Michael Steele is doing his best to help his Republican Confederate Party celebrate Confederate History Month.
And he is so very helpful. Last Tuesday night he was asked why African-Americans should vote Republican he told his audience of students at DePaul University:
“You really don’t have a reason to, to be honest — we haven’t done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True”…
And then he explained why.
Back in the day, pundit Michael Kinsley defined a ‘gaffe’ as a statement where a politician accidentally tells the truth. By this definition Michael Steele is a Gaffe machine. To explain why blacks do not have a reason to vote Republican Steele admitted that his Party had intentionally turned its back on folks of color as part of their “Southern Strategy“:
“We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans,” Steele said. “This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don’t walk away from parties, Their parties walk away from them.
“For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, ‘Bubba’ went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.”
Disclosing that the ‘Southern Strategy’ was and is a real policy of the Republican Confederate Party has landed Mr. Steele into more hot water with the old white guard of the party.
As usual, the real masters of the Republican Confederate Party wasted no time trying to deny the existence of a ‘Southern Strategy’ and discount Steele’s latest bit of truth telling gaffe. David Weigel lays out some the ongoing denial by the usual suspects. Bruce Bartlett chastised Steele:
I think it’s too bad that Steele gave Democrats reason to believe that their distorted vision of how Republicans came to dominate the South is correct. It may be his biggest gaffe so far.
Remember, in Washington a gaffe is when you accidentally speak the truth and when you tell your ‘biggest gaffe’ it is because you are telling a truth that some wish to keep in the shadows.
The “Southern Strategy” is one of those truths.
It was Lee Atwater who described how the SS worked is a 1981 interview published in the 1990 book, The Two-Party South by Alexander P. Lamis. In 2005, NYTs columnist Bob Hurbert quoted the interview in his column:
Listen to the late Lee Atwater in a 1981 interview explaining the evolution of the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy:
”You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
”And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.”’ [snip]
The payoff has been huge. Just as the Democratic Party would have been crippled in the old days without the support of the segregationist South, today’s Republicans would have only a fraction of their current political power without the near-solid support of voters who are hostile to blacks.
When Democrats revolted against racism, the G.O.P. rallied to its banner.
It was Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” that moved the Confederate party from the Democrats to the Republicans. And this was done by exploiting racism overtly with actions and covertly with coded talking points and dog whistles.
These days Kevin Phillips is known as somebody who has broken with the Republican Party, but back in 1970 he was in the Nixon White House working with future felon Attorney General Mitchell to develop the ‘Southern Strategy’. Phillips was profiled in a 1970 NYTs article (here is a link to a pdf). It is long piece, but worth the read. Here are some excerpts that shed a light on how the Republican Party started to date the Confederate Party (emphasis added):
[Kevin Phillips] On Negroes and the G.O.P.:
“All the talk about Republicans making inroads into the Negro vote is persiflage. Even ‘Jake the Snake’ [Senator Jacob K. Javits] only gets 20 percent. From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that . . . but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.” [snip]“My argument was this: Your outer Southerners who live in the Ozark and Appalachian mountain ranges and in the Piedmont upcountry-and now in urban-suburban Florida and Texas-have always had different interests than the Negrophobe plantation owners of the Black Belt. This is a less extreme conservative group. It adheres with other Republican constituencies across the country and can be appealed to without fragmenting the coalition. When you are after political converts, start with the less extreme and wait for the extremists to come into line when their alternatives collapse.” [snip]
A new ethnic disturbance-the emergence of the Negro-Latino–finally shattered it [the Democratic coalition]. The Democratic party, veteran accumulator of minorities that it was, tried to accumulate by rote the Negro minority and trumpeted its cause through the tried formulae of patronage for its spokesmen, government aid, social planning and bureaucratic intervention. But since the grievances of the colored minorities were caused in part by the exploitation and exclusion practiced against them by older Democratic constituencies, something had to give, and did. The two bulwarks of the old coalition, working-class Catholics and the descendants of the Confederacy, began to defect from the Democratic party because of its identification with the newcomers.
