Once upon a time, the conventional wisdom was that “all politics is local.” Now, it’s conservative heterodoxy to, suggest, as Larison does, that
defeating Crist will be a hollow victory so long as the movement conservative alternative to the Crists of the party seems increasingly pre-packaged and crafted by national activists who are oblivious to and uninterested in local conditions around the country.
Granted, Tip was not a conservative, obviously. So I ask: have conservatives always though that some broad, vague, Randian, Burkean vision superseded any and all local, “parochial” issues? Or is this something new?
Update. Some point out that conservatives used to talk a lot about “federalism”. I always thought that people just talk about states’ rights when their party has no power at the federal level. So it seems strange to focus on a top-down, unified national message when you are completely out of power at the national level.
But maybe that is the central lesson here, that despite the fact that there are few Republican elected officials in Washington, the city is still wired for Republican control in a way that makes conservatives act as if they were in power. When the Politico says you’ve got a headwind at your back, the pundits say it’s a center-right nation, and you’re enjoying a Balzian resurgence , why not run cookie cutter conservatives in every district in the country? The conservative philosophy has never failed and whatever happens will be some form of good news anyway.
greennotGreen
I thought conservatives used to believe in states’ rights, or was that just when states’ rights was a dog whistle for racism or other “conservative” values? A state is local.
Redshirt
Conservatives have principles? Vision? I didn’t realize this, other than “Win at all costs, and if you cannot win, make the winner as miserable as possible”.
Keith
I could have sworn it was the Democrats who wanted to nationalize the election back in 2006.
me
I remember in 1994 a lot of talk from Republicans about how nationalizing the election was the way to win.
Zifnab
Just a few years back, Republicans were bragging about being the “Big Tent” where business conservatives from the north, blue collar types from the heartland, young professionals from the east and west, and family values soccer moms and NASCAR dads across the land could all come together.
The whole “compassionate conservative” campaign in the Bush/Gore race was designed to paint Republicans as a smarter breed of progressives. The party was aggressively trying to jettison the negative aspects of its image. Now they’re practically embracing them.
This new cookie cutter conservative is a very big departure from what Republicans wanted to paint themselves as ten years ago.
different church-lady
Hint: everything changed on 9/11.
mistersnrub
These people are not conservatives, they are radical authoritarians.
Billy K
This fits in nicely with Conservatives’ love for authoritarian cultures. So, I’d think the answer to your question is yes.
different church-lady
Correction to above: “Everything changed” on 9/11.
Or maybe it’s “Everthing Changed on 9/11™”
Billy K
I owe you a Coke, mistersnrub.
handy
@different church-lady:
Funny, but those really are a little different, aren’t they?
And I think Zifnab’s right. This really feels like an about-face strategy from what Dubya and the Repubs were doing post-Clinton.
New Yorker
Once upon a time, I thought conservatives believed in federalism (and some self-declared conservatives who have been excommunicated like Sully still appear to). That day seems long gone, and it’s now me who sees the value of federalism. If Alabama wants to ban abortion, the teaching of evolution, gay marriage, etc. and wants to force every resident to recite the Pledge of Allegiance daily not to the flag, but to a giant picture of Sarah Palin hugging Jesus, fine. The blue states will pick up all the brain drain refugees, which can only be good for us.
And if New York wants to legalize all of the above, plus marijuana, all the more reason for me to stay here.
Fergus Wooster
What Zifnab said. The big-tent compassionate conservative approach was bullshit, but they at least felt the need to give it the appearance of reality. They wanted at least the appearance of a coalition.
These guys are more like Bolsheviks – they’re the national vanguard, and everyone who doesn’t toe their line 100%, even the like-minded, are Mensheviks and must be destroyed.
El Cid
Nothing has to make sense overall. Those very same “conservatives” will then turn right around and argue that the only legitimate government is local government, and that the federal government is mostly a usurper, and the real democracy is local. And then if the city council some how fails to approve whatever expansion project they’re lobbying for, it’s once again a sign that all government is corrupt.
The 1990s militia movement trafficked in the notion that the only level of government which could enforce the law was the county Sheriff.
