Ron Brownstein has a good article about the 2012 Republican primary. The rough take is that non-college educated, economically downscale Republicans will go for a candidate they feel they represents their values (like Palin) and the college-educated, economically upscale Republicans will go more for someone they think would be a competent executive. He describes it as “managers” versus “populists” and, it seems that, although the “manager” candidates used to always win the Republican presidential primaries, no one knows what will happen this year after all the craziness in the 2010 Senate primaries.
My opinion is that the Republicans will nominate a manager type and Bobo and Joe Scar will tell us this person is a highly cerebral, principled Burkean thinker, who “stood up to the Palin of the party”. Fortunately, for all the fluffing he gets from the press, he will still be Mitt Romney or John Thune, so he probably will lose in the general election, though not as badly as Sarah Palin would.
One thing I take away from the article: the economically downscale portion of the Republican party consists almost entirely of blithering idiots. And this is no accident: if you don’t make a lot of money and you vote Republican because of young bucks buying T-bone steaks and gays/retailers/schools/MSNBC desecrating the cradle of the Baby Jeebus, then you’re an idiot. You’re pissing your own health care, your own retirement, your own minimum wage because you’re dumb enough to believe some fairy tale that Rush Limbaugh told you. It’s a self-selecting group: people who don’t make a lot of money and do have brains don’t join the Republican party, because they’d like to have health care, Social Security, the opportunity to join a union, etc.
Namekarb
And then there is that large group of non-voters who rail against the unfairness of “The System” but won’t take that extra burden of filling out a mail-in ballot.
Perhaps the answer is a $50.00 tax credit if one can prove they voted?
cleek
and who’s going to win the 2012 Super Bowl ?
Baud
I’m not sure most of the low-income Republicans are stupid. I think they prioritize social issues over their own economic well-being. Would you support an ardent anti-corporate, economic populist if he or she were socially conservative on abortion, science, gays, church and state, etc.?
WyldPirate
Unfortunately, this group is also about 25-28% of the electorate. They have had an undue influence on the crazification of the Rethug Party and they have played a large role in making the Dems move more to the right over the years.
Chyron HR
@Baud:
Isn’t that a roundabout way of saying “stupid”?
SenyorDave
Sometimes its tempting to go galt and say that the dumb shits in Alabama deserve to have shitty health care and crappy schools, but I kick myself back to reality and realize their children don’t deserve a miserable life because daddy and mommy listen to Limbaugh and Beck.
I do hope that all earmarks are stopped because they help the red states disproportionately based on population.
May John McCain rot in hell for siccing Palin on this country.
Maxwel
Indeed!
PS
@Chyron HR: No, it is possible to be socially conservative on science and not be stupid. An intelligent person can have the value that experiments involving embryos are immoral under all circumstances, for instance; that’s a judgment call. Saying that anthropogenic climate change does not exist is not a judgment call, it’s just stupid. The fact that both views often overlap is a complication, I do not deny …
Menzies
@SenyorDave:
This.
I think if you dismiss them as blithering idiots – which I won’t deny they vote as – you also forget how much pressure is on them to act as such. This is the one point I do see in all that talk of Bittergate and other stuff as a gaffe, because people do have a tendency to think “if I’m going to get stereotyped or generalized as acting a certain way, I might as well deserve the characterization.”
Doesn’t mean the responsibility is off their shoulders to get informed and educated. But in a country where all the real policy is controlled by a small set of “experts” conversant in a jargon that is nigh-impossible to get into without some sort of primer, and the institutions built on that jargon, I see it as easy to understand.
Then again, maybe I’m just lazy. But I do try to keep up to date on this kind of thing.
slag
@Chyron HR: No.
This is.
Baud
@Chyron HR: I suppose more so than the others on my list. I think for them, they think of the question in terms of who they trust, and they trust their religious leaders more than scientists.
DougJ
@SenyorDave:
Yup, always remember that. It’s a very important point.
Mike Kay (Team America)
it’s all about the primary calendar, which tilts south.
Palin will win Iowa by 20 points, which is impressive in a 12 person field.
Palin will probably come in 2nd place in NH, because they don’t like holy rollers.
Then comes South Carolina, where she’ll slaughter the Mormon heretic.
Then comes florida, ditto.
Mitt will probably win Michigan, but not by much.
Then comes Super Tuesday, and Palin will pick off the stragglers with her sniper rifle, sitting in her gold plated helicopter.
After that is Texas and Ohio, and hello presumptive nominee Halfgovernor Palin.
The Grand Panjandrum
I think you meant to write 2010 Senate primaries, no?
SGEW
I think that you’re ignoring (or at least underestimating) the terrible pressure that friends and families exert on people, and the self-perpetuation of ideologies within closed communities. If everyone you personally know and respect has certain political beliefs, it is a rare individual who can reach other conclusions.
In other words, I believe that many of them are not “self-selecting,” and that it is not really a question of “brains.”
Ross Hershberger
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Palin is currently trailing Mitt, Huck and Newt in the polls. By a lot. I don’t see a long campaign improving her standing. She’ll have to speak without a script occasionally and that’s never in her favor.
James K. Polk, Esq
@Baud: Since the Senate is bought and owned by corporate influences, the president would be unable to advance “ardent anti-corporate, economic populist” policy.
Plus, yeah right, let’s see that hypothetical candidate. Who is that candidate’s constituency? Where does the money come from?
While we are living in fantasy land, I would love a romantic engagement with Scarlett Johansson.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Also, too.
Look for Obots, like myself, to vote for her in primaries and to contribute to her campaign (even if it’s only $25, though I will max out for her, just to rat fuck them).
WyldPirate
@Mike Kay (Team America):
This is wrong.
Palin will lose because it will finally come out that she went to six universities in five years because she couldn’t live down the embarrassment of pulling too many drunken trains at her previous schools.
TOP123
@Mike Kay (Team America): …have you seen her shoot?
Baud
@James K. Polk, Esq: I’m not saying there would be such a candidate. I’m saying that people who aren’t stupid do sometimes put their social beliefs ahead of their economic self-interest. I for one would have difficulty voting for an anti-science candidate even if he or she did have a better economic plan.
eric
@DougJ: the irony of course is that your actions are to help the children of self-professed christians who themselves refuse to enact the politics of social equality and justice taught be a certain jew of questionable parentage whom they purportedly worship.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Ross Hershberger:
what polls?
The same polls that predicted Clinton vs Giuliani as inevitable in 2007?
Please, you have to go by state by state, and the southern make-up of their primary system fits her like a neiman marcus glove.
Ross Hershberger
I can vote for Palin in the GOP primary without changing registration. Look for a lot of MI Dems to stack that deck.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@WyldPirate: That’s actually a big competitive advantage in Ohio.
MattF
Well, a lot of people voted for McCain/Palin, which was a sort of compromise between managers and populists. I know, McCain is a manager-from-Hell, but did you know that he was once a POW?
James K. Polk, Esq
@Baud: The “better economic plan” would be DOA.
You would be shooting yourself in the face to spite your nose. That’s why that candidate would get no traction. It’s like asking if you would vote for a fucking unicorn. It ain’t happening.
Davis X. Machina
50%-plus negatives, and 100% name recognition. Two years out.
No upside potential, zero, none. If she was a stock, you’d mortgage the house, and short her. In the general, McGovern, with tits. (And that’s not fair to McGovern or his war service.)
Palin is toast. Find something, or someone, else to talk about
Mike Kay (Team America)
@TOP123: is that some sort of kinky reference?
DougJ
@Mike Kay (Team America):
I don’t want to give her a lot of money but I wonder if a lot of us give a small amount, if it can somehow help fuel a “look at her awesome populist small donor base” message.
Ross Hershberger
@Mike Kay (Team America):
The polls I’ve seen were potential GOP nominees against Obama, so not exactly representative of primary contests.
But I have to believe that the GOP good old boys in the smoke filled rooms will manage to get the most electable candidate nominated somehow. Not that I wouldn’t love to see them send Palin to get steamrollered in the general election.
WyldPirate
@TOP123:
I have and as someone that has handled firearms of all types and been an avid hunter since I was old enough to hold the end of a long gun off the ground I can tell you with certainity the BS about Palin being an “outdoors person” or hunter is a big fucking lie.
She acts as if she has rarely, if ever shot a firearm of any sort at any point in her life.