These defectors have not yet lodged permanently in the suspect G.O.P. Many of them are in way stations-the Conservative party of New York, the Wallace movement. But they have left the Democrats and Phillips feels they have no place to go in the end but the Republican party. Hence, the emerging Republican majority that will dominate American politics until the year 2004. [snip]
Sterilized and scientific as are the terms by which Kevin Phillips plots the emerging Republican majority, its common denominator is hostility to blacks and browns among slipping Democrats and abandonment of the Democratic party because of its identification with the colored minorities. In the Northeast. the slippage is among blue-collar Catholics who find their jobs threatened and their neighborhoods and political clubhouses overrun by invading Negroes, while their erstwhile party seems to cluck approval. In the Outer South, the national Democratic party has begun to replace the G.O.P. as the symbol of alien causes-the Negro politicians and Federal interference with local autonomy. Hence, the shift to Republicanism, a trend which for the same reasons has engulfed the milder border states and will, Phillips insists, capture the perfervid Deep South when events force the abandonment of the more extreme Wallace alternative. [snip]
In the “Latin crescent “lower Florida, Louisiana, Texas-the political emergence of the Cuban and Mexican- American minorities, joined with Negroes and white radicals in a Democratic alliance, will drive the majority constituency of traditional white Democrats into the G.O.P. Phillips sees California and “the heartland.” the 25 interior states, many of which are dominated by Southern immigration patterns, as the great electoral bastion of a Republicanism that is against aid to blacks, against aid to big cities and against the liberal life style it sees typified by purple glasses, beards, long hair, bralessness, pornography, coddling of criminals and moral permissiveness run riot.
This may also be the source of the DFH meme, but I digress.
Phillips helped to create this monster and it may be why he has turned on it. He predicted a Republican majority through 2004 with the embrace of this strategy and he was right. His error was that he (and others) thought that the Republicans could and would be able to control the racism they were embracing for political expediency. They could not. And now the Republican Party has been taken over by the Confederate Party. Phillips is horrified and he should be.
Michael Steele blurted this out to the students at DePaul University and in that moment joined the effort to help celebrate CHM with the light of truth. Thanks dude, you da man. I hope they let you keep your job forever.
Cheers
dengre
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
I guess sometimes ‘divide and conquer’ is just ‘divide and divide’. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer party.
Mark S.
I still can’t believe Steele admitted that. Is this getting a lot of play from the bobbleheads?
Paul
Do you ever get the feeling that Mr. Steele is just as fed up with the Republican Party as your garden variety lefty?
asiangrrlMN
I gotta say, I am loving how Michael Steele is taunting his own party. He knows he’s just a token and that they can’t afford to get rid of him in case they risk looking even more racist than they already do. Delicious! Pass the pizza, the chocolate, and Alan Rickman.
Corner Stone
Holy shit. This was the first time I hit this site and saw the Evony ad.
I am totally OK with it. FSM bless me.
Lovely Rita
Wow. Increrdible what can happen when your political strategy is based upon appealing to the worst in human nature. It was inevitable that the Southern Strategy would get out of control, as most deals with the devil do. it is heartening that these attitudes are becoming the minority. That’s why the crazy is really being ramped up. No animal is more dangerous than when it is seriously wounded.
C Nelson Reilly
Michael Steele is the greatest Republican of all time.
Mike Kay
back in 2005, then RNC chairman Ken Mehlman admitted and apologized for the southern strategy.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-07-14-GOP-racial-politics_x.htm
I’m surprised some republican are denying what karl rove’s right hand man admitted.
Mike Kay
@Corner Stone: I told ya it was pretty …. uh.. good.
asiangrrlMN
Evony ads skeeve me out. The women are just…ugh. And I appreciate a healthy bosom as much as anyone.
Brachiator
@Mark S.:
Oh, I imagine that there will be all kinds of denials and even attacks directed at Steele for not being a team player. He must be a stealth Kenyan working for Obama.
But I also wonder how tea baggers, bobbleheads and the GOP leadership who have been busy attempting to portray health insurance companies as the epitome of righteous American free market altruism are going to deal with this recent little revelation:
Death Panel by Algorithm.
sherifffruitfly
Ok – he absolutely MUST be a mole for the Democrats.
