Jacob Weisberg (not normally one of my favorites) of Slate has a pretty reasonable, non-contrarian answer to the question: who killed responsible Republicanism?
Do you remember the Responsible Republicans? In the 1980s, small herds of them still roamed freely around Washington. In 1982, they stampeded over Ronald Reagan’s veto of the largest tax increase in history to mitigate the fiscal harm of his 1981 tax cut. In 1983, they converged on Capitol Hill to pass a package of tax increases and benefit cuts recommended by the Greenspan Commission to keep Social Security solvent. In 1986, they followed Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson to pass bipartisan immigration reform legislation by a large majority. In 1990, several were spotted with President George H.W. Bush (the Responsible one) at Andrews Air Force Base, conspiring to reduce the deficit.
[…..]If Responsible Republicans are in fact nearing extinction, I think we can identify the crucial event that signaled their demise. It was a December 1993 memo by conservative strategist and commentator William Kristol. Kristol’s advice about how Republicans should respond to Bill Clinton’s 1993 health care effort—and a series of follow-up memos he wrote in 1994—pushed the GOP away from cooperation with Democrats on any social and economic legislation. His message marks the pivotal moment when Republicans shifted from fundamentally responsible partners in governing the country to uncompromising, hyperpartisan antagonists on all issues.
I think he’s right that the Kristol health care memo was a crucial event. And there’s no question that Straussians are drawn to a sort of extreme Machiavellianism that paleocons might shrink from.
But to what extent was insane obstructionism the proverbial $100 bill on the sidewalk that economic theory would tell us had already been picked up? I mean, the 1988 election showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could win a race using only race-baiting and bogus claims (that Sam Donaldson admits the press was too lazy to check, in the great documentary Boogie Man). Once it was clear there were no consequences for turning your back on reality in a campaign, it was just a matter of time til actual governing moved into its post-reality phase.
It’s to Poppy Bush’s credit that he left a lot of the campaign bullshit on the battle field when it came to governing. But by the time Kristol and Gingrich, and later Rove and Bush II and Palin and Cantor, came around, the gun was already taped to the bathroom wall. And it was just a matter of time before til the country got its brains blown out.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
too many “taped to the”
DougJ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Thanks — I fixed it.
MikeJ
I thought it was under the lid in the tank.
The Grand Panjandrum
Too many pivotal points to really say for sure. But Nixon’s Southern Strategy is where this has its roots. What the GOP has become is the natural outcome of said strategy. It took 30+ years to come to fruition, but the Rove strategy was the final, and probably most cynical, implementation of the Southern Strategy and all its ugliness. Over those years they slowly ratcheted up the cultural resentments present in the South since Reconstruction and spread it around in such a way to gather up the disaffected stragglers in the midwest and west to make it a winning political strategy. What they forgot was to keep the craziest fringes under wraps. They shifted so far away from any real sustainable policy and ran completely on talking points and veiled cultural dog whistles that when it came time to govern they had no plan that would actually keep the country on track. What we have here was a failure to governate.
Mark K
Right. But Bush was not Michael Corleone. He was more like an immature, bullying Fredo.
mclaren
In the movie, the gun was taped to the rear side of the toilet tank. Also, Al Pacino let the gun drop from his hands when he walked out of the restaurant — in real life, Rove and his buddies have been waving the gun in public like crazed Waco refugees…and the press has applauded ’em for it and rewarded them with lucrative NEWSWEEK columns.
C.f. Erick Erickson. The crazier the hyperpartisan charges he makes, the more he’s rewarded with op ed gigs and paid columns and commentator guest shots in the major media. Soon he’ll be on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS, and eventually he’ll wind up hosting Meet the Press.
Meanwhile, people like Dennis Kucinich who point out that it’s illegal and unconstitutional for president Obama to order the assassination of an American citizen in a foreign country without charges or a trial or evidence, these people like Kucinich get ridiculed and showered with acid contempt as “crackpots” and “fringe lunatics” and “frothing at the mouth” and “raving” and “ranting.”
rob!
