I don’t want to obsess too much about the David Brooks piece about how the tea bagger anger is all the hippies’ fault, but Wonkette highlights one of Brooks’s particularly stupid claims: that the fact that tea baggers bought food from black merchants proves that they can’t be racist. Anyone who’s ever spent even a couple days in the south knows that you can eat plenty of food prepared by black people and still be a racist. I thought that Jim Sleeper’s arguments about why he thinks racism isn’t motivating the tea baggers was a bit more convincing. And, finally, since Ben Smith et al. have decided that Bill Cosby is the final arbiter of all things racial, I thought you might be interested in the Cos’s thoughts on tea baggers (actually, they’re pretty thoughtful, to be honest).
But, anyway, to keep things in perspective here, it doesn’t matter whether or not you or I or David Brooks or Jimmy Carter think that racism motivates the tea baggers. Jimmy Carter and I and most of you will vote Democrat in the next election regardless; Brooks will vote Republican regardless. But ask yourself this: do you think that a few years of images of Republicans carrying around signs of a president of color in white face and a president of color in a loin cloth will make voters of color more or less likely to vote Republican in the long term? Tea baggerism is a political dead end and if Republicans were smart, they’d get the hell away from it as fast as they could.
Adrienne
I’ll take “less” for a hundred thousand trillion Alex.
(says the 24 y/o black female)
cleek
i’m pretty sure that’s a universal thing. the north isn’t all-white, obviously.
General Winfield Stuck
Here is a very good article about what the tea baggers are about. It’s style over substance, stealing left wing tactics in some fantastical hope that, well, whatever that hope is, it is seat pants flying and last resort gambling in the power of libtard fairy dust. At least what it seems to me.
arguingwithsignposts
The first time I was taken to a “soul food” restaurant, I thought it was just home cooking. Apparently, rural southern food is not dissimilar to what people consider “soul food.” I didn’t know the black-eyed pea and the collard green were “black.”
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Yes it is and the Republicans are anything but smart. Right now, many of them see it as these people don’t like Obama and are ready to raise hell so they are taking advantage of the situation. The fact that the majority of the Republican party is now in the south is what is going to drive that party off of the cliff.
The nuts have got the wheel and they are going to make Toonses look like a model driver.
DougJ
i’m pretty sure that’s a universal thing. the north isn’t all-white, obviously.
Yes, but you’d pick it up more quickly down south. There are plenty of people in Boston who have never eaten at a black-owned restaurant. I doubt there’s anyone in Atlanta who hasn’t.
C Nelson Reilly
If Republicans were smart Glenn Beck would be a scientist
Makewi
I disagree with the premise that its racism that is motivating these folks, as you know I’ve said. The polls would indicate that 88% of the rest of the general population agrees with me.
I also disagree that the wacko signs will hurt the GOP in the long run, as this is a tactic that was used to great effect by those protesting the Bush regime. The GOP seems to be willing to follow that blueprint, and more, it seems to be working. So, if they are smart they will continue to run with it.
arguingwithsignposts
e.g., soul food items (wikipedia)
John Cole
Lemme guess- they bought the salad bar at a minority owned Applebee’s.
How are so many stupid goddamned people so influential?
DougJ
I also disagree that the wacko signs will hurt the GOP in the long run, as this is a tactic that was used to great effect by those protesting the Bush regime.
You do know that Bush won re-election, right?
LD50
So you think the teabaggers’ wacko signs will help woo black voters black to the GOP.
Okay, that gives me some insight into why the last two elections went the way they did.
Brachiator
@DougJ:
Here’s a bitch slap from the invisible hand of irony. A lot of Southern cooking is based on food that blacks cooked, prepared and then served to white people. There is a fair amount of African practices that seeped into things (especially dishes like gumbo). A lot of “Southern” cooking is really African-New World cooking.
And obviously, none of this prevented some white Southerners from being as racist as the day is long.
Shorter: When David Brooks comes to a conclusion about something, the opposite is most likely to be true.
Loneoak
Sleeper’s arguments were all fine and dandy, but they seemed to be more about the prudent political tactics and not the content of the rage toward Obama. His point was “It’s fine to call them assholes, just stop referring to them as racist assholes because it’s not great political tactics anymore.” That might be true, but seems beside the point of whether they are racist assholes.
I’m not at all convinced you can disentangle to racist from the asshole in any meaningful way. If a dude is carrying around a sign with Obama as a witchdoctor he may be expressing an underlying fear about his economic security, but he is doing it like a racist would do it. The crux of Sleeper’s claim is that the same folks are assholes to HRC, but they are clearly assholes in the way a sexist would be an asshole. And last I checked, being racist and sexist are not mutually exclusive, so we shouldn’t get sidetracked by the common denominator “asshole” and think the adjectives don’t count.
DougJ
The polls would indicate that 88% of the rest of the general population agrees with me.
My guess is that it’s under 66% that agrees with you.