This sort of sentiment went silent when the craziest right wing we’ve seen since High Reaganism held every single branch of the federal government.
Now that they no longer hold that power, then it is simultaneously true that the most important thing ever is (a) saving the nation from Obamunism through their conservalibertard neo-Confederate teabag rebellion and (b) rejecting all federal government and running everything from the local level.
Thlayli
… Burkean vision superseded any and all local, “parochial” issues
Remember Burke’s famous speech to his constituents, where he essentially told them “Don’t keep bugging me about how you want me to vote. I’ll vote however I damn well feel like voting. If you have a problem with that, don’t re-elect me.”
No points for guessing that he didn’t get re-elected.
cleek
purity of essence is the new states’ rights.
pharniel
Yes. SASQ
As long as Randroid==will do whatever the uberlords tell them.
Stooleo
The reason why they can’t reclaim the compassionate conservative moniker is that the jigs up. They milked it for all that it was worth and there is no going back. Any one who has half a brain knows that this compassionate conservative shit was a con job from the get go. I think remaining R’s are actually pleased that they do not have to pretend that they are compassionate. It never really was their style anyway. So here to the new mantra ” I’m here, I’m an asshole, deal with it”.
calipygian
This post by Larison is brilliant in it’s simplicity and will be copied and posted here wholesale for greater exposure:
Larison rightly identifies Palinism as some sort of infantile of Tony Montana-ism: I want it all, Chico, and I want it now.
calipygian
@calipygian: FWP, BQF.
licensed to kill time
I think they just believe in winning at all costs, principles be damned.
soonergrunt
@El Cid: That’s pretty much the history of the right wing since 1980.
You win David Niewart.
Mark S.
They’re mostly ideologues, so no, they don’t care about the nuts and bolts of governing. Also, they think that 98% of what the government does is unconstitutional, so they are probably against it before they even know what it is.
Pangloss
Is “a Balzian resurgence” in the lexicon yet?
EvolutionaryDesign
The movement is entirely maleable. The most important form of government is always the one that they currently control. The “Party” is an amalgam of Christian Nationalists and corporate exploiters. These people will not be happy until we pray to Jesus every hour on the hour, reject science (and any other biblical contradictions), and export the darkies. A truly sickening sect of society.
licensed to kill time
@calipygian: Underscore, dude. Put two underscores in the empty lines between paragraphs.
Pangloss
I’ve got a headwind at my side and a sixgun at my back.
Brick Oven Bill
This is indeed something new. It is a result of the election of a President who is on record stating that the Constitution is fundamentally flawed.
It actually seemed to start in earnest under Bush last spring, in my eyes. There is something going on in Washington other than representative government. Obama is just making it obvious.
We are seeing Conservatism being re-defined not as an abortion, or Catholic-Protestant, or tough-on-crime issue, or school boards, but as a fidelity to the Constitution issue. People sense Frank Rich’s ‘hidden hand’, and are responding.
I predict history will see President Obama as a good thing for human liberty, as he cannot help himself and is over the top in ways that President Bush was not capable of being. So what we are observing is the unification of the elements of America that are capable of appreciating the gifts that our Founders bestowed upon us.
So yes, this is good news for Conservatives, and everybody else, whether they realize it or not.
Kyle
The right wing believes is whatever rationalization they can come up with at the moment to support whatever it is they are trying to foist onto the country. They don’t have to believe it or mean it. And clearly, they rarely do.
gocart mozart
@greennotGreen:
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.
Not if it is gay rights, gay marriage, medical marijuana, cleen needle distribution, assisted suicide, Bush v. Gore, sex ed, pornography/free speech, and so on. They then want the feds to trump state law. This has always been the case. Conservatives were against states enacting their own minimum wage laws back in the twenties.
Fwiffo
The visual of “headwind at their backs” is never going to get old. I will enjoy that forever. It dovetails so nicely with the old joke about how a ballot operates just like the automatic transmission in your car; D for forward and R for backwards.
soonergrunt
@Brick Oven Bill: to quote the immortal Sammuel L. Jackson,
handy
@Brick Oven Bill:
It’s fascinating to be able to read in real-time a conversation one has with the voices in his head.