Not sure I totally agree with use of past tense in that phrase (that’s the only thing in whole piece I don’t 100% agree with). I think the election of Obama, who as we all know is a secret Muslim baby killing Nazi socialist whose mom was a race traitor, was this country, as whole, struggling to come to terms with what we were headed for if we continued down the Bush/Cheney road.
Sure, all that bullshit (Palin, Limbaugh, etc.) is still with this, but its sort of like telling Germany to stop being so sensitive about Hitler (Godwin alert!) less than 2 years after the end of WWII. Bush and Cheney poisoned the societal well for eight years, and it’ll take a long time until we completely flush it out of our collective system.
If we as a country throw Obama out in 2012, or simply replace him in 2016, with another Bush-type, then, yes, I’d say this country is headed down the shitter, permanently. But I’m still holding out hope that the next president (hopefully a gay Mexican, just to drive the GOP into mass suicide) will be more cut from Obama’s cloth.
If that happens, then we can look at the Bush/Cheney years as a period where 51% of the country went batshit insane, but it’ll be a period with a definitive historical endpoint.
Obot out!
mr. whipple
Nope, taped behind the tank.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The comment section makes for an interesting read in that it points another problem with Democrats trying to get out their message. The major themes I saw were:
1. That was a good article.
2. That was bad because Democrats do it, too.
3. Republicans who compromised were not true Republicans.
4. I’m not going to read the article, but you suck, Weisberg.
and others.
The shear volume of the rants drown out any attempt to find Republicans who will come back from the edge. I really do think the only way to cure this is for Republicans to lose seats in November.
aimai
I don’t know about this late dating of the crazy. From the moment Roosevelt took office the Republican party began its slide into irrelevance, rage, and spite as the motivating force for refusal to act legislatively. Basically, Roosevelt and the new dealers wanted to *do something* and the Republicans qua party of rich people wanted to do nothing and let the people starve. Has anything changed? There have been brief periods when the Republican party was in the ascendancy, or even in charge (Nixon, Ford, Bush, Bush) but each time they have remained true to their intention to rule or ruin or both,simultaneously.
aimai
Bob K
If i remember correctly (hell – even if I don’t who gives a rats’ a$$? – The G(NO)P doesn’t – I’m not going to start now) didn’t Billy Kristol and other Rethuglican elite decide that Sarah Palin was the GOP’s great white hope (that works on so many levels.) What the hell HAS he been right about in the last 10 years other than his name is Billy Kristol (which he only knows because of all the labels sewn into his exquisitely tailored suits and on his business cards?) Gingrich? The same Newtie who tied with $arah Failin’ in a straw poll at a Rethuglican shindig a few weeks back? Mittens and Huckabee front runners. No wonder Ru$h Hud$on Limbaugh III is leader of the party – Can’t swallow enough oxycontin in one sitting to make this bad dream go away.
zhak
I think you have a convergence of two things here: you have a party willing to campaign every single day of every single year, and you have a party that is almost always willing (since the Goldwater days) to put the party ahead of the country.
For me, this forever coalesced when Reagan said that government is the problem. I have always thought that was an incredibly insulting thing to say because our government, when in the hands of people wanting to do their best for America & the world, is rather an amazing thing.
MikeJ
@mr. whipple: you’re right. I had to check because it was bugging me. Overhead style tank.
mr. whipple
@MikeJ:
And my wife wonders why I watch it over and over and over. lol.
zhak
@aimai:
The Republicans were extremely upset that the New Deal brought so many good things to so many people — and their cynical view (quite possibly shared by many Dems :-) was that the New Deal led to people voting Democratic; iow, that that was why the New Deal programs were implemented: not to save the nation, but to ensure that folks would vote D.