The Bearded Blogger
@ 5, heh, toonses… but, as a few Tom Tomorrow cartoons illustrate, we are in the car with them… current republican hijinks are putting the whole concept of a deliberative democracy into jeopardy
@7 Glenn Beck… scientist… what?
geg6
This is why I still have my moments of optimism. Even the GOP must know the demographic reality they face. It’s so insanely self-defeating and nihilistic. I don’t expect the Becks and Limbaughs and Savages to be anything different than what they are. I do, however, know there are Republicans who aren’t batshit crazies. Why they have chosen to go all in with the insane clown posse or simply shrunk into the woodwork until the nightmare is over seems even more nuts than the teabaggers. Speaking of which, I’ve been reading more and more in the msm about the astoundingly psychotic inspiration for Beck. Anyone who is too crazy for the Birchers is truly the black hole of wingnuttery. And this is what Beck is pushing. Frightening.
Roger Moore
I’d sign on to a “tribalism not racism” explanation of the Republicans. The Teabaggers recognize the obvious truth that the country has been driven into a ditch, and they’re looking for somebody to blame. But they’re too attached to the tribe to accept that it was their own guys who were at the wheel- and riding shotgun- when the country went off track. So they’re furiously looking around for someone, anyone from outside the tribe who they can scapegoat.
When they find a likely candidate, they want to rouse the rest of the tribe against him, so they use the tribal language to demonize him in a way that will get the strongest response. If the victim is black, they use racist language; if she’s Latina, they use nativist language; if she’s a white woman, they use sexist language; etc. It’s not smart or rational, but it’s the traditional way of rallying the tribe.
Stefan
In an August 8, 2008 New York Times/CBS News poll, 5% of white voters openly admitted they would not vote for a black man for president, while 19% said most of the people they know would not vote for a black man. A Rasmussen poll from March 2008 came out even higher, with 14% not being willing to vote for an African-American. Since we know that people are likely to lie about being prejudiced, the actual numbers are likely higher than that. So with at least a quarter of the population either themselves not willing to or knowing someone who is not willing to vote for a black man, we’re somehow supposed to believe that the hysterical opposition to the first African-American president has nothing to do with race?
The Bearded Blogger
“My food is served by black people, therefore I am not a racist”
The unnatural spawn of Wittgenstein, Frege and Quine could not argue with THAT logic
Kris
DougJ
POLITICO aka stuff white people like and think about politics. It really is that simple why the media is stunned by Cosby’s words. I personally dislike the man because he is a hypocrite but that is besides the point.
This really shouldn’t surprise you Doug being the Michael McDonald of the intertubes.
Makewi
@DougJ:
He almost lost. He probably would have if the Dems hadn’t put Lurch up for the gig. My wife hated Bush with a white hot passion but the thought of putting Kerry in charge of the military during 2 hot wars made her do the unthinkable.
@LD50:
Black people are going to vote for Obama. The GOP needs to work on inclusion, but even so with a black man as POTUS I see very little chance of them making gains in registering more black folks Republican.
calipygian
The Politico is saying that Boehner and Cantor are privately worried that Tea Bagging Queen Michelle Bachman is hurting the GOP brand (although, given that the GOP brand is Zyklon B right about now, I don’t know how that is possible). Apparently, they are ball-less fucks who are terrified of taking her on and offending the 15% of Americans who are so dumb that they are threatened with drowning during a rain storm and still vote Republican.
arguingwithsignposts
@Brachiator:
I always thought gumbo was just a cajun creation, but I’m glad the Africans brought the okra to the party. Love me some okra.
Makewi
@DougJ:
I’m not just making the number up.
Johnny B
No doubt you are right about the politics of teabaggery. Not only is it back politics in the present political context, but their stupidity and racism make them so vulnerable in the future. How hard is it for Obama and Axlerod to tweak these folks and make them say and do horrible things, which tehn rebound to the benefit of Democrats.
Imagine. Justice Stevens resigns and Obama selects another woman of color for the Supreme Court. Bombs away again for the teabaggers as they decry persons of color and women generally.
Imagine also. Obama and Congress moves forward on immigration reform prior to the 2012 election. Teabagger heads explode as they deride the treachery of brown people.
With each slight from the teabaggers, Obama and the Democrats solidify their hold on women and minorities.
In some ways, teabaggery is the gift that will keep on giving until someone in the Republican Party can find a way to contain this idiocy and racism. If no one can, don’t expect the Republican Party to win a national election anytime soon.
The Grand Panjandrum
@John Cole: We live in an idiotocracy. No lie, lame idea, or absurd talkingpoint goes unrewarded.
LD50
Tho I’m sure your plans to get them to vote for *other* GOP candidates are showing great promise. And of course, you guys made great strides in locking up the Hispanic vote in ’08. Family values, Christians, all that.
Yeah, I suppose when you have 95% of a demographic locked up, getting to 97% won’t be easy. I’m sure this is a sign of solace for you.
Perhaps you guys should start advocating Rush’s latest ideas of resegregating schools and buses? That should make great inroads among Democrats who’ve been wavering.
Makewi
@DougJ:
Also, you are assuming that it’s whites vs everyone else in that 66% figure, which is not a fair assumption.
I’m not saying there is no racism in America, or that none of the criticism directed at Obama is. I’m just saying that the majority of people believe, rightly I think, that the disagreement is over policy.
DougJ
@Makewi
I really don’t think that the protests hurt Bush politically. I say that as someone who participated in them in New York in 2004. I don’t think they accomplished anything politically.
kay
@Makewi:
Oh, bullshit.. “Black people are going to vote for Obama”.
Black people voted for Democrats well prior to Barack Obama.
