Since I’ve been following politics, every time one party has achieved a major political success, some group of politicians and/or campaign/manager types has gotten a lot of credit: Newt in 1994, Rove in 2000 and 2004, Dean, Pelosi, and Rahm in 2006, the Obama team in 2008. Why isn’t this happening in 2010 (beyond a few half-hearted paeans to the orange one)? Dave Neiwert (via Upper Left):
So who WAS the mastermind of the 2010 Election? If anyone, it was Roger Ailes — a reality that hardly anyone seems to want to acknowledge, including Democrats. Indeed, this was the Fox Election in every respect. Nearly every candidate who won got major a push from Fox. The most energy came from a Tea Party “movement” almost wholly engendered by Fox’s relentless and unapologetic propagndization campaign.
This is so clearly correct that it’s not worth discussing further.
It’s natural to ask if this weakens actual Republican elected officials. The answer is complicated. Matt Yglesias:
Suppose there’s some sellout that John Boehner wants to implement. Boehner recognizes that he needs to pair this with a symbolic but meaningless gesture. Now suppose he sits down in a room with Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Donohue, and David Koch and persuades all three of those people that this is the right way to proceed. Then the next day, Boehner unleashes his symbolic gesture and his compromise, and the coverage of it on Fox News, The Rush Limbaugh Show, and the fox-affiliated radio shows is all positive. That alone gets you the three most popular talk radio shows, the television network, The Weekly Standard, a dose of influence at every single conservative think tank in America, and the important organizing efforts of Americans For Prosperity.
[…..]In essence, coordinated action among a very small number of people can cut the oxygen off from the tea party fire any time they want to. So the question becomes not how “the tea party” will react, but how a relatively small number of influential conservative media figures will react.
(my boldface)
I think this is mostly right. Yes, the relationship between teatards and Murdoch media is symbiotic, but if some (non-Palin) teahadist got too big for his britches and did something Murdoch and Koch really didn’t like they could suffocate him and replace him with the Tea Party equivalent of one of those fake Dali Dalai Lamas the Chinese are always installing.
There are issues where conservative elites can’t control the grassroots, most notably on immigration, but outside of that, all that really matters for Republicans in Congress is keeping Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Donohue, and David Koch happy.
Lee
I would really prefer this not to be true (much like many Krugman columns). But I have a really bad feeling that it is.
NobodySpecial
I don’t know. As those media guys go, so do the rest of the media, and at some point, the phenomenon may get too big for them to handle. Fox may not report on something, but ABC and NBC sure will, and they still command a lot of eyeballs.
Comrade Mary
Got the shuffle stuck on Bowie today, eh, Doug? (Of course, I approve.)
PPOG Penguin
“Dali Lamas” has to be the typo of the day. I have this image of two-dimensional, melted-looking Tibetan monks hung over branches.
Alex S.
Maybe your previous thread should have contained a “Young Americans” reference.
Villago Delenda Est
Um, in 2006, Dean was the mastermind. Emmanuel fought Dean’s plan, he wanted to target DCCC funds on specific districts, Dean advocated the 435 district strategy.
Emmanuel took credit for 2006, but he fought against the strategy that worked.
Alex S.
@PPOG Penguin:
Also strange, Matt Yglesias says that Murdoch, Koch, Limbaugh and Donohue are only three people.
sukabi
the biggest flaw with Yglesias’ thesis is that Boner has the will and the balls to do ANYTHING other than what his corporate masters have told him to do… so his whole scenario is moot… and I might add, that as soon as Boner decides he might want to do something other than what he’s been instructed to, then he’ll find himself under the Murdoch – Koch bus faster than he can say “Tan Man”….
Violet
Eventually the wingnut media controllers will overreach. Whether that happens before or after they destroy the US remains to be seen.
ppcli
@PPOG Penguin:
Well at least he didn’t call him the “Dalai Llama”, as the local university student newspaper once did. Also a nice visual.
JC
Sigh. I pretty much agree with this.
Which again goes to show you, just how broken our system is.
I watched the segment with Weiner and Bachmann and Hannity. Lie after lie after lie after lie came out of H&B’s mouths.
Lie after lie after lie.