But not all Republicans were painted with the same brush. Eisenhower expanded Social Security. Nixon created the EPA. And there have been a fair few in the Legislative branch over the decades who’ve done the right thing, even while being on the wrong side of almost everything for a hundred years (think Hoover & the Great Depression, think the America Firsters who did their level best to abandon England while Churchill begged FDR for the slightest help, think Civil Rights, think the huge military build-up under Reagan, think the perpetual lawlessness by virtually all Republican presidents since Nixon, and now, of course health care).
It’s just very bad right now, you know? It’s like both parties are putting on a show. Like everybody is performing a role and nobody is sincere. Like it’s a game, while everything is going to shit. We’ve had bad moments before, but there’s so much riding in the balance now, and those clowns in Washington are more interested in comity and war chests.
jl
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I agree. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. Problem is that the racist and/or sociopathically paranoid selfish illogical and ignorant wingnuts that have sprouted from the Southern Strategy may not be a whirlwind only for the GOP but for all of us.
Also too, the capture of the media by corporations and the corporate hacks they hire has not helped. This is a pathetic, IMHO symptom:
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Good Evening
Earlier I heard Dana Milbank on NPR whining about the fact that Obama went to his kid’s soccer game without bringing the press. These are very silly people.
Atrios 16:54
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2010/04/good-evening.html
Looks the kids soccer thing really left a deep raw scar on poor little Dana Milbank’s psyche.
Maybe he had worked out a witty angle on it, and then he could not get some first person observation to justify working it into some nonsensical media insight or parallel, or even perhaps ironical insightful parallel to Obama and Fall of Rome. Or sumpin really important like that.
I remember reading something by Robert Reich (I think) saying that he was doing an economic panel discussion on some network news talkie and thought it was one of the best he had ever participated in. Then during the break a producer told him it was important for hm to really ramp up the conflict at the end of the interview in order to make it a good segment.
The insane and worthless new media that has metastasized since lifting ownership restrictions has played a role too.
Nick
@zhak:
I partially blame the blogsphere and talk radio equally for this, because any hint of bipartisanship is derided by the mouthpieces on both sides.
Tom
@zhak:
A question that has stopped conservatives in their tracks every time I’ve asked it:
If Reagan really thought government was the problem, why was he so excited about being in charge of it?
DougJ
Spoof.
I always thought you were playing with us.
Nick
@DougJ: Huh?
calipygian
@The Grand Panjandrum:
When you have certain fat, pieces of shit governors commemorating Treason in Defense of Slavery and saying that the issue of slavery during the civil war wasn’t “diddley”, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Southern Strategy.
At this rate, lynching is going to come back into vogue.
TR
Funny. After so many years and so many failures, Bill Kristol finally has a major accomplishment to his name, and it’s destroying America.
The Dangerman
The author has the right decade but the wrong event; it was the Clinton impeachment when RR’s were finally flushed out of the system. Bush II came when Gore ran away from Clinton and his Bummer of a Hummer; the batshit crazy fuckers that now owned the Republicans lock, stock, and barrel had no reason other than to just lay low…
…only to come out of hibernation with the election of BHO, at which point said batshit crazy fuckers simply went off the rails (see Steele, Michael, though he was supposed to stay on the rails as I recall).
Montysano
@zhak:
I made the same point in a recent letter to the editor. It’s especially true here in Huntsville, where they were instrumental in putting a man on the moon. But as I passed the Tax Day rally on my bike ride home, they were tossing out the usual “Gummint cain’t do nuthin’ rite, ever!!” red meat and the engineers were lapping it up.
I’m just glad I’m not them. What a miserable way to go through life.
Also: when did “liberty” come to = “my money”?
Montysano
@Nick:
ORLY? Every day, Limbaugh hisses that Obama “depises this country”. Every day, Levin calls Obama a Marxist.
There’s a Maddow/Olbermann equivalent for this?
Mark S.
@Montysano:
Nick is some sort of a weird troll. In a little bit, he’ll be telling us about how he’s worked for all four networks simultaneously, how the press isn’t to blame for misinforming the public because they love a good story too much, and that the Democrats will lose 250 seats this November.