They’ve been voting for Democrats for 60 years, for a lot of very good reasons, central among them being the FACT that you can get elected as a black Democrat. Democrats vote for black people, and they donate to black candidates. If you’re a young and ambitious potential pol, and you’re black, it makes good sense to be a Democrat.
Look at the election results from 2006 if you want data on whether Republicans will vote for a black Republican. It ain’t pretty.
When does the conservative outreach start? What are you waiting for? It’s been sixty years.
Calouste
@The Bearded Blogger:
“My food is served by black people, therefore I am not a racist”
Not only that, but the cleaner is black as well and we even have black caddies at the country club.
DougJ
Makewi: I don’t look at Rasmussen polls. Moreover, I believe that racism is not the primary motivator of the tea baggers anyway.
(EDIT: that poll is about whether MOST opponents of Obama’s health care plan are racist anyway. What’s that got to do with the .1 percent who showed up at 9/12?)
Stefan
Black people are going to vote for Obama. The GOP needs to work on inclusion, but even so with a black man as POTUS I see very little chance of them making gains in registering more black folks Republican.
African-Americans voted about 90% for Obama. But they also voted about 90% for Kerry, Gore and Clinton in previous elections. It doesn’t seem to have that much to do with the race of the Democratic candidate, therefore.
Makewi
@LD50:
I’m not a member of the GOP. I’m a registered Independent. I disagree with the current administration over issues of policy, and I disagree with the GOP over the best way to be more inclusive.
LexLurker
@cleek:
Old saying
In the south they don’t care how close you get as long as you don’t get to high up.
In the north they don’t care how high up you get as long as your not too close.
Makewi
@DougJ:
Then we are in agreement on that issue.
Zifnab
@Makewi:
BWHAHAHAHA! Which policy, Makewi? The budget policy? The foreign policy? The domestic policy? The tax policy?
The GOP is all over the map on any 10 year time frame. They’re incoherent. You only need to listen to Micheal Steele’s NPR interview.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112281170
He argues both for and against cutting waste in Medicare. He is both for and against government run health care. He both supports and opposes changing tax rates. IN ONE INTERVIEW. Completely. In. Coherent.
And he hasn’t even taken the plunge off the deep end with Beck and Limbaugh – reading the tea leaves of opposition policy in hopes of spelling out cryptic misspelled acronyms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-D_S7WOnjg
What policy, Makewi? We haven’t had a policy discussion since 9/11. The GOP has been one giant rhetorical clusterfuck.
calipygian
If it was disagreement over policy, then where were the Tea Baggers during the Medicare Part D debate? Where were the Tea Baggers during the Trillion Dollar unfunded tax cut for rich people? Where were the Tea Baggers when we were flying pallets of wrapped bricks of hundred dollar bills into Baghdad, contractors played football with them in the basement of a ruined Saddam palace and then they disappeared to fuck knows where? Where were the Tea Baggers when Bush gave the big investment banks and AIG 700 Billion to so the bankers could continue to light their cigars with Benjamins?
I’ll tell you where they were – jerking each other off, jumping up and down like meth addled chimps, pumping their fists and yelling “America, FUCK YEAH!”
But at least a (debatably) Christian (definitely) White man was bringing dignity back to the Oval Office. When he wasn’t drunkenly choking on pretzels, that is.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
I think the simple answer is fear and helplessness. There have been some Republican leaders who have tried to confront the crazies. All they’ve gotten for their trouble is rabid denunciation as RINOs unless they recant and kiss Limbaugh’s and Beck’s asses fast enough. It’s not an environment that would encourage any sane person to step up and take a strong stand.
It doesn’t help that the party lacks any convincing national leadership. The leaders they have are either talk radio hosts who profit personally by fanning the flames of crazy or Congressmen from safe Republican districts where encouraging the insane base is still a workable short term political strategy. Neither group has any personal interest in bringing the crazy under control.
DougJ
POLITICO aka stuff white people like and think about politics.
If anything, that’s giving Politico too much credit It’s stuff white people who live in Bethesda and watch “Morning Joe” like and think about politics.
LD50
Among Republicans, ‘conservative outreach’ pretty much amounts to calling Obama a racist.
Republicans still can’t figure out why that hasn’t worked.
stickler
We need to back up a little bit, here. We keep saying “they (Republicans) need to get the hell away from” these nutball crazies like Bachmann, Beck, etc. But who’s the “they” in that sentence? The GOP currently has no national leadership worth mentioning. Boehner? Steele? Rick Perry? The USS Elephant is adrift in heavy seas and there’s nobody on the bridge.
Maybe if some Republican would stand up and tell Beck to dial down the crazy, he’d be rewarded by looking statesmanlike. Or maybe they could stop the all-filibuster policy in the Senate. But I’m not sure there is any Republican of national stature willing or able to do either. The lights are on, but nobody’s home.
Whick
I thought it was mostly right-wingers who use “Democrat” as an adjective or an adverb or a free-standing label for the Democratic party. Have you been infected by them? Or are you from the South? in which case it’s your home dialect.
Makewi
@Stefan:
96% of the black vote for Obama, and a 2% increase in the number of black voters. Some people will tell you there is something insidious about that. You should just laugh at those people.