Dubya put on a more convincing act that he knew what he was doing with his chainsaw (although it was clear he didn’t know) than she is with a shotgun or rifle.
Gustopher
Please, please, please can’t we get Mittens? Romney sends star-bursts up no one’s thighs, he’s got the whole Health Care Albatross from his governorship, he comes across as having no convictions of any kind, and he’s Mormon.
He’s unelectable, and he has the advantage that if Obama scores an own-goal and Romney is elected, I think the country would survive.
eric
@Davis X. Machina: it all depends which population you are measuring. Those are not numbers of likely GOP primary voters, who get to decide who takes on the black guy in their white house.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Davis X. Machina:
A few months ago, I would’ve agreed with you. I figured she’d run, but only to increase her profile. Lately, I’ve been thinking she’s fallen into the pond gazing at her reflection; I think she might think she can pull it off. Which only matters in that, if she’s in it for the money, she’ll play nice, if she thinks she can win, it could get ugly. I see her and Huckabee competing for the Bible-clingers, Romney winning the country clubbers, and Pawlenty (maybe Thune) splitting the difference and taking the nom (VP Jindal).
PurpleGirl
My dentist is an intelligent man and quite well off. Yet he listens to Rush, although he stopped putting the radio on during my appointments. I’m always surprised by his right wing provaclivities, but I guess he read Ayn Rand in high school and became enchanted with her bs. (He is a good dentist, though.)
Mike Kay (Team America)
frankly, I’m surprised at some of you.
the low-information, anti-intellectual, superstitious, jesus-freak, gun-toting, NASCAR-lovin wingnut voter who worships reagan and at one point worshiped Shrub will never vote for someone who is smarter then them.
Ross Hershberger
My hope is still that Palin will get elbowed out by the GOP powers that be, get pissed off, listen to her base and run a 3rd party spoiler race, Nadering the GOP. It’s a long shot but we need our hopes and dreams.
eric
@Mike Kay (Team America): that narrows the field
R-Jud
@PurpleGirl: What is it about dentists and orthodontists? Ever since I can remember, all of the professionals treating my teeth have been double-dipped uber wingnuts. That was true whether I was in PA, NY, or Chicago.
sacrablue
Two words: Jeb Bush
Greenjeans
Blue collar Republicans males vote Republican because they perceive their party as being more masculine.
I don’t think they have any idea that they voting against their self-interest, because they’re plenty satisfied with being on the right, masculine side.
They are the perfect tools to be repeatedly punked.
DougJ
@sacrablue:
W is too much of an albatross. People really hate that guy.
eemom
I’m telling y’all, it’s bad karma to do anything to help give Sarah Palin a shot at the WH no matter HOW improbable her winning is.
I felt the same way about Guiliani in ’08 and she is arguably worse.
You just don’t take chances with an outcome that catastrophic.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Greenjeans:
but Palin is fuckable.
it’s like those losers in high school who are easily manipulated by shapely chicks.
Baud
@eemom: Agree. All that effort really should be focused on organizing our side of the ball.
Dee Loralei
@Ross Hershberger: I agree with Ross here a bit. And remember folks, in 2008 McCain was actually their very best chance to keep the White House.
And I also agree with Davis X Machina, Palin’s unfavorables are just too damned high, But ya know, Republican primary voters have shown themselves to be pretty darned immune to logic. See 2010 and hell some of those crazies fucking won!
So, Mike Kay, please don’t feed the beast. I know the idea of rat fucking sounds great, but dude, folks said Reagan was too stupid to win. Folks said W was too stupid to win and we’ve already had 16 years of the too stupids running this country into the ground. We honestly can’t tolerate another week of that kinda stupid in charge of the federal government.
Usually when I vote in a Republican primary it’s to get the sanest, least offensive person the nom., just because living in TN, I know that I’ll have to live with that person.
agrippa
40 to 60% of eligible voters do not vote. That tends to skew things.
The base of the GOP is the old Confederacy; southern white men and white women. In the past they were the southern conservatives who voted Democrat. They now vote GOP. But, their conservatism has not changed.
The old populism is long gone; that populism, from to time, trumped the visceral conservatism of a strongly hierachical/stratified society. No longer; we now have an ersatz populism.
There is a lot of pressure to vote GOP; ‘white men have no business voting Democrat’; just as there was a lot of pressure to accept Jim Crow.
John - A Motley Moose
@Ross Hershberger: This. I get awful uncomfortable when I read about Palin being unelectable. That sounds an awful lot like the Goopers were saying about Obama in 2008, “There’s no way a black man with a Muslim name can win.” I keep thinking of the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.” I’d be happier if she gets buried in the primaries. That’s one sure way to keep her from winning the general.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Baud:
I’m doing that as well. I’m lead IT analyst for Alan Grayson 2012. Check out his computer network.
Evolved Deep Southerner
This. God, this boils it down so well. I can understand why a wealthy person would vote Republican, but a working-class person who’d do so is just fucking dumb. Period.
Baud, you make an interesting point way up near the top of the thread about social issues trumping economic ones, i.e., whether I’d vote for a full-throated “class-war populist” who I disagreed with on all the social issues. I’d have to see that particular candidate before I could answer your question, but if you ever hear of a candidate like that out on the campaign trail, please let me know. I’d love to see what such a creature looked like.
PurpleGirl
@R-Jud: I think it’s that they see themselves as small business owners (which they are) but they also get these ideas that they pay too much in taxes at all levels… and they have too much Ayn Rand. I’m sure that’s part of it.
AxelFoley
@cleek:
Bet you didn’t think Health Care and DADT wouldn’t get taken care of, right?
Dennis SGMM
@DougJ:
That is the kind of statement that bothers me a lot. I’ve spent considerable time “down among ’em” and throwing them away wholesale by branding them as idiots is both ignorant and counterproductive.
They are a product of their culture and it’s a culture that, on a local level (your neighbors, your congregation), offers its members a lot of support and help. Many of them really do walk the walk for those with whom they’re affiliated.
You feel contempt toward them? They feel sorry for those who haven’t been born again and placed their faith in science rather than in Jesus.
That’s the way they are. If I wrote a comment along the lines of “Muslims’ paternalistic attitudes toward women, their rigid theology and their resistance to scientific inquiry marks them as idiots,” I’m reasonably certain that you would be among those castigating me for it – and rightly so.
It’s a different culture with both good points and bad ones. Calling them idiots won’t make them Democrats and it won’t change them either.
Ross Hershberger
18 months is a long time, and Palin will likely remain unpredictable. She interests me because more than any other politician in memory, you just haven’t got one damn clue what she’ll do next.
The only clear outcomes in her calculations are the ones with dollar signs.
rikyrah
6 out of 10 voters say they would never vote for Caribou Barbie.
at her height of negatives, the % that said the same about Hillary Clinton was 42%.
42% vs. 60%
like some of us have been saying about Caribou Barbie – when those negatives, and the percentage of those who say she’s not qualified to be President dips below 50%….get back to me then.
Mike Kay (Team America)
ya know if Palin’s sex appeal can turn someone with an education, like Rich Lowry, into a cockold, then just think what power she will have on the morons.
(see here) http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-CM148_1008po_H_20081008162935.jpg
sacrablue
@DougJ: I think he will stay in the shadows while Palin, mittens, Gingrich and the rest of the field try to take each other out. He will show up at the last minute and pretend he is the adult. He also has a chance at picking up a significant slice of Latino voters. I think he is waiting for his brother’s legacy to be papered over. I don’t know why I think this will happen, but I get stomach pains just contemplating it, especially if Obama is weakened by the firebaggers.
AxelFoley
@eemom:
Might be the first time I’ve agreed with you, but yeah, I’d never vote for Palin.
I’d fuck the shit outta her, but never vote for her under any circumstances.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Ross Hershberger: but she is already running. Now like her unstable soul mate ross perot, she could drop out and pop back in, but she is running, it’s just whether she makes her official announcement in 8 weeks or 9 weeks. And they have to make announcement during the first quarter so they can begin fundraising.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Dennis SGMM:
I’m “down among ’em” every day. These are my fucking RELATIVES we’re talking about in many cases. Doesn’t change my assessment that they’re voting against their own self-interest, Jesus or no Jesus.
And your Muslim point? I’d like to think if I were “down among” them, I’d have the good sense Allah gave me to have the same takeaway for them as well.
monkeyboy
If I were a low-income Republican
I wouldn’t think my team would enact policy that would turn me into a high-income Republican. Though I would hope that their policy would give me or my children a better chance at becoming high-income.