Nick
@Montysano:
What, you’ve never seen FireDogLake, MyDD, OpenLeft, AmericaBlog or DailyKos?
Nick
@Mark S.:
nice try, but I only worked for ABC and PBS simultaneously and the press is 100% to blame for misinforming the public BECAUSE they love a good story too much.
In fact, pointing the finger at the press was all I’ve been doing here in the last few months.
rob!
All those combined have less audience than one hour of Limbaugh does. Just not the same, in terms of influence.
Did any hack from the nets ever ask Bush to respond to a comment from FDL? Yet Obama is asked to respond to Palin’s nonsensical mutterings.
Nick
@rob!:
In which comes from larger point, which is…the media is working for the loudmouths on the right.
Wile E. Quixote
@Nick:
Yeah. I’m sick of that. I mean really, when is someone going to call out Fox on their “fair and balanced” bullshit? What kind of network can claim to be fair and balanced when it’s run by an ultra-liberal Johnson staffer like Bill Moyers. What kind of network can be fair and balanced when it has TV shows hosted by former Democratic candidates for president like John Kerry? What kind of network can claim to be fair and balanced but also trumpets its liberalism by giving Noam Chomsky his own show? What kind of network can claim to be fair and balanced when it gives John Edwards and Al Gore all the air time they could ask for?
Jennifer
I dunno.
I think you can trace the roots of the madness back to the very moment the Laffer curve was sketched out on a cocktail napkin. Once it became a convenient article of faith that helping the rich helps everyone, all evidence – and it continues to pile up – that the theory is basically crap simply gets brushed aside and ignored. Because like I said, it’s now just an article of faith.
At some point, there was a kernel of truth in the idea, but that’s been over 20 years in the past now. When Kennedy cut top marginal rates from 91% to 70%, it tripled the value of every additional dollar earned at the top marginal rate for the earner – instead of keeping 9 cents of every dollar he was keeping 30 cents – over 300% more. That’s a fairly hefty incentive to seek additional earnings. And again when Reagan cut the rate to 50%, there was a pretty good incentive – a dollar at the top marginal rate had been worth 30 cents to the earner; with Reagan’s rate cut, that dollar was now worth 50 cents – a 66% increase in value.
But what happens as you cut rates more and more is that the stimulus incentive becomes more and more “meh”. By the time you’re quibbling over 36% vs 33%, it’s not stimulating anything. That 67 cents the earner gets to keep on every dollar earned at the top rate is not all that different from the 64 cents he was getting before.
The stimulative value of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans was pretty much tapped out by the end of the 1980s, but the GOP had ridden that horse to victory 3 times by then and they weren’t going to come down off of it. Poppy got raked over the coals for putting reality ahead of faith; the issue next raised its head when Clinton passed some minor tax increases in ’93 without a single Republican vote while Gingrich (and Limbaugh) pontificated about the depression that would surely result. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop Bush from making tax cuts the centerpiece of his campaign in 2000. Only now it was being cast in the language of a religious crusade – Bush characterized it as “immoral” to tax rich people at 36% (or was it 39%?); he conveniently had the correct “moral” number at his fingertips, and it was a puny little non-stimulative amount which even a chimp could have seen wasn’t going to accomplish anything other than allowing rich people to keep more money. And of course, the economy during his terms proved how useless his tax cuts were for economic stimulus – after the recession of 2001, the recovery back to the base point took 5 years.
I’d say that these days the GOP is a party in the grip of a religious delusion that revolves around the idea that supply drives demand in the form of tax cuts for rich people. It’s kind of a cargo-cultish belief, a belief that the most efficient way to move a string is to push it. And really, you do have to wonder about the general sanity of a group of people who, despite personal experience, believe that businesses add workers as a result of the people who own them getting tax cuts on their personal income. I mean, a lot of these folks do own or have owned businesses and know damn well that the only time they’ve ever hired anyone is when demand for their product or service exceeded what they could deliver with current staff.