@DougJ:
I could give you a Fox News poll with similar numbers, but why don’t we just save time and not.
calipygian
Lest anyone think I am exaggerating about playing football with bundles of 100 dollar bills:
Calouste
@kay:
There have been 4 black Republicans elected to Congress since the Congressional Black Caucus was founded in 1969. One of them was a non-voting delegate from the Virgin Islands, two of the others were from New England.
It ain’t pretty indeed.
Makewi
It’s not that. It’s that the one they have, which boils down to “set up a situation in which everyone can become rich enough to want to be a GOPer” worked better in the country that used to be. That country isn’t around anymore. All the jobs that used to make that sort of thing possible are overseas now.
They need a new plan. Something that moves the line just a touch more towards society on the societal needs to individual rights plane. I would focus on rebuilding how we deal with education and the desire for education as a good first step.
arguingwithsignposts
@Calouste:
The weirdest part was that the other one was JC Watts, from Oklahoma!
That GOP recruitment strategy is working really well for them.
John K
What a joke. You libs are losing and all you’ve got is the race card to play.
The entire country has had it with Obama and the democratic party. Just suck it up and deal with it.
Betseed
Brooks’s column discussed “producerism,” the notion that elites are taking money away from hard-working people and giving it to people who don’t work. He argued that there’s no racial aspect to that, which is bull. An awful lot of Americans think that “hard-working people”=whites and “people who don’t work”=members of minority groups.
JK
Speaking of David Bobo Brooks. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer just wrapped up his Friday nite segment. Ruth Marcus filled for Mark Shields. Is there a more pathetic, nauseating liberal pundit than Ruth Marcus? She agreed with Brooks on almost every issue.
I generally like the NewsHour, but what is the fucking point of airing a segment that’s supposed to present an exchange of liberal and conservative views if one panelist is simply a sock puppet for the other panelist?
ronin122
Makewi: Fox poll? Agreed with you there in your decision not to put it up.
kay
@LD50:
It annoys me a little, because it starts with the assumption that black Democrats and candidates are somehow tangential to the Democratic Party, and it simply isn’t true.
They’re as integral a part of the base as exist. They’re completely involved in every level of Party leadership, all the way down the county level, and there are elected black Democrats from mayors to governors to, now, President.
The idea that this alliance just sprang up miraculously when Obama threw his hat in is delusional. It’s 60 years old.
Republicans think they can crank out some flyers and create this whole structure. WTF?
LD50
I’d still like to hear Makewi’s thoughts on the GOP’s efforts over the last few years to woo Hispanic voters with appeals to ‘family values’. Is it working?
Makewi
Discourse at it’s finest. The sign of an open mind willing and able to reach across the aisle to find that common ground that will work for us all.
handy
@John K:
John K, you miss-spelled “democrat party” in your post. Just trying to help is all.
arguingwithsignposts
@John K:
hahahahahahhahahahahahahahah. I think you’re in the wrong aisle.
LD50
True. And when the GOP wants to show how inclusive *they* are, the best they can come up with is “well, I heard we elected this colored fella a few years ago, but I can’t remember his name right now”.
Makewi
@LD50:
No, it isn’t working. If you look to my comment @ 48 you’ll see my thoughts on where the disconnect is.
Martin
Great-grandfather of David Brooks:
“I can’t be racist! Hell, I own black people!”
Yeah, whatever. That’s why I never listen to these idiots.
DougJ
I would focus on rebuilding how we deal with education and the desire for education as a good first step.
You do know that makes you a liberal, right?
I’d be thrilled if Republicans focused on improving education, provided they did it in a constructive way. The trouble is, all I’m able to imagine is creationism, home-schooling, inaccurate re-tellings of history, and attacks on teachers’ unions. But if they focused on it in a realistic way, that would be great.
LD50
Gosh. I’ve never heard a more cogent explanation of the last two election years. Please tell us libs how to start winning elections, pretty please?
calipygian
I notice you have jack and shit to say about my assertion that GOP crimes were horrendous over the last 10 years and the Tea Baggers had jack and shit to say about them because, well, at least the guy running things was a White Jesus freak, just like the guy in the mirror.
LD50
@DougJ: No, he means vouchers.
LD50
YOU LIE!
kay
@Calouste:
Look at 2006. It’s instructive. Just as a practical matter, if I want to get elected I need three things: a Party structure that welcomes me and thinks I can win, money, and votes.
Republicans offer none of the above, for black candidates.
I’m probably running as a Democrat, right? If I actually want to get elected? I can be APPOINTED, if I’m a Republican, but elected? No.
I think the numbers speak for themselves. I think the GOP have it backward. They didn’t build it, so they didn’t come.
General Winfield Stuck
If they did that they would meet us somewhere near the balance point of that scale/ Democrat light as they call it, Malikin would erupt into RINO flows of angry molten lava and Limbaugh would just explode like the big ball of pus he is. Not going to happen.
DBrown
@Makewi: As a troll you are pretty bad – leave the stupidity to BoB.
LD50
I remember a wingnut column about 4-5 years ago (can’t recall who) pointing out that the fatal weakness of the ‘Democrat Party’ was its ‘overreliance’ on black voters. When it was pointed out to him that the GOP is awfully dependent on white evangelicals, he didn’t deign to respond.
It’s like those columnists who say that Obama isn’t all *that* popular, once you factor out nonwhite voters.
