If Republican Congressman Bob Inglis worked for CNN or Kaplan, he’d be fired for saying this:
“There were no death panels in the bill … and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It’s not leadership. It’s demagoguery,” said Inglis, one of three Republican incumbents who have lost their seats in Congress to primary and state party convention challengers this year.
Inglis said voters eventually will discover that you’re “preying on their fears” and turn away.
“I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading,” he said. “What it takes to lead is to say, ‘You know, that’s just not right.'”
Inglis lost his primary, so the GOP, Kaplan, and CNN have quite a lot in common these days.
Zifnab
Is this where IOKIYAR and Reagen’s 11th Commandment butt heads?
John Bird
Well, that is not a winning talking point for a Republican, “the government is not trying to kill you”. It’s along the lines of “Obama is not biased against white people” or “some of the unemployed are not lazy”. You don’t say it in polite company.
jacy
After not taking the time to actually look up anything about the record of Republican Congressman Inglis, I think it’s still probably a pretty safe bet that the only time Republicans nowadays speak up and say “You know, that’s just not right,” is AFTER they’ve been kicked to the curb.
Heaven forbid you should take a stand against spouting poisonous nonsense when it actually means taking, you know, a STAND.
Come to think of it, it’s not just Republicans either. Wankers.
NobodySpecial
This is the part where Conservadems run him for the seat in a Dem primary next time under the phrase “This is the best we can get in this district.”
Pancake
Well, actually he was fired by his employers: the voters in his district.
Tom Hilton
What I’m wondering with Inglis (and, even more so, Bennett): now that they’ve got no more reason to appease the loonies, is there any possibility of getting them on our side on anything?
EconWatcher
jacy:
Not true in this case. Inglis was one of a very few republicans, for example, who voted with democrats to call out Joe Wilson for his “you lie” comment (and that was well before his primary loss). Inglis is a decent man.
jacy
@EconWatcher:
Well, that’s good to know – or bad to know in this case, I guess. Seems anyone with a lick of integrity still left in the Republican party should be packing their bags. Last one out the door can turn off the lights.
Stupid politics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@jacy:
Add him to the list with Bennett (Utah), Christy Whitman and god knows how many others. It’s bad enough they only speak up when it’s too late, but the Broders and the Cokies will all applaud his courage without actually applying what he says to that Republican Parth he’s talking about.
Roger Moore
@Pancake:
Not quite. He was fired by a subset of his employers: those voters who are allowed to vote in the Republican primary. Those voters aren’t necessarily representative of his constituents as a whole.
Keith
Thanks for not using the Politico link, but the comments there are truly indicative of the problem. (First one out the gate called him a “limp-wristed RINO”, and it went downhill from there)
MattF
A rep from South Carolina, in point of fact– so, not a soshalist, not even approximately.
JITC
@EconWatcher:
Despite his decency, he lost his race. Or maybe because of it?
We have pandering, lying politicians because that’s a winning strategy. Is it the voters’ fault after all?
Svensker
@Pancake:
Yes, for being rational and speaking the truth. Perhaps the voters should get a clue and turn off Fox, Rush, et al.
cat48
The one good Republican in SC was voted out. This is sad for us in SC. Now a Teabagger will win.
freelancer
Damn, DougJ.
EconWatcher
The primary loss of Inglis shows how far off the deep end we have come. He has like a 94% rating from the American Conservative Union. Endorsed by National Right to Life and NRA. Vigorously opposed Obama’s health-care program.
So why did Republican primary voters dump him? He thought Joe Wilson’s “you lie” outburst was wrong and said so. Ditto with “death panels.” He has criticized climate-change denialists, and wants to work with Democrats on a revenue-neutral carbon tax to cut our use of fossil fuels.
Even though he was the incumbent, he got completely slaughtered, by more than 2 to 1.
Scott
Kaplan won’t be able to fire him, but I bet they’ll never let him write an op-ed…
kommrade reproductive vigor
Silly Republican! People WANT to be scared of non-existent threats!
Also2, I’m now officially certain DougJ uses an Awesome Blog Title generator.
RolloTomasi
@jacy: Inglis is a coward. He should have spoken up regarding death panels last summer. This is the equivalent of Colin Powel spilling the Iraq War beans in 2007, or Tom Ridge acknowledging the political motivation of Orange Alerts in 2008. Either hold a press conference when it matters or stfu.
Culture of Truth
primary voters: we demand 100% insanity!!
Zifnab
@cat48: And the district won’t really suffer for it any more than all the rest of us. That’s the crime of it all. You’ve got these little enclaves of stupid sending up their stupid minions. And since they write federal legislation, not state or local laws, the impact of one more stupid Congressman in the herd is very difficult to distinguish.
I’d love to see a district’s community forced to live under whatever laws they voted for a year before everyone else does.
Hell, I almost want to start stomping my foot and demanding federalism and state’s rights. It’s hardly fair that you’ve got a state like Vermont or Minnesota producing fairly rational and intelligent representation, but being forced to subsidize the idiocy down in Alabama and Texas because of a gerrymandered numbers game.