Mainly I would want Republican policy to keep me from becoming worse off – which is currently happening to a lot of people. In relative terms this means that I would like my “white male” status preserved through the preservation of “a well ordered society”. In other words I want Jesus, Negros, Mexicans, Gays, Women, etc. kept in their current place. I wouldn’t want a soshulist government to make any of them (except Jesus) better than me.
The enemies of low-income Republicans are everybody else that is low-income, not the high-income Republicans that they want to become (even though HI-Republicans are keeping LI-Republicans low).
Rock
It’s wrong to say Thune can’t win the election. He’s a white, male, devoutly Christian, telegenic blank slate. He would be formidable opponent. I would not b surprised if he were out-polling Obama right now.
Ross Hershberger
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Well, she’s doing something, but I’m not sure it’s with the intent to hold office. She’s got a sweet gig now, and why spoil that with having a job to work at? Whatever gives her the most money or attention. Most attention: running for office. Most money: her TV show, ‘books’, speaking and other appearances. Right now those two potential paths are in conflict.
cmorenc
@PS:
Sometimes yes, and the value can legitimately be rooted in intelligent, religious/moral notions about sanctity of human life. But all too often in too many people, the religious/moral foundation is heavily contaminated with pure mythical/theological crap that falls completely apart on even the simplest rationally objective consideration.
I actually admire the modern Mormons in many respects, and make a point of touring their Temple Square complex in Salt Lake City one evening every year when I go skiing out there, guided on the tour by deadly earnest, but bubblingly cheerful, friendly twenty year old Mormon girls from all parts of the globe, who make Mormonism seem wonderfully attractive for an hour or two. I admire that nearly all of their twenty-ish young men take two years off college to get sent to some unchosen, unfamiliar part of the globe to do missionary/service work; many of the times I’ve been through the Salt Lake airport, I’ve run across a gathering of family and friends just outside the secured gate area, waiting to warmly greet and embrace some young man returning home from completing his two-year mission. Um…at these moments I can momentarily forgive and forget the anti-progressive aspects of the Mormon church, including the prop-8 stuff, even though the rest of the year, “not so much” would be a vast understatement at how appalled and disgusted I am about these other aspects.
BUT: one of the knottier Mormon theological tidbits I always come across during the tour is the notion that there’s a vast reservoir of “preborn” humans residing with God for eons, until each in their designated turn or time gets sent to earth by God to become a fetus through conception and be born, and spend their life on earth either living right by God’s will or doing wrong, and then comes death and the afterlife, as appropriate to the way the person lived and related to Jesus and God. It’s obvious why this particular theological conception is tightly coupled with notions of life begins at conception, and is sacred from that point on.
WHERE this theological notion runs into deeply problematic logical knots is: what happens theologically to all the conceived fetuses that naturally abort at some stage of pregnancy, from failure of implantation all the way to a fetus near the cusp of viability when natural miscarriage occurs? I’m sure Mormon theologians have pondered and crafted some sort of answer to this knotty problem, but there is no plausible answer that isn’t far more contrived than Einstein’s attempt to introduce a “cosmological constant” into relativity to avoid the potential for eventual collapse or runaway expansion of the universe rather than steady-state.
And many of the Mormons who accept wholesale these hyper-contrived, inherently illogical notions are otherwise very intelligent people. Again, I’m not saying that a highly intelligent person can’t choose to believe that it leads to an unacceptably dangerous moral slippery slope to regard the sacredness of human life as beginning at conception, and I’m decidedly not saying at all that on the whole, Mormons are evil, stupid people – in a great many respects, the society they build is admirable and healthy, even if it has some ugly flaws in part. BUT: it is true that many otherwise intelligent people have too unquestioningly swallowed tons of illogical theological crap at the foundation of some of their beliefs and attitudes on scientific and social issues (BTW, progressives themselves aren’t immune from this problem either).
Dennis SGMM
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
They do vote against their self-interest. But, they don’t do it because they’re idiots.
Mike Kay (Team America)
the great thing about palin is she will unite Will Rogers’ unorganized party.
It’s like when ronald reagan gave a speech at the UN saying the soviets and the US would ban together if martians invaded earth (no really, he said that).
what ever differences we have, we will unite to fight the horror of the halfgovernor.
TOP123
@WyldPirate: Yeah, it hurt to watch. A wolf-shootin’ helicopter-ridin’ outdoors lovin’ mama grizzly who doesn’t know how to work the bolt action on her rifle. Uh huh.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Rock:
Obama beats him by twenty points, though as the article says, a lot of that is probably low name recognition. I’m pleasantly surprised, with the economy where it is, Obama still beats “generic republican”
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Rock: thune won’t be able to raise money. And heaven help him if the skeletons in his closet come out (wink, wink).
agrippa
@monkeyboy:
exactly, monkeyboy.
That works very well in a strongly hierachical society where people are taught to respect and defer to their betters.
And to disrespect those of a lower rank.
eemom
@Dennis SGMM:
I ranted about this earlier on another post.
Theoretically, what you’re saying sounds reasonable.
However, I just cannot come to terms with the level of stupidity that enables someone — anyone — to vote, again, for the same people that just spent the first 8 years of the millenium fucking them over seven ways to Sunday — to fall for the exact same liars telling the exact same lies, again.
I’m sorry, but nobody smart enough to breathe has the right to be that. fucking. stupid. And they certainly don’t have the right to drag the rest of us down with them.
Furthermore, it’s all well and good to give pious speeches — like Somerby does — about how what we need to do is not insult them, but win them over — but that, again, sounds very noble in words and is likely impossible to actually do. You can’t talk to people who won’t listen.
Furthermore too, they aren’t all just decent God-loving salt of the earth church-folk. Lots of them are seriously hateful, bigoted, willfully ignorant assholes.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: it’s incredible, when you consider that back in 1982, when reagan presided over a much milder recession, his approval ratings where in the low 30s.
S. cerevisiae
You can forget about Pawlenty. He is as exciting as generic cream of celery soup and anyone from MN can attest to how he has tried to turn it into a cold Alabama.
He wouldn’t even win Minnesota.
cmorenc
@John the Motley Moose:
Even better example: All the progressive-minded folks who thought through fall of 1979 through late spring 1980 how splendid it would be if Ronald Reagan won the GOP nomination because he couldn’t possibly win the general election.
Davis X. Machina
@Dennis SGMM:
Self-interest is weak tea compared to odium theologicum.
Examples from history of people acting not just against their self interest, but that of their families, and even their children, in pursuit of quasi-religious, or religious imperatives are legion.
We’ve nearly reached the Saipan cliffs/Masada stage of our cold Civil War where if I’m Mr. GOP Second Quintile Voter it’s better for my children to go hungry under a Republican, that be fed under a Democrat, be sick under a Republican, than see a doctor thanks to a Democrat, etc….
DougJ
@Dennis SGMM:
You are the one who is contemptuous not me. You describe these cultures as monolithic in a way that they are not. Evangelicals mostly vote Republican, but there are 20-25% who don’t. I have contempt for those who choose to Republicans (if they are low-income) and respect for the other 20-25%.
EDIT: And talk to someone from a Muslim country and they’ll often tell you the same thing: that in Iran, it is a misinformed populace that props up the Mullahs and that the more informed parts of the populace do not respect the misinformed ones intellectually.
Davis X. Machina
@cmorenc: Reagan was a formidable politician long before ’80 — and far from an empty suit. He nearly won the nomination in ’76.
Comparing him to Palin is like comparing Kobe to Obama because they both play hoops, and often on TV.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Ross Hershberger: The good old boys in the smoke filled rooms were behind Mike Castle and Lisa Murkowski. Once upon a time, they were supporting Charlie Crist, Bob Bennett, and Arlen Specter too.
Palin gives the far-right the charismatic populist they’ve been dreaming of since Reagan. Even if everyone to the left of Sam Alito knows she’s DOA in the general, she still has all the folksy liberal-hating charm the base thrives off of. Not to mention that in her corner is Rupert Murdoch, who never saw a train wreck he couldn’t profit from. We’ve already seen Karl Rove bend prostate before her, it won’t be that hard for the rest of the inner party to fall in line once she starts taking the rural and southern states.