Mike in NC
There’s an old Colonel Sanders joke that comes to mind here…
General Winfield Stuck
And I would further argue that repubs aren’t really on the individual rights side either. They are for them as long as it’s profitable and people act the way they want. It is about loyalty to the conservative idea,which is compliance, not freedom of action, unless it’s to fleece whatever flock that happens crosses their path, without fear of retribution from law.
gwangung
@General Winfield Stuck:
Nah, it’s GOTTA happen, sooner or later, or the Republican Party will cease to exist. Voters care about tangible results, not ideology. At some point, some bright boy in the Republican Party is going to try that, damn the pus-bleeding and they’ll win. It might be after Rush kicks the bucket and Malkin starts to look grandmotherly, but it’s going to be done if the Republicans want to survive.
Martin
But what the GOP seemingly refuses to acknowledge is that when you hand the keys to corporations, you lose individual rights at the same rate as if you handed the keys to government. The difference, at least, is that we chose a democracy which allows us to have a say in government. And if you give the keys to organized religion, you face the same problem. The entire goal of the religious right is to curtail individual freedom, and a major goal of corporations is to do the same.
Republicans aren’t screaming ‘Government doesn’t work’ so much as they appear to be screaming ‘Democracy doesn’t work’. If Democracy is a successful foundation for government, then the only measure of that success is whether government works or not – and the GOP has spent the last 30 years screaming that it can’t *possibly* work, or that any effort to make it work is socialism. I know that’s not actually what most conservatives believe, but y’all need to stop saying shit that you don’t believe and actually say what you do.
gwangung
Well, that’s the nub of it. This isn’t bad overall strategy–it’s a way to appeal to voters that’s a real difference from Democrats. Except the tactics they use to implement don’t work and cause the opposite to occur—their policies are making everyone poorer.
Republicans need to let go of blind adherence to ideology and go look for pragmatic solutions. (And that’s a sound plan for anybody, really…)
gwangung
@General Winfield Stuck: Well, current Republicans, at least…adherence to party and ideology over all….
General Winfield Stuck
This is the rub. Actual Conservatives don’t run the GOP anymore, it is run by southern ideologues who have never believed in many of the main propositions the founders gave us. They want what they want, and if they can’t get it they are increasingly willing to create mayhem. There is no antidote to this for the GOP, because the southern wingnuts have the numbers. That’s why we see so little pushback from incumbent wingnut elected officials.
A party breakup is the only course open, imo, because the screamers running the gooper asylum will never moderate, ever.
xanthippas
Yeah, the same applies here in Texas. We eat a lot of food prepared by Hispanics, but…well, it’s the same.
General Winfield Stuck
I would agree however, that a gifted conservative leader could pull things together long enough for them to win an election under the right circumstances. But there is no one like that in their current lineup, and even then, it will take some time out of power to soften hard ideology we see now, but then only temporarily.
Or unless the dems so screw shit up, then it won’t matter much anyways. cause we be fucked royal.
kay
@LD50:
One of the most interesting things to me about the Obama/Clinton primary were the (mostly older and with some Party clout) black Party leaders that I met who were passionate about Hillary.
They weren’t identifying as “black people”. They were identifying as “Democrats”. I felt as if the media completely missed what was not a black-white battle, within the Democratic Party, but what was a Democrat-Democrat issue. It was what all political battles are about: power.
I think it’s dishonest and disrespectful to claim that black Democrat = Obama. It’s a lot more nuanced than that. The Party leaders are Democrats. They’re not “Obama Democrats”.
chuck
@Makewi:
You seem to be under the misapprehension that anyone actually wants to be nice to you. Eat a bag of dicks. Hope that clears it up.
gbear
The teabagger’s theme, written and performed by Timbuk 3
This song is for Makewi.
Pug
It’s that the one they have, which boils down to “set up a situation in which everyone can become rich enough to want to be a GOPer”…
Isn’t this kind of like telling all those young black kids, “Practice hard and you can make it in the NBA? About one in a million will make it.
gwangung
@chuck: Meh. If she acts like a dick, treat her like a dick. If she posts reasonably, respond in kind.
Tom
Clarence Page has a much better take on the tea partiers-meet-black folk story after the protest.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0916pagesep16,0,4081867.column
burnspbesq
@Makewi:
Elections have consequences. Your side lost. It’s on your guys to reach out and be bipartisan. And we’ve surely seen a lot of that behavior.
Roger Moore
@Pug:
It doesn’t have to be. As long as the pie grew fast enough and the rich showed some restraint about grabbing ever larger slices, the average American’s situation could still improve even as the rich got a larger and larger percentage of the whole. And if “rich” extended far enough down the ladder, there was still a plausible hope for most (white) Americans that they could climb the ladder far enough to benefit from the Republicans’ tax policies.
The problem is that the opposite has happened. The pie hasn’t grown very fast, the benefits of Republican policies have gone to an ever shrinking chunk of the populace, and the idea of climbing the ladder is looking less and less plausible. So all that the Republicans have left is a lot of donations from their ultra-rich patrons and tribalist support from frothing at the mouth teabaggers.
Calouste
@gwangung:
Not sure that will work in the US system. David Cameron is doing it quite successfully for the Tories for the UK, but in the British parliamentary system there is an official Leader of the Opposition, who does have quite a bit of power over the party and its MPs. He’s had 4 years now to work on the image of the Tories.