And yet, the american public elected the liars.
And you know what, the truth is, I don’t care about politics, that much. It’s not my job, it’s a hobby. I don’t obsess about things, unless something is so transparently wrong. Like the ‘deficit!’ followed by a tax cut for billionaires that all the media loved.
it’s so broken. It isn’t my job to try to fix it, I’ve got enough on my plate with life, to worry about this crap politics.
I want to go Galt, or really, I want to just simply live my life, and trust the people who are elected to do the right thing, and not drive the country off a cliff, and lie to me like they breathe.
So the best I can do is vent here, about the stupid crap that passes for political dialogue and policy.
fasteddie9318
@Alex S.:
Particularly strange when the jury is still out on whether any of them are actually human beings.
NonyNony
I’m beginning to think this isn’t true. Immigration is an issue where conservative elites don’t have consensus and so they’re fighting with each other. The illegal status of Mexican migrant workers allows a workforce that can be screwed, blued and tattooed six ways from Sunday – paychecks, benefits, etc. There’s a faction of the conservative elites who are very much interested in maintaining the status quo and the horribly regressive stuff we see spurting up on Arizona and other places is because it’s getting to the point where you need to put forth a LOT of effort just to maintain the status quo.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Yglesias: “In essence, coordinated action among a very small number of people can cut the oxygen off from the tea party fire any time they want to. So the question becomes not how ‘the tea party’ will react, but how a relatively small number of influential conservative media figures will react.”
Doug: “I think this is mostly right.”
It’s not godwinning to point out that this hypothetical scenario is a quasi-fascist approach to government, and I presume that Doug and most BJers would find this distasteful or even dangerous. Something to keep in mind the next time that “manic progressives” of the “professional left” are berated for their failings.
Bob Loblaw
Oh come on, Yglesias is clearly beyond the pale here.
He forgot about the oil and hedge fund executives! Those guys have feelings, you know? They put a lot of work into their politics. Koch and Donohue can’t speak for all of them all at once…
Paul in KY
If I was the Democrats (which I am, but not one who makes any decisions, dammit), I would be emphasizing this & trying to demonize Mr. Ailes (who, from what I’ve read, would be quite easy to demonize).
He’s an unelected kingmaker who’s beholden to nobody & anti-democratic, etc. etc. Start running against Fox & ginn up a little anger over this multi-millionaire who thinks he can buy himself a government.
I think FDR would have known how to play this.
Kristine
Bowie frame of mind lately. I like.
sukabi
@Violet: think the signs of over-reach can already be measured… Glenn Beck’s radio show in NY has been cancelled… Fox “News” has been losing audience share for the last 2 years, although they’ve got a way to fall, since none of the other networks have deemed it necessary to actually commit journalism.
And the Republicans are poised to have a catastrophically tone deaf 2 years… they have already pissed off a bunch of the folks that brung ’em with their weaseling on deficit cuts / and lack of plans for jobs / going to try and take away health insurance benefits that are already being used by millions of seniors and middle income folks with kids…
don’t think anyone will come out of the next 2 years looking good, but the R’s will look completely ridiculous / out of touch / incompetent by the end of it…. and with all the promised “investigations of Obama”, it will only shine the light on their own corruptness — kind of like what happened with the Clinton years… all those good “family values” guys going after Clinton ended up either out of a job because of their own adultery, or in jail for actual criminal activities… don’t think the next 2 years will be much different than that.
El Cid
FoxNooz and the other big right wing voices aren’t operating for their own sake; they represent big money and right wing anti-liberal policies.
So what makes FoxNooz and Rush Limbaugh happy are largely what makes the rich happy and which inflicts short and especially long term damage on the liberal and labor (environmental, etc) projects.
They’re mostly proxies, in other words.
Yes, it’s about making FoxNooz happy, but you don’t do that unless you make the people whom FoxNooz represents (i.e., not just the Koch types but the super-rich in general) happy.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
In a world of depressing blog posts, this may be the most depressing one I’ve read all week.
It’s straight-forward, clear-cut, utterly banal at this point, and deeply, deeply depressing.