That’s the central delusion in the insanity. But like I said, by this point it’s become an article of religious faith. Good luck killing it.
jl
One common strand of all this racism, self-destructive selfishness, refusal to get basic facts straight, is a lazy and helpless mentality that looks towards authoritarianism to solve all problems.
From my pont of view, McConnell’s lying speech on financial reform was so absurd it should result in a noticeable dip in the GOP approval ratings about five minutes after the clips are shown on the evening news. How will bailouts be avoided in the future with a system that is the same as produced the bailouts in the firstplace? They are already ensured in perpetuity whenever there is a panic or a crash (and we have ‘100 year’ problems at least once a decade now with the current system).
But from an authoritarian teabagger’s point of view, it is reassuring. Sure, the system in place right now permitted grotesque bailouts that did nothing to sanction the titans of finance who caused the problems. And all the very seriouis white people said we had to start it under Bush II and continue it under Obama.
But angry and forceful white men the teagoofs trust now say that next time, by gosh darn it they will Just Say No! And these angry baleful white men yell a lot and are outraged all the time. So, yeah, the teanuts trust them. This good and trustworthy man will say “No Bailouts! Gosh dang darn it!” And stand firm.
I wonder whether authoritariansim was the real psychological trick of the Southern Strategy, or a supplemental strategy that made it work as well as it did, along with grinding the faces of the poor, the working class and the lower middle class.
Now we have 20% to 30% of the country who only trust angry forceful filthy rich white hypocrites who advocate that cutting the Gordian Knot is the solution to any and all problems, if only one has the guts to do it. Then the white hypocrite sells his white dupe supporters down the river as soon as he sees a few bucks in it. And they are disillusioned and move on to the next brutal swinder to lead them.
Wile E. Quixote
Oh fuck. I’m sorry about that last. Goddamn Comcast has been routing all of my net traffic through that weird Mirror, Mirror universe where left is right, up is down, good is evil and everyone has a goatee. It’s a crazy place where Bill Moyers (with a goatee, so you know that he’s evil) is in charge of Fox News and sets tone of the programming.
DougJ
@Nick:
FDL and AmericaBlog are nuts, I agree. But they are nuts in a different way than the right, they spend all their time attacking Obama.
Of course, that makes them nuts in the same way that the right is, but I think you see my point.
jwb
@Nick: I want to know who is calling the shots at the networks. I can understand why Fox’s coverage is the way that it is, given Murdoch’s ownership and all; I don’t understand why all the other networks insist on being mouthpieces for the Goopers as well. Maybe TV demographics are skewed that far right, but somehow I doubt it. A couple of threads back you mentioned how the networks all want a big Gooper win in November, which given the coverage I don’t doubt for a minute, but I wonder again, who are the people making these decisions?
Mark S.
@Wile E. Quixote:
You’re still there.
What, you think John Cole, for fuck’s sake, is a Democrat now?
I think you need to report to the Agony Booth.
jenniebee
This was foreseeable. No good can ever come from the loins of anyone named “Gertrude Himmelfarb.” It’s a poetic impossibility.
Wile E. Quixote
@Mark S.:
Damn! I knew that something was wrong when I was watching MSNBC and Rachel Maddow had a goatee. I probably should have noticed earlier when I saw that Ann Coulter had a goatee, but what with Ann’s big hands and feet and Adam’s apple I just figured that she had missed a couple of estrogen shots. Oh well, at least I’m going to the Agony Booth and not being forced to watch Meet the Press.
Nick
@jwb:
Well I can tell you that ABC is the way it is because of Disney and Disney is a corporation looking out for corporations. NBC has a similar problem with Comcast.
CNN is the way it is because they’re the trying to compete with FOX.
Nick
@DougJ:Case in point…Back in October, Olympia Snowe proposed a bill with a trigger for the public option, the blogsphere went apocalyptic. Say Reid went with that option? The end result would have been a bill, passed THEN, with a trigger for a public option. It would not have been what we wanted, but Democrats wouldn’t have suffered from four more months of debating healthcare and political ramifications of it…but because it was a Republican proposing it, it was bad.
