I realize I shouldn’t continue to read the Kaplan opinion page, let alone link to it, but this Caddell-Schoen piece reads like a parody, from the multiple citations of Rasmussen polls to this:
To turn a corner, Democrats need to start embracing an agenda that speaks to the broad concerns of the American electorate. It should be somewhat familiar: It is the agenda that is driving the Tea Party movement and one that has the capacity to motivate a broadly based segment of the electorate.
Is FreedomWorks directly paying these guys? Seriously. What is going on here?
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Man, it’s obvious that if the Democrats “embraced an agenda” which deliberately went out and pissed off the teabaggers, they’d lose nothing and probably firm up their support and energise people who would actually vote for them.
They’re not goddamned swing voters. They’re people who think the Republicans aren’t rabidly right-wing enough.
El Cid
A Democratic resurgence is inevitable once the party turns toward investigating Obama’s birth certificate and vowing to declare health care reform un-Constitutional, as well as cuttin’ all the taxes and stoppin’ all da spendin’.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fuck you but no thanks, I will never be a teabagger. Now teabaggee is a whole ‘nuther thing…
They are probably being paid to provide the knob polishing that goes with a good teabagging.
Menzies
I’m honestly speechless.
Exactly how is the Tea Party series-of-loose-planks-that-they-call-a-platform going to motivate any kind of “broadly based segment of the electorate?” Do these people not realize that this movement is so fractious that the only thing holding it together is their opposition to the Democrats, or – since apparently now we can’t say that ’cause they endorsed Minnick – “big government?”
You know what, maybe it would be a good idea for the Democrats to do that. Then the teatards would have nothing to direct their anger at and go reach to insubstantiality.
David in NY
Feh.
Crashman
Sooo… Let’s see, that advice would consist of:
1. Every government program is evil except the one I’m enrolled in.
2. black people=scary!
3. ???
4. Electoral Victory!
Arclite
Heh.
I just saw “Han Shot First” byline under the Ballon Juice logo.
Classic.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Caddell is a bug fuck crazy Clenis bottom feeder consultant type that is pissed cause the cool kids in DC are no longer interested is his wingnut light consulting/
Culture of Truth
um, yeah.
Remind me – who has the House, the Senate and the Presidency?
Bad Horse's Filly
That would be the segment that lives in Amurika , right? Thank god I live in America, were, according to a CBS poll today, 82% could give a fuck about teabaggers.
CynDee
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Wow, that’s the finest line to be heard since One-Eyed Jacks, when after beating Karl Malden into the saloon floor, Marlon Brando said to him, “Get up, you scum-suckin’ pig.”
Eljai
Caddell and Schoen raise cherry picking to a whole new level that, quite frankly, has my consciousness exploding like glassy shards of spittle from a Glenn Beck rant. Which reminds me, there have been innertoob sightings of Caddell commiseratin’ with the frothy one about such things as oh, say, Van Jones’ questionable past. Yet, Caddell and Schoen describe themselves as democratic pollsters. My. Ass.
socraticsilence
I don’t know it seems like it’d be hard for Obama to embrace a movement based on hating Obama and a general fear of Brown people.
Ash Can
Somebody needs to break it to these poor idiots that 18% is not “a broadly based segment of the electorate.”
kommrade reproductive vigor
Thou shalt not question the story arc!
joel hanes
Magical thinking seemed to work so well for these guys during Bush 43. They became convinced that they created their own reality by saying what they wished were true.
It’s hard for them to give it up.
max hats
Doug J, you need to own up to the terrifying truth: this is what these people actually believe.
slippy
@kommrade reproductive vigor: I’m scratching my head wondering when the media will start reading the polls and figuring out that they lost control of the narrative months ago.
They’ve relentlessly pushed this “teabagger anger” bullshine on us practically all year. I saw a front page story about it today in one of our local papers here in Indiana. And even with all this pole-vaulting of a minor political squib of a movement into the stratosphere of exposure, they’ve failed to gather more than 18% support. Their ability to distract America from our real concerns is vastly overrated, and seems to have almost utterly vanished in this case.
Stroszek
And here’s the media to the rescue.
Courtesy of Reuters, all he-said/she-said, no fact checks, and naturally, the first paragraph is nothing more than a laundry list of GOP talking points:
Dems need to move fast and capitalize on the frayed nerves.