TGIF, y’all!
dww44
@sukabi:
It seems that Jane Mayer has found herself under the Koch bus already for her recent New Yorker article according to Digby. The bus that smears and attacks, that is.
Note: I thought I entered the link to Hullabaloo, but obviously don’t know what I’m doing.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Kristine: It’s his birthday tomorrow! I wouldn’t like to suggest that I can understand the workings of a mind as finally tuned at Doug J.’s, but I do wonder if this little factoid might have something to do with it.
It’s also Elvis’s birthday tomorrow. I’m curious to see what Doug J. could do with Elvis’s lyrics….
/not hinting at all
/actually hinting very broadly
New Yorker
We’ll see. There’s one issue that scares me that I hope the GOP elites (re: bankers) can smother the teabaggers on, and that’s the debt limit. I think plenty of economically illiterate teabaggers want a default, so it’s up to the bankers to prevent that from happening.
DougJ
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
Which Elvis?
Breezeblock
I don’t care what anyone says, I’m drinking tonight.
licensed to kill time
@dww44
Your link got mushed into the reply button on your comment somehow. I have no idea how that happens but I have seen it before.
Chris
@Violet:
That’s what makes me stir uncomfortably whenever I hear liberals say “we’ll win in the end, this can’t last forever.” Maybe, but how much longer do we have to wait, and how much damage can they do in the meantime? I doubt “destroying America” is on the table, but there’s plenty of things that are.
E.G. the American public did eventually come to its senses and realize that the Iraq war was a disastrous idea, but not until 2005, two years after the war. By that time, the damage was done and it was far too late to put things back on the right track – the Iraqi body count is well over a million and the trouble the invasion caused will have repercussions for decades. How many more Iraqs are we going to have to put up with before people really have had enough?
kindness
Soooo….the answer for Democrats then is to kidnap Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Donohue, and David Koch and drop them off in the Pakistan frontier provinces or Iran or some such place? The only thing I fear from that is those boys would have the money to actually bribe their way out of one of those places.
I suspect the real answer will be less Bond like and more boring….but it would be fun to see the reichtwingnutz’s heads explode when they see their fearless leaders held by Satan’s minions.
DougJ
@Chris:
I think it’s 75-25 that when the demographics turn decisively in Democrats’ favor — in the next 10-20 years — this will still be a more or less functional society, still some form of democracy.
Chris
@DougJ:
Hopefully, some sort of functioning welfare state also.
Chris
@DougJ:
Hopefully, some sort of functioning welfare state also.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: Are you asking skinny or fat, or are you asking Costello or Presley?
It is Presley’s b-day tomorrow. Costello’s is early September IIRC.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: What should make you “stir uncomfortably” is that this statement/idea is demonstrably not true. New Deal aberration aside, this nation has ALWAYS been run by the monied interests for the goals and needs of those interests. Hell, it’s why we had the revolution in the first place; wealthy Americans didn’t want to give England, the folks that had set them up and carried their asses for more than a century, any kickbacks – they wanted the whole pie.
Ailuridae
Here’s something to chew on; It is not at all unlikely that Boehner will do something responsible over the next two year in terms of governance and whatever that turns out to be (raising the debt ceiling etc) will be viewed as a bridge too far by some tea partier and he’ll face a primary challenge from the right/crazy.
Random question re: usage. Twice this past week I have seen Tea Partyer used elsewhere – did I miss a memo? It is partier, right? Like it has always been?
Alex S.
@The Moar You Know:
Sorry, I have to chime in here, but the battle cry of the Boston Tea Party was not just “No taxation!”, the “without representation” part mattered more. It was about democracy, not about free market capitalism.
sukabi
@dww44: yeah, I saw that… and this is kind of a “defining moment” for those folks who claim “journalism” as their trade… will they band together to push back against the propaganda machine or will they become part of it…
someguy
So basically, four (or 3.5) guys control the world, if not now then surely by the next election cycle.
Of course the other way you could analyze this is that Matt stayed up all night and polished off a Boston Bong all on his own. Seriously – isn’t this akin to the Soros paranoia? Is the mojo of those dumbass blonde Fox news chicks so strong that they can hypnotize at will?