And Blue Dogs would have never opposed a bill that had a Republican vote.
In the end we got a much less progressive bill that even olympia snowe had proposed, with a bigger political price.
If our government can govern without the peanut gallery of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Bowers, Hamsher, Michael Moore, and kos, we’d probably be in a much better situation today.
Polar Bear Squares
This is why all those bipartisanship fetishists can kiss my arse.
You can’t negotiate with a zombie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjMiDZIY1bM
jenniebee
@Nick: Yes, and the same thing goes for when the public option was dropped altogether – Left Blogistan only went collectively bonkers about that because the person behind that decision was that awful Republican Rahm Emanuel. It was a completely partisan hissy fit.
Also, we totally backed this health insurance booster shot plan because it was copied from the boiler plate of the notoriously Democratic AEI’s health care reform suggestions and that radical lefty Democrat Mitt Romney’s health insurance gift in Massachussetts. Thank Heaven Democrat Scott Brown made it to the Senate in time to vote for the same completely Democratic health care reform for the nation that he had voted in when he was a State Rep. in Mass.
Hey, Wile E – I like this game – anyone can play it!
Anne Laurie
No, it’s not, and I give you one name to refute that argument: Lee Atwater. My personal conspiracy theory is that Atwater’s minions electronically stole the 1988 election, and that’s the mysterious “terrible thing” Atwater was apologizing for when he died. By 1992, Clinton’s DLC buddies had too firm a grip on the levers (or the RNC’s ‘nads) for the Repubs to repeat, and by the time Baby Bush was on the top of the ticket, we’d all learned enough about the limitations of the dataverse that such widespread theft could no longer be dismissed as “something that no major American political party would even consider”. But eventually, we’re going to find out how Atwater nibbled just enough votes off the edges to install Poppy illegitimately… I just hope it doesn’t take as long as it did to uncover conclusive evidence that Jefferson’s gang stole the 1807 election.
jenniebee
@Polar Bear Squares: Except that with this crowd, if they thought they actually could get our brains, it’d take McConnell, Boehner and Cantor about thirty seconds to hit the mics and insist that if they don’t also eat our eyes then their principles are outraged – outraged! – and it’s a totally partisan solution.
Demanding bipartisan solutions is asking govt to ruin a pony.
jwb
@Nick: Yes, I can see the corporate angle, but I don’t see how totally crazy is actually good for corporations. I mean, the Dems are cozy enough with the corporate set the way things are, and at the moment they are a hell of a lot more predictable. Disney also needs its copyrights enforced (among other things). Good luck on that without a functional government.
jwb
@Nick: “CNN is the way it is because they’re the trying to compete with FOX.”
But what’s the point of competing with Fox in this way? The decision would only make sense if they believed that’s where the viewers are (or at least the viewers the advertisers want). Is that true, because if it’s not then you have to look at some other explanation.
Nick
@jwb: They want to get Republicans elected, that’s all, because Republicans will do much more to protect them than Democrats, who won’t do anything at all (despite the best efforts of the Hamsherites to convice us the Dems are pro-corporate)
So putting the GOP back in power is ALL they care about, because if there is no risk or possibility of the GOP taking back control, if Dems don’t feel the pressure of a pro-Republican electorate, they just might come down hard on corporations, raise their taxes and take away the forturne they hoarded.
So they pay their anchors, producers and excutives a high bribe..er…salary to be a propaganda machine for the right wing.
Nick
@jwb:
uhh, Fox is the highest rated news network on cable TV, with more than 3x the viewers of second place MSNBC. Ratings-wise, whatever FOX is doing, they’re doing it right.
and for advertisers, having 3x as many viewers as the next closest news network is more than enough to seal the deal, so if CNN wants ad revenue, they have to get the viewership of FOX, so they’re going to try to do what FOX does.
Mike in NC
Poppy Bush should rot in hell for eternity for the miserable scum offspring he and his rich bitch wife conceived.
