Everyone is talking about David Frum’s “Waterloo” piece today. I’d like to highlight the part that I find most interesting (and agree with most):
I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.
So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours
I was on the road last week and it seemed like everywhere I went (the breakfast bar at the Quality Inn, the Moe’s Burritos, to use exact Brooksian detail), Fox News was on. There’s no question that it’s GOPTV; sure there is some actual reporting, but it’s mostly Republican propaganda. I know the ratings aren’t that high but it’s a ubiquitous part of American life now.
Fox and Rush are bigger than the Republican party. The idea that Republicans can somehow break away and start acting independently is silly. I like David Frum’s blog and I think his analysis is dead-on, but his project of de-Foxifying the Republican party is hopeless.
Bobo and Frum and the rest need to look themselves in the mirror and say: I belong to the Fox News party. That’s the first step.
Short Bus Bully
Has this ever happened before in American history? That a newsmaker has simply taken over an entire political party?
This is fucking insane.
ellaesther
Dude. Health care reform was hopeless, too.
I’m in a good enough mood right now that I will even go back to my mantra of several months ago and say: I really hope that David Frum (and whoever else) does manage to de-Foxify the GOP, because I continue to think that a healthy two-party democracy requires two functioning parties.
DougJ
@Short Bus Bully:
Good question. I don’t know.
Mike Kay
This is also the Waterloo of the Hippie Industrial Complex.
Hanoi Jane Hamsher, Tailgunner Glenn, Shitty Sirota, the Firebaggers, the PUMAs, the JunkBloggers — the whole Manson Family drove their purty-hippie-van off a cliff.
leo
Exactly, these aren’t ‘right-wing’ activists — these are ‘fox-news’ activists.
(Or Fox-a-vists for short)
TDE
I wish I knew Frum would be crying like this back when he was writing speeches for Bush II.
These tears still taste good though.
dmsilev
Michelle Bachman is on my TV whining about abortion.
I think I’m going to turn around, go back to the train station, and get back on the train (just did the Seattle->Chicago run. Short version: Awesome).
-dms
AkaDad
I was told many times that elections have consequences.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Yup, time for Frum to get off his pity pot and realize what he wrote in that piece is absolutely true, and endless articles describing it won’t do a damn thing to change it. The GOP is in the firm control of the tea bag mentality and is the devils due for starting the “Southern Strategy”. For these people, the core of their beliefs is not accept a dimes worth of moderation, no matter what. They are anarchists and nihilists at heart, and the vision they have for America involves scenes from Dante’s Inferno. But they will settle for the old southern lifestyle, long forgotten,, but not by them.
Frum needs to saddle up with conservadems, at least for the short term, or put his energies into forming a new conservative party to do battle with the troglodytes that have conquered his former party. Whiny articles of the obvious will not get the job done, not with the tea baggers.
Joseph Nobles
Fox News: just enough news so you can follow the propaganda.
It’s a lot like the Daily Show, but that’s just enough news so you can understand the punchlines.
gregw
When I walk into a business with Fox on the TV I ask them to change the channel. I get a kick out of it when they get this puzzled WTF? look on their faces.
Ash Can
Sounds like David Frum finally decided to help himself to a big ol’ piping-hot mug of Wake The Fuck Up.
Ned R.
As a friend of mine noted, while this piece is of interest, the more interesting one might be Mark Steyn’s cri de couer over at the National Review. A farrago of self-pity and apocalyptic foolishness.
TR
Have we started the Glenn Beck Suicide Watch yet?
Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression
I used to comment on FrumForum, but got tired of gentle David making polite noises about respectable conservatism, sort of like a piano player at a Klan rally asking the members to say “Darky” instead of “”N***er” because it sounded more genteel.
David doesn’t seem able to understand that the party of Everett Dirkson and Dwight Eisenhower, the party of Lowell Wiecker or even Wm. F. Buckley is long dead. Its the Birchers and Tea Partiers now, and Erick Erickson is the brain trust.
Third Eye Open
Its a chick’n v. egg argument. If it isn’t FOX it will be another outfit; If Rush didn’t exist it would be necessary for the reactionaries to invent him.
I believe that this generation understands that common cause is the only thing keeping us from falling behind a quickly industrializing world. I like the idea of Obama changing trajectories, but I am fairly confident that he sees himself as a stepping stone to that lofty peak which most of us may never live to see.