The Raven
And Limbaugh and Donohue both work for Murdoch.
The dangers of a consolidated media have been known since the 1940s, and were made (and perhaps still are) illegal. But with a complaisant FCC and SEC, who is there to stop the consolidation? Changes in the electorate will only make a difference if they can be translated into changes in Federal regulatory practice, and that is going to be very hard to do if the reformers have limited access to mass media.
Villago Delenda Est
@sukabi:
The snacks are better in the Corporate Overlord tent.
They’ll go with the snacks.
Villago Delenda Est
@Alex S.:
Indeed, the Boston Tea Party targeted the property of a corporation, not a government.
A corporation with a government sanctioned monopoly, which is where the representation part comes in.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know:
That is one interpretation. Another is that the colonies (the wealthy within them) were pissed that they were not treated as full-fledged British citizens and were not able to vote or have representation in Parliament commensurate with their economic significance. That is, John Hancock and George Washington, had they lived in London or Norfolk rather than Boston or Virginia would have had votes in Parliament or been MPs themselves. This lack of voice in governance, specifically wrt taxation, was a major trigger. Yes, it was an upper and upper-middle class revolution, but it wasn’t quite as mercenary as you suggest.
DougJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m not as familiar with the King’s lyrical oeuvre as I should be, I was hoping it was Costello.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@DougJ: Oh, right, I forgot for a moment who I was talking to!
The first one. The one all the girls screamed about.
(I do know, after all, what you are capable of with the other Elvis’s lyrics. It’s well documented).
Mark S.
@someguy:
Where do you get that? He’s just saying they disproportionately control one party. Can you think of four non-elected Democrats that have anywhere near as much power as these guys?
daveNYC
Or they’ll see that they won’t be able to stop the stupid and adjust their holdings accordingly. Not raising the debt limit doesn’t have to mean default. It could just lead to the US cutting spending on everything except the debt. Insanely bad, but not financapocolypse.
Except that Soros isn’t running an entire media empire, and convincing teabaggers to buy some stupid meme isn’t exactly like trying to do the old Jedi mind trick on a Hutt.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: I had guessed that. I could feel a yearning for the little hands of concrete emanating form your question.
cmorenc
Aren’t you forgetting someone REALLY important that is only partly under Murdoch/Ailes’ control – Glenn Beck? Yes, his platform is Fox News, but if Murdoch tried to dump Beck because Beck insisted on going off on some semi-heretical tangent that Murdoch and the core GOP media establishment thought bore too big a risk of being destructively counterproductive, does he really have the power to contain the Frankenstein monster he’s set loose among the TeaTards?
They’re not doing such a hot job with effectively reeling in Sarah Palin, and she’s gone way past being a useful tool/fool. She’s not going to prove NEARLY so easy to divert or tear down as they hope she will be, come presidential primary season. Why do they think they can control Beck? If they tried to kick him off the air at Fox, there would be immense negative repercussions, and the worst of them might likely not be for Beck.
AnotherBruce
@someguy:
Right, because that Soros media empire is working 24/7 to spread liberal propoganda all over the world.
losingtehplot
Tell us about it – last General Election in Britain in 2010, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper in England endorsed the Conservatives (after endorsing the kowtowing Labour party after Maggie’s party became a busted flush of corruption. The formerly somewhat left-wing Labour Party realized in 1997 that they’d never win unless Rupie waved his magic wand). Meanwhile in 2010, Rupert Murdoch’s edition of the Sun in Scotland endorsed the Scottish National Party because he thought that would defeat the Labour Party and strenghthen the Conservatives. So Rupie can endorse two political parties with opposing manifestos on the same small island, and pretty much gets what he wants – while meanwhile paying no taxes in the UK because the Australian Rupie became an American citizen in order to not pay taxes. BINGO!!
Villago Delenda Est
@daveNYC:
The teabaggers are exactly the sort that Obi-Wan was talking about with Luke when he mind-tricked the stormtroopers.
agrippa
I think that Fox – Murdoch – had a lot to do with the election results. But, I think that it is far too soon to ‘give credit’ to any political person. The results may be pretty ugly. And, giving credit to Murdoch is not the something political professionals really want to do.
