Speaking of Larison, he asks a good question:
One wonders where Republican hawks can possibly go from here. They have almost three more years of an Obama Presidency to endure, and already they have gone mad with alarmism, hysterics and overreaction to fairly ho-hum policy decisions. Obama needs a credible, sane opposition to keep him in check and challenge him when he is actually wrong. Right now, he doesn’t have that, and all of us will suffer for it. His own party will not hold him accountable, because a President’s party never does, but in any contest between an erring Obama and a mad GOP the latter will keep losing.
My answer: Republicans (not just hawks) are going nowhere until November 6, 2012. They will continue the same noisemaking and hysteria until Obama wins a second term. They’ve convinced themselves that every minor loss on his part is their gain, despite any evidence to the contrary. As long as Democrats lose a seat or two in the 2010 election, nothing’s going to change.
Until the 2012 election, every time one of their their anti-Obama talking points is featured in the “on the other hand” portion of the nightly news, they’ll congratulate themselves on winning the day. Every downward blip of Obama’s approval rating will be celebrated, and any upward movement will be explained away.
So, batten down the hatches and get ready for a thousand more days of Newtonian bullshit:
So let’s go back to Gingrich’s original sentence. “One of the things in the health bill is 16,000 additional IRS agents,” he said. First, that’s not a “thing in the health bill.” It’s an extrapolation from a CBO report. Second, the word “is” is wrong, as even the original GOP spin only used the word “may.” Third, the number 16,000 is wrong. Fourth, the word “agents” is wrong. But if the statement gets no credit for truth, it’s at least efficient: Not just anyone could pack four falsehoods into 13 words. But Gingrich, now, he’s a professional.
Napoleon
I actually don’t think you will see a change in them unless they fail to take back any house of Congress and lose the 2016 presidential election.
Adam Collyer
I have a close friend who is from originally from Tennessee. Her sister works for the IRS in a clerical/administrative capacity. A day or two after the health care bill passed, my friend was told by her sister who works for the IRS that she had heard on the news that they were hiring 16,000 new agents, and she just couldn’t believe it!
If people who actually work for the IRS hear this nonsense and go, “Oh yeah, I totally believe that gun-toting IRS agents are being hired to make sure we all buy health care,” even though such agents don’t exist and there were no announcements from the actual IRS about it, then I can’t even begin to explain how deeply disappointed I am.
The Grand Panjandrum
And Obama steadily puts one foot in front of the other. Stimulus, extending S-CHIP, Ledbetter Act, Health Insurance Reform, slowly standing down in Iraq, new START treaty … and the beat goes on. He’s piling up the wins. Most of them are modest but a couple of them are huge. It all counts for something.
As I said in the previous thread, when Palin, Bachmann, the hideous spawn of Cheney known as Liz, and Michael Steele are the people who are featured daily as the representatives of your brand your shit is weak. Very weak. They make the serial adulterer Newt (Imagine being named after a salamander!) look like the grown up in the crowd. Good luck with that GOP.
JGabriel
The goal is to make the country ungovernable. It won’t keep Obama from having a second term, but if they can get enough seats by 2013, they can impeach him for GWD (Governing While Democrat).
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numbskull
I don’t know that I agree with Larison’s point about the country needing the Republican party to influence a Democratic president. Last time that happened, we got NAFTA, more financial deregulation, and other assorted steaming piles. Going further back, it could be argued that our post-WWII policy of containment at the cost of all else was largely due to the Republicans, whether when in power or when coercing Dems to shore up their right flanks.
So AFAIC, a Republican party in disarray and that is ineffectual is a Win-Win. A win for the Dems, a win for the country, and then really, who cares about the dead-ender 20% that’s always going to be miserable when the rest of us are happy, prosperous, and peaceful?
Mike Kay
Hanoi Jane Hamsher also uses the IRS boogy man, violating the far left’s precious Overton’s Window by invoking right wing frames of argument.
JGabriel
The Grand Panjandrum:
Imagine knowing that everytime a pagan looks at you, she’s thinking, “I could really use those eyes.”
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mistermix
@numbskull: To be fair to Larison, he’s talking strictly about foreign policy – NAFTA perhaps is part of that, but the other stuff you mention isn’t.
As for the rest of your point, I’d like to believe that this is a win-win (or win-lose) but as JGabriel points out, the end result will probably be an ungovernable country, which is a lose all around.
stuckinred
@Mike Kay: But she’s soooo pretty and smart and she’s the only one in the whole wide world that tells the TRUTH!
Mike Kay
@stuckinred: Funny how the hippies can act just like Palin’s love starved shut-ins.
cleek
Hamsher knows the out-of-power party is always the more energized party.
so how does an energized Democratic party benefit her ?
golly. beats me.
numbskull
@mistermix: I’m not dinging Larison on foreign policy, I am dinging the idea that a Democratic president needs the Republican party to influence him (or her). I don’t know that there are any examples in my lifetime where that has worked for the country. I mean, it’s an OK premise in theory, but we have an awful lot of data to demonstrate that 1) the Democrats are broad enough to have their own conservatives that keep liberals in check (and Obama is no liberal, anyway) and 2) listening to the Republicans on ANY policy, whether domestic or foreign, simply doesn’t serve the country well. Hasn’t since WWII and won’t going deep into the 21st century.
Now, I’m not saying that we don’t need a multi-party system. I wish we had one, and you could argue at one time we did have one. One-party rule always results in extra corruption. But, for now, were stuck with two wings of the corporatist party. I’ve benefited from it financially. But I don’t like it.
