Daniel Larison has a smart, sharp response to Rich Lowry‘s (not that stupid, IHMO) idea that Paultards are the new Deaniacs. Here’s Lowry:
Rand Paul’s victory is another sign that there’s a roiling, libertarian revolt within the GOP that is likely to fuel an out-of-nowhere Dean-style “Republican-wing of the Republican party” candidate for 2012. The way Dean represented a rejection of Clintonism, this candidate will represent a rejection of Bushism. He may upset the apple cart on foreign policy the way Dean did—perhaps by calling for a pull-out from Afghanistan.
Dean was also running within the DLC consensus on social and cultural issues in 2004. Lowry seems to forget completely that Dean took a lot of flack for his stated interest in expanding the Democratic Party to include, as he put it, “guys with Confederate flags in their pick-up trucks.” His idea was to try to make the Democratic Party competitive nationwide, and he argued that this involved tailoring candidates to their constituents, which is more or less what the DCCC and DSCC ended up doing in the last two cycles. The idea was to minimize and downplay differences over social and cultural issues in order to appeal to working- and middle-class voters, many of them white men, who had once been Democratic voters. In many respects, Dean had a record as governor very much in the mold of Clinton himself. Stupidly, Republicans refused to distinguish between Dean and his politics and the politics of his netroots supporters and insisted on portraying Dean as a left-wing fanatic.
[….]A depressing truth about the enduring power of Bushism is that Bushism satisfies most of the major factions in the party in one way or another. During the last primary contest, McCain represented the general continuation of Bushism, and both Romney and Huckabee were basically presenting themselves as adherents of Bushism who also had executive experience. All signs right now point to a 2012 field that offers the same choices.
(Larison also demolishes the idea that withdrawl from Afghanistan will energize conservatives.)
This is exactly right. Also too, style and temper play a key role in this. Dean got left-wing activists going not so much with what he said as with how he said it. A friend of mine has a joke that in a low level math class, you prove a theorem by repeating it loudly. Likewise, you fire up activists by repeating your positions loudly, no matter if they differ all that much from other candidates’ positions. Perhaps this is less true on the right, where genuinely out-there positions are more acceptable, but Scott Brown captured Erick Erickson’s heart with the truck and the “people’s seat”, not with his socially moderate political positions.
A skilled politician knows how to rally the troops without making the natives restless. It worked for Bush in 2000– George Jesus for the snake-handlers, genial ol’ compassionate conservative Dubya for the undecided voter. It worked for my old friend Eric Massa, too, who had local liberal activists convinced his bloviatory opposition to the Health Care Bill was part of a principled drive for single-payer, not a blatant suck-up to conservatives in his district.
Anyway, Larison is right: Republicans will probably run someone with the same positions as George W. Bush in 2012. The only question is whether it will be an angry, activist-friendly Dubya or a conciliatory, Broder-friendly Dubya.
Corner Stone
I feel like King.
jeff
I think Rand Paul could be a real force down the road a bit–should he win. He’s actually talking about going through with libertarianism, rather than just lying his ass off. His potential success is bad for Republicans, bad for Democrats, and bad for American prosperity. In that order.
handy
Dean was also right about Iraq. From the beginning. When it wasn’t exactly a popular thing.
kid bitzer
” an angry, activist-friendly Dubya or a conciliatory, Broder-friendly Dubya”
or a mavericky, roguey, dubya with boobyas. also.
Tom
There is an old saying – “when you have the law you pound the law, when you have the facts you pound the facts and when you have neither you pound the table.”
DougJ
@handy:
Al Gore was against it too. And he was Clinton’s VP.
I don’t see how opposing Iraq is a rejection of Clintonism.
Alex
I think if Rand Paul, and whatever other Tea partiers get thrown out there for 2010 lose (not all of them will, but some will, starting with Rand himself, I think), the idea of a libertarian-Republican in 2012 goes down the drain. The establishment is aching to be rid of these people, but they can’t do that until they definitively start losing. And they will in November.
srv
All signs point to y’all being wrong. If not for 2012, shortly thereafter.
If you think people are crazy angry now, wait until they have had a couple more years to stew on high unemployment, low growth, outsourced, local and state bankruptcies, bigger deficits, and being assraped by the next brilliant Goldman Sachs financial instrument.
The presumption is that the middle class will recover and be the moderate middle. I don’t think y’all should assume that. The middle is going to fragment, and they are going to go to the fringes.
patrick II
“Also too, style and temper play a key role in this.”
“Also, too” is funny sometimes at the end of sentences, but when you have used it so often it just starts fitting into your writing it is a little freaky.
Jeffro
Let’s see, we just had a fake Dem (Specter) lose to a real Dem (Sestak)…
…a corporate Dem (Lincoln) in a fight for her electoral life against a real Dem (Halter)…
…a Teabagger nut win his primary by simply being himself, meaning he’ll most likely lose in the general…
…Murtha’s seat retained by a Dem…
At this point, I’m not seeing any trend lines other than a) real Dems are more appealing to Dems than fake ones, and b) Teabagger activists are going to cause major trouble for the Republicans for at least this election.