For Murdoch, and the GOP, politics is mostly a matter of rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies. Lying is an effective way of doing both.
eemom
I’ve been thinking the same thing recently, whenever I see one of the emmessemm faux-tizzies to the effect of, “Oooh, those congressional republicans better watch out…..the tea partiers are gonna get PISSED.”
There may be some grounds for debate as to WHICH pig’s chant they will bleat, but bleat they will, all the way to the slaughterhouse.
The Raven
BTW, the people who have been covering the media side of this ground for nearly 25 years are Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Might drop by their web site & see what they have to say about it.
Southern Beale
Which is why Obama is doing a pre-Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly and Hillary Clinton courted Rupert Murdoch.
Fox News rules their world, which is completely puzzling to me. Sure they rule the cable news ratings, but that’s so subjective! For one thing, Fox News is part of every basic cable/satellite package; MSNBC is not. So comparing Fox and MSNBC ratings is comparing apples to oranges.
And second of all: it’s fucking CABLE. Stack up O’Reilly’s ratings against a network program and he’d be cancelled after three episodes!
I just fucking don’t get it.
Gus diZerega
Conservatives love quoting Alexis de Tocqueville’s concerns about a future overly protective government but they studiously ignore his warning that America’s future aristocracy would be the business class.
A fundamental definition of aristocracy is that different and more lenient laws apply to them than to the rest of us. Looks like this is going to be a very interesting struggle – whether the rule of law applies even in principle equally, or whether we finally formalize the aristocracy that is growing up around us.
Once we fought a revolution over issues like that.
fasteddie9318
@Omnes Omnibus:
It was still pretty mercenary, when you consider that among the complaints of the revolutionaries was a British policy of not massacring the natives so that white settlers could take all their land, and that those upper class revolutionaries had by 1776 gotten pretty facile at redirecting lower class white rage away from themselves and toward blacks and the Crown.
WereBear
I love that; yes.
But speaking of Demographics; the youngest person I know who watched Faux News is in their forties. Now, maybe they will age into it; and I can’t see Murdoch caring unless he has cornered the futures market in WalMart replacement body parts.
Will people age into it? Or not?
Southern Beale
By the way, speaking of media: Helen Thomas is back with a column in today’s Falls Church News-Press. It’s about privatizing Social Security.
Eric S.
@DougJ: The King.
Davis X. Machina
Fox reaps what it did not sow. No one makes money from telling people things they’re not already predisposed to believe. And Fox is a business.
Murdoch could disappear and take his networks with him tomorrow and very little would change except there would be a sudden lack of readily identifiable targets for people in Left Blogistan to focus on.
Before there ever was a Fox there were: office water coolers, local talk radio, (especially ostensibly non-political local sports talk radio, which is a hotbead of vulgsr glibertarianism), local newspapers, fax machines, church basements, investment newsletters, the specialized business press, etc. etc.
Omnes Omnibus
@fasteddie9318: Not arguing that…. The French Revolution came out of the same groups of people, lower upper and upper middle classes who wanted their share of the pie.
Southern Beale
@WereBear:
Judging by the tremendous relief expressed by folks in the gym whenever I turn the tv off FOX and onto something else, no.
For example, yesterday morning: when I asked the other guy in the gym if he minded if I changed the channel he practically spat on the ground as he said, “they’re just going to be saying the same crap over and over for the next two years! All lies!” And this guy was in his 40s.
I think they’ve pretty much burned their brand with the sentient-life-form demographic.
Judas Escargot
@Paul in KY:
If I was the Democrats (which I am, but not one who makes any decisions, dammit), I would be emphasizing this & trying to demonize Mr. Ailes (who, from what I’ve read, would be quite easy to demonize).
[…]
I think FDR would have known how to play this.
Hell, even earlier. Thomas Nast did some good work on Boss Tweed 140-150 years ago.
lou
@daveNYC:
Oh, no. It’s likely to drive interest rates through the roof and heat inflation. It will make the interest rates of the late 70s look like chump change. Whether it affects the US financiers I don’t know. but the rest of us are screwed.
It’s ironic that the people screaming the most about possible inflation caused by our debt are pursuing policies that really will lead to major inflation.