That Obama feller seems pretty nice, and on top of things. I hope he’s on my death-panel.
demkat620
@Short Bus Bully: I don’t know the Horace Greeley exactly applies.
But I can’t think of anybody else that could come close.
CT
When does the first “Don’t gloat/be nice to the firebaggers” post show up? And who writes it? My bet is tomorrow and Joan Walsh…
dmsilev
Wasn’t there some GOP Senator who predicted that health care would be Obama’s Waterloo?
Does that mean that Obama is the Duke of Wellington? Do we get to name a train station after him?
-dms
Nob Akimoto
If it IS Waterloo…
“It has been a damned serious business – Pelosi, Reid and I might have lost 30 votes. It has been a damned nice thing – the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life…By God! I don’t think it would have done if I had not been there. “
DougJ
@Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression:
I’m sympathetic to him. This would be hard for anyone who was a lifelong Republican to admit.
Jason Bylinowski
Has anyone else noticed that Sullivan is creepily ignoring any mention of HCR? I guess I’m probably reading the creepiness into it (it’s pretty hard hard to abstain your way to lecherous behavior) But what is that about? Is this an anti-jinx measure or did I miss the post where he informed us all that HCR is now beneath him?
jwb
Whenever Fox News is on in the lobby of a hotel I’m staying at, I go to the desk and ask to speak to the manager. I then tell him or her that I will not stay at their hotel if they don’t change the channel. So far, every manager has agreed to change the channel. (BTW, I generally ask that they tune to the Weather Channel, since it’s hard for the wingnuts to complain about the choice.)
I agree with your observation that Fox News seems to be far too prevalent in public places and it makes me wonder how they are doing it and why CNN, for instance, hasn’t been pushing back.
Cat Lady
Shorter Fox News: if you can’t convince them, confuse them.
/Harry Truman
dmsilev
@TR:
I think tickets went on sale back when he pretended to douse himself with gasoline on air a few months back.
-dms
DougJ
@dmsilev:
Yes, that is what he is referring to.
gwangung
Personally, I won’t gloat. But I won’t be particularly nice if they say something stupid.
demkat620
OT but, the Awesome Anthony Weiner is on my teevee.
Comrade Mary
Doug, was the choice of this video just too obvious, or are you saving it for after the vote? (I think Red State would approve of the hot pants.)
TR
That Steyn piece is crazy even for him.
Oh, Marc, your tears taste so so sweet.
Clifton
Frum is the creator of the “axis of evil” speech. So I say f_ck him. His sober analysis is not an acknowledgment of having a flawed worldview. It is always the liberals’ fault!
ajr22
@TR: Do you think glenn will actually feel the country become socialist at 9 pm? When he wakes up tomorrow will he be driving to work in America or in Germany circa 1939 like a twilight zone ep? Wait and does this mean Rush is leaving America? Please god let it mean Rush is leaving.
SIA
@dmsilev: Where are the photos? I seem to remember a photo journal mentioned. :)
gregw
@dmsilev:
Damn, I missed that.
Jim C.
@#22
Yes, I’ve been watching Sully today. Given that I advocated leniency towards him and stated that he’s a good read and a reasonable conservative in a recent blog thread on this site, I’ll speak up on this one.
I’m not going to jump the gun prematurely here. Sullivan has been pretty consistently advocating that this bill get passed. He’s been continuously telling Democrats to “Pass. The. Damn. Bill.” so I’m going to give him some grace time to see what he ends up saying.
My guess is that he ends up writing a very long post about the historic nature of this accomplishment and then pivoting to how awesome Obama is.
Just a guess though. I’ll be happy to come back here and eat crow if I end up being wrong.
me
@TR: Is Rush going to broadcast his Monday show from San José?
Zifnab25
Which is why David Frum is another useless tool in the image of Bobo. He simply has nothing useful to add outside of media spin. Frum puts on a pretty face and offers up a few suggestions, but only when he knows he won’t be taken seriously by anyone in power. He regularly gets called out by Rush and Friends for being “too liberal” every time he questions Bush approval ratings or John McCain’s election prospects or popularity of anything from the Iraq War to health care. In another life, he’d be Alan Colmes. Utterly useless even as pundits go.
And that’s setting aside all the times he’s peddling winger propaganda against global warming or immigration or balancing the budget.
mcc
@Clifton: Is it a flawed worldview he’s objecting to, or ineffective political tactics?