Jamie
Another point of view on Machiavelli?
http://www.unt.edu/honors/eaglefeather/2007_Issue/kniatt8.shtml
AJ
I hate Reagan, but I’m not giving him credit for this. The post here on Balloon Juice on the 18th at 10:46 “Confederate History Month: Something to Read”, also shows another answer.
It started with LBJ and the Civil Rights Act: that begat the huge switch of the south to the Repuke Party, that begat Goldwater, that begat Paul Wyrick and Richard Vigurie, that begat Ronald “Traitor” Reagan (Reagan’s first speech after winning the Repuke nomination? Philadelphia, Mississippi. The subject: State’s rights.), that begat Lee Atwater, that begat Grover Norquitst, to Karl Rove, etc., etc.
Fill in your own names, but it goes back before Reagan. Admirers of Robert Caro’s “Master of the Senate”, can go back to the 50’d and Robert Taft and Henry Luce, the Richard Scaife of his day.
Turgidson
@Anne Laurie:
Didn’t GHWB win by….a LOT? I mean, I wouldn’t put anything past the modern GOP, but that would be some kind of a heist.
Or, is that kinda your point? That GHWB’s margin was so huge, after being behind or neck-and-neck in the polls for so much of the campaign, that it smells fishy? And that Atwater thought there would be no further investigation if the margin of victory was so big that no one could contemplate fraud on that scale?
Interesting stuff, as usual.
Mark S.
@Nick:
If CNN thinks they are going to lure any Fox viewers by being Fox-lite, they deserve to go bankrupt. I don’t watch much CNN, but it’s always on at my gym and here are some of my suggestions:
1. Can Larry King just retire? He looks like a wax museum piece and is about as entertaining.
2. Stop having all these New Age flakes like Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil. This isn’t Oprah.
3. Quit having 14 pundits sitting together at a table looking at their laptops. Four or five is plenty.
4. I don’t have a problem with him, but I could see how some people might not like Anderson Cooper. He has the vibe of “I’m smarter than you and went to better schools than you did.” Two hours of him every night is too much.
5. Get actual experts for guests. Judge Judy is not an expert on the Supreme Court. Penn from Penn and Teller is not an expert on anything besides magic tricks. The last time I watched, they had Cosby talking about the girl who killed herself because of bullying mainly because Bill did Fat Albert back in the 70’s.
6. Fire Erik son of Erik, just because.
I think the main problem is that CNN is trying to be too much entertainment. Normal people don’t find news all that entertaining and would rather watch something else. News junkies can’t stand all the other crap CNN loads its shows with.
mclaren
@Wile E Coyote:
Hey! I’d pay to see that channel!
Then when Chris Matthews starts fellating Dick Cheney in a fawning interview, Noam Chomsky could interrupt him by saying, “Mister Matthews — your agonizer, please!”
Then Chomsky clamps the agonizer onto Matthews’ shoulder and he falls to the ground convulsing. And when he recovers, he starts asking Cheney some tough questions for a change, like how Cheney thinks he can defend war crimes like torture and mass civilian bombing in Iraq…
Quiddity
@Jennifer
I completely agree.
Nellcote
@The Dangerman:
STEELE: Well, I’m the cow on the tracks, and you’re going to have to stop that train to get this cow off the tracks and move forward.
Ecks
So if poppy bush is the one who got elected then let quasi-reality intrude on his governing (which he kinda did, at least by the low, low, standards of the rest of the recent GOP), then what lesson did the GOP learn from his ensuing loss to Clinton. One term presidenting does not make you a political role model.
He really lost due to the economy tanking on him, of course, but I’m guessing that this is not the lesson drawn by GOP operatives who WANTED to believe otherwise.