David Hunt
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve read somewhere (a long time ago, sorry) that, prior to the Revolution, the last thing the a lot of the Colonies wanted was to get representation in Parliament. If they had that, then they’d have had a small number of seats, the taxes on the Colonies would have been passed anyway, and they’d have lost their whole “no taxation without representation” talking point. At the time of the Boston Tea Party, Ben Franklin was a lobbyist in London for Pennsylvania and a number of other Colonies. I’ve heard that he was under specific instructions try to prevent the Colonies from being granted representation for this very reason.
Mark S.
Christ, can these clowns do anything right?
It’s a good thing they came back and read, because otherwise those portions would have been struck from the Constitution. Glenn Beck told me that.
Mark S.
Good God, did I do that? I deleted the fucking tag!
licensed to kill time
Somebody forgot to close their italic tag, David Hunt!
Mark S.
Help us DougJ Kenobi, you’re our only hope!
fasteddie9318
FSM, I didn’t think I was THIS drunk.
Ailuridae
@lou:
It’s ironic that the people screaming the most about possible inflation caused by our debt are pursuing policies that really will lead to major inflation.
It may be ironic but it is also intentional.
rikyrah
I can’t disagree with this in the least.
licensed to kill time
If anybody wants to know the easiest way to use the tag buttons above the comment box try this:
Highlight the text you want to bold or italic or whatever, THEN hit the appropriate tag button. This will automatically insert the open and close tags all at once and you will never suffer the embarrassment of borking a whole thread.
Remember to use two underscores in each empty line between paragraphs for blockquotes to hold it together.
And starting your blockquote directly under a line of text or two underscores will keep it from going bold.
stuckinred
sumbody fucked up the intertoobz
brantl
It’s not symbiotic between Fox News and the tea-tards, it’s parasitism, the tea-tards just don’t know it. It’s also addictive parasitism, for the low-thought, low-intelligence, high belligerance voter.
ET
OT but cool…..
Lobbyist Registration Tracker
From The Sunlight Foundation: “…this database allows users to see those registrations as they’re submitted, to browse by issue, registrant and client, and to see the trends in issues and registrations over time. The database is updated weekly based on Senate records and includes all registrations starting in 2009.”
burnspbesq
When did the Republican Party take over Costa Rica? This sounds like something they would do.
http://www.ticotimes.net/News/Top-Story/News/Costa-Rica-s-new-National-Stadium-built-without-a-parking-plan_Friday-December-10-2010
daveNYC
Insanely bad, yep. Not as bad as what an actual default would bring about though.
Alex S.
sassy!
General Stuck
@ET:
phone home and fix this thread
freelancer
I use italics for emphasis.
NonyNony
@lou:
On the one hand, outlook for long term economy bad.
On the other hand – hyperinflation would turn my mortgage payments into chump change pretty quick.
I know a number of folks in the 70s paid off their student loans via hyperinflation. And student loans then were nothing like what student loans are like now.
The more I think about it, the less and less likely it seems that the House GOPers will default on the debt ceiling. There’s no way for the Masters of the Universe to really profit on it. I’m wondering if Pelosi should just stand aside and tell Boehner “I’ll match you 1-1 on votes for raising the debt ceiling” or maybe 2 for 1 – one Dem for every 2 Republicans. I just don’t believe that Boehner couldn’t round up the votes when all was said and done, and it would be nice to see the Tea Partiers have another bit of their idealism kicked out of their groins.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Alex S.:
alex likes italics?
freelancer
—– — – – – —
TOP123
@Alex S.: As you both said; my only other nitpick about this is I think we’re talking about the Chinese-installed Panchen Lama, rather than fake lamas Dalai or Dali.
licensed to kill time
@freelancer:
Morse code? A cry for help?
fasteddie9318
@TOP123:
Good point, although they’re just waiting for the death of the current Dalai Lama so they can have their fake Panchen Lama declare a fake, cooperative Dalai Lama. That’s why they installed the fake Panchen Lama and kidnapped (is he still alive?) the authentic one.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@NonyNony: One of the things I read about Benjamin Franklin was his views on a Central Bank. He originally opposed it, but came to believe that keeping a certain amount of inflation would keep people from sitting on their money, because sitting on it would cause its value to decrease.
jl
Why was the US Chamber of Commerce not included?