Lovely Rita
Also have to add on Michael Steele–he was part of one of the funniest bits between Stewart and Colbert on TDS ever. Picture it, RNC 2004, Compassion night, I think they called it. The rank crassness of the GOP’s exploitation of the few party minorities was the subject. At the time, Steele was the Lieutenant Gov of Maryland and the highest elected black Republican in the country. The power he had to cut the ribbon at the Labor Day Crab Cake Festival may have been mentioned.
That may have been the finest week in TDS history.
hamletta
Wow! I’ve heard the Nixon and Atwater stories for years, but seeing Phillips lay it out in such explicit terms — deal with the Devil, indeed.
Steele would seem evidence the bill has come due.
And asiangrrlMN, don’t Bogart the Rickman!
Dennis G.
@C Nelson Reilly:
He is amazing. I do not know how he stays in the game, but he does.
He was a crappy Lt. Governor and the financial troubles he is having with the GOP are similar to the problems he has always had regardless of his job. He is tied to some corruption scandals in Maryland and nobody ever drops a dime on him. He is a survivor and entertaining.
Mike Kay
I wonder what Steele’s gonna do for employment after this year.
I hope he’s tucked enough away, because he’s only 52, and I don’t see him employed by the wingnut welfare network or the republicans ever again (this includes lobbyists).
Dennis G.
@hamletta:
And remember, this is Phillips laying it out in 1970. It turns out that the embrace of racism was a successful strategy for the GOP.
burnspbesq
Odd charge, that. A quick google search yields page after page of links to Bartlett condemning the Republican corruption personified by Abramoff. What am I missing?
hamletta
@Lovely Rita: Hey, now! Crab cakes are serious business in The Old Line State!
Your use of the noble crab cake as a weapon of ridicule will find no purchase with me!
asiangrrlMN
@hamletta: Step back from Alan Rickman, and no one gets hurt.
Taobhan
The evolution of the GOP into the Confederate Party was inevitable from the inception of the so-called “Southern Strategy.” It took much longer than I thought it would but here it is at last. I don’t know if the upcoming mid-term elections will confirm the downward spiral of the Republicans into a regional party but, if not, it’s only a momentary pause before their final descent into total irrelevance.
The concept of the GOP being the party of “NO” is thoroughly Southern in strategy and attitude. It perfectly reflects the stubbornness and defiance that Southern whites have generally held up as their defining “virtue” since their defeat in the Civil War. They see the current direction of the Republican party as a vindication of their culture and their values. That’s why the “Solid South” is as loyally Republican now as it used to be for the Democrats.
The GOP sold its soul to the devil in embracing the Southern Strategy during the Nixon years and now it’s reaping the consequences. White Southern values are not the values of the American people. But the white South will not allow the GOP to soften its defiant attitude or broaden its appeal to other Americans. They have the Republican party in their grip now and will drag it down to its demise – just as the Confederacy fell in 1865. It’s simply in their DNA.
Lovely Rita
@hamletta
I’m a lover of the tasty crab cake myself. The sacrifice of dignity was worth the comedy gold, believe me.
hamletta
@Dennis G.: Well, yeah. And I’m old, but not so old when I remember such explicitly racist language treated like so much marketing-speak.
He’s not saying anything Atwater didn’t, but it’s treated as perfectly sensible talk by a Serious Person in a mainstream publication.
It’s shocking like the old WaPo advice column we found when we rolled up the old rug at my mom’s house. It sounded so bizarre, and it wasn’t from some far-off time, but from the early ’70s.
I’d spent those years reading “Stories For Enlightened Children,” and to read that stuff freaked me out.
hamletta
@Lovely Rita: Pssst…I have the One True Recipe, from the former First Lady Of Maryland, Mrs. Tawes.
Lovely Rita
@Taobhan
Could not have said it better. The GOP is caught in a trap it set for itself and I don’t really see how they get out of it. It’s nice to see karma in action.
Yutsano
@hamletta: Share plz. No really, please share. I would kill for a decent crab cake recipe.
Lovely Rita
@hamletta
Nice! I’m sure not only delicious, but with a fantastic story behind it! My favorite!