Larison can wank away all he wants, but the shorter version of all this is that the Republicans are going to keep pushing their non-solution solutions (he calls it Bushism; I call it “voting Republican”) while the country continues to drift ever so slightly back to the center and vote Democratic because, well, when it comes down to it, at least the Dems aren’t in the thrall of the lunatic fringe.
Side note: it sure would be great if Lowry could expand upon that “roiling, libertarian revolt” and explain where these folks were during the last decade…
Keith G
Its May 19, 2010 and I just cannot care a lot about Lowry’s prediction for 2012.
There is a lot of pixels being wasted on little news.
Corner Stone
@Tom:
I’m going to rely on my good friend Midnight Marauder to correct me here, but I thought the old saying was:
“When the student is ready the Master appears.”
Lev
Yeah, I’m sure Rand Paul did himself a favor tonight by making a lot of peoples’ first impression of him be that he’s a backward race weirdo. He’s definitely going to be impossible for Democrats to beat. For real.
handy
@DougJ:
Oh I wasn’t making that point sorry. I was just failing to see the connection between Dean and Paul as phenomenons within their respective political parties. (And just to clarify further–I know one of Paul the Elder’s platform points was opposition to Iraq, and so this may very well be with the Younger, but this doesn’t strike me as a particularly defining aspect of the whole movement.)
Anyway, just rambling here. Carry on.
Corner Stone
@srv:
Mainly because the new normal is being set at “reported” unemployment of 9%.
And of those, some 40%+ are long term.
They will take it out on the people in power who are not helping them. It doesn’t matter any longer how bad BushCo bent everyone over. No one has moved to stop or reverse the pillage.
williamc
I just watched Rand Paul on Rachel Maddow from earlier tonight, and he actually says that “its tough to have an intellectual debate in a political sense” while talking about how he doesn’t like the portions of the Civil Rights Act that prohibit private businesses discriminating against minorities, and how he wants to debate it some more. Its tough to have an intellectual political debate with someone who thinks that something that was made law in the mid-1960s needs to keep being discussed over and over again.
One of my best friends is a libertarian, and he believes that libertarianism is the route to true freedom, but when we talk about it, what he advocates sounds like tyranny of business elite over the commoner, and when this is pointed out, this is alright to him, putting the lie to his path to freedom canard.
And I know Jon Stewart disagrees when people on blogs say it, but Maddow really did destroy him. He sounds like a crazy, overly-defensive, 17yo Ron Paul (they have very similar voices, its so weird).
Tyro
. I was just failing to see the connection between Dean and Paul as phenomenons within their respective political parties.
Let me try: both Dean and Paul were articulating a position that their supporters felt weren’t being acknowledged by the elites of their respective parties.
Now, I don’t know what exactly that view was for the Rand Paulites (TARP?) (For Dean, it was Iraq, when most of the top-tier Democratic candidates were trying to embrace it as quickly as they could in 2002), but that is a point of similarity between the two.
Corner Stone
@Lev:
Sounds like the perfect candidate for KY. I say those stupid hillbilly fuckers secede and get it over with!
BruceFromOhio
I remember there was smirking chimp. And then there was angry chimp. Eventually we got to angry, smirking chimp, and that was the last time I ever saw that particular president say anything at all.
2012, bring it.
Martin
Rand Paul is already backing into GOP rank-and-file positions. He’s pro-life, doesn’t want major changes to the big entitlement programs the poor people of KY rely on, and so on.
He’s got quite a tightrope walk ahead of him. Conway seems like a pretty smart guy – I think he’s going to know how to make hay out of this.
Rand will have some trouble holding his libertarian base while capturing the conservative Dems and moderates in his state that he need to win. Today’s polling shows him with a 5 point lead – that’s not so hot when you spanked the shit out of your opponent and the other guy squeaked by.
Corner Stone
@williamc:
Honestly, I have seen very little of Rand. But, a sampling of Ron.
I was so struck by how incredible the patterns and intonation, inflection was by Rand.
That was freeking creepy.
Lev
@Corner Stone: Like they did with Reagan? Or Roosevelt? If we know anything by now, it’s that voters are pretty short-term thinkers. How quickly has the Bush Administration been chased from the minds of voters.
Little Boots
Daniel Larison is awesome. Just saying.
Elie
I think that it will take many years to assess the impact of our intervention in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East. Its not the simple equation of “for” or “against”, though I in general do not favor military solutions to what are political or socio/politico solutions.