DougJ
@Comrade Mary:
I’ve seen about three other blogs run it already today, though I toyed with the idea of running it with the post title “Better than an ABBA song” (from Muriel’s Wedding).
dmsilev
@SIA: Still on the camera. I got in just about a half an hour or so ago.
I took a boatload of pictures, but I’m not sure how well they’ll come out. Between reflections from the windows and the fun job of taking pictures from an 80 mph platform, I anticipate a low hitrate. Once I have a chance to sort through them, I’ll put the good ones up on the web.
-dms
Jason Bylinowski
@Jim C.: Yeah, now that you mention this, most of the posts are seeming very generic anyway, and it’s starting to make sense that he might be rolling out something later.
BDeevDad
When is Rush moving to Costa Rica?
Scott de B.
From TPM:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@demkat620: @
Hearst? I guess there were powerful publishers, but never one who could move a national party in this way.
I have a hard time with Frum, he says all the right things, now, but this is the guy who wrote not just the “axis of evil” speech, but a book about Dumbya entitled “The Right Man”. I just can’t take him seriously.
FlipYrWhig
@gregw: I remember him dousing _someone else_ with prop gasoline.
Max
@Jason Bylinowski: I was just about to comment on that.
My take is that Sully’s writing one of his epic love letters to Obama (which I enjoy a lot) and will post it following the passage of the bill.
Corner Stone
@DougJ: Bah. Just more CYA by the people who were there when the shit went down but now don’t have any actual “in” to the current seats of power.
He’s looking for his cake but as we all know, it’s a lie.
Corner Stone
Can’t stand Ed Schultz.
scav
Jesus, what with the Party of Fox intersecting with Waterloo, I’m suddenly transposed back to the early 1800s. Oh Help, I’m such a nerd.
ellaesther
@Short Bus Bully: Man, I cannot think of his name right now for the life of me but there was that newspaper owner who essentially pushed the United States into war with the Philippines back at the turn of the last century.
And indeed, powerful newspaper owners really shaped politics in this country for decades and decades. To a some extent we owe the fact of President Lincoln to one angry newspaper owner — but again, the name escapes me.
Sorry, I’m too giddy with current events to be accessing my historical knowledge all that well.
Mike in NC
The anger is bound to boil over soon and people will get hurt.
Meanwhile, the media will take this as an indicator that conservative viewpoints aren’t given wide enough exposure. The NY Times and Washington Post will hire a few more wingnut scribes. David Gregory will hire Michael Savage as his new co-host. Mary Cheney will be on cable news 24/7.
ajr22
Ya frum is no longer a conservative. Nothing he writes has any connection to the conservative party, and his goal of making the party sane is actual proof of his detachment from reality. He really has become a writer for liberals. No conservatives would read him, he is just a place for liberals to go when looking for what “sane” republicans are thinking.
schrodinger's cat
@Jason Bylinowski: Yes I noticed that too. Ignoring an important, even momentous political event and posting instead on some boring religious stuff. I don’t get it.
Josh
Ha ha.
“I don’t like this bill because making us get insurance is communistic.”
Wow.
someguy
Frum’s a fucking brain surgeon. You can boil down his position thusly:
“If only Republicans weren’t so shrill about their racist, sexist, xenophobic and selfish bigotry, and not so open about their backwoods retard inbred lowbrow mentality, they’d be a lot more sellable at the polls.”
There’s a reason the dude is exiled from the Republican Party. Even in the Land of Teh Morans, he’s considered too dumb to breed. The only way Republicans would get more votes is if the issue was whether they should leave the country. I’d vote for them then…
ellaesther
@scav: Maybe you can help me with my messy history? (see comment #50)
FlipYrWhig
@scav: Who does that make the Duchess of Devonshire?
FlipYrWhig
@ellaesther: Hearst.
Ned R.
@Jason Bylinowski: Sullivan did mention a couple of HCR related posts here and there, but they were more tangential. I gotta say, in comparison to his usual “I AM MY ID WITH LITTLE RESTRAINT FROM THE SUPEREGO 24/7” style, I actually appreciated the calmer approach on the last few days.
ellaesther
@FlipYrWhig: God bless, and thank you. The brain, she is overloaded.
Mark S.
I was expecting Frum to get crucified in his comments but actually most of them are pretty reasonable. They even go so far as to admit this is basically RomneyCare.
schrodinger's cat
@ellaesther: Was it Hearst?
scav
Devonshire’s easier. Umm…. God, druggy grambler with fashion sense. Lady GaGa? What’s-er winehouse? I fall down miserably with recent culture.