So what if she’s ‘unelectable’. The True Americans know she’ll triumph, because she’s just like them. And when she doesn’t…
kdaug
@Chyron HR:
Why, yes, yes it is.
Redshift
@Dennis SGMM:
I don’t think this thread is about how to win them over. That’s a different discussion, and while it is good to try to figure that out, sometimes we need to just have a head-shaking thread.
rikyrah
I don’t underestimate the ambition of the Bushes. IF they believe that Jeb can win in 2012, then the rest of them better watch out. Jeb is supposed to be able to appeal to Latinos, as well as ‘ compassionate conservative’ folks.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Davis X. Machina: Reagan:Palin::Kobe:Starbury
change
It seems from these comments that nothing would make liberals shit their pants quite like “Palin/Jeb Bush 2012″….
PS
@cmorenc: I think we are on the same page. It’s just that your post was long enough to make a complicated point, and mine wasn’t. We agree that some religious people are intelligent. And as you suggest there are intelligent progressives with, ah, non-rational bases for their views. (Daddy was a Republican, I hate Daddy, I’ll be a revolutionary. Of course, those ones usually change back later.)
El Cid
__
One of the more subtle points made (actually his main emphasis) by Tom Frank in What’s the Matter with Kansas is that above and beyond the people who are simply wrong in calculating what politics are in their material best interests, plenty of people simply value the cultural / racist / moral shit over their material circumstances anyway. Particularly the Talibangelical and white supremacist and Confederate Lost Causer types.
Clearly they are completely wrong when they think that the neo-Confederate / Wall Streeters are going to make their lives and the country in general materially better, and also not realize that the cultural / racist / moral shit is part and parcel of screwing themselves over materially.
In the end, though, what matters is that their votes count and they drive this country into as shitty a direction as they can.
AxelFoley
@Rock:
LOL, you sad fools don’t quit.
AxelFoley
@change:
Silly rabbit, I welcome that shit.
cmorenc
@WyldPirate:
Um…although George W. Bush pulled his long string of drunken, irresponsible trains most notably while in the Air Force reserve rather than college, to the point of losing his flight certification and not too many people he supposedly served with in Alabama remembering him showing up for required duty shifts. Nevertheless, that information “coming out” VERY prominently didn’t stop him from winning the Presidency either. Too many people chose to believe all that was long ago, far away, water long gone under the bridge and well out to sea and Bush was a much more mature adult now, or else that the whole thing was a liberal media smear which therefore had no credibility and somehow made Bush more, not less suitable.
The one thing Bush did have going for him was the powerful Bush family political mafia and inside GOP establishment and Galtian business community connections, whereas Palin does not have the cocoon of the traditional GOP establishment to protect her. But her cadre of tea partying true believers may yet prove even more powerful in surrounding her in a teflon bubble.
eemom
@AxelFoley:
and I hope it’s the last time you agree with me. You’re disgusting.
Redshift
@change: Not much for reading comprehension, are you?
PS
@Mike Kay (Team America): it’s like those losers in high school who are easily manipulated by shapely chicks.
Um, het boys?
Davis X. Machina
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Mean — and completely accurate. We had Starbury here not too long ago polishing the Celtics bench and he fit the Wasillia Quittah role like a glove.
Dennis SGMM
@DougJ:
Hey Doug, I wasn’t the one who used the word “anyone” in my comment. I believe that I conditioned my response well enough to avoid describing other cultures as monolithic. I pointed out that there are some admirable aspects of parts of Red State culture and that, admirable or not, they didn’t all wake up one day and decide to be Republicans.
My equating your “idiots” conclusion with a similar one regarding Muslims was not a critique of Islam, it was a critique of broad-brush denigration of other cultures – even those that exist with in the U.S.
As for your gratuitous inclusion of Iran: I have worked with a pro-democracy Iranian student group here for only seven years. Please further enlighten my ignorance.
cmorenc
@Davis X. Machina:
Yes, but even so what Reagan had was but a formidable almost-majority faction within the GOP, which was nevertheless regarded until fall 1980 as too extreme and unsound to be able to carry the general, far more moderate electorate. That is, until over the fall of 1980 the public got fed up with the protracted Iranian hostage crisis and the protracted economic stagflation that plagued the country, and decided that Carter just wasn’t getting it done and decided to see if they could get comfortable with Reagan, which enough of them did decisively during the debate a week before the election.
licensed to kill time
Every now and then a bit of loose change falls out of Rush’s pocket, rolls across the Intertoobs and lands here with a squishy tinkle. Once here it tries to dazzle with tired old slogans, bumper sticker talking points and ‘neener neener’ arguments.
It’s kind of a squishy tinkle down theory in action, best ignored.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What Palin lacks, that Reagan had, Gee Dumbya had to a lesser extent and Mitt to a still lesser one, is the ability to play to different constituencies. Her comfort zone is very small, and she quickly panics and retreats into her buzzword cloud, what somebody called “free association demagoguery”. Reagan, as I remember him, was supremely confident, Bush II could maintain his swagger as long as you didn’t push one of his multiple insecurity buttons. Mitt strikes me as very uncomfortable around those he considers his social and intellectual inferiors, which is most of his base, so he’s kinda like Poppy Bush in that regard. You can always see, behind that game show host smile, the thought bubble that says “Am I dumbing it down enough for these rubes?”
PurpleGirl
Don’t forget Nixon’s Southern Strategy which not only worked in the South but also brought in Northern, Midwestern and West Coast people with much resentment against civil rights advances and other changes in society that they didn’t like such as women’s rights.
eemom
@licensed to kill time:
effin’ brilliant, sir/madam!
Many have tried, but I do believe you are the only one here to do justice to the creature.
DougJ
@Dennis SGMM:
What do those Iranians you work with tell you about support the theocracy? I would guess they don’t have a lot of respect for those who support it.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Dennis SGMM:
Um, erm …
Is this not the prima fascie definition of an idiot?
DougJ
@Dennis SGMM:
I still can’t see what they call Red State culture has to do with actually voting Republican. I understand that the two are correlated, but I know people who hunt and love Jesus who are liberals. I would argue that the ones who hunt and love Jesus and vote Republican are acting stupidly by voting Republican (if they aren’t wealthy) and that the ones who hunt and love Jesus and don’t vote Republican are not.
licensed to kill time
@eemom: Muchas gracias :)
When that change rolls around we should view it as a stray penny and not deign to pick it up. Not worth the time.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@change: Please, PLEASE don’t throw me in the briar patch …
Reminds me of Karl Rove in ’03 surrounded by a gaggle of reporters trying to get a chant going. “Howard Dean … Howard Dean …”
Chyron HR
@change:
Your political acumen never fails to astound.
Dennis SGMM
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Your characterization of Palin’s retreat “into her buzzword cloud” is on the money. To my mind, one of the things that’s changed since 2008 is that Palin can blow off non-Fox media by simply asserting (To the plaudits of her followers) that the liberal media is out to get her. At this point it would not surprise me to see the Very Serious People applaud her as well.
Dennis SGMM
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I’d suggest that it’s a sign of someone who values certain beliefs above all else. That the South hasn’t become a depopulated wilderness after more than 150 years of acting on those beliefs is a testament to something. I’m just not sure what it is.
change
Looks like Dingy Harry is going to file for cloture on START tonight.
too bad he pissed away all his political capital on homosexuals in the military, because John McCain is downright enraged over that and so are a lot of other Republicans, with McCain at the head.
Remember, 67 votes to ratify!
J
@eemom: Vehemently agree. What Dennis SGGM says sounds plausible enough, and it resembles something I used to believe, but I’ve gone–I think most of us have gone–as far down that road as we can. The present-day Republican party has compiled a record–visible for all to see–of dishonesty, malice, catastrophic failure and–why not say it–wickedness, for what else should we call a policy favoring aggressive war that has costs at a minimum tens of thousands and more likely hundreds of thousands of lives and the proud embrace of torture? That this party, instead of dying or spending decades in the wilderness, is poised to regain the ascendancy, doesn’t speak well of our fellow citizens. The one thing I’d agree with is that putting things in terms of ‘interests’ seems to cede the moral high ground, to the poseurs and frauds on the right. Policies that give the vast majority a chance should be described as what they are, decent and fair. I’d go so far to say, modestly liberal or social democratic policies don’t harm the interests of anyone, except on the narrowest and most selfish understanding of ‘interests’. If members of our ruling class had been compelled to pay taxes at the allegedly confiscatory and punitive rate that in fact by all historical and comparative standards are very modest, they would be… absolutely fine in every way, very rich, very comfortable and with the added benefit of living in a fairer more decent nation. The non-plutocrats who support the Republicans without narrow self-interest as a motive are guilty of supporting unjust, unfair and sometimes evil policies even though they are against their interests. They are vicious and stupid.