I wish that we could for once, have discussions and ultimately decisions that are not bi-modal — for and against, yes or no. We have interests which are of mixed value and cost to us. The success of many of these is only assessed over time and even then, many times the results, the verdict, is mixed…
We desegregated US schools by dictum of the Supreme Court. This caused White Flight and mass abandonments of communities in the inner cities of many states. Again, not ALL the reason, but contributed to it. This resulted in defactor resegreation of inner city schools and locked in second rate status as the funding moved with the exiting whites.
Am I against school segregation? Hell yes! My pain is that our solutions for so many things are about coercing the solution rather than the horrible patience of working out a change more slowly but maybe more effectively through the effort of engagement and organizing.
It pains me even when I read my own comments and thoughts about how we must FORCE this solution or that. It almost never works long term, even when it feels good short term. Change is a bitch that is slow and complex and punishes all sides — you just cant always see how right away and therefore it results in political instability and more of the same.
We are emotional creatures more than rational, thoughful entities. Oh so many times we have given up the whole ranch to make a point or to score a limited victory at the cost of many long term benefits for all the little folks who do not know…
The Greeks knew the sin of wanting to be perfect like the Gods and they told their stories of that punishments in literature and the arts. Perfection is always unattainable. If you almost get there, or try too hard, the Gods punish that — severely.
We are humans bounded by those limitations and hopefully by humility. May we at some point find patience to actually learn, real time, how to make lasting, meaningful difference
gocart mozart
@jeff:
I don’t see Rand winning even in wingnut KY. If I was running against him I would lay off the 14th Am stuff and just keep repeating over and over that Paul would:
Legalize pot, close Gitmo, legalize flag burning, abolish mine safty regs, privatize social security, abolish medicare, abolish minimum wage laws, Osha laws, Am Disibility Act, workers comp, SSD and so on.
These are laws that benefit real Americans and so don’t count as big gubbmint which only benefits the coloreds.
Also, he may be a bit squishy on abortion and stem cell research. i.e. Leave it up to the states.
He is a consistant hobgoblin yes he is.
ed
We’re winning!
Sorry, I can’t resist typing that whenever Rich Lowry’s name is mentioned.
Little Boots
A world in which Daniel Larison was The Opposition would be a much more interesting world.
Stroszek
And speaking of the health care bill, nothing underlines this point more than the fact that Dean’s 2004 HCR proposal was very similar to the “horrible, right-wing” law that Obama actually passed.
Splitting Image
I think Rand Paul may end up being a bigger disappointment to the teabaggers than Scott Brown. He’ll voice the libertarian opinion more reliably than Brown has done, but he’ll also have much higher expectations to live up to.
Admittedly I don’t know much about him yet, but he doesn’t strike me to be as consistently libertarian as his dad is. (Not that Ron himself is entirely consistent in his beliefs either.) I think he may turn out to be the replacement for John McCain: the career maverick who votes straight party line unless he’s having a fit of pique about something mean someone in his party did to him.
Larison is right about Dean, as usual. The tell that the G.O.P. doesn’t get it yet was the wingnut party manifesto that came out of Maine. Snowe and Collins have hung on there by catering to their constituents, not by parroting the same crap that works in Mississippi. They won’t be able to reproduce what Howard Dean did until they put aside the purity crusade and allow people like Snowe to have a place in the party. As it is, they think one of her is one too many.
Little Boots
That said, Dems are fine in 2010 and 2012. Repubs really are fucked, profoundly and deeply (assuming that’s not redundant.)
DougJ
@patrick II:
I almost used it in a seminar announcement sent to the rest of my department yesterday.
Mike in NC
Line of
compassionate conservativesassholes, now forming on the (far) right.BTW, was Rand Paul named in honor of a certain crazy lady? Never heard of him until a couple of months ago.
handy
@Tyro:
I can see that, but then again, as you concede a bit–the line of demarcation between the Paulites from the larger Republican base is fuzzy, at least with respect to actual matters of policy. In fact a lot of the rhetoric just strikes me as classic Repub messaging cranked up a bit–fight big government and soshulism, cut taxes, states rights, etc. This isn’t exactly revolutionary and you’ll hear it just as much from a John Boehner as a Sarah Palin.
williamc
@Corner Stone:
I listened to it without watching, and I swear, he sounds like a younger, less old-timey Ron Paul. I didn’t pay too much attention to the races last night (first time in years, but I’m busy with work, so meh), and I really thought the polls were wrong and that there was no way the people of KY, no matter how inbred redneck yokel they are generalized being (and I know lots of perfectly pleasant rednecks from KY), would vote for a Paulite libertarian. People in the Southern state might love some god, guns, and gold, but they aren’t too crazy about people who advocate taking things away from them.
Who knows, the stereotype might bear out, and he might win with his “I hate the Civil Rights Act and Department of Education and the Americans with Disabilities Act”. But electing Republicans should get your state what you vote for: a lobbyist-bought-and-paid-for state legislature, crippling tax cuts, stupid uneducated children, and no ramps or elevators in buildings.