In the US, only a Presidential candidate can be considered to have the same kind of cloud for the opposition, and they have maybe 6 months to turn things around. And before that there’s a year of primaries and their build up where you have people like Palin and Tancredo spewing all kinds of shit.
Bad Horse's Filly
But ask yourself this: do you think that a few years of images of Republicans carrying around signs of a president of color in white face and a president of color in a loin cloth will make voters of color more or less likely to vote Republican in the long term? Tea baggerism is a political dead end and if Republicans were smart, they’d get the hell away from it as fast as they could.
Probably the smartest thing I’ve read lately. But the flaw of course is, “if Republicans were smart”…
Mike in NC
Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.
matoko_chan
Why did Brooks write that piece?
Anyone that can read knows that Obama is Jefferson’s dream candidate and George Bush Presidentsson is Jefferson’s nightmare.
I just read the Jefferson/Adams complete correspondence and I didn’t see any David Brooks style batshit crazy populist fantasy in there.
And Andy Jackson would have gutshot Beck for a dirty seccessionist and told Palin to stay home and take care of her kids.
So who is Brook’s target audience?
People that can’t read, know nothing about actual american history, and are racists that desperately want cover for for socially unacceptable viewpoints.
The Tea Bagger Demographic…..old white semi-literate racist rage-boiz and rage-gals that you could meet at a Klan rally.
Makewi
@LD50:
Vouchers are a stop gap measure. They should be looked at as a short term solution while a long term solution is being looked at and implemented.
If you look at Jefferson’s idea of public education as “scraping the masses” then the vouchers merely represent a tool towards that end.
@DougJ:
The label doesn’t scare me. Actual workable policy with built in measurable benchmarks to identify success or failure which were implemented without political gain in mind would be my goal.
Makewi
@Pug:
Only if the odds are so stacked against it happening that it approaches the impossible. You can be an outstanding ball player, the best in your city or at your college and still not make the NBA. You can get a middle class to upper middle class wage merely by being good enough.
Where the problem today is, is that being good enough used to mean working hard at a good job which didn’t require much more than a HS diploma, but today means at minimum a college degree. You also have to be hungry today, to have a real drive to force the success. Because you aren’t just competing against your countrymen for the position you want.
sparky
@Roger Moore: Yes. But it’s not clear who will win the rubble of empire. Even if Obama wanted to actually fix anything on the economic front (sorry, he doesn’t except in trivial ways) he and the rest of the US cannot restore the US to its perch. Those days are just over, and now the mass of us will fight about scraps. In that environment, a charismatic leader of any stripe could, with luck and good timing, win the levers of power. Obama may be a slow-motion tragedy as opposed to the high-speed Bushwreck, but I would never, ever count the unhappy idiots out.
Makewi
@Roger Moore:
I like the pie analogy. I’d add that the pie is now also being shared with the Indians and the Chinese as well as all the other usual suspects and a few other new comers to be named later. I’d also add that one of the reasons the pieces of the pie are being taken by those that already have theirs is because they are better situated to be able to. The reasons for that are many, and the dangers in “fixing it” with interventionism are perilous at least in part because of the larger group at the table.
sparky
@matoko_chan: Simpler answer: Mister Brooks is a courtesan in the classical sense of the term.
Makewi
@matoko_chan:
Jefferson and Adams took their shots at each other in the press of the day, often under assumed names and through proxies.
LD50
So Makewi is in the position of arguing that the GOP is not a racist institution, even tho nonwhites seem to avoid it in droves. I’m glad *I* don’t have to try and rationalize those two ideas.
Makewi
@LD50:
You presume that it is racism that is keeping them from the GOP. It is far more likely that they feel their interests are being better met with the Democrats. You are also making the mistake of grouping all minorities into a single entity whose reasoning must be exactly the same, which is likely a mistake.
Gwangung
Might agree that racism isn’t the MAIN force behind much of the protests. But racism isn’t a binary quality and people have more than one pulse that can drve them.
Napoleon
I am not even going to bother reading everything up thread but you are insane if you do not believe that the Republicans are negatively branding themselves for years with stuff like the teabag stuff you are insane. It is pure gold for the Dems
superdestroyer
The Republicans could support reparation, forced busing, more affirmative action, racial set asides, and giving the CBC exactly what it wants and blacks would still automatically vote for the Democratic Party.
The better question is what is going to happen after the Republican party completes its collapse and all of the former Republicans start voting in the Democratic primary. Will the greens and white professional progressives still feel the need to support the craziness of the CBC or will they appeal to white moderates instead.
Sharon
Of course, they bought food from black vendors. A review of a just few pictures shows people that can hardly survive an hour without a massive infusion of calories.
They would have bought food from Osama bin Laden rather than go hungry. (They couldn’t have brought their own victuals, they’re not strong enough to carry that much.)
Bubblegum Tate
@LD50:
The rationalization is “blacks have been bought out by welfare and affirmative action, and they won’t bite the hand that feeds them.” I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen this argument presented–with a straight face–as “blacks are on the liberal plantation.” This is considered dazzlingly insightful conservative thought.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
Actually, it’s both.
One thing most of them agree with, and more so everyday, is that the GOP sucks eggs, the reasons are many no doubt, but how much does that really matter?