I remember when I moved to the DC area being totally floored by the sweet sweet abundance of the deliciousness that is crab. You could not get a crab cake delivered to your door in Columbia, Missouri!
TenguPhule
Watch the media fall asleep and let it pass by.
Like every other fucking scandal involving the GOP.
C Nelson Reilly
@Dennis G.: He survived the rain of Oreos. I think that earned him his special powers.
Bill E Pilgrim
This is a really important point that’s often missed. We can shake our heads and wonder why the GOP would continue to destroy itself with ever more server purification purges, but to those pushing this, each step farther to the right is a point of pride.
“But that will only feel good for a moment, and then will destroy you” is overlooked with a combination of wishful thinking and echo-chamber mutual encouragement, for which humans in have an infinite capacity.
In the entire universe I think there’s no force to match the pull of trying to out-do your peers.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Taobhan: Well for some reason “I do not have permission to edit this comment”, otherwise was going to add the link to your comment that I accidentally erased.
hamletta
@Lovely Rita: OK, posted on my neglected blog.
No great story but the one that involves my parents’ wrasslin’ over the signed copy.
Lovely Rita
@TenguPhule
What is going on in the GOP is not reliant on media “exposure”. The party is being left behind by the forward march of history while they desperately cling to now useless strategies, failed policies, and attitudes that are at least 20 years behind where most of the country actually is. They must change, or die, but due to the nature of the people that they have left, change will not be tolerated. They are really up shit creek as a party.
Yutsano
@hamletta: WOOT!! Grazie mille! I’ll have to find a good excuse to make those now.
Redshift
@Mike Kay: Steele is certainly raking it in (I love it that the GOP love of grifters has netted them so many who are fleecing the party itself), but he doesn’t seem like the type to wisely salt it away. I see him pulling a Stephen Baldwin not too long after the end of his tenure as chairman.
Redshift
@C Nelson Reilly: More impressive, actually, is that he survived making up the story of the rain of oreos. But his willingness to make such an accusation certainly gained him a lot of cred with the GOP.
burnspbesq
OK, I think we’re all in agreement that Megan McArdle is useless at least 99 percent of the time. But this is pretty good.
El Cid
@Brachiator:
They wuz murdered by the AL-GORE-RHYTHM methoid.
See what you libruls done unleashed?
MikeJ
@Lovely Rita:
Thank god, what with being a thousand miles from the ocean.
You can however, get a discount at Shakespeare pizza on the days they ask for lines from the bard simply by saying any old thing in iambic pentameter.
Bob K
The nine most fearsome words for an African American: I’m Here from the KKK and I’m here to help you. –
Grand Wizard.
I love Australians. They actually APOLOGIZED to the Aborigines.
When Mr. Rush Hudson Limbaugh the Turd pats you on the back – You know your ship has come in. – Dominican Escort Service
Cavaliers 4 Evah.
Fuck Round Heads – Only if they look like Paris Hilton
If the CIA really wanted to break somebody – They’d play $arah Palin$ collected $peeche$ non $top at them. Can’t think of anything that would work better.
Dear Moussad – If I$rael was serious about getting rid of all the Arabs – CAN’T YOU PEOPLE JUST BUY THEM ALL ONE WAY TICKETS TO RIYADH? Prove to us that God’s – “Chosen People” are not just bigots.
Liberate the Romany People
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Starkist or Chicken of the Sea is the most difficult decision I have to make – Tunch
Avenge Bill Clinton’s Shirt – Remember when Bill was in Haiti and Dubya wiped his hands on it? Are we gonna let that go? Where was his $ecret $ervice detail with the Purell? This is our “Grassy Knoll Moment” people – let’s make the most of it.
The main difference between north and south are the signs. South: No Coloreds North: No Irish
If we could go back in time and sink the “Mayflower” this country might have been a better place. I say might because there were plenty of other white folk that would have come instead
White Man’s Burden – Screw the English. Let’s start with Elizabeth Hurley. Liz – heard you doing a commercial today – you should package your voice as an aphrodisiac. $arah – I have nothing against you. Some of my best friends are opportunistic bimbo fashion models. It’s what a gal has to do to get ahead, I get it. I know you get a hundred large for every speaking engagement. Just turn down the volume a bit.