Jamie
sounds like Kentucky found a good replacement for Bunning. Nobody will notice that he left.
jwb
@Martin: Do you have the numbers or a link for the Conway-Rand poll?
Little Boots
Well, at least DougJ’s awake. Someone’s putting their time in.
jwb
@Little Boots: Larison is also a Rand Paul backer. Just saying.
gocart mozart
@Little Boots:
Like a black man’s package rammed down their throats so to speak.
Corner Stone
@Lev: Are you arguing with my premise? And that is “unemployment at 9%+ and things get screwy.”
Steve
I don’t know how libertarian Rand Paul really is. His dad is all about reducing our foreign entanglements, cutting spending everywhere and anywhere… whereas on Rand’s website, he says military spending should be our #1 priority as a nation.
I think if you want to cut only the spending that Democrats like, you’re not a libertarian, you’re a Republican.
Martin
@gocart mozart: The problem the GOP faces is that they are focused on national, not local issues, as many analysts have pointed out.
The real problem, though, is when they focus on local issues in a recession, what are they focusing on? The local issues are jobs, the economy, the state of everyone’s safety nets – all things that an awful lot of people, even on the right, agree that government isn’t bad at. It’s hard to get most people riled up about abortion when they don’t have jobs. The only local issue the GOP really has to hammer on is immigration, and that’s a short-time winner in most places, but a long-term loser. They know that, but what can they do? They’ll sell their future out in order to pick up seats in November.
Little Boots
He has his flaws, jwb, he really does. But I still think he’s awesome altogether. One of the last thoughtful conservatives.
Corner Stone
@gocart mozart: Alicia Tyler
Lev
@Corner Stone: Not at all. Just saying that if things get better, people will credit the people in charge. Just like they did with Roosevelt and Reagan, among others.
NickM
“Deaniac” has a nice woody sound about it. “Paultard,” on the other hand, is frightfully tinny, I think.
Little Boots
God, I love a tinny reference. Once a python geek, always a python geek.
Corner Stone
@williamc:
Without co-signing the rest of your post – not only was his voice creepy as hell but if you saw his small movements while speaking. That is some weird shit.
I’m just like my dad in that we both love Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream.
But this fruity fruit is fruity.
gocart mozart
@Corner Stone:
ahem.
Little Boots
He’s crazy, Kentucky, for once, give a fuck.
jwb
@Little Boots: Oh, I like Larison, regularly read his blog, and think he has lots of smart things to say. But he’s got himself his own brand of deep crazy if you get him on the right topic—so much so that I don’t know if I’d want him anywhere near the levers of actual political power.
Corner Stone
@Lev: Ok, thanks.
If things climb above the new normal people in charge will be rewarded.
But that ain’t happenin’.
williamc
@jwb:
Sully too seems to be in the tank for Paul. This might finally be the thing that gets me to stop reading his blog. I hate Republicans with a passion that burns like scotch bonnet, but the burning hate that I have for libertarians is deeper and more fierce, like a eunuch getting gonorrhea: one you can wait out and while the burn is bad, eventually you’ll beat it, the other is something that just makes no sense happening in the real world and can’t really be understood by anyone.
Endorsing an actual libertarian for higher office, in government, over people’s lives, is actively rooting for a failure in government; they don’t believe in it, that’s where that part of Republicanism comes from. To take libertarianism seriously (in a nation as greedy and needy as the US) is to not be taken seriously.
Little Boots
I’m not sure I disagree, jwb. I’m grasping. I was once a conservative and I want to think it wasn’t crazy turtles all the way down, once upon a time. Larision helps. And really, he does have very interesting, thoughtful posts, usually.
Corner Stone
@gocart mozart: What? Do you have an issue with beautiful women?
DougJ
@williamc:
Sully lost me with the Kagan stuff. I took him off my reader.
Lev
@jwb: I find him to be at his best on electoral politics and foreign policy. Like, there’s nobody better on either of those topics. He’s usually at his worst on social issues. And I don’t say that just because I disagree with him. I disagree with Joe Carter and still think he’s a great blogger on those issues. To his credit, though, Larison seems to avoid those topics these days. Man knows his limitations.
Little Boots
Oh, god, not the Kagan stuff. Will resist.
Corner Stone
@Little Boots: Are you under 50? It’s been turtles since WWII.
El Cid
There was a time not too long ago when Democratic party leaders didn’t speak their differences with the Bush Jr. approaches clearly and bluntly. Apart from high level political analysis, about everyone I knew got sick of the Democratic Party continually distancing itself from everything we saw as common sense and worth defending. And Dean was pretty good at that. For a lot of people I knew, that meant something.
jwb
@williamc: I haven’t been reading Sully lately, but I’m sure he likes Paul for the sheer drama of it, on the one hand, and his desperately romantic hope that it augurs a change in the GOP on the other.