I read someplace (TPM, or GOS?) that the Chamber of Commerce has already written the GOP leadership a letter warning them not to cut discretionary spending that they want to keep, most importantly highway funding.
Looks like the wheels for a sellout/compromise are already turning in the backrooms.
Interesting to see how much of the teabagger oomph can rouse itself when it veers off the course charted by the moneybags and has to operate without astroturf dollars.
Omnes Omnibus
@David Hunt: An alternative to Parliamentary representation that some proposed was that the Crown determine the colonies’ share of revenue to be raised and then allow each colony’s legislature to raise the money through whatever means it chose. The idea was that the taxation would be imposed with representation.
Source: Memory of Tuchman’s March of Folly so it may not be completely accurate.
de stijl
I don’t agree with DougJ’s and Neiwert’s premise that there is a mastermind and a group of masterminds. Yes, there are enablers and enhancers of predictable voter trends, but the “masterminds” have a marginal effect on what was going to happen anyway because of voter fatigue / let’s give the other folks a shot / historical mid-term swings / Iraq War / blowjobs.
The masterminds and their efforts push n more seats towards their team, but the underlying dynamic of the electorate was going that way anyway.
What was newish in 2010 was that the masterminds also affected the type of candidate that won: 2010 was going to be a banner year for Rs anyway, but this time around it also impacted the type of Rs that were candidates.
TOP123
@fasteddie9318: Absolutely, and I freely admit I was just nitpicking. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Mostly I was amused, when first reading the quote in the post, by the four reactionaries who ended up being three reactionaries. I have been having fun trying to imagine which two of the four are actually one person, and why.
JCT
The juxtaposition of idiot David Brooks and Paul Krugman this AM on the Op-Ed was truly mind-bending, but in the end I was banging my head on my desk just the same.
I think I will try to recover my good spirits by going home tonight and listening to “DIamond Dogs” on VINYL, dammit. Still have my aunt’s copy from ’74.
Oh, and chase it with some alcohol — wasn’t old enough to drink back then….
Bubblegum Tate
@Alex S.:
This reminds me–in the runup to the elections, I saw a bunch of teabaggers make the argument that because their district’s Congressman was a Democrat, they were not being “represented,” therefore they were suffering “taxation without representation” and therefore became the Revolution-era cosplayers known as teabaggers. They weren’t kidding in the slightest when they said it, either.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bubblegum Tate: As a good friend of mine once said in a different context, “I hate idiots.”
losingtehplot
@agrippa: Murdoch is not a political person; he is, in fact, apolitical. His belief system, his very reason to exist, is to make money, and he will follow any route possible to make more money – so he supports the ‘communist’ gov’t in China, fronts the dirtiest, most anti-liberal newspapers in English-speaking countries – US, UK, Australia – is going after the BBC in an attempt to shut it down because it interferes with his attempts to dominate British communications (so yay, we can all watch the GlennBeck-ster). ‘Conscience’, ‘dignity’, ‘solidarity’ are dirty words to Mr Murdoch. His devotion to money is supreme – Politics, or at least political loyalty? Meh!
Villago Delenda Est
@losingtehplot:
This is true, and I dare say that if Murdoch could make a short term killing on selling revolutionaries the rope that they’d use, in the next five minutes, to hang his worthless Ferengi ass, he’d go for it.
Acharn
@NobodySpecial: No, there’s a lot that NONE of them report on. I accidentally stumbled on reporting about the riots in Tunisia and Algeria (and Morocco?)on some obscure blog about North Africa. Our wonderful media didn’t begin reporting on those events until four weeks later. How often do you read reports about the people killed in drone attacks? How often do you read about what budget items the British government is cutting? Compare that with how often we have something like Balloon Boy. Did you ever hear about the President of Nigeria going missing? For six months nobody in his government knew where he was. He finally was reported to be in Saudi Arabia. Did our wonderful media report on that? There’s so much more. No, as depressing as the thought is, this article is right on the money.