Seriously – If you wanted to make some serious coin you would couple the random quote generator which is
“da bomb” (why do white folk try to sound black? iz cauz we envy them? iz it a guilt thing? iz it winkie envy?) Eminem I’m looking at you here – “Two Trailer Park Girls Go Round the Outside, Round the Outside, Round the Outside) It’s a small world after all, It’s a small world after all, It’s a small small small world. That thing where you can’t get a tune out of your head – it’s called an “Ear Worm” the best way to reset is to play the most saccharine thing you can think of. “How’s that Hopey Changey Thing Workin’ Out For Ya.”
Dammit Rupert – I thought when you palmed her off on the Discovey Channel our problems were over.
What do you get when you cross a fembot with a random quote generator (insert your favorite annoying fox commentators name here)
Brown Eyed Mullet – Australian slang for that turd you just saw floating next to you in the ocean/lake/pool.
Ask not what you can do for your country – find out how much that beyotch be payin.
in the immortal words of Warren Zevon – Thirty Eight Special pointed at my head – I’ll sleep when I’m dead
Try watching this – it’ll help
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSB4gtFFwy8
Bill E Pilgrim
So I noticed someone in another thread here posting links to this place which seems to be some sort of PUMA site that’s been accused of being racist and denies it.
The link above is a post about how horrible Michelle Obama’s clothes are which includes links to this as proof , which is titled:
…starts with this:
…and goes on to call her dressing style “fashion baboonery”.
Gosh, I can’t imagine why people think they’re racists.
JMC in the ATL
They absolutely are reaping what they have sown, especially with their determined alienation of the fastest growing demographic – Hispanics. Between Hispanics, African Americans, non-conservative white women, GLBTs, non-neocon Jews, environmentalists, people in possession of empathy, and people under 35 who don’t want to be associated with a bunch of rich angry white racists, where does the GOP go?
I honestly don’t see the Democratic coalition holding together after the GOP finishes becoming a regional / religious right party. But until that happens, clearly their 27% will dominate their party’s politics. I guess I see in the short-to-mid-term a situation where the GOP elected officials continue to resemble the 27% more and more, and the real policy debates occur between the Blue Dog and the Progressive wings of the Dems. In the long run, once they complete their transformation into an unelectable Whig/Know-Nothing rump, I imagine the Blue Dogs and the Progressive wings will split and become the new heirs to our two-party system.
zoe kentucky
@Bill E Pilgrim:
God, those people are such assholes. Really? A whole page of comments dedicated to tearing down Michelle Obama’s fashion sense? Commentary provided entirely by women, of course. Seriously? WHO THE FUCK CARES WHAT SHE’S WEARING. I’d bet these people identify as feminists yet they don’t get that harping on such superficial crap to tear a woman down is completely and totally anti-feminist.
It truly embarrasses me as a woman.
arguingwithsignposts
Wow, did I just hear Chuck Shumer use the term “lie” wrt the GOPers? Who stole the Senate Democrats and replaced them with people with spines?
Bill E Pilgrim
@arguingwithsignposts: I was thinking the exact thoughts yesterday when I read about this at TPM.
We’ve secretly replaced the Democrats with Folger’s crystals. Let’s see if anyone notices…
MinneapolisPipe
@Taobhan: Word Up.
Tattoosydney
@arguingwithsignposts:
You’re still dreaming. Go back to sleep for five minutes and all will be back to normal.
MinneapolisPipe
@JMC in the ATL: Substantive argument. Worth thinking about.
zoe kentucky
Hmmm…I wonder why PUMAs get tagged as racists when some of the commenters on that site refer to Michelle Obama as a “crack whore” and say that she’s an “unladylike” “thing.”