Little Boots
yeah, yeah, yeah, Corner Stone, but I did like Buckley. Okay, at first.
Martin
@jwb: Can’t find it right now. Watch the TPM Tracker. A poll was run today which was 48/43, I believe. But other than Rasumussen, the polling suggests the race is pretty open.
jwb
@Little Boots: “And really, he does have very interesting, thoughtful posts, usually.” Almost always, actually. It’s just that when he goes off the deep end, he really goes off the deep end.
Little Boots
Corner Stone, what do you think of Larison?
Lev
@DougJ: Wow, that is so interesting, because I am this close to dropping Sully myself for exactly the same reason. I sent him an email today in which I basically took him to task for insinuating that Elena Kagan is gay without proof, and that he is essentially calling her a liar with this garbage. I didn’t make Dissent of the Day. Oh well.
jwb
@Martin: Thanks. I looked for it at TPM as well as a couple other sites and Googled, but couldn’t find anything more recent than 5/13.
robertdsc
Daddy Paul says no. Rand’s full name is Randal.
williamc
@DougJ:
I really don’t get his Kagan wedgie. A wingnut floats a rumor that she’s gay on the CBS news website (the guy a known plagiarist), the White House denies said rumor, and then he freaks out that straight people in politics deny too strenuously that they aren’t gay? And now he hates careerists too?
My personal belief on this: with all the busts lately, I think Sully’s pot dealer just ran out of the good stuff and he’s going crazy and lashing out. And maybe he can haz starbursts for Rand Paul? Larison though, I don’t know. He usually has pretty good BS detectors, and his Conservatism is actually logical, so I don’t get his Rand leanings, but hey, we all need heroes…
DougJ
@Lev:
What I don’t like is the misogyny. He doesn’t treat Crist and Graham (who are more obviously gay) this way.
I’m against swishboating of any kind. I don’t see why he thinks there is one standard for lesbians and another for gay men.
Little Boots
Sully is, well, even more than Larison, insigthtful, kinda, with that deep bit of crazy obsessive about some things. Actually, Larison’s really more insightful, but Sully still comes through sometimes. I wouldn’t give up on him yet. (And again, I don’t think he was entirely wrong about the whole Kagan thing.)
Little Boots
I don’t think he does, Doug. He has a weird quirk about the Clintons, that is true, and she was a Clintonista once upon a time, and that may unhinge him a bit. But it is an interesting question what things, personal things, we are allowed to ask about a Supreme Court nominee, why and why not?
Corner Stone
@Little Boots: People here cite him as the last sane conservative.
But he’s just as messed up as the rest.
They don’t exist. If they ever did.
gocart mozart
@Corner Stone:
No, just clearing my throat.
Lev
@DougJ: To be fair, Sully did write this:
Then again, he hasn’t had two weeks of every other post being about why doesn’t Lindsey Graham just come out already, and for God’s sake why won’t anyone just ask him to? He has an instinct for the big story, but I think that leads him to latch on to stories like this and Trig Palin and basically refuse to let go even after it’s clear there’s nothing there. I just think the guy has some more growing up to do.
DougJ
@Lev:
I’m not sure she’s gay anyway.
Little Boots
For better or worse, the closet is becoming less and less acceptable as an idea. The hypocrisy thing is itself a bit hypocritical. The closet itself is under assault, and that’s what Sully is getting at, fitfully, inconsistently. The Kagan nomination may just be the first big opportunity to get at that. Though with Sully, it’s always about other, personal things as well. And misogyny may play its part.
handy
Well he better hurry up because he’s not exactly a spring chicken.
Little Boots
And that too, DougJ. She may not be. Which makes this whole thing surreal and kinda silly, but inescapable all the same.
williamc
@DougJ:
I think you nailed it here. He does seem to just not dig women, and this isn’t the first time its shown through in his work. The abortion series he was doing last year, hearing from women all over the country about the agonizing decisions that they were making about having late-term abortions, yet still never being able to empathize with them over this heart-felt decision, is right up this ally.
But I always hearken back to my older gay male pals. We’re of different generations (some of us are early 30s having been out since high school, some late 30s coming out in college, some 40s and 50s coming out later in life), but the striking thing is that to a one, all of them tell me that over time they don’t hang with women much anymore or that the women of their lives fall away to where they are friendly but not friends with women anymore. At least not as close as they once were. I don’t know if this has happened to Sully, but I do know that he’s got some bug in his butt about Kagan that he doesn’t have about Huckleberry Graham or Charlie Crist.
And plus, the lady just don’t seem gay to me, but what do I know about lesbians anyways?
Corner Stone
@gocart mozart: It’s kinda weird. Because I just posted something about “Let me clear my throat”
And it got eated.
Comrade Luke
He also says this:
Really? Why?
And if so, good lord have we been exaggerating what it takes to be a senator, let alone a good one.