Jim C
The opening of a WSJ article about Bob:
This is the Bob Inglis I’ll always remember.
He may have had his claimed “Road to Damascus” moment, but the role of a Republican Cassandra is a just one for him.
PaulW
Yeah well he lost so no one needs to listen to him. Right, Newt? Right, Palin?
Culture of Truth
Inglis: oh shit i created a monster
John Bird
@Jim C:
Well, the ground shifted underneath him. He used to cultivate a careful balance in his party between pretending to have insane views about government and wanting to know about the President’s pee-pee. Now it’s tipped all the way to the former and where is he left? Nowhere, that’s where.
Svensker
I’m just sick of these nutjobs. Was hanging out with some folks earlier and they started talking about Obama and how he’ll probably appoint King Samir Shabazz to a post in his administration soon. There are lots of things about Obama I’m not happy about, but this stupidity on the right is way beyond disturbing. They really do love being ignorant fucks, don’t they?
R-Jud
Tangent: I’ve just come back from two weeks’ vacation in the US. While waiting for our flight yesterday I caught about twenty minutes of CNN– Wolf Blitzer and the Cafferty File. I nearly started ripping up chairs and throwing them at the screen, the stupid burned so fiercely.
How you front-pagers can bring yourself to watch and read this crap so often without also doing needle drugs or cutting yourself amazes me.
boognish
@ Zifnab Minnesota sends Michele Bachmann to DC. We’re not immune to the dumbassery.
FlipYrWhig
@Zifnab:
Minnesota? Michele Bachmann’s Minnesota?
John Bird
Me, I read Fox News and Fox Nation everyday and try to keep tabs on the talk radio points of the week. It’s like when Jeff Goldblum hacked the mothership on Independence Day, I tell myself, but it’s probably just fun.
Mike in NC
Krauthammer’s column in the WaPo today is a masterpiece of Obama Derangement Syndrome, or perhaps the A/C in his mansion isn’t working and the heat and humidity got to him.
Nah, he’s just whacked.
John Bird
Also I read this, which is (im)probably the most fun place on the Internet for U.S. politics jawing:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=201
handy
@Jim C:
Seriously. Meh about this guy. So he’s not a total whackjob. I guess in today’s GOP climate that’s an accomplishment, but really it’s just a sad commentary on the state of things.
Culture of Truth
I’m just sick of these nutjobs. Was hanging out with some folks earlier and they started talking about Obama and how he’ll probably appoint King Samir Shabazz to a post in his administration soon.
Yeah it’s like when liberals used to joke that Bush would some insane loon like John Bolton to be Ambassador to the U.N. It shows there are nuts on all sides.
Wait, what? He did what?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Jim C:
When it comes to these folks, I could do with fewer “Road to Damascus” moments and more “Albert Speer in Spandau” moments, but then I’m just nasty that way.
FlipYrWhig
@EconWatcher:
This is what’s sad. We basically are running out of Republicans who have any interest at all in finding common ground on anything. It used to be the idea of Congress that there would be attempts to haggle. Now the only haggling takes place between the various wings of the Democrats. The Republicans don’t do any work and don’t try to learn, happy to just sit in the back of the room throwing spitballs and doodling pen1ses into their textbooks.
If they did participate, we wouldn’t always be happy with the results; but there would be _more_ results, more deliberative democracy, and more reason for the whole American system of representative government to exist.
Zifnab
@boognish: They managed to concentrate their crazy. Both Senators are rock solid, Keith Ellison is the first Muslim Representative, and Jim Oberstar – Chairman of Transport and Infrastructure in the House – has left me nothing to complain about.
If every state were as sensible as Minnesota – with a one to seven wacko ratio – the nation would be better for itself.
Face
I cannot wait to see what these teabaggers do when they actually get into Congress. Will there be a contest to see who’s the first to suggest Obama’s impeachment (8 mins post-swearing in, tops, is my guess)? Will they demand that all the House Negros serve them their coffee? Will they park their tractors in the proper DC lot?
BruinKid
Stephen Colbert really wanted Inglis to keep his seat, and for good reason. It wasn’t just the censure of Joe “You Lie!” Wilson, either. How many here knew that Inglis was one of the few Republicans who opposed Bush’s Iraq surge in 2007? Or that he spoke out against offshore oil drilling way BEFORE the BP disaster?
And the context of him saying “turn off the Glenn Beck” was in response to a woman at his townhall repeating the lies ABOUT those “death panels”.
So for those who say he’s only speaking out now, they simply have ignored what he’s said and done in the last couple years.
John Bird
I do feel the pain of Republican delegations, to an extent. They ginned up this shit in ’94 with the help of Limbaugh and that guy who said Hillary Clinton had lesbian orgies in the White House and then it got away from them, because radio hosts who will cry on demand are way more charismatic than some super-tanned lizard from money.
The Republicans’ official leaders no longer HAVE the ability to set the agenda of their party. It now belongs to a gaggle of irresponsible media figures who are likely to turn Huffington, I mean Democratic, whenever that’s more cash for them – a lot of them used to be Stern wannabes in the first place. And in the meantime, they’re playing to their audience, and that means, the government is Nazis, the government is the USSR, the government is the Black Panthers, the government is planning to take your guns and gas Grandma, “red diaper doper babies”, as Savage likes to put it (and I’m serious, he uses this whole phrase at least once a show to describe a Secretary of Whatever).