DougJ
@max hats:
That really made me laugh, because it really would be terrifying.
Menzies
@Stroszek:
This. Luckily Harry Reid seems to have found his testicles. Guess they were particularly well-hidden.
joeyess
Pat Caddell?? He’s a fucking jagoff of epic proportions.
melmoth
Why must you place this crapulence in front of us? Who the hell takes the WashPost op-ed page seriously? We all know these writers are a pair of hacks. stop torturing yourself and us with this manure.
forked tongue
Jesus God. I’m so old I remember a time when Patrick Caddell was sort of a welcome presence on the teevee bobblefests. Back in the 80s. I also seem to vaguely remember Jay Leno being kinda funny back then, so don’t go by my memory.
DonkeyKong
Harry Reid has always been a fierce tucker.
zhak
I’ve got an amazing idea the Dems might consider embracing: the truth. Instead of tacking toward the folks that are all worked up based on lies & their own unresolved issues, why not actually base their ideas on a more reality-based foundation & get some good stuff done?
Countering the lies would be a good start, in fact.
DougJ
@zhak:
Amen.
mr. whipple
@Stroszek:
And here’s another, from the Lexington Herald-Leader(read the whole thing, it’s awesome):
“McConnell’s statements are perfectly calibrated to inflame the public. He insists the bill would “allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks.”
Their resemblance to the truth is another matter.
The provision that McConnell claims would allow endless bailouts emerged from a bipartisan collaboration by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
Warner, who learned a thing or two about capitalism as a successful dot.com entrepreneur before becoming Virginia’s governor, told The Washington Post: “It appears that the Republican leader either doesn’t understand or chooses not to understand the basic underlying premise of what this bill puts in place.”
The provision to which McConnell particularly objects creates an orderly process for letting “too big to fail” banks fail, at the industry’s expense, without taking down the entire economy.
The losers would be the management and shareholders, not the taxpayers. So onerous would this process be for failing financial institutions, says Warner, that it would serve as a deterrent to reckless decision-making.”
kentucky.com/2010/04/15/1224749/mcconnell-to-big-banks-rescue.html
encephalopath
@9 Culture of Truth
Yep… if Democrats would “start embracing an agenda that speaks to the broad concerns of the American electorate” they just might win the White House and both houses of Congress.
They could really get somewhere. People would vote for them and stuff. Oh… that happened already?
Shalimar
I’m trying to imagine the resulting stream of vulgarity if someone had tried to tell LBJ that he really needed to embrace the Bircher agenda if he wanted to get anything passed.
Mark S.
Oooookay. This is the second time today I’ve seen this ridiculous argument. Take it away, Amity:
We should definitely listen to these people who are so grounded in reality.
Speaking of Amity, this was her argument that teabaggers aren’t racist:
I’m not surprised that ridiculous answer wasn’t very popular.
Um, oh fuck it, I have no idea why these ludicrous statistics prove anything one way or the other.
Allan
Can someone help me with a Venn diagram of “white racists” and “Obama voters” please?
I’m having trouble figuring out how many miles apart to place the circles.
Allan
Oh, and someone should check on Broder.
He’s been in the can with that column for like, hours.
Allan
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
I think that’s just a PC way of saying “fat people.”
rob!
Jesus Christ, Washington Punditry is a sick, sick bunch of folks. They’re so fucking worried about seeming like “the elite” they’ll compliment any screaming nutjob, as long as he comes from “the heartland.”
Ick.
GregB
From Wiki:
In 1988, Caddell left the Democratic Party after an acrimonious lawsuit with a Democratic consulting firm. Republicans would often cite Caddell’s tirades against the Democratic Party on the floor of the House and the Senate.
This douchebag has been Democrat bashing for 22 years.
Fox only has one bigger scumbag on their payroll and that is the repulsive Dick Morris.
Lurking Canadian
Mark S. at 30 got there before me, but this:
is so absurd that it needs to be said twice. Reducing the debt with an emphasis on tax cuts. While carefully crafting initiatives to stimulate the economy.
Did even Laffer think that was possible? I mean, he thought tax cuts could pay for themselves, but did even he claim they would not just pay for themselves, but pay for other stuff, too? How much monkey crack do you need to smoke before that makes sense?