El Cid
Rand Paul may make a ‘good’ Senator in the sense that two alligators fighting to the death makes for a ‘good’ spectacle.
Corner Stone
@DougJ:
But he’s so honest about how he views things. You know, sometimes I wonder about how amazing it is that he gets to the correct answer when he’s coming from where he does.
Little Boots
I dunno, williamnc, my experience and that of most of the older gay men I know is that women are a big part of our lives as friends. I do from time to time detect a misogyny in some of what Sullivan writes, but I don’t think it’s because he’s gay, per se.
williamc
@El Cid:
Kinda what I was thinking, though more “good, I made it to the toilet to vomit instead of all over my bedroom carpet, now I won’t have a mess to clean up”.
DougJ
@williamc:
Yeah, I agree.
But what do we know with our irrational hatred of Jane Hamsher?
Little Boots
And I’m actually okay with Jane Hamsher, so I’m even more right about Kagan.
Comrade Luke
Oh, and another thing: the fact that Larison had to write an article, and we’ve spent nearly 90 comments discussing a prediction by Rich Lowry has to fit into some kind of wingularity metric.
Lowry is the bottom of the barrel. I can’t believe anyone is talking about him, let alone this many people.
Corner Stone
@DougJ:
Ohhhh…snap?
williamc
@Little Boots:
Heh, it might be different here in the deep south as women of a certain age here either marry or vanish to an attic somewhere (I kid, I kid to those who can’t take a joke).
Also too, I don’t know if he does know any women because while I too hate some lady starbursts, and the Trig story is specious, no lady friend of mine would let me go on a bender about someone’s baby like that, no matter that I wanted to “get to the truth”.
@DougJ:
I am officially never talking about Ms. Hamsher here again. I have nothing nice to say, so I refrain from saying anything, irrational or otherwise…
Corner Stone
@Comrade Luke: Cockpunch. It’s the only answer.
Little Boots
That is way too funny williamc. Though as a midwestern liberal, I refuse to laugh at your observation of ladies and attics.
Mark S.
Hey kids, have you ever wondered why libertarians are 99% white and male?
So, to review, the government forcing you to have your rapist’s baby is freedom. The government prohibiting “Colored Only” water fountains is tyranny.
patrick II
@Mike in NC:
Evidently not. His birth name is Randal.
His own youtube on the matter
Little Boots
Damn, I forgot to add also, too, up there. And now it’s just senseless.
Mark S.
Hey kids, have you ever wondered why libertarians are 99% white and male?
So, to review, the government forcing you to have your rapist’s baby is freedom. The government prohibiting “Colored Only” water fountains is tyranny.
Corner Stone
@williamc:
Honestly. That broke my fucking heart. I’ve always wanted to drown that POS Sully, but when he posted that one absolutely heart-motha-fuckin-breakin comment from one of his readers…….and THEN said how he couldn’t see her side!!
If I could’ve crawled through these tubes ala Ted Stevens/Rambo II style, I would have.
I’m not sure there’s been much more that made me so angry as that.
Little Boots
Abortion, always the kicker with these glibertarians. Can’t we just distribute the appropriate amount of heroin and have done with them?
Corner Stone
@Little Boots: Well, whatever you do, do NOT mention Kathy Bates and/or Misery on a thread that DougJ is moderating.
That will get you shitcanned faster than saying IQ is heritable across races.
CaseyL
@Comrade Luke:
Larison’s in a tough spot. He is a conservative Republican. And even though he acknowledges that conservatism and Republicanism have both gone deep into Crazy Town, he still has to somehow write positively about conservative Republicanism. He needs to be able to quote, or at least reference, someone who isn’t an instant candidate for protective restraint – and the pickings are pretty slim.
Rich Lowry is a deeply dishonest hack, with an explicit and disturbing crush on Sarah Palin, but at least he is not (yet) on court-ordered thorazine.
Little Boots
I would love to know the backstory to that, Corner Stone, but I’m not sure that I’m allowed to ask yet. I have this weird feeling I’m on thin ice with DougJ, but maybe it’s just the noob status.
jwb
@Comrade Luke: Actually, we’ve said very little about Lowry.
Little Boots
I think Larison will stop being a conservative at some point, though it might just be ego. I stopped, he’s smart, so he’ll stop. Yeah, might just be ego. But he can’t seriously stay in such a brain dead movement forever.
williamc
@Mark S.:
Like I said upthread, libertarianism is really just dog-whistle meaning tyranny of the rich over the rabble. Assholes that need to experience how the other 95% live, but never will because the system that they hate protects them most. They could all go DIAF, but our soc!al!st fire department protects their gated communities better than our public school buildings.
@Corner Stone:
You’re telling me. I must have written him a letter every day telling him to lay off this, he didn’t know what he was talking about, he didn’t know what it felt like, and he was being glib about something he was never going to experience, either as a woman or a man who had just impregnated a woman who was doing it, so he was out of bounds either way. I’m glad others felt the same, though he kept on doing it. He lost me for a while, but old habits are hard to break I guess.