Will
The conservative philosophy has never failed, it’s just become more selective.
EvolutionaryDesign
@calipygian:
The self-interest angle is spot-on. I think that is something we progressives have to focus on more as a movement. Obama mentioned it at the start of his presidency, but we really need to take a look at ourselves and ask what each of us has done for someone else lately. After banging my head against the wall for years and praying for “change”, I’ve begun to realize the old maxim “change comes from within”. Volunteer. Donate to charity. Give your time. I recently began tutoring grade-school aged children, just to do something. I know time is scarce, but hey, I’ve got an hour a week. What if we all did stuff like this. We have to re-teach the world that in this life, we are all connected, and all in this together.
/DFH platitudes
El Cid
It would be so fucking nice to have one god-damned thread on this blog which didn’t revolve around that BOB jackass. Just one.
joe from Lowell
Conservatives used to be genuinely localist.
For example, the John Birch Society used to argue against building a national highway system, on the grounds that it would homogenize the country, and undermine local distinctiveness.
srv
We need a remake of the Boys from Brazil – with someone making clones of St. Ronnie.
You know, there would be a market for a fertility clinic with a conservative bent.
Brick Oven Bill
It will be good for you too soonergrunt. Just lie back and enjoy it.
Now I have to go, as Glenn Beck is going to be on the TV. I hope he is feeling better as the replacement host is not very good.
licensed to kill time
__
Gawd, that just gave me an mental image of Sarah Palin doing a faceplant into a pile of coke.
Incertus
@Fwiffo:
Never heard that one before, believe it or not. But you can bet your ass I’ll use it.
El Cid
And just to distract us from the Fort Hood commemorations, today’s mass shooting of the day. One or two dead, up to 10 wounded.
Roger Moore
It’s all part and parcel of the “Party of No (R)” approach to being in the minority. The most the Republicans can do is to block the Democrats, and the only way they can do it is by voting as a monolithic block. The moment Republicans are allowed to vote their consciences, some of them will wind up siding with the Democrats, and that will all but guarantee that the Democrats get their way. They could also accomplish something by making positive proposals of their own, but we all know how unlikely that is.
Fergus Wooster
That image will keep me going for weeks.
Actually, it would go a long way to explaining her resignation speech.
cleek
the reason it’s a national campaign is because the activists are united through the internet.
in years past, they’d have been organized from the ranks of local partisans by party officials at state and local levels. now, everyone with the smarts to start a blogspot blog can be an activist. and there’s enough info out there that thousands of supporters can find out which races are ripe for their own special type of couch-bound ‘activism’.
the internet has decentralized activism.
it hasn’t yet decentralized real life, though, so there’s a disconnect as hordes of online pseudo-activists flood money and influence into places where they don’t live.
Zifnab
@EvolutionaryDesign:
Cheers to that.
Northern Observer
Conservatism and Conservatives are a misnomer in America. The people you see on your TV screens, the activists who run the elections, the bulk of the sitting members are not conservatives in any shape or form, they are radicals, pure and simple.
Most American conservatives identify as independents and democrats.
This is nothing new. There was always the potential. McCarthy and the young Nixon showed the way, Goldwater held the coming out party and Reagan made them semi respectible, despite holding them in personal contempt. Under Bush 2 you had the full flower and now the radical weed is everywhere where ‘republican conservatism’ once stood.
They are America’s radicals and America’s biggest political problem/challenge. Hopefully they can be overcome in the next 50 years. My thought is that demography will take care of the bulk of the problem. But 50 year of BS dominating your domestic politics is crippling. America may be in rough shape by the time it has settled these mindless troublemakers.
licensed to kill time
@Fergus Wooster: At the time I heard speculation that she was “on something”. Of course, it would be irresponsible not to speculate…
gocart mozart
@Brick Oven Bill:
So you are in favor of that whole slavery/denying women the right to vote thing B.O.B. Interesting.
I beg to differ B.O.B., I think conservativism is an abortion.
arguingwithsignposts
@El Cid:
At least the Makeweewee hasn’t been around lately. But I’m growing weary of Plato’s Third Law of Thermodynamics and Palin/Beck worship and b.s. Obama conspiracies. I’m switching back to Firefox for the Pie Filter, unless someone can tell me if Greasemonkey works with Flock.