Anya
@Mike Kay (Team America): @DougJ: You two need your heads examined. Seriously! I will never play roulette with the future of this country or the world, when there’s a small chance that this lazy lunatic can pull a win. That said, I don’t think you will get your suicidal wish. Palin will not run because she has a lucrative scam and a great deal of attention. Plus, she fancies herself as a king maker, so why risk all that for an unknown chance.
Ross Hershberger
@J:
Agreed, and well said. I’d like to comment on this:
Time was when evil looked like evil because there were only so many ways to look at it. Today the GOP has far more methods and opportunities to change the subject, hide, obfuscate and bury voters under a bullshit avalanche. I’m no longer sure that the plain truth that the GOP has screwed us for years and intends to go on doing so will actually have any impact on their popularity. They can dodge that charge in a dozen ways.
Mark S.
Harsh but true.
I’m curious: can anyone thing of a historical example of right-wing populism that wasn’t mostly motivated by racism or xenophobia?
Davis X. Machina
Vicious and stupid in the service of a higher cause.
The merely vicious can be bribed. The stupid can be manipulated, or to put it more kindly, instructed.
But those who care not for the things of this world, for a better world awaits them, and their children, after The Fill-in-the-Blank? (The Resurrection of the Dead? The resurrection of the South? The amendment of the Constitution? The day They all go back to Africa? God knows…)
Not amenable to the usual tools of politics and politicians. In the medieval period there was some record of success using a stake, bundles of kindling and a medieval box of medieval kitchen matches. Not much short of that can be shown to work
Mike G
@El Cid:
I think it’s a combination of not understanding macroeconomics very well, and the cultural attitude that you don’t dare question the economic system. These are the crowd who shout “soshulism” or “communism” at the most tepid suggestions for tempering raw capitalism; taking on people far above themselves in the authoritarian heirarchy can be dangerous, and reminds them of their inferior position. It’s easier to hate on the easy social targets from outside their tribe that are lined up for them on Fox News, people they can look down upon as not having as much whiteness or Jeebus as they do.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Dennis SGMM: I still don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.
I’m not entirely sure what it is, either, but I’m rapidly honing in on inbred stupidity. And, again, I was born here. I live here. I’m not speaking out of Northern superiority. Brother, these people’s blood runs through my veins and I am “among ’em” every single day.
We’re too rich in natural resources to become a “depopulated wilderness,” but God damn, you’d think we could’ve done better than THIS shit.
Bob Loblaw
@Mike Kay (Team America):
I know, it’s like Obama is superbly popular or something. And not unfairly persecuted and sabotaged by “the racists” or “the Professional Left” or Rupert Murdoch or whoever the made-up boogeyman of the week is this time around.
He’s only the most popular President since JFK. And he’ll win reelection with >51% of the vote without breaking a sweat (albeit at a lower electoral college vote total after the census and the inevitable backslide in Indiana and Virginia). But this would hurt the narrative, so we’ll just keep pretending that he’s some aggrieved underdog fighting tooth and nail against the system for our own self-satisfaction…
Kyle
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
In major part it is due to being part of the United States, and subsidized by the rest of the country in infrastructure and federal spending, not to mention the pressure from federal laws to rein in the stupidest of regional racism, cruelty, superstition, backwardness and pride in ignorance.
You’re welcome.
Had the South successfully seceded, I imagine today it would look something like apartheid-era South Africa or Rhodesia, but poorer without the gold mines.
monkeyboy
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
“Self-interest” is not a monolithic concept. “Better, less-expensive health care” might seem to be in everybody’s self-interest. However it has to be weighed against white males maintaining their social class position. If HCR can be seen as benefiting Negros and Mexicans more than it does the less wealthy Republicans then white males lose out. At the worst it might collapse the bottom of the social-class ladder and some white males might have to share the bottom position with Negros and Mexicans rather than automatically being better than them.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@monkeyboy:
kdaug
@monkeyboy:
Read: We are losing our special privilege. Equalization means cutting off the mountain tops to fill in the valleys. Those people who don’t even belong here, are now gonna be your equals, and you’ll have to get in line behind them.
And they don’t even speak English.
AxelFoley
@eemom:
Lol, u mad?
Nellcote
@Dennis SGMM:
Air conditioning?
Nellcote
@Dennis SGMM:
Air conditioning?
Ross Hershberger
@Nellcote:
This is possibly true. Southerners use more electricity per capita, and anyone who has been in Atlanta in July knows why. Global Warming and rising energy cost are not working in their favor.
Anya
@Bob Loblaw:
So are you saying, Fox is not the propaganda arm of the Republican Party and they were not advancing lies and conspiracies and insinuations about how Obama is a marxist-muslim-terrorist appeaser-socialist-anti-white-grannykiller, for the past two years? Did Media Matter lie to me?
Anya
Why are my comments in moderation?
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Kyle:
It’s interesting to speculate. I suspect that there would have been a short period of “prosperity” and slightly hastened the textile syndicate’s flight southward in search of cheap leabor, but today, yeah, we’d look like South Africa or Rhodesia.
This is all assuming that the slaves hadn’t killed all the plantation owners and managers in their beds about 1868.
El Cid
@Mike G: A lot of times when white right wingers screamed about ‘soshullism’ or communism, they meant that the government might stop them from doing the authoritarian and/or racist/discriminatory/exploitative shit they were doing.
Southern segregationist politicians nixed the tiniest potential discussion by FDR to have a national health care plan, since fedrul gubmit might require that a white hospital treat blacks, or that a white patient could be forced to go to a black hospital, and it’s actually likely that at some point they’d be right. But the sickened, disease-ridden, illness-hobbled Southern whites sure would have been better off.
Not all the time, of course. Much of it is simply being stubborn, anti-intellectual, and unquestioning of the right wing bullshit they see and hear and are reassured by all the time.
Their insurance premiums have been rising for however many years, and it’s all because of the Mexicans and the New York libruls and now because of Obama’s health care law and also because the companies are being taxed a lot more, because they just are because shut up.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Ross Hershberger:
Ain’t gonna keep ’em from voting agin’ anything you goldang Yankees propose to try and stop it, though.
But that’s not idiocy. Just deeply rooted culture. Right, Dennis SGMM?
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Anya:
cuz, ya too hott to handle?
monkeyboy
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
Desiring action against your “group’s” self interest is A prima facie definition of idiocy.
By “group” I mean something that might consist of
1) Just you.
2) You and your family
3) You and some narrow class you are in such as “Jewish doctors near and in Atlanta”.
4) You and a larger class such as “democrats”.
5) You and a larger class such as “Americans”.
6) You and a larger class such as “Earthlings”.
Other than the first case one can desire action that is against your individual interest when it aids your group’s interest – the reasoning being that what you lose is made up by what your group wins – and group support and general group betterment may help you make up what you lost.
[ All of the above just to head off Randian individualism ]
The big question is where you draw the lines of your group.
As above I said that “self-interest” is not monolithic.
For less wealthy Republicans is seems that they value the class status of the group “less wealthy white men” over better, less expensive health care for the group “all Americans” because they perceive the benefit to the larger group to be detrimental to the smaller group.
Nellcote
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
What do you think would have happened without the TVA?
Ross Hershberger
Many Southerners liked the way things were in the early 18c. Many of them would like to be still living that way. Many others would have emigrated.
For better or worse, however, they’re ‘us’. Us with noses sacrificed for the sake of spite.
Kenneth
The solution to the Southern Problem is the break-up of the USA.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Nellcote: Oh, shit, Nellcote, what would have happened without a LOT of damn things? The TVA, rural electrification, fluoridated water, quinine, penicillin …?
It’s hard to overstate just how shitty it is down here and just how much shittier it might get if the people working earnestly in the “interest of the people who elected them” are successful in even half of what they’re working toward.
gnomedad
This made me think of something I can’t recall seeing discussed — who could stand to be her running mate? To pretend to take her seriously 24/7? Although if it were someone who believed Palin would resign after a couple of years …
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Ross Hershberger:
They THINK they’d like to be still living that way because they have this wild, sad myth in their head about Miz Scarlett and Rhett Butler and all that God damn “Southern nobility” nonsense.