Allan
@Lurking Canadian:
You just have accept that you lack any actual talent and can only succeed as a dependent on the wingnut welfare state. Then it becomes pure self-interest.
The lies don’t stick in your throat when you’re washing them down with Cristal, baby.
gbear
@Shalimar:
It would probably sound a lot like this LBJ quote to an obnoxious reporter:
How many times a day do you suppose Obama thinks that? It’s fun to imagine what LBJ would say if he were dealing with today’s DC press.
Allan
@Lurking Canadian: And also too, this column was generated using LuntzPro, a new application that generates focus-tested buzz words in grammatical sentences that have the feel of truthiness without requiring any actual ideas.
Cliff
The real question is, how does DougJ read these assholes every day and not realize some fundamental truths about how they think?
What is going on here?
What’s going on here is that THEY’RE ASSHOLES.
They’re assholes, and they or their editors are getting money jammed down their throats so hard that they can’t think of anything else besides being an asshole.
jl
These two people are pure hacks. They seem vaguely familiar from past elections but I don’t pay enough attention to remember who all these hired flacks are.
The column makes no sense, except as mindless superficial poll driven crystal ball gazing in a seance run by a drunk.
This part was priceless:
“And the Tea Party movement stands for fiscal discipline, limited government and balancing the budget”
How does the insane teabagger desire to keep Medicare just exactly the way it is, and from the reception of Palin’s blather, run a world military empire of domination (USA USA!) and reducing taxes even further square with balancing the budget and fiscal responsibility?
Oh, that’s right, they want to eliminate the budget rounding error that is US foreign aid funding. That’ll fix it.
The teabaggers are pathetic innumerate scared bitter white people who are afraid the gummint is going to take their stuff, while they run around to stupid rallies with their inane illiterate signs, that are sponsored by rich money bags who scheme how to take all their stuff night and day.
I read something somewhere recently about how they are similar to the white South Africans who wanted their white pampered social welfare state just for them and nobody else, everything else, including reality, be damned.
Mark S.
Oh, I finally get why 11% of teabaggers saying the best thing about Obama is his intelligence proves they aren’t racist, because if you are actually racist, you wouldn’t think a black person is intelligent.
I still don’t know why the Muslim thing means you aren’t racist. That would be like proving someone isn’t homophobic because they don’t dislike Bush because he is a lesbian.
Is Shales’ book about the Great Depression this stupid? I think I would kill myself if I had to read hundreds of pages of this woman.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Mr. Fix’t to the rescue!
Fix’t.
soonergrunt
Not that anyone will notice, but I’m taking some time off from all the blogs and such.
The crazy-making from both sides is getting to me a little too much.
Hell, the only reason I’m mentioning this is because I’m just vain enough to think someone WILL notice and care. That itself is enough reason to take a break.
DougJ
@soonergrunt:
You won’t be able to stay away.
Mike in NC
WaPo + teatards = match made in heaven
Will
Pat Caddell is the original PUMA. He has been concern-trolling the Democratic Party for almost 30 years.
Yutsano
@soonergrunt: FWIW I’ll miss your witty reparteé, not to mention your very much appreciated insight on military issues. Unless this is related to the job search, stick around for a bit plz.
jacy
@soonergrunt:
Yeah, yeah, and every time Cole posts something like that, it’s immediatly followed by eleventy-billion posts.
But if you do manage it, have fun, so we can live vicariously through you when you return to enthrall us with your exploits in the “real” world that I’ve heard so much about. :)
Brick Oven Bill
Mark S. teaches us:
“That would be like proving someone isn’t homophobic because they don’t dislike Bush because he is a lesbian.”
I know lesbians Mark S.
George Bush is no lesbian.
Lesbians as a rule do not delight in cooking, to their detriment. Teabaggers cook with zeal, but never with Rachel Ray or Mario Batali nameplate cookware. We understand that these are just cheap rip-offs and instead use cast iron, available at your local thrift-store. Probably originating from someone who is now dead.
But this does not matter to us.
Women and food being the essence of our experience. Perhaps also the occasional tobacco product. Soonergrunt is a puss Yutsano. Listen instead to me.