Wile E. Quixote
@Makewi
So you’re saying that your wife is every bit as much of an idiot as you are. Really, your wife is stupid, which should be obvious because she married you. Please explain to me why your spouse, who sounds like she is packing a few extra chromosomes, thought that a cowardly fuckup who only scored 25 percent on his pilot qualification exam and who then wimped out on being a fighter pilot so he could go serve in a REMF unit and another cowardly fuckup who had five draft deferments during the Vietnam war, were better qualified to run the country during two hot wars than someone who had actually served in combat and been shot at.
I look forward to your explanation, it should be entertaining.
Wile E. Quixote
@Makewi
This coming from the man who wrote yesterday that Andrew Sullivan had no idea what decent people thought and that after writing a column took a handful of shrooms and had sex with an anonymous stranger. Would it be possible for you and the rest of your Republican buddies to be even bigger, whining, punk-ass bitches than you are?
General Winfield Stuck
Makewi claimed to be female a while back. Prolly in hopes we’d go easier on a woman. Imagine that, a married lesbian wingnut. Or just a black liar. Take your pick.
Makewi
@General Winfield Stuck:
I never made any claim to a gender. You all have just assumed whatever pleased you.
Wile E. Quixote
@Bubblegum Tate
Yes, it’s because conservatives want blacks to be on the conservative plantation, where they’ll pick cotton, sing spirituals and serve cool mint juleps to Massa as he’s sitting on the porch.
Makewi
@Wile E. Quixote:
It’s one thing to be rude to me, but to make comments about my wife is really beneath you. So here’s my response. Fuck you.
Makewi
The rest of you have a fine weekend. Try not to hate so much.
Matthew Hooper
@Makewi: Oh, I utterly adore this sort of logic from Republicans. No, no, no, it’s not racism that’s keeping black people from the Republicans. It’s just that the Democrats support their innate shifty, lazy ways by supporting welfare. And Hispanics? They just love those less-than-draconian immigration laws the libruls support, so they can be their naturally deceitful selves and grab free medical benefits over the border.
Yeah. Right. They aren’t racists. They just call a spade a spade.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
And once again Scarlett make her grand exit.
With God as my witness, I will never be stupid and wrong again
DougJ
@Wile
Makewi is right: leave his wife out of it. There’s no reason to get nasty and personal that way.
LD50
Midnight Marauder
@Napoleon:
I am not even going to bother reading everything up thread but you are insane if you do not believe that the Republicans are negatively branding themselves for years with stuff like the teabag stuff you are insane. It is pure gold for the Dems
I love you. This is everything I was planning on writing as I was reading this madness, and you came along and did the deed.
Kudos.
matoko_chan
@makewi
Have you read the book?
Thought not.
n/e one that believes Brooks’ whacky populist fantasy has got to be a semi-literate two-digit.
I think 99% of conservative writing now is just whistling in the dark.
In 20 years the % of white people that vote conservative drops to less than 30 %.
Right now the GOP is running around like dinosaurs trying to lay eggs in a New Ice Age blizzard.
The environment has moved on, and they can’t evolve and incorporate black and brown people into their base.
If they can’t evolve, the GOP will go extinct.
Actually……they are already extinct….the tiny little brains in their dinosaur hips just don’t know it yet.
matoko_chan
less than 30% of the electorate.
the onset of nuclear winter for conservatism.
Poor dinos.
;)
Brachiator
@arguingwithsignposts:
The Wiki has this unintentionally funny entry about gumbo:
In this vision, the okra somehow ambled into Cajun kitchens on its own while black folk stayed outside. The reality is that blacks and Native Americans were cooking for and alongside whites in Louisiana. And of course, some Cajuns and Creoles were mixed race.
And this reminds me of the dumbth in the writing of David Brooks and others about the tea baggers. They just can’t
deal with messiness and complexity. It’s got to be either/or for them. Either the tea baggers are racist or they are not. But this is one of the few times when the words of Sarah Palin apply, because here it’s really also, too.
tc125231
@cleek: Well that’s true. Although those who grew up in certain suburbs of Chicago –say Wilmette, where my Rush worshipping, Harvard mis-educated older brother lives –could be forgiven for not knowing that.
tc125231
@Makewi: Nobody hates you. A kind of casual disdain for your powers of reasoning would be a far more accurate description.
tc125231
@Makewi: where does that come from? Certainly not 528.
You know, a sure telltale for identifying poor thinkers is the tendency to manufacture Bullshit facts.
Mayur
Is there an ignore function on this blog?
Laura
Well, not to defend Brooks on this column, but he probably voted for Obama, and will probably not vote Republican for the forseeable future — i.e. until Huntsman or another sanish person runs. (2012 doesn’t look likely for that).
Being a “conservative” doesn’t really equate with being a Republican these days. I’m not a conservative, so I don’t agree with or even respect Brooks’ arguments a lot of the time, but I’m not sure he deserves to be accused of voting R just yet.
low-tech cyclist
Tea baggerism is a political dead end and if Republicans were smart, they’d get the hell away from it as fast as they could.
You can’t get away from what you are.
Cerberus
For Makewi.
A lot of the problem is that Republicans have been fighting this sort of two-primed narrative trying to feed out and out racism in their base while appealing to “why I would never” soft-racists who are just comforted by the fact that no matter how bad they’re doing at least they are doing better than them.