Back in the early 18th century, the people who presently yearn for the South to “rise again” would be at about the same social station they are today except with even fewer teeth, no indoor plumbing, a helluva lot more incest and many more problems with intestinal parasites.
But yes SUH, they’d still take that over being the same as a nigrah.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Bob Loblaw:
“I know, it’s like Obama is superbly popular or something. And not unfairly persecuted and sabotaged by “the racists” or “the Professional Left” or Rupert Murdoch or whoever the made-up boogeyman of the week is this time around.”
both statements are true. You need to enroll in a remedial course in logic (try your local community college).
He is very popular (72% personal approval rating in this week’s ABC/WaPo poll).
He is unfairly attacked by the Professional Left™ (ie he’s a secret republican) and sabotaged by fixxed news (ie he’s a secret muslim who killed jesus).
TOP123
@Ross Hershberger: Mmm hmm; and until about late May mid June and then again in October you can drive around with the a/c on and the windows down, as many do.
The point about electricity usage in the South would be even more pronounced if the energy cost of cars in ATL (and elsewhere, of course) were factored in.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@monkeyboy:
cleter
Look, the GOP nominee is not going to be some long-shot with near-zero name recognition like Thune or Daniels. It never is. The GOP does not nominate long shots. The GOP nominee is somebody who ran before and did ok and/or was a VP/VP nominee. McCain, Dole, Bush 1, Reagan, Ford, Nixon. Only two guys have bucked that system in the last 70 years or so. One guy conquered Europe and the other guy was a President’s son. There’s nobody in the current field that can buck that system. That gives you a short list of Palin, Huckabee, and Romney. Palin may be unelectable, but she’s eminently nominatable. She’s the perfect candidate for the Iowa pig farmers and South Carolina fireworks-stand owners who think the earth is 6000 years old and that Obama was born in Kenya. Birther pig-farmers and new-earth fireworks-stand operators pick the GOP nominee.
Claiming to be a competent manager in the GOP primary will get you nowhere. Romney’s earnest bleating that he was a better governor than Palin will get him nothing but hoots of derisive laughter.
Comrade Kevin
@Mike Kay (Team America):
There is something funny about that sentence. I wonder what it is?
bemused
It’s not just down scale republicans who vote against their own interests. I recently had a stunning conversation with some relatives, a long time common law couple in their 50’s, who I always thought were firm Dems. We were talking about the Minnesota races and I said anyone who voted for Cravaack over Oberstar was just plain stupid before I realized that it was more than likely that these two did just that. They are hard workers and good people. He’s an excellent carpenter who picks up whatever jobs he can find, she cleans at a resort. They never have saved much if any money and have pretty much lived on a shoestring which was their own choice. She complained scornfully that Oberstar hadn’t done much of anything lately except for spending money on stupid bike paths.
I was just shocked. She had a serious health problem less than two years ago and couldn’t work for awhile. She is doing well now but she applied for social security and currently is having major dental work done, teeth pulled and will get a new set of teeth that will be paid for by MN Care or some other program. How in the world they would think that dumping Oberstar and voting for Cravaack was going to be good for people in their circumstances is beyond me.
There are definitely lower income Dems that have bought into anti-Dem propaganda.
monkeyboy
@kdaug:
Some of it is White backlash against considering Negros and Mexicans who are economic equals as social class equals.
But then again the income bottom 20% of Whites are probably in the same wealth range as the income bottom 70% of Negros and Mexicans.
In terms of income bottoms the White 20% is surely of a higher economic class the the Pigmented 20%.
Any policy that helps the lowest X% of the total population helps the Pigmented more than it helps the lowest X% of the White population.
The Race Card
I just love how you flip me over when you play me, liberals.
MMMMM damn this is good…
Evolved Deep Southerner
God damn it. Now my comment’s in moderation, indefinitely I’d imagine.
Fuck, all I did was use the word for having conjugal relations with one’s own close relatives. Is this so wrong? I mean, God damn, we’re talking about the American South here. If we are to have an honest discussion, we’ve got to be able to say the word “insects.” (It’s an anagram, people, figure it out.)
monkeyboy
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
You really need to learn the secret way to format posts. But when I invented it I copyrighted it, © 2009 MonkeyBoy.
Your post was too messy and distracting. If you obey my WILL (© 2009) I might consider responding though it seemed you had little content or issue.
Tattoosydney
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Urgh. Thanks for that freudian image.
The Race Card
Play me some more!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cleter:
Of those three, I think Huckabee’s got the best shot, and that’s a weak front-runner. I just can’t see Romney surviving with a) Mormonism b) his pro-choice, pro-gay rights stances as MA governor. One or the other, but not both.
handy
Stupid? Idiotic? Racist? I don’t know. I do know that some people are awfully concerned about labels, when missing the larger point that any large scale movement like we’ve seen with the Republicans these 10, 20, 30? years, one that appeals only to people’s basest emotions–fear and anger–will ultimately destroy what’s great about this country.
I’m not sure what the solution is. I hear this chatter sometimes about how talking to people about why they believe what they do, like some sort of encounter group, is the first step. I’m very skeptical. There is a well-funded media machine, with books, TV and radio shows, internet sites, all with the single purpose of re-writing history, philosophy, science, religion–reality, to bend people toward this destructive end. Having a groovy rap session ain’t gonna cut it. Hell, even appealing to people’s own sense of morality and religion won’t either.
Ask one of these right wing born again Christianists about the Sermon on the Mount, or the Epistle of James, or the book of Amos, and marvel at the insights you get–all except the most obvious ones, like the God they claim to worship has a big problem with hypocrites and tribalism.
I honestly can’t fault people who in the face of all this can do no more than to say, “To hell with it. I’ll do what I can, advocate for what’s right when time and resources allow it, but basically I’m just focusing on my little molecule of the world because the rest of it is psychotic.”
Evolved Deep Southerner
@monkeyboy:
Hey, man, thanks.
Now I ask you again. If I define the lines of my group as 1-5, whatcha got? Is this an unreasonable definition of a group?
Otherwise, I find it too strange to call someone else “monkeyboy,” so I’ma call you Josh, OK?
So whatcha got, Josh?
El Cid
When discussing “the South”, it’s always a good idea to clarify who you mean.
Never forget that a majority of our nation’s African Americans live in the South, or that it tends to have the fastest growing Latino population, or that some of the most reliable Democrats are those elected by blacks and larger city populations.
Or that it was the region of the highest in-migration from Northern and mid-Western and Western people of all races because the cheaper land, larger spaces, and nicer environments versus what they didn’t like about the living conditions in so many of the cities they left. To the extent that there is any resupplying of white Democratic voters (even if it’s a net outgassing), they form a big chunk.
Which is not to say that overall white Southern voters and politicians aren’t the most reactionary, neo-Confederate, anti-modern, authoritarian, plantation plutocrats in the entire nation.
Or that the South when polled, due to the aforementioned harmful nincompoops and malevolent wild-eyes, drag Obama’s approval ratings down much farther than is representative of the non-South.
kdaug
@monkeyboy:
Precisely. The numbers are what’s visible, not the percentages. There are a lot more blacks and hispanics that they see being helped than there are whites, and that’s what breeds the resentment. They may understand that they’re in the bottom 20%, but they won’t understand why 4/5ths of the people in line with them are minorities.
Ross Hershberger
Interesting animated red/blue map of 2 party voting from 1920 – 2008 if you feel like looking at a cool moving picture for a minute.
Bob Loblaw
@Anya:
No, Fox News has not made Obama unpopular. Because Obama is not unpopular. Fox News increases the intensity of those who are predisposed to never giving the President popular approval and reinforces narrow and insular memes that are immediately discredited among the general population, but it doesn’t create loss of support among independents, let alone left-leaners. Fox News is occasionally able to make acts of legislation unpopular. They have no effect on Obama as a person.
Polarization at the extremes tells you nothing about the median citizen/voter’s views, which are consistently positive despite a down economy. There’s a reason. It’s because Obama is not unpopular or unfairly maligned.