Taylor
The warning from Hamsher et al all along has been that the personal mandate without a public option alternative (of some kind) will be a gift to Republicans in 2010 and 2012. It is a warning with some force.
While I’m happy HCR will pass tonight, I would say there is no room for gloating, big battles still lie ahead.
Socrates
By the way:
This blog and the community here deserve a share of the credit for this historic moment.
You all fought the good fight, you were relentless. One of the best places for info and bucking-up.
Fucking great job, everyone!!!!!!!
Thank you!
gregw
@FlipYrWhig: found it at you tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txPDQ2jNCHk
Dunno if this linky thing will work.
Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression
@DougJ:
I was a lifelong republican, an activist for Reagan…I quit in disgust in the mid 90’s, as I moved leftward and they moved rightward.
It IS difficult to admit what we used to support was wrong, and as much schadenfruede as I have for the wingnuts, there is mixed a genuine sadness.
Its like the memoirs I read from ex-Weathermen or Panthers, about the day they realized that their movement had been taken over by thugs and anti-democratic would-be dictators.
I hear the wingnuts speak the phrases I used to speak, quote the same authors, invoke the same principles, but I realize they mean different things- “free market” actually means “crony capitalism”, “Liberty” means “I got mine fuck you”, and “limited government” means “Unlimited Executive power”.
If I was in the mood to get into a philosophical debate, I would make the argument that the Democratic party actually best represents the truest principles of conservativism (small c), in that they promote a pragmatic solution-oriented, well ordered society, a cautious consensus aimed at maximizing both liberty and order.
I honestly believe that the Republican party represents a dangerous radicalism, of unlimited ideology, embracing the wild unlimited government power (for the Executive only).
So yeah, there is a sadness and regret in coming late to this realization. But better to admit error late, than to hold stupidly to a path that leads to destruction.
Tom Hilton
@Mike Kay: Stop kicking the
Judean People’s FrontPeople’s Front of Judea!dan robinson
Fuck David Frum.
That is all I think of that son of a bitch.
Corner Stone
What I love – my channel guide says the show that should be on MSNBC right now is “Witness to Jonestown”.
That’s a keeper.
Texas Dem
True, but Frum’s readership is hardly representative of mainstream thought in the GOP. Check out Malkin, Hot Air, or Red State if you don’t believe me. Frum is a very lonely voice. And thank God, because if the GOP had followed his advice the health care bill would have died last year.
kommrade reproductive vigor
So Frump is just smart enough to realize the monster is no longer obeying orders and it might get messy for the creators. Fuck him.
Months? If he wasn’t on a soapbox when the first fRightie suggested Democrats wanted the terrorists to win, he can go fuck himself with 12″ of cold iron.
Really, fuck him.
birthmarker
Ask that Fox News be changed, turned off, or the volume be cut down. I do it all the time if no one is watching it. I just tell whomever that I object. Most of the time no one is watching, or the people who are are really old. Meantime my millenium and gen y sons get all and I mean all their news from the web. Like Jon Stewart says, the kids are all right.
schrodinger's cat
Isn’t Fox News like Pravda? its not really news but propaganda dressed up as news.
scav
@FlipYrWhig: I mean, I’d love to tie it up neatly and suggest La Palinista or suchoid for Lady D, but Lady D had some taste and judgement.
gogol's wife
I keep having to work, but coming to read your comments every hour or so has kept me from going crazy today. Thanks everyone.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Ned R.: Wow. thanks for posting that link. This part really caught my eye:
Got that? Your very character is going to change as a result of having health care. Anywhere along a spectrum that includes saying “aboot”, to full French fluency, in advanced stages.
I’ll get the croissants and cafe creme ready.
Martin
Wow, Fallows calls a spade a spade…
Good call, as always.
GeeYourHairSmellsTerrific
@Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression:
What really confuses me, is a lot of these people screaming about liberty, don’t have theirs yet. They are essentially screaming “don’t give me shit, give it to that rich dude over there”
Tom Hilton
@ellaesther: Charles Foster Kane.
Mark S.
@ellaesther:
Huh, my comment disappeared.