I wish I believed they were all GOP moles trying to make democratic women look bad.
geg6
My dad, a steelworker with only a high school education, was a Republican throughout his entire adult life (mom was a lifelong Dem). But as a child, the first criticism I remember him voicing of his party was the appeal to racists of the Goldwater campaign. He managed to hang on through the Nixon years because of his hope that Wallace would keep the racists out of the party. It was all over between him and the party, though, when the GOP swooned over Reagan. First because he considered Reagan a traitor to the union movement (remember that Reagan was a member of and once an official of, I believe, SAG) and dad was a big union man despite his party offiliation. But second, he was a frustrated historian (self educated, of course) and well knew the symbolism of announcing his run in Philadelphia, MS and was appalled that his party was willing to turn it’s back on it’s origins. Dad became a Democrat at that moment and never regretted it. I have often thought, the last couple of years, how much he would have enjoyed the Obama campaign and win and the descent of the GOP into its racial and ethnic death spiral. My dad was a great and unusual man for his time and place. I miss him.
Bill E Pilgrim
@zoe kentucky: With a little Googling, I discover that that group is known as big Sarah Palin supporters, and Scott Brown boosters.
So, PUMAs and then some, I’d say. Your basic racists, not quite garden variety in that they seem to be “gay men from Chicago” who started as Hillary boosters, but basically just racists, nonetheless. The “Fashion baboonery” line was enough evidence for me.
BethanyAnne
@asiangrrlMN:
Have you seen the Plants vs Zombies spoofs of them?
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/93649-PopCaps-Evony-Spoof-Ads-for-Plants-vs-Zombies-Keep-Coming
:)
Tattoosydney
@BethanyAnne:
Do love. Don’t buy PvZ unless you want the next 24 hours of your life to be spent frantically planting plants so they can throw crap at zombies.
Tattoosydney
@geg6:
That made me all warm inside. Thanks.
dmsilev
@asiangrrlMN: Evony has a pretty scummy reputation, for their ad campaign among other things. If you want the gory details, this story is a pretty good overview.
dms
kay
@geg6:
My father is from that generation and he really enjoyed the whole thing. He never believed Obama would win, and when he started to rack up primary wins, he followed it almost obsessively.
By the end of Bush’s two terms, he was referring to Bush as “that rat bastard” and Cheney as “that fat bastard”, to his grandchildren’s amusement. He was really, really bothered by the invasion of Iraq. He’s never been thrilled with Republicans of any stripe, but Iraq did him in. It’s real simple for him. He says ‘those people never did anything to us”.
Boudica
god, I love this blog! Not only for the history lessons and Cole’s rants, but to find fellow Rickman salivaters…..it’s too much to ask for!
Honus
@geg6: Reagan was actually president of SAG, used to boast that he was the first union president to become POTUS.
Dennis G.
@Yutsano:
Of course the best crab cakes contain hand picked lump crab meat from Smith Island (IMHO).
Linda Featheringill
@zoe kentucky: Aside from the racism [and there is a bit of that], I think one reason some people criticize Mrs. O’s clothes is that SHE LOOKS DAMN GOOD no matter what she is wearing.
And while the harpies might have a more coordinated wardrobe, Michelle looks better in her clothes than they do.
debbie
This entire series has really been outstanding. I’d have liked to pass it on to my idiot conservative family members. Is there anyway in the future that these kind of series get their own specific tag? It’d be great to give them one simple link and let everything unfold before their unbelieving eyes.
Ash Can
If a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth, what Steele said at DePaul was no gaffe. He was speaking to a group of black students, and evidently choose to be frank with them. This is what John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” would have looked like if it had involved any actual, y’know, straight talk.
I continue to believe Steele is a reasonably decent fellow (as Republicans go) who’s making the best of a really lousy position. If he can continue to shake the RNC down for cash it would otherwise be spending on the election campaigns of raving lunatics and guys in white sheets swinging nooses around, good for him. And if he’s going to speak truth to the party on top of it, then he deserves some kind of national honor. Maybe we can start by renaming for him all the shit nationwide that’s been named for that fraud Reagan.
brantl
@burnspbesq: This link was established so long ago, that I’ve forgotten the evidence by now.