Honestly, it’s like you whiners won’t stand for anything other than 100% approval across the board. Or 1000%, or perhaps even infinite popularity. You are not aggrieved. You have no case. The President is thoroughly and properly appreciated and supported nationwide.
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Those must be some shitty saboteurs if the man remains so popular then. I wonder why everybody is afraid of such incompetents?
And no, the two were not inconsistent. You argued that Obama’s electoral position has been compromised by random people on the internet. This is plainly false, as Obama isn’t electorally compromised whatsoever. There is no insurgency. There is no primary. There is no white conspiracy to bring the black man down.
He’s really popular, he’s going to win reelection easily, and there are no boogeymen in the closet who are jeopardizing anything.
Bubba Dave
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
So a millionaire married to a corporate lawyer is an idiot if he runs for President promising to raise taxes on his own income group?
How about a man from a wealthy family who isolates himself from his social class and raises taxes on his own income group to create work projects for unemployed people he’s never met (not to mention all that Social Security stuff)?
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Bubba Dave: You got me, Bubba. You’d be an idiot, if you were a millionaire married to a corporate lawyer, for trying to do any-God-damn-thing for non-millionaires and non-corporate lawyers. And the unemployed he’s never met. Fuck those people.
Now, tell me. How many millionaires married to corporate laywers – or just plain old millionaires or corporate lawyers wholly unattached to one another – are there in this country? If everyone whose household made over – hell, let’s just pick a number out of the air here – $250,000 voted one way on any given candidate or issue, and the ones under that line voted the other way, who do you reckon would win, and by what margin?
Bubba Dave
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
My point, such as it is, is that limousine liberals are voting against their own self interest just as much as the working-class voters who vote Republican, and for the same reason– they believe there’s a moral obligation there. When I was knocking on doors in Ohio for Obama, I remember one woman who was agonizing over her vote, because she knew full well that Obama was better on the economy and better on foreign policy but she believed that every abortion is an act of infanticide. I can, and do, disagree with her premise– but I can’t fault her conclusion given that premise.
In a better political system (i.e. a parliamentary system) we’d end up with a party that was economically liberal and socially conservative and one that was socially liberal and economically conservative and then we’d see shifting coalitions where (for instance) the entire Southern contingent would vote for stimulus and for the Affordable Care Act while DADT repeal would be pushed through by a mix of Western libertarians and coastal liberals. As it is, people have to choose a complete package– opposed to their economic interests or pro-(what they see as)infanticide?
Bubba Dave
@Bubba Dave:
To clarify,
…in addition to those we already have. In fact, we could probably add another axis to that for isolationist vs. internationalist and have nine major or semi-major political parties….
Anya
@Bob Loblaw:
What “whiners” like me tend to mock is over the top criticism from the left that tend to mimic right-wing hysteria. “He is the worst president,” “he’s destroying the country,” “he’s destroying the Democratic Party”. When a lot of low information voters hear some of the lies and innuendoes, that effects his standing with voters, not to mention the media constantly hyping every drop in the polls and ignoring when his approval bounces back. The hysteria in the left is distracting and idiotic. They chase every freaking rumor instead of defending their causes and supporting good legislations. I give you Exhibit A
This is from a #1 recommended diary at Dkos. the diarist is reacting to an unsourced rumor from Politico that claims the President will cut SS. Tell me that’s not destructive?
Bubba Dave
@Bubba Dave:
And a further clarification:
is true in some and not all cases. Probably in both directions– I’m sure there are rich liberals who don’t give a damn about anyone else but vote Dem because the Rs are tacky and I know damn well there are voters like the friends of my grandmother who told her they’d never vote for Obama because they used to live in DC and the blacks were so uppity there. But there are legitimately good people voting against their class interests for reasons that I have to respect, even though I disagree.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Bubba Dave: Interesting points, BD, and I respect them as you respect the positions you respect but disagree with.
But let’s close the circle here.
You’re using as examples people who hear that a certain candidate is pro-choice – people who, I really must suspect, aren’t pregnant or even know a family member contemplating an abortion – and based on that position, they’ll vote for the “pro-life” candidate, no matter how many other positions that candidate may support that would directly and measurably degrade their lives and futures.
Are these good people? Damned if I know. Are they voting against their self-interest? Demonstrably. Is this done out of a sense of higher, nobler morality, as they understand it? Probably.
But to get back to the post that started this all, pointing at your opponent and saying “But he’s PRO-ABORTION!” and letting that carry the day for you … damn, is that not the political equivalent of the Jedi Mind Trick?
Put more succinctly, is it possible that these are, deep down, good people who are nonetheless easily-led idiots? And isn’t that where this thread started?
Bubba Dave
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
And again, I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that taking a moral stand is idiotic. Had I been born 40 years earlier, I like to think I would not have voted Democratic in the South (except for President) because the evils of Jim Crow overshadowed the economic policies. Would that have made me an idiot? Or principled?
If Obama had advocated placing American Muslims in internment camps, I’d have held my nose and voted for McCain. Would that have been idiocy? Or basic decency?
I think in a situation where the premise is impossible to prove or disprove, then idiocy must be determined by asking whether the conclusion follows from the premise. If it does, then the conclusion isn’t idiocy.
monkeyboy
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I still think I shouldn’t respond to you since you Disobeyed my Will © 2009 MonkeyBoy and posted something that displayed bolded blockquotes. But you are learning.
First off
I have a nickname similar to that but I’m not “Josh” (even though it is a common name for Jewish doctors which I am not).
I prefer “MonkeyBoy” to indicate my solidarity and kinship with monkeys and my opposition to Dr. Lizardo. All humans are apes and all apes are monkeys. Christian fundamentalists do not like this fact.
Can I call you Bubba Jimbo?
I see no reason to omit my group 6 (“Earthlings”) from any moral discussion about where self interest lives. From my list of groups top down I would best partially locate some self-interests as:
6) “Earthlings” – concerned about global pollution, global climate change, over destruction of the commons such as over fishing of the ocean. (and the general welfare of all humans)
5) “Americans” – concerned about the American economy and jobs – American wealth production through agriculture, mineral extraction, jobs in manufacturing, and the general welfare of Americans. This where the USA wants to out-compete all other nations. The better off most Americans are (by the nation promoting their welfare) the better the whole USA will compete.
I could go down some list of groups but the point is that “self interest” is tied to a group, and a person’s “self interest” may involve weighing the self interest of different group memberships.
And that some people regard “white privilege” as more important than HCR because in some calculations HCR may erode White privilege.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Bubba Dave: Again, point well taken. I just don’t look out on the political landscape and see folks advocating heinous (to me) “social issues” positions (or at least none more heinous than their predecessors’, and I know I’ll get flamed for that qualification) that would just obviate any other issue they stood for. If I had a good real-life example in mind and could view it through that lens – if Obama HAD, in fact, supported internment camps for Muslims – then perhaps I could answer you better.
Having said all that, OK, I’ll concede – for the sake of argument – that the average redneck voter here in the South isn’t an idiot, and has perfectly good moral reasons for voting against his or her own best economic interests. I just can’t figure out what those reasons are. And something tells me that if they tried to articulate these overriding moral concerns, I’d laugh and end up calling them idiots anyway.
@monkeyboy: Sorry, Josh. You can call me whatever you want. I love a good conversation, but the beginning of this one doesn’t seem like that’s what we’re headed toward here, so let’s just stop before we get started.
Bubba Dave
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
And I didn’t mean to suggest that none of them is an idiot– I live in Texas, for goodness’ sake. I see idiots daily. A lot of them are idiots who are motivated by racism. A lot of them are idiots who are motivated by homophobia. A lot of them are idiots who just want to be on the winning team. But some of them are non-idiots who just want what they see as infanticide to stop. I think they’re wrong, but not idiots.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@monkeyboy: I am fascinated about one thing, Josh. What’s with your preoccupation with Jewish doctors? That’s two posts in a row you’ve brought up – entirely gratuitously, far as I can tell – Jewish doctors. I can assure you I am a pure-blooded redneck mongrel if that dispels something you’d built up in your head about me being a Jewish doctor from Atlanta. Wish I was, but I’m not.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Bubba Dave:
I guess this gets to my point. What would you reckon the idiot-to-non-idiot ratio is among the Texans you are surrounded by?
However lopsided that ratio may be, I’ll see you a Georgia (the place of my birth) and raise you a South Carolina (the place of my current residence.)