Are you talking about William Randolph Hearst?
kommrade reproductive vigor
@dmsilev: A boot. To commemorate ze arse kicking.
jwb
@Short Bus Bully: In the US, radio and television was pretty regulated with respect to political content prior to cable, and newspapers were regional, so historically it has been difficult for media owners to exercise this kind of national influence—at least in the US. Maybe you could argue that conditions in the Soviet Union or perhaps Nazi Germany were such that media and political interests were similarly aligned—though, as I understand it, neither had anything like the alternative mainstream media outlets we have here.
Fox may have a large influence in the US, but its absolute numbers remain very small—in fact, if you look at the ratings, the most surprising thing is just how small the audience for all news and politics is. And the rightward tilt of news media in general can be explained, beyond the economic interests of the owners, largely by the fact that the audience for news and politics is older and more conservative than the population at large.
GeeYourHairSmellsTerrific
Ah, boo, Jessie Jackson Jr. is finished. He was fun to watch.
ajr22
Oh man winguts on the twitter machine are going nuts. I just was on a hcr trending topic and clicked on a wingnuts who said there are 224 traitors in congress, her profile read ” Location Texas
# Bio: Bible-believing Christian, Reagan Conservative, American Patriot and I’m playing my drum! Pro-Constitution, Pro-Life, Pro-Israel. The Revolution HAS begun! ” Insane, and as a jew I would like to say these peoples support of Israel scares the hell out of me.
scav
@ellaesther: Is your war with the Phillipines really Hurst and the Spanish-American War and I’ve no clue about Lincoln. I really better at Random English History (try the Mitfords).
AnotherBruce
@Corner Stone:
I can’t stand Norman Goldman, our local liberal radio station puts him on the evening drive time. He’s a shitweasel.
Peter J
Sadly, Limbaugh has taken back his promise to move.
In any case, Costa Rica must be a lot worse than US with HCR, their constitution forbids a standing military. Instead, I think he should move to Saint Helena, that’s where Napoleon was sent after his defeat at Waterloo.
jwb
@ellaesther: Yes, a de-Foxified GOP would definitely be good for America. The alternative is a Democratic party that is continually at odds with itself, which given the current state of the Senate makes governing almost impossible.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Then wouldn’t the current generation of American elderly be rather less panicky about Presidents Blackman and his soshulism coming after their Medicare? (I know Steyn’s nutty in a completely different way than even the rest of the NRO stable)
Martin
@Bill E Pilgrim: I cannot tell you what a hankering I have for ketchup potato chips right now.
But I think the GOP has seriously misplayed this hand. After today, the press will drop all of the horserace shit and out-compete each other to educate the public on the meaning of the legislation. It’ll look totally reasonable to 80+% of the public and had it passed more quietly without all of this smoke and fire, I expect that it’d be considerably less of a lead story than it will be over the next few months. Approval of the bill will soar, particularly among independents. Approval of Obama and Dems will rebound, and there’s nothing the GOP can do about that before November.
Les
@Jim C.: A little bit more on Sully: It’s Sunday. His Sunday blogging tends to be a little slower paced, more poetry/religious/philosophy focused. He might write something on HCR today once the voting is over. But he’ll be all over it tomorrow, I bet, as he has been chanting PTDB for weeks now.
katjam
The Republican Party should just accept reality and rebrand itself the National Fox Party.
For 8 years the Foxes raided the henhouse of our federal government stealing integrity out of every department and emptying the feed bag. Now, locked out, they are yapping and snapping at the feet of Democrats who are actually trying to govern.
They retreat to their FOXNews den now and then to vent, or they listen to Rush, the Uber Fox, as he bully them to attack again..
Corner Stone
@GeeYourHairSmellsTerrific:
I was watching CSPAN for a bit and that look he shot someone off camera when he went to gavel the first procedural vote closed was priceless.
It was like, “You fuck. You just said something? Something to me? Shiiiitt. I’m going to spin this gavel a few times in my hand as I fantasize about me and you in an alley.”
Bob K
FUCK YOU RUPERT MURDOCH – F.U.! I SO hope you die badly. Why does an AUSTRALIAN get to tell us what to do? What happened to American Exceptionalism?
dan robinson
@78
From that link:
That’s some good snark.
jwb
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: I disagree, I think. I don’t see what Frum’s saddling up with conservadems does for anybody. What we need are sane people who understand conservathink working to make the GOP a place where sane politicians can succeed.