New Yorker
Ah yes, fidelity to the Constitution. So you’re going to advocate indictments be handed down against much of the Bush administration for treating the Constitution like toilet paper?
Frank Rich is the boogeyman this week? What happened to George Soros and Bill Ayers?
So instead of arbitrary detention and torture, he’s going to…..declare himself Emperor?
“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” – Thomas Jefferson
I’m glad you agree with the founders on the danger of religiously-motivated government. Can you tell the GOP (and the “me too” elements in the Democratic Party)?
Ugh
Yes, this is essentially what John Yoo said in class one day in 2000.
Kiril
States’ rights was always a way for non-Southern Republicans to weasel out of supporting racism, as well as a way for Southerners to support racism without actually saying so.
Zam
In 94 republicans finally broke their something like 50 year losing streak in the house. I assume they are trying to recreate that, however they don’t really have a good spokes model like Gingrich was at the time. Hell now Gingrich and Palin are fighting for control. Even 2006 really wasn’t a national election, just look at the kinds of candidates and how they are not lockstep with Pelosi in the way many republicans were with Gingrich. So the best bet is that they are taking a little from 94 but some crazy ass people are the ones trying to interpret 94.
Zifnab
@New Yorker: If George Bush had an abortion, BoB would be defending it to his last breath.
AnotherBruce
@Redshirt:
Conservatives have principles? Vision? I didn’t realize this, other than “Win at all costs, and if you cannot win, make the winner as miserable as possible”.
We saw their “principle” in action for 8 years. Advance the interests of the wealthy and powerful through corporate cronyism, all the rest is window dressing.
valdivia
sorry if I am going OT and going over something that may have been talked about already but I just saw the Fort Hood remarks by President Obama. Just amazing. So good to have him at the helm.
then again I am an O-Bot.
gex
@AnotherBruce: You forgot scapegoat the gays, the Hispanics, the blacks, the poor, and the Dixie Chicks (for good measure).
AnotherBruce
These people are not conservatives, they are radical authoritarians.
No, not this, this country has had 3 decades of ascendant conservatism. What we see today is the result of conservatism. And it’s not so different than what has happened in the past when conservatism has held power for a period of time. These people are conservatives.
georgia pig
The teaparty organizers realize that tou have to have a federalized, unified wacko message, because thinking about parochial issues involves, you know, thinking. Thinking that might make you conclude, for example, that a public option with an opt out provision might be acceptable to some locales, or that providing a public competitor to break a health insurance monopoly might actually enable free enterprise rather than restrict it. Starbursts, death panels and and Hitler! are much easier messages to control, because they’re not connected to reality.
gocart mozart
I think that conservativism is being defined as a movement of shreiking losers who don’t know history and are oblivious to facts and logic and that took a word that used to mean an obsure sex act and turned it into something weird and dirty.
GReynoldsCT00
@arguingwithsignposts:
The other troll was around earlier today… highly recommend Firefox and pie
Talking Point Hero
#1 – Greennotgreen – Conservatives believe whatever the Faux Nooz talking points tell them this week. Speaking of wing nut talking points – how about that N.Y. Post? Every bit as classy as good old Rupert himself. Pass the popcorn
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/10/shocking-allegations-levi_n_352314.html
General Winfield Stuck
It is new only in so much as the makeup of the GOP is new. And it really isn’t the GOP anymore, the southern wingnuts are just using the name of their conquered party, for now.
The original conservative movement actually had at least an intellectual foundation benieth it, albeit a shaky one, when it’s captains first hoisted it’s tenets on the nation circa 1980. And now, at least the centerpiece of that ideology which was economic, has failed quite miserably,. Partly due to it’s lack of reception and mitigation to real life problems of people, and partly from it’s shepherds being self promoting scoundrels mostly interested in wealth and power and keeping it no matter.
What we have now is a screaming band of banshee confederates opposed to about everything but rabble rousing and beating liberals with any political weapon they can handily grab. There are only two ways to victory for these folks, bring the country down to it’s knees with mischief, or a giant asteroid hitting the earth.