BethanyAnne
@Tattoosydney: I’ve been poor, so I haven’t sprung for the full version, but I <3 the game. Played the free version several times :)
Bob K
@Lovely Rita:
You need to look in the white pages under “escorts” You can get a crab cake delivered ANYWHERE if you are willing to pay serious coin for it. But you say “Rush ate my money clip” I feel your pain – happens to me all the time. Don’t sweat the small stuff. I like you Rita – even if you are a meter maid. Hey – Next time I double park the Bentley in front of the Krispy Kreme can you cut me some slack? Here’s a tip for you: Dig down deep in the couch. There are probably a few Krugerands that slipped out of your pocket. If the girl/guy is good she’ll/he’ll stop at the Piggly Wiggly and actually get you a crab cake. If it’s the crappiest crab cake you ever and and you’re pissed off and want your money back you must be a young republican. If you are a liberal you’ll thank her give her the crab cake and send her over to your neighbors house. THAT YOU CLUELESS FRAT BOYS IS HOW WE ROLL AND WHY YOU ARE NEVER INVITED TO THE CLINTON’S BARBECUES.
HyperIon
@zoe kentucky:
what are you smoking?
Dennis G.
@burnspbesq:
@brantl:
In the early 1980s, both Bartlett and Abramoff were working out of the Reagan White. Bartlett was a domestic policy adviser and Jack Abramoff was the head of Citizens for America, an astroturf group financed by Reagan donors and run out of the White House to gin up support for Reagan policies. Jack was also the head of the College Republicans and his right-hand man in both operations was Grover Norquist.
Jack and Grover may or may not have worked closely with Bartlett back then, but by the nineties when Jack was a lobbyist and Bartlett was a pundit/think tanker on wing-nut welfare, Jack’s billing records make it clear that his team was in touch with Bartlett.
When Jack landed the Sweatshops of Saipan as a client in 1995, Bartlett was one of the ‘libertarian’ voices he turned to to defend the sweatshops and labor abuse as a model of conservative progress. According to Abramoff’s billing records for the Marianas Islands Bartlett was in discussion with Team Abramoff to take one of Jack’s ‘Think Tank’ trips to the tropical island in 1996. In 1997 another team member was meeting with Bartlett in an effort to get a favorable items into the Washington Times.
The released Abramoff billing records are incomplete. These records suggest that Bartlett took the CNMI trip, but the fragments that we have do not produce a smoking gun.
Due to the uncertainty of the link directly to Abramoff, the post has been change to remove the assertion that Bartlett was an Abramoff crony.
Cheers
Tattoosydney
@Bob K:
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what Evil Brick Oven Bender sounds like.
Bob K
@Tattoosydney:
Thank you. In my best Andy Kaufman impression:
“your corporation is depreciated”
someguy
When the RNC chair basically damns the Republican Party as a lynch mob, I think it’s safe to write them off.
ericvsthem
@geg6: Thanks for that. Going to leave work early so that I can go call my dad and then give my son a hug.
Tattoosydney
@Bob K:
I like you.
Tattoosydney
@Bob K:
I have found that “My heart will go on” will displace almost any earworm, but then you have to get rid of it as well, and the only thing that works on Celine Dion every time is the “Banana Split” theme song.
It’s death to all earworms.
NickM
Bob K – the K is for kiln.
Tattoosydney
@NickM:
Except on amphetamines, ethanol and quite possibly ecstasy.
Mumphrey
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Wow, that’s a vile site. I looked through a little bit of it, and learned that Republicans don’t care about homosexuality. No, really, they don’t. Some nut on the site said so. Republicans only have a problem if somebody gets hurt or something. I never knew they were so tolerant. Also, somebody else asks a burning question:
You know, I was wondering myself when the “lame-stream media” would begin to “connect the dots” and dig into the scandal of the 29 miners who obviously set the explosion themselves to make it more likely that cap and trade would pass… Ooooh, or maybe Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi decided to kill them! They’re soooo evil.
I don’t know why the people at that wretched site are even pretending to be Democrats; one of the pages there is called “Democrat Donors”, and on that page they refer to the “Democrat Party”. I don’t know why they would even bother trying to make anybody think they’re really Democrats. Seems like the use of “Democrat Party” would give it away to anybody.
asiangrrlMN
@BethanyAnne: Funny as hell. Love it.
@dmsilev: Disgusting. Worse than the ads. Ugh.
