazy ass and read Perlstein’s books. Go on, read them. The conventional wisdom at the time was that it was over for the Republicans. Perlstein explains, at great length and in great detail why this was bullshit and in Nixonland explains why Johnson and the Democrats went from being big winners to big losers in two years flat. Seriously, get off of your lazy ass and read Perlstein and if you don’t agree with what he says then come back and offer up some evidence as to why things are different. Don’t just sit there on your lazy ass and barf up a lazy argument from authority by saying “Completely different time, different world, different country, different everything.” I’ve heard enough of that annoying shit from smug, condescending baby boomers who lived through the fucking ’60s and I’m sick and goddamned tired of it.
From reading the history of the Democratic party over the last 45 years and reading comments on this and other blogs it seems that Democrats alternate between periods of lazy smugness and stupid complacency where they get into power and then assert that things have changed and when asked about all of the times they said “things have changed” before and ended up being out of power a few years later, reply by saying stupid things such as “Completely different time, different world, different country, different everything.” and periods where they’re out of power and spend time pissing and moaning about exactly what the Hell was wrong with all of those voters who failed to see how great things were under the Democrats and who refused to return them to office.
Oh, and Dan, dude, I’ve got some bad news for you sunshine, a lot of the differences you cite between the world of now and the world of 1964 are not differences to the favor of Democrats and progressives. The US economy is no longer what it was, we’re trillions of dollars in debt to foreign bondholders, which seriously limits our maneuvering ability. Our manufacturing base has been eroded over the last fifty years and the kinds of jobs that many Americans had in the 1960s, where they worked for one employer for life and were assured decent benefits and a pension don’t exist any more. It’s a lot easier to pursue progressive social change when things are good than it is when things are bad.
If you want to be stupid, smug and lazily complacent then go right ahead Dan, be stupid, smug and lazily complacent and plan on being a loser again. Just like Democrats were losers in 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004.
Wile E. Quixote
@DanSmoot’sGhost
@Wile E. Quixote.
Really?
I voted for Humphrey. I sort of remember the time.
Good for you, you voted for Humphrey, and I’m glad that you sort of remember the time. But what you seem to forget is that Humphrey LOST THE FUCKING ELECTION!.
Do you have anything to contribute to the discussion Dan, any facts, any arguments? Anything at all of substance, or are we all just supposed to fall to our knees in awe of your awesome Baby Boomerness and tender memories of voting for Hubert Humphrey in 1968? Tell us Dan, how did the 1972 election turn out? Do you have tender memories of voting for McGovern? Do I have to remind you of what happened to George McGovern too? Do you have tender memories of voting for Carter in 1980. Mondale in 1984. Dukakis in 1988. Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004?
barstoolcadaver
Don Coyote is concerned, therefore all must be so. It is the driving force behind Cervantes Brothers Loony Toons Power Hour and traveling re-spew. Elegant condescension is not just a breakfast beverage anymore.
RichPletcher
No … you clearly do not get it. I will not buy a Chrysler or GM vehicle because the union does not own the company … the shareholders own the company. But Bo Bo has confiscated the senior, secured bondholders property. Any govt that is brazen enough to do this is brazen enough to tell you that the house you have lived in all of your life, and have paid off and own free and clear, no longer is yours to pass to you heirs but is now property of the state … to be sold and for the proceeds to be handed around to whomever the chosen own deems has been victimized in the past. I don’t care that there’s a black man in the WH, I won’t support him because he’s an America hating left wing Marxist nut-job.