And well, people got old. The kids of the authors liked the other races a little more and their kids a little more than that. And well, the non-whites also increased in voting power. And suddenly the strategy isn’t so hot, because a 20-something looking at the financial shit-storm isn’t comforted by the fact that some black mom is starving in an alley, they’re terrified and angry. They don’t see the sort of stark difference and separation their grandparents saw, they see themselves in that black mom.
The groups that are hated, that are targeted by the Republicans is probably already a majority and is only growing and the wounds are far too deep to keep playing on divisions to get people to vote against their interests.
The tea party crowd is one of the most obviously racist movements since the KKK. They have no coherent message and pretty much every single “media-friendly” point they make is a code-word for racism or racist fears of money aiding black people.
And what’s so utterly delicious about this whole thing is that the glibertarians, by signing onto this whole movement have removed the republicans best chance for a rebranding dodge from the crippling problems they face. No one thinks an independent or a libertarian separates you from the wingnuts anymore and the glibertarians have only themselves to blame for screwing themselves out of their obvious escape hatch.
matoko_chan
Laura, what you see from Brooks and the rest of the soi-disant conservative intellectuals is just pandering to the low information base.
Brooks: Nah, you aren’t racists….you are Noble Populists.
Can’t cut the fringe when the fringe is all that is left.
CTCB05
It’s impossible to prove a negative so how can anyone prove their are not/not a racist? Still, there is racism in all groups in the world. There are blacks who are racists, but we never hear the mainstream media mention them do we?
I drove 2,800 miles to the 9-12 march & it wasn’t rascism that inspired me to go, but the abuse of big, corrupt government.
It’s in the new, underground book just out. It’s about another revolution coming where decade-career politicians, lobbyist need to be removed. Read it!! It’s about what is going to happen next.
(booksbyoliver.com)
ThresherK
Might agree that racism isn’t the MAIN force behind much of the protests. But racism isn’t a binary quality and people have more than one pulse that can drve them.
Yep. I want a mathmetician to run some correlation numbers. How small a room would we need to hold everyone thinking “Those birthbaggers are making so much sense, policy-wise, but shouldn’t drag race into it; it’s mean and inaccurate, and gets in the way of our issues”?
Hey, CTCB: Didn’t you and I get arrested together while protesting the Patriot Act, billions for Blackwater, and warrantless wiretapping?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@CTCB05:
Good for you. Glad to hear it.
I look forward to your support from here on out on repealing the so-called Patriot Act, rolling back FISA violations and overreaching wiretapping and data harvesting programs, prosecuting violations of the convention against torture and related US laws, and investigating graft, corruption and theft in the disbursement of funds during the wars. Oh and shutting down the so-called War On [some] Drugs. And stopping the use of tasers as instuments of extra-judicial punishment and retaliation without due process by state and local law enforcement officers.
If you didn’t have a peep to say about any of these problems with big corrupt government over say the last 8 years, that’s no problem (I won’t even ask about your position during the Schiavo case, since that is water under the bridge). I say it’s never too late to get onboard a train that’s headed in the right direction. You can start by making a donation here.
Wile E. Quixote
@CTCB05
Tell us CTCB05, did you protest against warrant-less wiretapping (what’s more abusive and corrupt than the government monitoring the communications of free citizens), Medicare Part D (a huge entitlement program that was passed without any funding mechanism), No Child Left Behind (the federal government involving itself more in our schools), Terry Schiavo (corrupt politicians interfering in a private end of life decision) or anything else that happened while Bush was in office? If the answer to these questions is anything other than “no” then you’re nothing more than another semi-retarded conservative butt-boy for that fat, doughy bastard Glenn Beck.
LD50
Am I right in assuming that nothing Bush ever did struck you as “abuse of big, corrupt government”? That you somehow think this began with Obama?
And also, I bet you never thought that spending billions of dollars on a war based on lies was worth protesting, either, right? Had to have a Democrat in office before the government became ‘big and corrupt’, eh?
Tehanu
@superdestroyer:
You lost me at “forced busing” — another right-wing code word for “bringing them nasty minorities into the pure neighborhoods of us nice white folks.” I assume you didn’t use “Democrat Party” because you wanted us to think you are a reasonable moderate instead of just another Republicaloon.
superdestroyer
Tehanu,
A few years ago the African-American dominated country government in Prince Georges County, Maryland wanted to continue spending money on forced busing even though there were almost no white kids left to bus.
To the black community, forced busing such as was occuring in Seattle and Louisville (and was ruled unconstitutional) was good government policy and something that should be expanded. Just look at the push of the idea of busing across county and state lines.
Tehanu
You’re missing my point. Busing may or may not serve a good purpose — and I really don’t give a damn how the Bush Supreme Court ruled on it, because they are traitors who gave cover to a judicial coup d’etat in 2000 and ought to be impeached — and people can have principled discussions about its merits or lack thereof. But “forced” busing is nothing but a racist dog whistle.
superdestroyer
Tehanu
How can it be a racist dog whistle when the Cities of Seattle and Lousiville were in front of the Supreme Court aruging that race based forced busing was not only legal but good government policy. Republicans could have support such a stupid argument and would still not pick up a single black vote. However, if the Republicans decide to come out and agree that race base school assigned is good policy they will lose middle class white votes.
The idea that blacks or Hispanics will ever vote for the more conservative party is patently wrong no matter what the dog whistles you think you are hearing.