@Boudica: Seriously, back away from Alan Rickman and no one gets hurt.
tenkindsofgrumpy
DennisG A first class piece of journamalism! Thank you. And the comments? Hands down, the best on the tubes.
Scuffletuffle
@asiangrrlMN: Mmmmmm, Alan Rickman. Can I have some?
asiangrrlMN
@Scuffletuffle: NO! He is mine, and I do not share my toys with others.
Scuffletuffle
@asiangrrlMN: B-b-but I asked nicely…sob…
/turns away wiping teary eyes on sleeve
Tattoosydney
@asiangrrlMN:
Now, now, young lady. What have we told you about sharing?
asiangrrlMN
@Scuffletuffle: @Tattoosydney:
Mumble mumble mumble. Fine. Scuffletuffle can play with him for FIVE minutes! Harumph.
LittlePig
@hamletta: Awesome.
Crab cakes are hard to find here in the South (I don’t count Captain D’s) – many thanks.
But then I’m the only guy in Arkansas that keeps Moxie in the fridge. I like the stuff, despite the threats from my son to get me disbarred as a Southerner.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JMC in the ATL:
I strongly agree with this. The way the GOP split into progressive and conservative factions and as a result lost the 1912 election is a precedent worth keeping an eye on. I thought the split might start right now given the split between the Blue Dogs and progressive Dems over HCR and with banking reform on the deck, but the cracks seem to have been papered over for now, which is another one of those things Obama is doing currently that will loom larger over time as people come to appreciate the nature of the current Dem coalition.
Also, folks who are ready to dig the grave of the GOP as a neo-Confederate regional minority party might want to go read a little bit more about the Democrats from 1876-1916. They managed to win several presidential elections and wield tremendous influence in Congress during that period despite being a regional minorty party, in part because of tensions and splits within the GOP which only fully ruptured in 1912 but were present throughout that period.
Tattoosydney
@asiangrrlMN:
/meaningful look/significant pause
Scuffletuffle
@Tattoosydney: Oooh, oooh… five minutes will be fine. Thank you so much!! Tattoosydney, I owe you bigtime!
El Cid
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Not to mention that the Conservative Coalition between right wing segregationist grandfathered-in Southern Democrats and pro-business Northeastern and Midwest Republicans more or less dominated Congress — winning on pretty much every issue it united around — for most of the last half of the 20th century, a pattern which changed mostly because Southern conservatives all went Republican and Northeastern & Midwestern Republican moderates have slowly been under assault from the Neo-Confederate Deregulatory Talibangelical brigades.
asiangrrlMN
@Tattoosydney:
@Scuffletuffle:
OK, OK, TEN minutes. Sheesh. Just don’t glare at me like that again.
P.S. Scuffletuffle, you better not break him before you return him to me.
Scuffletuffle
@asiangrrlMN: I won’t break him, but he might be a bit moist…you know, like the catnip sacks when the kitties are done…mmmmmmmmm….
asiangrrlMN
@Scuffletuffle: That’s fine. I can always wash him off.
Rebecca
@Mike Kay:
Isn’t it obvious? He’ll be running for office as an Independent in Maryland. That’s why he’s pointing out the Emperor has no clothes.
wmd
This series and the moniker “Confederate Party” should inspire a bumper sticker:
Don’t Vote
Confederate
Logo is the confederate flag elephant (with Circle slash).
wmd
@wmd:
I’ve done a fast and dirty sticker layout.
Confederate elephant is dengre’s art. I’ll be printing a single copy for my own use. I think the concept is a good one.
newsbird
@zoe kentucky:
Actually I learned that word from a liberal bashing Bush about his baboonery. I guess he was a racist too.
I think the word is hilarious. I can see now that out of context it looks racists. I am sorry about that.
Cacti
@newsbird:
And some of your best friends are black, right?
Carol
1876 (The Corrupt Compromise that stole the election) to the GOP split of 1916) was an age of Republican dominance. The Republicans also ruled the Congress as well. It wasn’t until the Democrats began taking in immigrants and to a lesser degree, some blacks-that they began their long dominance in politics (1933-1992) for Congress, And their lesser dominance (FDR-LBJ) of Presidential Politics.