As a result, a big chunk of the Republican base doesn’t want to vote for their Republican congressman. They want to vote for Glenn Beck or Michelle Malkin. Since they can’t (those people aren’t stupid enough to run), they want to vote for whoever goes on those shows and agrees loudly with the host.
It’s gonna make for the lamest pick-up of seats in the history of midterms, in my opinion, even if it’s a big one. If the grand strategy is obstructionism, really, it’s not gonna work out for them in the long run, but watch the record after 2010 for some awesome D.O.A. bills that seek to replace the Department of Education with a talking crucifix that exchanges dollars for gold coins.
Kryptik
It’s just depressing that the nutjobs are winning. It’s like a fucking avalanche set off by someone on the other mountain shouting at you to go away…then eulogizing at your funeral that you were responsible because you were putting up ‘Avalanche Warning’ signs and that your death was deserved..
Teak111
Same thing happened in Cali coupla years back in the GOP primary for govnor. Richard Riordan, mod GOP mayor of LA, kicked to the curb in the primary by nobody uber conservative business man, Bill Simon. Result, Gray Davis becomes governor, gets punked by Enron and recalled by uber conservative house member, Daryl Issa (who now wants to impeach Obama). Result=a moderate conservative gov known as the Governator. But the GOP learned its lesson and has stood up another mod GOPer in Meg Whitman, whose just going to”fix” all of Calif problems. Crazy GOP only goes so far.
FlipYrWhig
Do you slide the bill into the gash in his side?
Zifnab
@John Bird:
Yet. Lou “I hate Mexicants!” Dobbs has contemplated a Presidential run, or at least a Gubernatorial race. Glenn’s cult of personality could slowly be building up to some kind of insane political power play. Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan both made plays for the Republican Party at their peaks. And Sarah Palin is more media figure than politician these days anyway.
Redshirt
It’s going to get worse before it ever gets better – if it can get better. Have we crossed a line of no-return yet? Can the crazy ever be put back in the bottle?
Kryptik
@Redshirt:
The problem here is whether it’s simply a case of ‘It’ll bet worse before it gets better’, or a case of ‘It’ll get worse before it gets even worse’.
Davis X. Machina
You have to see this from their perspective. It’s not ‘ignorant’, it’s ‘simple’; it’s a virtue. It’s a holy, Christian, thing. Being learned is bad.
It’s also a lot less work than knowing your ass from your elbow.
Holy — and less work. What’s not to like?
Redshirt
@Kryptik: I have to hope – I have to – that this craziness will burn out. The anti-communism scares of the 50’s eventually burned out; other periods of craziness have passed.
I just am not sure, since so many of the foundations of our society have been crazified – for specific purposes – whether it will be allowed for the craziness to burn out.
As long as the media exist not to report the truth but rather serve a specific corporate agenda, I don’t know who will have the capacity to take the foot off the crazy gas pedal.
General Stuck
Crocodile tears when wingnuts get voted off Skull Fuck Island.
Kryptik
@Redshirt:
I wish I that kind of hope left. But…
Look around. 55% of likely voters think Obama is some rampant soshulist. How many times did we hear ‘MARXIST!’ or ‘COMMUNIST!” as a pejorative just this election, forget in the past? The anti-communism hysteria never burnt out. It hibernated, but it never left us. We never really ever got over the cold war.
And it’s precisely because all of our foundational institutions have been crazified that I’ve become simply resigned that we’re probably going to end up with a republican president by 2012, because everyone’s gone batshit insane, and the media are spiking the waters with crazy because they honestly believe they’re hopelessly too liberal.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Al Franken’s Minnesota
Redshirt
@Kryptik: I’m not even concerned about 2012; 2010 has me worried, if these evil jerks get any form of real power (unlike the power they have now: to obstruct, and dominate the conversation).
The worse horror I can imagine is a completely BS impeachment trial going forward, since I don’t think there’s any reason it would not succeed, even if it was 100% completely fabricated. Who’s gonna call anyone on anything?
No one, that’s who.
If we can survive 2010, then we get another 2 years to try and purge the insanity. Not confident we will, but at least there’s a chance.
fasteddie9318
@Redshirt:
Not really. If 2/5 of the population believes that Jeebus is definitely going to return sometime in the next 4 decades, and almost 2/3 of the country believes that America was founded as a Christian nation as the polls suggest, then I think the crazy horse has long since left the barn.
gbear
@Zifnab:
Actually we’ve got two whackos. Klein and his district are wingnutty too but Bachmann kind of leaves everyone else in the dust. I’d bet Bachmann and Klein have identical voting records (that is, when Bachmann bothers to show up to vote).
DougJ, how could you have missed the headline ‘Broken Inglis’? I’m shocked & Marianne Faithful is devastated.
Bobby Thomson
@jacy: Agreed. Not exactly profiles in f***in’ courage to tell the truth after the vote has been taken and you’ve been shown the door.