Though if those don’t happen, over time, a third party of mod conservatives could make them electorally viable, provided they pull their heads at least part way out of their asses.
Left Coast Tom
It takes money to pay for Sarah Palin’s clothes and Dick Armey’s ego. If you’re “creating” an astroturf “movement” then taking it national provides an economy of scale.
El Cid
I have to say that one of the accomplishments of the Bush Jr. conservatives 2002 – 2006 was to finally end their ability to promise a Reaganite utopia that everyone would love if only they had absolute power.
If the Democrats are lucky, a sense will remain that they are weakly to moderately capable when holding the Executive and Legislative branches (not the Supreme Court though), whereas the Bush Jr. / Reagan II Republicans were an absolute horror.
The Glenn Beckite neo-Confederate tea-baggers may be trying to scream that Democrats controlling both the Executive and Legislative branches are the equivalent of Stalin-Hitler-Mao-Pol Pot, but outside the easily outraged white conservatives of the South, very very few people agree with them.
licensed to kill time
@El Cid: I believe BoB stated that he was off to worship at the Porcelain Throne of Beck, so maybe this thread will be BoBfree for a bit.
gnomedad
@El Cid:
Seconded. Even if not for the racism and sexist, I’d be tempted, were it up to me, to give him a good long vacation for “disorderly conduct”.
Ailuridae
I really like Larison but feel he is ignoring the elephant in the room. Crist is gay and everyone knows it.
When movement conservatives talk about the RINOs and the “them” that threatens their “us” it is not just on ideological grounds. So they label those within the Republican camp as “moderates” no matter how inappropriate that label is to their actual politics/positions. See also, Graham, Lindsey.
catclub
Joe From Lowell @37 said:
“For example, the John Birch Society used to argue against building a national highway system, on the grounds that it would homogenize the country, and undermine local distinctiveness.”
I presume they also said those things were a communist plot,
so their batshit insane prelude kinda ruined the impact of the
accurate parts of their argument.
This is a problem for anyone not in the mainstream. Any small error in the full presentation will be mercilessly attacked, while the correct points will be ignored.
Once you decide it is NOT a communist plot, you can decide
the whole argument can be ignored.
Shell
Was staggered to hear a conservative radio host (Michael Medved) say similar. Well, he started with “His opening remarks were perfect…”
I didn’t wait around for the inevitable “but..” Or the inevitable callers.
arguingwithsignposts
@GReynoldsCT00:
BTW, Greasemonkey and the Pie Filter both work with Flock! Just installed and Plato’s Third-Dimensional Insight player is back to munching on pie!
W00h00!
AnotherBruce
@gex:
Well, that’s not so much a principle as it is a second nature.
GReynoldsCT00
@arguingwithsignposts:
Happy to hear that. I’ve been trying to get it to run on my mac at home but so far haven’t been successful…
Zam
@Left Coast Tom: Good point, spending time running around Iowa or other such areas campaigning for your Ideas does not allow for free designer clothes.
gocart mozart
Prediction for 010: Dems will lose a dozen or so bluedogs to teabag candidates for being insufficently crazy, but a dozen or so moderate Reps will lose in blue states because their opponent was to crazy. All in all good, I hope I’m right.
gocart mozart
to =too
licensed to kill time
@Shell: I just googled for the speech; the first hit that comes up is from the Wall Street Journal headlined: “Obama delivers largely unemotional speech at Ft. Hood”….
El Cid
It’s not this simple. Ronald Reagan not only launched his campaign in Mississippi talking about states’ rights, he used it as a governing strategy.
On the right, you support “states’ rights” when it helps to undermine things that may occur at the federal level that you don’t want.
Likewise, you would oppose “states’ rights” when it looks like a state or two might do things that you don’t want.
So, when it comes to the federal government helping with health care, it’s “gaaaak States’ Rights! Constimatution! Tree O’Liberty!”