Texas Dem
Or that black knight who got his limbs chopped off in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Corner Stone
@AnotherBruce: Don’t want to rehash all the Ed critique others have done, but Ed seems to frame all his Gotcha! questions worse than Matthews does.
“Congressman, are you happy with the fact the WH lubed you up with vaseline and not KY jelly here?”
Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression
@GeeYourHairSmellsTerrific:
Allow me to be more blunt- it means “I live in this doublewide trailer, but I’m ok with AIG getting a bazillion dollars as long as that strapping young dark skinned buck has only a single wide.”
Corner Stone
@Martin:
What the heck are you talking aboot?
…oh God…the vote hasn’t even happened yet!!
mr. whipple
She’ll be saying that tommorow morning.
FARfetched
@Short Bus Bully: One of those near-useless pieces of trivia that stuck with me from high-school American History class was that William Randolph Hearst hyped up the explosion of the Maine in Havana, blaming it on Spanish agents and all but single-handedly ginning up the Spanish-American War. I’m sure war coverage sold papers.
carlos the dwarf
@Jason Bylinowski:
Sullivan has said in the past that he writes most of his weekend content in advance and sets it to post automatically. I expect he’ll have something to say later tonight, but I don’t consider his lack of live commenting on a Sunday out of the ordinary.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He also thinks that this “governmentalized health care” (which is amazing, since it doesn’t even include a public plan as an option, let alone anything remotely governmentalized about the industry as a whole) is going to cost so much that there won’t be any more money for wars. He actually writes that, pretty much.
And then everyone will call American Cheese “Comrade Cheese” or something instead out of disdain for our refusal to join in invasions on false pretenses anymore and boy then we’ll all be sorry.
Clifton
@mcc: He’s objecting to the tactics, which, in my opinion makes him an even bigger piece of shit. He believes the exact same thing as these people and has no problem with them in office. Just tamp down the public displays of bigotry. If the last thirty years can’t put a dent in your belief of “free-market economics and Republican values”, then what will?
Wag
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
I predict the next wingnut meme will be that they can “challenge this in the courts”. That should keep them busy for a few months.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@jwb: If I thought there was any hope for the current GOP to become sane, I would agree. Since I don’t think there is that hope, Frum’s rantings are like chaff in the wind. And he is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I hope I am wrong.
FairEconomist
I think if the Republicans had negotiated in good faith we’d have a bill very similar to this, with a few symbolic but relatively insignificant changes like stricter limits on malpractice claims. The policy wouldn’t be all that different. The politics would be different, because the GOP could claim credit for the benefits we will see.
stickler
Ellaesther:
Everybody’s already pointed it out, but yeah, it was William Randolph Hearst. He sent Frederic Remington to Cuba to draw pictures of the conflict between the Spanish authorities and the Cuban revolutionaries in 1897. By then, though, the Spaniards had agreed to negotiate and there wasn’t much fighting to depict. Remington sent a telegram to New York:
“Request permission to return. There is no war.”
Hearst’s (probably apocryphal, but awesome) reply: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures; I’ll furnish the war.”
Hearst’s media empire was pretty powerful for a long time, pimping a lot of right-wing innuendo and cant, and blowing the horn for both Red Scares (1919 and 1947-53). Remember that “Citizen Kane” was nearly not made because Hearst was so pissed off about it, and the movie was never even mentioned, let alone reviewed, in any Hearst paper. Nasty piece of work, he was.
gbear
@TR:
I hope Frum has called up Rove and said ‘Thanks a lot, fucker’. IMO, Rove courted the batshit crowd more than anyone.
Krissed Off
I love the smell of soçialism in the evening.
ellaesther
@scav: Yes yes, good God. Hirst and the Spanish-American War! That might explain why my brain wasn’t accessing the right name for the newspaper guy — I was starting in the wrong mental file ALL together. Geez!
Thank you!
jetan
@Scott de B.:
We have a winner.
ellaesther
@stickler: And thank you too!
(And everyone, thank you!)
gbear
As long as this is somebody’s Waterloo, please let me cue up one of the most beautiful pop ballads ever written:
The Kink’s Waterloo Sunset. Ray Davies at his best.
Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression
O/T, a nice bit of concern trolling from McArdle
After a year of vicious slandering and bashing of HCR by Fox news and the Village, resulting in public confusion and doubt over HCR, she primly worries that voting this in is in defiance of the “popular will”.
Oh, teh tyranny.