Mike Kay
Heh!
Are you saying online-hippies are gullible coughjohnedwardscough!?! :)
Joseph Nobles
OT: Pakistan has a major case of the fee fees. The country has blocked Facebook and Twitter because of some Draw Mohammed Day promoted by some of the people on both sites. Now if they would only hand the nukes over to adults…
Batocchio
How about an angry, dogmatic Dubya who masquerades as a conciliatory Dubya? Much like, ya know, the actual Dubya?
Chuck Butcher
@Batocchio:
I’m pretty sure I’d be a bit more sanguine about our future if I had any idea what the fuck that bunch is going to get up to next. I can make up a lot of paths they seem to be heading down, but sensible doesn’t seem to be one of them and that is scary in regard to a major political party that might one day have more than a little to do with the running of a nation like this. Teabaggery is far enough out there as it started and throwing in the Paultard faction is getting really weird. When Michael Steele starts looking half sensible…
If these clods follow Limbaugh and Beck off the crazy cliff it will be quite awhile before they either drag themselves back or something replaces them – short of earth shaking happenings. Looking at what it took for the Whigs to collapse is way short of reassuring.
Xenos
@Mike Kay: Ok, ok, I get it, you are a the vindicated cynic who is so much cooler than everybody else, with a compulsion to trot out how foolish the cyber-hippies have been.
Your schtick, it is getting dull.
Xenos
@DougJ: re. Sullivan
That. And the racism which is denied with sentiment but revealed with the promotion of the most obvious sort of junk science.
If I may stereotype a bit myself, there is a reason some white male homosexuals are often at the center of movement conservatism – aside from gender issues they are pretty consistently validated and privileged by the bigotry of these movements.
Mike Kay
@Xenos: and yet you prove my point. this post makes fun of Massa, Dubya, Broder, Dean, and it even calls Dean’s supporters deaf. that’s okay. oh but someone always pops up and says edwards bashing goes too far. I guess it’s still too soon, the wound hasn’t heeled.
MikeJ
@Mike Kay: Edwards bashing would be fine if you ever did anything else. You are the dullest person on the internet. We don’t need you here because we already know what you’re going to say.
Dull is much, much worse than offensive. You’ve failed miserably at offensive but succeeded beyond what anybody could ever hope for on dull.
Xenos
@Mike Kay: It is not that the wound has not healed, but that the heel has been wounded… mortally. Sure, I supported the guy back in late 2007, but was never in love with him and was happy to see him bugger off into the sunset once it was clear that Obama could go the distance.
You are bitching about Edwards-pumas who do not exist, as far as I can tell. So it gets old. And boring. If your theory is that the firebaggers are all Edwardian sentimentalists then by all means feel free to go there and harass them. See if they really exist.
aimai
Actually, I object to the Dean bashing. Dean was the only active politician (Gore wasn’t running for anything) who was willing to come out and oppose the war and support democratic policies on things from gays to health care. The only. He had an active netroots. That doesn’t make them hippies, much less excitable, stupid hippies. In the summer when he was criss crossing the country he created out of nothing an active, energized, base of people of all walks of life–many of them previously a political. And he went on to build on that with the 50 state strategy. There’s nothing like that with the tea tards. And, frankly, this had nothing to do with merely saying stuff loudly. Dean was no more deceptive or confusing about his message than our current beloved leader. Like any politician he offered people a chance to have some of their views pushed, while others were offered a chance to get a seat at the table if their candidate won. Deaniacs were no more ignorant of Dean’s non-left nature than Obama voters were “ignorant” that he was a centrist. It was the major media who insisted that this totally ordinary guy was a raving lunatic. Just as it is the major media and the right wing who insist that Obama is a marxist. This doesn’t mean that Obama’s voters are deluded commies.
aimai
the farmer
Paultards are the new Deaniacs
Uh, no. Paultards are just what they always have been… neo confederate paleoconservatives (hiding out pretending to be libertarians).
*
EconWatcher
I like Larison, but he does have some of the crazy in him, as others have said. A good example is a very recent post in which he claimed that nativism is a virtually non-existent tendency in America and denied that it was the driving force behind anti-immigration politics:
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010/05/19/more-caricatures/
Say what? Now in fairness, he said these things in the process of bashing Bill Kristol, which is always a worthwhile and commendable endeavor. But still, his basic point seems kind of delusional, and probably has something to do with his own, uhm, nativist leanings.