Anne Laurie
@Turgidson:
Bingo. The polls were neck-n-neck, the exit polls showed Dukakis taking a lead, and then… surprise! It’s a Bush-pocalypse! I am not the only person who found this fishy at the time, but our suspicions were greeted by other Democrats as “needlessly defaming the sensibilities of the American people” because, who could imagine that our fellow Americans on the Rethug axis would stoop so low as to stealing a national election? Even if a few bad apples were to come up with such a crazy idea, surely their comrades would reject it out of hand!…
There have been any number of “breaking bad” points in modern American political history — Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Ford successfully persuading his former fellow Congresscritters to let Watergate conspirators like Cheney & Rumsfeld escape punishment, Reagan’s embrace of right-wing totalitarians — but Bush the First’s enthusiastic embrace of the lowest criminal element in his party has yet to be given its full vile weight in the anti-pantheon of our country’s disgrace.
FlipYrWhig
@Ecks: I still think the whole George W. Bush fiasco began as a scheme to make people look back fondly on George H.W. Bush. It just got _slightly_ out of hand.
Either that or it was a _Trading Places_-style bet between Poppy and Bar about whether even the idiot kid could be President with the right amount of help. And in my thinking, Poppy bet “no” and after he lost had to take the lumpier bed in Kennebunkport for the summer.
Mnemosyne
@Ecks:
Never raise taxes. Republicans will tell you to this day that Poppy lost because he raised taxes despite that whole “read my lips” thing.
That’s really when the anti-tax jihad went nationwide.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Remember in the ’88 primary campaign when Bruce Babbitt said he was willing to stand up for higher taxes?
Anne Laurie
@FlipYrWhig:
As if. The terrifying thing is that “Poppy” and “Bar” really seriously consider themselves as America’s Aristocracy, and honestly believe that their hellspawn descendents deserve to be in charge of our poor battered nation. And the rightward axis of the Permanent Party are happy to let the “Bush Dynasty” act out the royal-family role, with a side of Corleone, because they make such wonderful figureheads… don’t care what kind of theft, barratry, and treason their handlers, er minions, are up to, as long as they get to barf in the Jap’s lap or give that uppity Cherman beyotch an unwanted shoulder massage. Anybody who thinks the Bushes aren’t dangerous because the family’s average IQ is slightly higher than room temperature doesn’t appreciate how useful a gang of really nasty sociopaths with good tailors can be to the thugs who represent the Robber Baron leg of the modern Republican triangle.
bob h
Probably Bob Dole’s decision to make filibustering a routinely applied Senate procedure should be mentioned here.
superdestroyer
I guess the left’s definition of a responsible Republican is a Republicanism who does whatever the Democrats want them to do.
As the U.S. becomes a one party state with the collapse of the Republican Party, progressives will realize there dream of no opposition to their agenda. The real question is can the private sector in the U.S. produce the economic output to sustain the coming welfare state with the coming demographic changes and with more regulations on all sectors of the economy.
Remember November
Bill Kristol is the smarmiest grouper-mouthed always wrong Galtian jackass I’ve ever seen. WFB is probably spinning right now- the retarded bully in the back of the classroom took over his publication. I’m no fan of WFB but the man knew how to defend his position with clarity, and sometimes vitriol when needed. Kristol is all vitriol all the time.
me
This is my favorite take on “I miss republicans”: http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2004/12/i-miss-republicans.html
Batocchio
Cheney: “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. This is our due.”
Bush the Elder decided to try to repeat the Reagan fiscal irresponsibility BS with his “Read my lips, no new taxes” crap. The message Gingrich, Rove, Cheney, Bush the Younger, etc. got from Reagan and Bush the Elder was not that unicorn campaign promises and lousy policies were bad – it was that you don’t back down from your unicorn promises and instead stick with lousy policies. Bush the Elder was much better than his son at governing, but in terms of policy, there’s a direct line from Reagan to the current evil zealots (who would reject the real Reagan now, bad as many of his policies were). In terms of governing and ethics, there’s a direct line from Watergate through Ford’s pardon of Nixon, Iran-Contra all the way up to the many sins of the Bush administration. None of this happened overnight. There’s always been a scumbag contingent in the GOP, and they took over – because the party as a whole cared more about power than the good of the nation.