Martian Buddy
@Corner Stone: One of Malkin’s readers commented that someone had called today’s vote “political Jonestown.” Frum’s got more of a clue than they do as to which side is chugging the Flavor-aid.
Mark S.
@FairEconomist:
Pretty much.
FlipYrWhig
@ellaesther: The Span-Am war included the US winning the Philippines, so you were in the right mental file. (It’s also the occasion for the writing of Rudyard Kipling’s notorious poem on the “White Man’s Burden.”)
dogbud
There is a sneaky gizmo you can buy that turns off tv sets which are tuned to Fox Noise.
I have one, and it actually works. I never go to a doctor’s office without it. :)
http://www.tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_main.php
Buy two and give one to another frustrated liberal!
hidflect
Rupert Murdoch basically became kingmaker of Britain through his ownership of The Sun newspaper. He picked the conservatives when they won and he picked Tony Blair when he won. Now politicians actively court The Sun before they do anything. Murdoch obviously thought he could repeat this “experiment” with FOX. That’d be the big reason he became an American citizen. With all the money in the world the only challenge left to him was to become The Most Powerful Man in the USA! Glad it’s not really working out so well, but sad he’s wrecking the USA in the process…
danimal
This time, Frum won’t be alone. There are conservatives in the GOP that are not teabaggers or loons. They have been really quiet and have been hoping that the teabaggers would fade away and let the establishment regain control. Kind of like how they juice up the anti-abortion folks and let them down slowly.
Just about now, those conservatives have realized that the “let the crazies take the Dems down and then we propel ourselves back into power strategy” is not working. They now know they must regain control of the GOP if they are to have any power at all. In other words, the civil war most of us thought would come after the 2008 election is coming now.
Pass.The.Damn.Bill and pass the damn popcorn.
Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression
Speaking of the Party of
FoxRedState Strike Force:“Let’s send the Judas Stupak 30 pieces of silver!”
very reverend crimson fire of compassion
@Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression: This strategy was first implemented in the Chesapeake immediately following Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, When the wealthy planters began wooing poor whites away from common cause with enslaved blacks by playing on white racism and codifying colonial apartheid in a series of anti-black/Indian laws. These bastards have been with us from the beginning, and it’s still an open question as to which side wins the American Revolution.
patrick
Does “free-market economics” include anti-trust exemptions?
FormerSwingVoter
@Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression:
In their defense, most of them are very much not okay with AIG getting a bazillion dollars. They just think its more important that said dark-skinned buck has only a single wide.
MJ
Wait, didn’t Frum famously coin the phrase “Axis of Evil” when he was working as a speech writer for Bush the Second’s team? So pardon me, if I question his commitment to turning down the “overheated talk”.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@Martin: Martin – not sure if you are still reading this, but I was in the car from Austin back to Houston today (3 hrs roughly) and was switching back and forth on the satellite radio feed between Fox (Cavuto) and CNN (Wolf).
Every time Fox went to a Dem congress person speaking, they turned up the audio of the teabag protesters. You could click one station up, hear the exact same speaker and not hear any of the protest noises. It was incredible…
When the RI governor came on to whine about the bill, the sound of the protesters was muted.
theflax
The phrase “conservative entertainment industry” should become as ubiquitous in Democrats’ speeches as “liberal media” is in Republicans’. It simply sums up the whole problem with Fox, Regenry, and their ilk.
The Truffle
Dear Canada:
Will you take David Frum and his wife Danielle Crittenden back? Pleeeeeaaaaaaaase?
Royston Vasey
@dmsilev: or even a capital city.
=)
RV in NZ
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
Um, my channel guide says the show that should be on MSNBC right now is “The Stripper and the Steelworker”. I don’t know what to do with that exactly.
Man, I am relieved. In time it’ll fade from memory how long this took or it’s ugly path to passage– well, except for the right’s beastly tactics– but that it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s passed.
(deep happy sigh)
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
I’ve been thinking a little about that today– what are they going to do now? They couldn’t stop it, they couldn’t stop the feckless, disorganized dems from passing it. As someone else said upthread, is Glenn Beck on suicide watch?
Now they truly are the “party of No.” They own “no” now: no change, no progress, no new ideas, no ability to deal with big problems.
Barney
There’s a quote from Stanley Baldwin, British (Conservative) Prime Minister in the 1930s (and apparently first said by his cousin Rudyard Kipling):
“What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.”
Always handy when thinking about some types of media.