Cat Lady
But who? Here are the possibilities so far, and Republicans don’t go out of the box to run presidential candidates:
Palin – (1)
Romney – (2)
Huckabee – (2)
Thune – (2)
Barbour – (2)
Gingrich – neither
McDonnell – (2)
Pawlenty – (2)
Jindal – too brown, doesn’t matter
Brown – too dumb, and isn’t running
Thune is enough of a blank slate, but that’s not how Republicans roll for their presidential candidate. Romney won’t get past the Palinistas, and he’s untrustworthy to everyone in the general, Barbour is a fat racist assclown who would only win in the South, McDonnell is too wingnutty who had to deny his agenda to win in a low turnout election, Pawlenty has zero charisma, and Gingrich has WAY too much baggage. In the primaries every single candidate will have to double down on the crazy to get the Palinistas if she doesn’t run, and if she does, the rest will have to kneecap her bigtime. It will be entertaining, in a horrifying way.
kay
@Cat Lady:
I think Mitch Daniels is a possibility. He’s the governor of Indiana. He has a long record with movement conservatives (he worked for Reagan) and he was budget director for Bush. In between stints in government he worked for various corporations.
His basic approach is to privatize everything. He privatized children’s services in his state, which was a disaster, and then he privatized child support collection, which was another (complete and epic) disaster, but he’s a midwestern fiscal conservative and he’s not completely insane.
I haven’t heard him advocating overturn of the Civil Rights Act or the 17th Amendment, and he’s not running around calling anyone Hitler and Stalin so he seems to stay clear of the lunatic right.
Nick
@DougJ:
Is it possible to irrationally hate someone so irrational herself?
Cat Lady
@kay:
I don’t see him getting past the Palinistas if he isn’t spouting dominionist and racist red meat Beckian claptrap, or at least dog whistling it loudly. The only hope for Republicans is to get their Teatard base really excited and activated, and we know what that means. The Crazy Train has left the station, and every candidate has to be on it.
kay
@Cat Lady:
Oh, I agree. I don’t know what they do with the Palin-Beck-Tea Party people. They’re the Republican base.
I just think Republicans really, really need an upper midwest state, Ohio, Michigan or Indiana. I don’t think they’ll ever get Minnesota or Wisconsin, although they always claim those are up for grabs. Indiana is probably the easiest, and there could not be a more business-friendly candidate than Daniels. His philosophy aligns nicely with Grover Norquist. He could run as a Washington Outsider, I think, but he’d have lots and lots of national corporate funding. Best of both worlds.
I don’t ever really count them out. They’ll find someone marketable.
Cat Lady
@kay:
He’s not handsome enough. He looks like an older Peyton Manning. What is it about Indiana and foreheads?
TomG
I’ll add my two cents…I’m worried about Rand Paul for the same reason I dropped my initial support for his father: he is NOT a libertarian, not really.
I know this is very much a “true Scotsman” argument, but most libertarians who I find myself agreeing with are pretty certain Paul is best considered a “constitutional conservative” like his father – notice he is even MORE pro-life friendly as far as endorsements go. Here is an EXCELLENT summary about Rand Paul –
Rand Paul posting
kay
@Cat Lady:
That’s true. He’s not at all handsome, is he? I can’t stand him, because I don’t think privatization works, and it’s a too-easy solution, but I hate that we look at “handsome”.
We do, though. I have a good friend who just loved Bill Richardson. I sent him 25 dollars in the primary because she kept haranguing me. Once, after a couple of beers, she said “he’s not going to win because he’s fat“. I just laughed and laughed, but there’s truth to it.
Cat Lady
@kay:
That’s Romney’s only ace in the hole. We already know about Palin’s appeal. If those two were smart they’d team up, but I don’t see Romney being VP to Palin, and she’s going to want to be #1. She’s earned it, and that’s how the Republicans roll. That ticket would be catnip for the DC press, and a disaster for the country. It could happen.
kay
@Cat Lady:
Well, we disagree there. I think Romney is unelectable, nationally, as a Republican. There’s a reason places like Minnesota and Massachusetts elect non-insane Republicans, because their Republican base is different than that nationally. I think his record of switching completely cynically and opportunistically on nearly every issue dooms him with the entire base. Anti-abortion people don’t even buy him on abortion. Romney raised a LOT of money early in the last GOP primary. He was clearly the choice of big bidness. His problem was, no one wanted to vote for him. I don’t think he makes it out of their winner take all primary process.
Cat Lady
@kay:
Your fingers to the FSM’s orrechiette. He doesn’t have any supporters here in MA, that’s for sure.
LarryB
I’m late to the party, but:
This is not quite right. It’s hard to remember now just how cowed the Democrats were after 9/11. Dean got the activists going because he was just about the only national politician who was willing to call B.S. on the bait and switch that was “compassionate conservatism”. His 50-state strategy came later as an outgrowth of his failed presidential attempt.
grandpajohn
@jwb: Well, once you said “he is an idiot” what else is there to say?
Bill Murray
@Cat Lady: Thune is just as dumb as Brown, if not dumber. They could run on a ticket as one total brain, two hunky smiles
goatchowder
The only difference between Howard Dean and an insane maniac is that Howard Dean is not insane.