But when it comes to the gays gettin’ all a’married, it’s “Quick pass DOMA!“, and when states thought about calming down Uncle Ronnie’s miserable excuse for law enforcement called a “drug war” (never mind his global network of contra and mujahedeen drug dealing warlord freaks), then it was time for THA FEDRUL GUBMIT to crack down on those insufficiently obedient states.
jl
I wouldn’t be so puzzled by the label of ‘conservative’ if it were just ‘states’ rights’. But it is ‘states’ rights’ with very explicity notions about how each state should be, which is that they should all be 100% straight-up wingnut from townhall on up, no exceptions.
It is an extremist reactionary political, social, relgious, and to some extent racial/ethnic movement. It is certainly a visceral cultural nativist movement. It is not any kind of traditonal American conservative movement. Unless you want to call the Know Nothing Party and its descendents conservative. Only difference is that there is some give on race if the individuals buy in 100% to the cultural nativism and religious values. But that seems unfair to people like Teddy Roosevelt and Arther Vandenburg, or Ford. Or even Hoover. Or even Coolidge. Or even the domestic policy (as opposed to domestic crime) Nixon. And to ol’ Bobdole, a sardonic ol’ soul. Alsotoo.
jl
@El Cid: Yeah, el Cid has it nailed. Should have read that comment first. The wingnuts fit that pattern exactly.
RSA
Whoa, for a second I thought that read “defeating Christ will be a hollow victory,” and wondered what happened to Larison. Because, obviously, defeating Christ would be a huge victory for pretty much anyone.
ChrisZ
The wingnuts don’t have a strategy. They are simply reactionaries crying for attention and feigning outrage at everything anyone else does. They don’t “think” a top down approach is a good idea, they don’t have strategic thoughts! They just yell and scream and hopes people listen.
Unfortunately, people do listen . . .
Punchy
OT:
There was a shooting at an Oregon strip mall. Clearly would have been prevented if every shopper, clerk, homeless guy, and local 5th grader in the town was packing heat.
ChrisZ
Also, why is it that Google Reader doesn’t show new BJ updates until there are already 80 comments in the thread? How am I ever gonna be one of the cool kids at the top of the thread this way?
gocart mozart
Speaking of blue dog democrats, over the summer when they had those town hall meetings, I was watching CSPAN carry a meeting in Missippi (I think). I thought the Rep was a douche at first but after hearing the questions from many (all?) of his constituants, I sort of felt sorry from him. Its hard to be a Dem Rep and have to deal with questions like “Do you pledge to vote against that evil commie Pelosi for speaker?”) Maybe he is only being a douche to survive in politics? The sad thing is that most of the audience appeared to be working class.
gocart mozart
@RSA:
The teabaggers will crucify Crist!
licensed to kill time
@RSA:
Well, a judge just banned a Xian license plate in South Carolina , maybe that’s a small victory.
Svensker
Remember when the Bush Administration sent 24-year-old ideologues to run Iraq after the invasion? Remember when the Bush DOJ was hiring lawyers right out of the wacko Christian “colleges” without regard to their experience or abilities?
Apparently this new GOP believes that if you have the right slogans (because “principles” implies having to think), experience and knowledge don’t really matter. Guess all those Disney movies they absorbed as kids led them to believe that “abracadabra” worked as policy.
gwangung
@Svensker: They believe in the Green Lantern theory of governing: all you have to have is will, and things will get done, some way, some how.
(though it actually looks like they’re now becoming Red Lanterns and Orange Lanterns, to be truthful….)
Bubblegum Tate
@Kyle:
I think this is a pretty important point/distinction. The people who cook up these weird-ass rationalizations probably don’t believe them, but the people who repeat those weird-ass rationalizations do believe them wholeheartedly.
RE: Palin as Tony Montana: Who does Sarah Palin trust? Sarah Palin, that’s who! Also!
Chuck Butcher
Does anybody want to/can answer this The Confederate Party of Republicanism Believes … What?
New Yorker
Funny, that was basically the theme of South Carolina’s letter of secession in 1860. They were all in favor of states rights for slave states….but not so much for states rights when it came to northern states ignoring fugitive slave laws.
But this is South Carolina we’re talking about. They later tried to secede from the Confederacy.