Yutsano
When you’ve puked your guts out and sweated your ass of going through boot camp while learning to fire a gun and the limits of your physical and mental being and pushing just beyond that, I might just consider your assertion. Until then piss off.
LD50
@gbear:
My favorite LBJ bon mot was “boys, I may not know much, but I know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad”.
That was back when Texas still had some elected politicians who weren’t repulsive buffoons.
Martin
@Yutsano:
Cut BOB some slack. Remember, Al Franken tried to touch his wiener at the Harvest House buffet, so he’s been there, man.
Tattoosydney
@soonergrunt:
We’ll notice.
You should do what I do and read only threads that involve doggies, cats, product blegs, cooking, art of naked mopping. It makes the world seem a much nicer place.
trollhattan
It’s pretty clear they’re losing whatever tepid mojo they may have once had, whilst harvesting Roger Simon dollars.
Teabonics lives on, however
farm5.static.flickr.com/4029/4525186416_9e5e3e3b7c_o.jpg
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@soonergrunt:
Who are you? Am I supposed to care if you are taking a break? For all I know you could be a serial murderer in here announcing that you are taking a break from killing!
psst… think this will fool him into staying?
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: Not that I’m bragging or anything, but BoB just tried to get my attention, in a rather weak attempt, but I’ll take it for now. Granted it’s not the blatant flirting you get, but baby steps man, baby steps.
O-genki ka? It’s my Friday and I don’t think I’m fully recovered from Arizona yet.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Yutsano:
BOB goes through this every single day when he gets ready for work.
Yutsano
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): I’d only believe this if the lesbyterian forklift driver (the existence of which I am not entirely convinced of) wakes his sorry ass out of bed every morning. Otherwise I refuse to believe he’s anywhere near that tough. Why yes, yes I am in a feisty mood why do you ask? :)
Brick Oven Bill
Sun Tzu teaches us:
Disciplined and calm, to await the appearance of disorder and hubbub amongst the enemy:–this is the art of retaining self-possession.
Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy. Do not interfere with an army that is returning home.
When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.
So I am sorry for calling you a puss Soonergrunt.
+ several
Jeff Fecke
@Lurking Canadian:
Come on, everyone knows that tax cuts automatically mean higher revenues. Also, wishes are horses, and beggars are riding.
Joey Maloney
@Lurking Canadian:
Fixt for standard Republican predilictions.
pj
@CynDee:
Ben Johnson, not Karl Malden. Here’s the scene. Calling Slim Pickens a “big tub o’ guts” was a winner, too. Also.
asiangrrlMN
@soonergrunt: I’ll miss you, soonergrunt. I really enjoy reading your commentary. But, take the break if it’s what you need.
Hi FH#1 & 2!
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Yutsano:
I should have added “In BOB’s mind, …” to the post above. Sorry about that oversight. ;)
“lesbyterian”? lol! He only thinks that to assuage his ego after having been rejected by said lesbyterian.
Anne Laurie
@soonergrunt:
You will be missed, sir. I will live on the hope that you’ll return refreshed, and with happy tales of a new job.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I, for one, hope we can convince him to stick around for a spell. He is one of my favorite commenters here for sure and I always know I’m going to either learn something or enjoy his feistiness. But I can also appreciate the necessity of breaking away.
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): Oh now I get it. He’s still getting a bone for Rachel. This explains much.
Beej
Have these idiots bothered to look at any polling stats to see what percentage of the electorate is actually represented by the tea partiers? Read something on kos not long ago. I think it was something like 1-2%. Oh yeah, the Democrats should all gather round and take lessons from the teabaggers. Oh yes. That will certainly win them elections. What in the hell are these jerks smoking?
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
Be careful – it’s only a little step from Bob flirting with you to full on sexing against the pizza oven. Remeber he does sell sex toys.
BoB wants to sex you! BoB wants to sex you!
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Tattoosydney:
No shit. Then he will try to pull a(n electric) train on you.
Nellcote
Creating and reporting on their own reality. The possiblities are frightening.
Arclite
Does anyone know why T-Rex’s blog (iamtrex.com/) stops at Dec 3, 2009?
Remember November
Since when is 18% a broad sampling of the electorate? Oh right, Friedman unit mathematics. 6 People=600 people=6 million people