WereBear
@numbskull: I gotta agree:
And it was Fear of Republicans that led LBJ to hang on in Viet Nam past all hope of it making sense. I struggle to figure out where the R’s have done good since the Gilded Age… and I come up empty.
rickstersherpa
Listeing to news reports on Newt (professional liar) and Lynn Cheney (evil) bloviating in hysteria about the Obama administration. Came across these wonderful lines by Orwell recently, and said, how appropriate:
“By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’(1). But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. “http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
The current Movement Tea Party/Republican thing is not a Conservative or even a reactionary politics. It is a classic, nationalistic, authoritarian, race based mass movement and the mental and emotional energy that is generated by such things should not be underestimated.
EconWatcher
OK, so how are we going to do this November? I still think we’ll lose seats, but I’m starting to think we’ll hold on to decent majorities in both houses.
Davis X. Machina
@EconWatcher: Funny you should bring this up… Nate Silver is talking about 50+ seat losses on his front page today.
WereBear
There are a couple of diaries on GOS with details on a poll indicating the Teabaggers are motivated by (surprise!) racism.
wilfred
Loyal opposition will have to come from within the Democratic party, unlikely, or from like-minded people coming together to oppose measures like Presidential authorization to assassinate an American citizen.
That is kind of a big deal. I wonder if anyone will ask Obama about it.
cleek
@Davis X. Machina:
Silver writes:
gulp
Davis X. Machina
@cleek:
A lot of voters believe is that Democrats are going to take their guns and force them to pay for gay-married abortions, or in the worst case, get them. Not a majority, but a lot
And they’ll vote. Crawling over broken glass if necessary.
We’ll all sit home complaining about the lack of a floor vote on single-payer health care, and get buried in the landslide.
We’ll be right, of course… but that won’t stop the war in Iran.
tomvox1
This post is dead on. There will be a media-cheered false dawn after the 2010 midterms, when the GOP will conclude that doubling down on the crazy has paid handsome dividends for them (although their gains will really be due to traditional anti-incumbency). But in 2012, they will take a Mondale-sized whipping. And then maybe the adults (i.e. what used to be called Eisenhower Republicans) will be forced to admit that they have to form their own party and leave the GOP to the whackos. Because by wholeheartedly embracing and promoting the lunatic fringe, the party will have completed its transformation into the modern incarnation of the Know Nothings and be headed for the same sort of irrelevance as a political force in this country.
The fact of the matter is, the GOPers are up against a guy who is going to eat their lunch 8 days a week and still leave them thinking they are well fed because they are just not that bright, while Obama is going to go down as one of the greats.
tomvox1
@Davis X. Machina:
Re: Nate Silver
Well, it’s April now. Let’s see what happens in November. Not saying this dire prediction can’t happen, only that it is a lifetime away in politics.
Pococurante
I honestly can’t get worked up over poll estimates taken five months before the average voting citizen starts to pay attention to political ads. OTOH ActBlue needs to be fed regularly until then.
sloan
@tomvox1:
It’s sad how predictable this all is. 2010 will be portrayed as a referendum on Obama and HCR, and teabagging will be credited will delivering an anti-Obama victory, even if the Dems hang on to the House and Senate.
The fundamental reasons for the 2010 result – GOP usually does better in midterms, party in power gets hurt in a recession, President’s party usually takes a hit in midterms, etc. will not be reported. It will be reported as a teabag revolution.
This will likely cause the GOP to learn exactly the wrong lesson and nominate a loon in 2012. I look forward to this. The emboldened conservative movement is showing their true colors. Their hate and paranoia is on display for the world to see. Better that they flaunt the crazy and show us who they really are than hide behind the “compassionate conservative” mask.
El Cid
With as much craziness as we’ve seen so far in the Gingrich Congress since they took over in January of 1995, there’s simply no way that Republicans can get any crazier.
Within 5 years or so, the early 2000s, they’ll have to act to moderate themselves, I’m sure of it.
aarrgghh
it’s not just “ho-hum policy decisions. it’s every damn thing obama does. it’s winning a nobel prize. it’s boosting our olympic bid. it’s addressing schoolkids. it’s putting his feet on his desk. it’s tossing a baseball. it’s his inauguration.
the noise machine’s tossed the break and has both feet on the accelerator. but it’s already off the cliff and the only question is how big a boom it’ll make when it hits bottom. if there is a bottom.
Sentient Puddle
@Davis X. Machina (and everyone else reading Nate’s analysis): He’s basing that on an analysis that assumes only national trends. That sort of thing is generally sufficient to establish a rough baseline (especially this far out), but ignoring the local game fucks up your analysis if you want any degree of precision. As much as Republicans love to say that it’s going to be 1994 all over again, they forget that a significant portion of their gains that year came from geographic realignment. Not something they can rely on to get them anywhere close to 50 seats this year.
YellowJournalism
Gingrich is one of the best liars I’ve ever listened to. The clip they showed on The Daily Show last night with the outright lies Gingrich and Hannity told about the START treaty and biological weapons attacks was another example of how these people are master manipulators of “the facts.”
Gregory
…demonstrating that the GOP has learned nothing at all from the 2008 election, not to mention the Democratic primary before that.
Rick Massimo
It was relatively recently that I was introduced to the concept of “winning the day” and/or “winning the news cycle.” And I realized that that’s what the Republican Party had been devoting itself to for 30 years.
What a depressing, waste-of-time thing to devote your political life to.
The Chief
re: Nate Silver’s analysis
Just remember that he’s not saying a GOP takeover is likely. If he ran all the numbers, he’d probably still have the likelihood of that at below 50%. He’s just saying that it’s possible, as in at least better than 9-to-1 odds. Those aren’t “good” odds, but they aren’t completely far-fetched either.