El Cid
@New Yorker: That’s one of my favorite historical factoids ever.
I think it should form the basis of a Jeff Foxworthy type list of “you might be living in a state full of right wing Southern jackasses.”
“If your state threatens to secede from the Confederacy because it warn’t pro-slavery enough, then…”
Comrade Dread
This.
The ascendant feature of this ‘conservatism’ isn’t a dedication to or respect for the past. There is not even an acknowledgment of the past. Nor is it preserving our nation, heritage, values, and precious resources for progeny, as there is little thought for tomorrow and there is no empathy because outside of the group, there are no people of value, only enemies.
This ‘conservatism’ this Republicanism is all about now. It is a selfish philosophy and poisoned well that marries Boomer narcissism, with Randian self-centered values, a slash and burn consumerism, and a submissive idolatry of money and the rich, with a little cult of personality thrown in.
Perhaps I engage in some hyperbole, but it frustrates me to no end to see this destructive philosophy claim so many people, especially within the church. It needs to be engaged, argued with, and fought at every turn.
Zifnab
@Chuck Butcher: They’re better than you, so gimme!
Government by kleptocracy. The GOP cronies are allowed to take as much as they can get their hands on. Any attempt to prevent them from taking whatever isn’t nailed down should be prohibited. If ripping the scaffolding out of the ceiling causes the roof to cave in, the cronies get in line first for relief and the rest of you can fight for scraps.
It’s the epitome of Fuck You politics.
arguingwithsignposts
@ChrisZ:
Because RSS only updates every 60 minutes through the Reader right now. JC or his techie could install RSSCloud plug-in to provide updates more immediately.
John could also install the WPTouch plug-in to make it an easier load on iPod Touches and iPhones.
LD50
@gocart mozart:
That is sad. Working-class poor whites, pledging their loyalty to a party that fucks them over on a regular basis, convinced that all their problems are the fault of Nancy Pelosi.
Shit, even the Soviet Union never had that many people brainwashed that successfully.
bloomingpol
See Kelly Ayotte NH – the woman chosen by the party, who can’t tell us what she stands for, and who is being challenged by the right. Very interesting story.
Reason60
What is funny is, that the older mainstays of the conservative catechism- fiscal restraint, limited government, assertive defense of America-
aren’t controversial.
The reason they are non-controversial is that they are tired platitudes, without anything behind them.
No one seriously wants to balance the budget- No one seriously wants to reduce the size and scope of the federal government- not Palin, not Bachmann, not Limbaugh. Defending America means continuing to atack and bomb and shoot at anyone who lifts a hand to us, anywhere in the world.
Those stock phrases are empty flags, strange symbols and totems that you know used to mean something, but no one can remember since Grampa died; but they are hung out at rallies anyway, out of respect.
So real parochial issues are ignored, cast aside in favor of the dog whistles and buzzwords of political comfort food.
Enlightened Layperson
Actually, there is a certain logical consistency to it. If you believe that all government, at least all federal government, is evil, then it makes no sense to run for federal office based on local issues. Do that and you are acknowledging that the Evil Federal Government might be capable of doing something worthwhile for the folks back home. Can’t have that!
Enlightened Layperson
As for states rights, let’s admit it. Everyone is inconsistent and hypocritical on states rights. We’re just as inconsistent and hypocritical on states’ rights as the wingnuts. Because face it, states rights is never the real issue, just a clever dodge to oppose something the feds are doing without having to come up with a substantive argument against it.
That’s why I say, sure the South was inconsistent and hypocritical about states’ rights, but I can forgive that. What I can’t forgive is deploying them on behalf of slavery.
frankdawg81
We had conservative morans running for city counsel and school board here who’s main themes were, in order: no new taxes, end abortion and mandate prayer.
So yes, the cons could run a ficus tree on that platform for any job in the world. Frequently the ficus would be a better candidate and would most certainly be a better office holder.
BillCinSD
@Enlightened Layperson: well except the Dems don’t actually try to use states’ rights for anything but ridiculing the Republicans
Batocchio
For a second, I thought that said “Defeating Christ,” which I suppose would make sense for the reigning party of greed, war, and torture.