Wile E. Quixote
@cmorenc:
No, that’s a stupid example and complete bullshit because any progressive-minded person in 1979 who thought that was completely fucking retarded. Those out of touch shitheads completely ignored the fact that Reagan handily defeated the very popular Pat Brown for the governorship of California, won again in 1970 and had come close to defeating Jerry Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. Any progressive in 1979 who thought that Reagan couldn’t hand Carter’s ass to him on a platter was an ignorant, out of touch moron.
Comparing Sarah Palin to Ronald Reagan is stupid and ignorant. Progressives who shit themselves in anxiety over Palin somehow becoming the next Reagan are no less retarded than conservatives like Rich Lowry who spooge themselves when they see her on TV.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Bubba Dave: Let me go just a little further. If you have a gripe that falls short of “infanticide” – destroying our military by allowing the ‘mos to run amok there, say, or the travesty of hearing “Hail to the Chief” when a Kenyan/socialist/whatever comes in the room – and that gripe rises, in your mind, to something that trumps all other matters of self-interest or plain old common sense, would I be justified in calling you an idiot then? Or is this “moral issue” one that each and every person allowed to define for themselves?
If it’s the latter, then there are no idiots in this country. And you and I know this is not the case.
Bubba Dave
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I’d say 56% idiots.
Evolved Deep Southerner
God DAMN it. Moderation again. The s-word this time. Fucking Southern threads do it to me every fucking time.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Bubba Dave: Well I’ll be damned. Georgia just has 53% idiocy and South Carolina 54% by that same measure. So if I’d have seen your Texas and raised you a South Carolina, hell, I’d have lost.
Seems like it’s a shitload higher just looking and walking around day to day, but I get the sense that the non-idiots tend to be a lot quieter than their counterparts on the more ignorant side of the proverbial aisle. I know I don’t say much when politics come up among people I don’t know well.
That’s a good enough note to end this on this evening, I reckon. Time to hit the rack. I’ve enjoyed talking with you. Merry Christmas and good luck in Texas.
And, Josh, you … you just keep on doing whatever it is you do, dude. Happy Hannukah.
pattonbt
I think it’s much simpler than most things pointed out so far….
Lower class whites know the Republicans will screw them, but they believe that they will be screwed less than “the others” (minorities). Lower class whites do not believe that will be the case with Democrats (the exact opposite in fact). They believe Democrats will actually help “the others” before them.
So they look at it as “I’m fucked either way, so at least I won’t be fucked as bad as the other guy, at least I’ll be allowed in the front door.”
As for the religious (and by those I refer to the overt Christian Taliban faction) it’s all about superiorty. They need validation in life that they are “better” than everyone especially when their station in life isn’t “better” than others. Many people need to feel they are great and religion is the perfect blanket to wrap oneself in for that, because there is no authority higher than God (as to how they would like to have the world defined). Thus, they are “better” and “good” no matter their actions and beliefs.
monkeyboy
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I hold nothing for or against the Class of Jewish Doctors. But as someone familiar with the South I know that this is a Class that is well known and discussed. I brought up this Class as my #3 example since it is so in the consciousness of the South.
To my first post, you responded by deciding to rename me from “MonkeyBoy” to “Josh” (the most common Jewish doctor name) and then rant at me for something I cannot understand, and then in another response rant about nonsense.
Yes the South does have a bigotry problem and seems to assume or project Jewishness onto those who are not.
As an 11-year-old I lived in Pennsylvania but went to a summer-camp in Georgia. A few of my fellow campers assumed that from from my “Northern accent” that I had to be Jewish and persecuted me for this assumption. This was so well known that the only real (but secret) Jewish camper assumed I was Jewish and approached me for help for him to stand up for himself. I couldn’t offer him any advice and he left 2 days later.
You, Evolved Deep Southerner, seem to have racist issues with Jews, just like the 11-year-olds at my camp did.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@monkeyboy: Don’t work out your fucking summer camp issues on me, dude. I had nothing to do with whatever misery your fellow 11-year-olds heaped upon you back in the day.
If you can’t understand my posts, then don’t start directing weird shit at me about Earthlings and Jewish doctors and Dr. Lizardo and “disobeying your will” and copyright symbols and your deep and abiding sense of kinship with our primate brothers and so forth.
I see, daily, racism where I live against African Americans and (to a lesser, but growing, extent) Hispanics, but I honestly can’t say I feel a real strong anti-Jewish vibe down here. I’m sure if there were more Jews who actually, you know, LIVED here, my white trash brethren would be a little more proactive in discriminating against them, but they just don’t seem to exist. Hell, even Catholic churches are few and far between in these rural parts; synagogues are pretty well non-existent or so low-key as to be practically so outside our largish cities, and we don’t have many of those.
Sorry your fellow campers gave you such a hard time. Obviously, it left a deep and lasting mark on you, and I hate that.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@monkeyboy: Actually, me calling you Josh was a really, really obscure inside joke. Here you go.
monkeyboy
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I don’t care how you dissemble, but you SEVERAL TIMES tried to dismiss me by not addressing me as “MonkeyBoy” but as the invented a Jewish name “Josh”.
You have a real Racist issue with Jews. For someone born in the South I can say this because I am not Jewish. You are just like the asshole 11-year-olds when I went at 11 to summer camp in racist Georgia.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@monkeyboy: Did you not check out that link at all? Or are you still just sullen/pissed at me about what some preteen cracker miscreants did to you however-long-back-when?
Or is Strong Bad anti-Semitic? If he is, I swear to God I was not aping him on that score. No pun intended.
Evolved Deep Southerner
OK, let’s unpack this.
You are pissed because I refused to call you “monkeyboy” and instead called you “Josh” as some anti-Semitic dogwhistle? And not some free-association thing off an old Homestar Runner skit?
Did it ever occur to you that when I hear “Josh,” I don’t think “Jewish doctor” and that this is the first I’ve ever heard of “Josh” being some kind of anti-Semitic pejorative? As I told you above, I don’t KNOW very many Jews. Or if I do, I don’t know they are, in fact, Jewish. I could see a bunch of redneck 11-year-olds fucking with you as a “Yankee” but not as a presumptive Jew. If they did, I doubt they had much idea what they were talking about.
God almighty, how bizarre. That summer camp experience must have been one of the worst experiences you ever had to still get so worked up about it now. I hope you can work through it one day.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@monkeyboy: Sorry the quote’s still in bold there. I know it’s against Your Will (© 2009.) Far be it from me to infringe on a man’s intellectual property. I consider “the circled c” sacred.
monkeyboy
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I don’t see why a link to a Strong Bad cartoon where someone is called “Josh” excuses you from trying to dismiss me by implying that I am Jewish and calling me “Josh”.
I guess you think this makes sense if Racist Asshole language is OK as long as it is has cultural references. E.g. If a cartoon character on South Park says something “outre”, racist, disguising, and obnoxious then then nobody can question it.
That is the essence of Libertarianism.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@monkeyboy: Um, I was thinking more of your handle “monkeyboy.” (Yes, in the Strong Bad thing it was “monkeydude,” but it reminded me of that.)
Now, let’s think about this, monkeyboy. (And oh my GOD, I will NEVER call you Josh again as a joke, fucking forgive me.)
1. Have I ever heard you speak? No.
2. Do I know where you’re from? No.
3. Do I know what you look like? No.
4. Do I know a God damn think about you, other than you like to be called “monkeyboy” and have some beef with Dr. Lizardo? No.
So from this WEALTH of information I have about you, I have decided that you are Jewish, and that I’m going to call you the super-secret-Jewish-slur-word “Josh.” It has nothing to do with that Homestar Runner cartoon I linked to. It’s just my great genius at gleaning subtle shit from one’s handle and posting style that I deduced that “hey, they’re not Jewish, and they were born here, but weren’t raised here, rather they were raised in Pennsylvania, so if I call him Josh, it’ll be like calling him a Jew, just like they did to him at that summer camp …”
Am I following you correctly here, monkeyboy?
John Bird
Once again: white male social conservatives are, in fact, voting for their own best interests.
They’re not voting for the common interest, even the common interest of their families and households, but they are voting to keep their superior status in a crappy situation.
eemom
@monkeyboy:
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I’ve seen some weird-ass flame wars on this blog but I do b’lieve this takes the prize.
handy
@eemom:
I discovered something new today. Calling someone not named so “Josh” is apparently anti-Semitic. Who knew?