I can’t quit you when you write things like this:
So true. You’ve got Andy McCarthy telling us that president Obama is allied with radical Islamists in a Grand Jihad against America, Stanley Kurtz insisting that he was a Marxist revolutionary in college, and Dinesh D’Souza claiming he is motivated by the Kenyan anti-colonialism of a bygone era. John Yoo and Marc Thiessen established themselves as national pundits by insisting that strapping someone to a board and nearly drowning them repeatedly isn’t torture. Glenn Beck twists history in ways so conspiritorial he can’t even maintain his own consistency, and earns tens of millions peddling his untruths.
Of course, Hanson isn’t talking about those sophists. Instead he takes am at targets including climate science, the stimulus, and Ezra Klein…
Before the spending binge occurred? You mean to say that the eight years of George “Deficits Don’t Matter” Bush did not include spending binges? You mean to say that emergency spending for the worst downturn since the 1930s was seriously in doubt under any president of either party?
What Ryan is doing is pretty obvious. He is trying to frame fiscal irresponsibility as somehow solely about 2008 – 2010. He’s lying about the Republican past and the recession. He has no serious plans to cut entitlements now (anyone only focusing on discretionary spending is a demonstrable fraud), no plans to cut defense, no plans to raise any taxes. And he has thrown away a chance to become a real fiscal conservative in Washington, able actually to tackle the problem rather than exploit it for partisan purposes.
He is the problem with Republicanism today, not its solution. If the debt is such a threat, why do you refuse to tackle it seriously now? Why reduce yourself to the tiniest sliver of the smallest part of the discretionary spending budget … when you could claim a serious mandate to end the debt for good? Why, after the last campaign, are the Republicans still unserious about cutting spending?
Because they’re frauds.
When he is on, he is on.
Just Some Fuckhead
If you’d actually quit him you’d never know he wrote that, like me.
The Grand Panjandrum
Maybe you need a Sullivan Award? For best juxtaposed posts from the same blog during a specified period. He goes from making perfect sense (e.g. torture, debt, etc ) to utter depravity (e.g. Bell curve, obsession with Trig’s birth, etc). In his case in can be in the same day or quite often the same hour but I would recommend a one week period.
Sully, I can’t quit you either.
Marc McKenzie
Hell, I can’t quit him either. He can be frustrating at times, but when Sully’s on target, it’s some of the best, most bloody honest political commentary one can read.
slag
Or raising taxes
El Tiburon
Wow, he was able to state what is so fucking obvious. It shows something that we are impressed when a pundit is able to accurately describe what is in directly in front of their face.
Next, Sully characterizes the sky as blue.
Punchy
Fizz’icksd.
Really? Sully has just now noticed his party of dicks is a party of dicks?
arguingwithsignposts
Andrew Sullivan can go DIAF. idiot.
Elvis Elvisberg
Sullivan’s an energetic, emotional writer. There’s good and bad there, as I think he’d be the first to tell you. I understand saying he’s not one’s cup of tea, but I really don’t understand writing him off.
@The Grand Panjandrum: I haven’t seen a reasoned, factual debunking of Sullivan’s questions about Sarah Palin’s reported pregnancy. She claimed that she started having contractions in Texas, so she got on two plane flights back to Alaska. It seems to me most likely that she was just engaging in some tall tale telling. And I suppose I wouldn’t be as interested in the subject as he is. But it’s not crazy.
Alex S.
Bush Jr. was being ignored after the 2006 elections. Democrats were on the rise and have been in power until now. So now, more than four years later we get another chance at seeing Republicans in action – and not an insular White House bending the legislative and judicial branch to its’ will, but congressmen and women who lack the messaging power of the White House and who are in closer contact with their base. So now we actually get to see what the Republican Party really is like. And maybe Sully’s shrill attitude is a sign of things to come. Hopefully, other more or less “important” people realize that they are all frauds.
Also, the blogosphere has moved into the mainstream since 2006. Polls become party chatter. Traditional media is fading, Twitter, Facebook and the like facilitate a democratization of information and opinion. Maybe this time their hypocrisy will reveal itself for all to see.
MikeJ
When he is on, he’s obvious.
Whoops. El Tib had it first.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Well, “because they’re frauds,” and because being frauds has worked in the past. And appears to be working among a great many Americans now.
When one is a fraud, and one’s fraud has ceased to impress, one moves on to new fraudiness. The GOP understands that they don’t need to move on.
Alwhite
When a blind sow finds an acorn it really finds an acorn.
Meanwhile I would rather spend my reading time on more consistent and worthwhile writers. I do appreciate that you read the asshole though as it saves me from ever having to give him a second thought
Folderol & Ephemera
@El Tiburon:
To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
mb
Sully bashes bush’s economy while simultaneously gushing over Mitch Daniels for 2012.
Inconsistency, thy name is Sully.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Oh my God. Thirteen comments in, and at least a third of them are dismissive of John Cole, dismissive and contemptuous of Andrew Sullivan, and/or dismissive and contemptuous of (and an obstacle to) intelligent conversation.
John was asking the other day where commenters disappear to — this one has nearly disappeared because of this very atmosphere.
ed
Whatever. This reads more like what Driftglass has said for some time about Sully:
Should Sully–or anyone–really get credit for observing that the sky is blue? Has it come to this?
jrg
What pisses me off about the GOP is that finally… finally after a decade, my retirement plan is going somewhere besides down, in part because we’ve started spending money on our own economy, rather than “spreading Democracy”, and we’ve put some controls on Wall Street (though not enough), and these fucking GOP morons are howling…. HOWLING… about socialism.
Heaven forbid someone who actually works for a living see some benefit from the government, rather than using all our money on tax cuts for the rich, Medicare part D for a bunch of geriatric, tea-bagging ingrates, and a trillion dollar war.
I’ve come to the conclusion that all that’s left of the GOP are idiotic, rural “populists” and Jeebus freaks. Anyone with a dime to invest should be voting straight ticket Dem.
jibeaux
You see, we could really make use of TBogg’s tag “all y’all motherfuckers don’t even know my opinion on shit”. Just sayin’.
jrg
Repost. FYWP.
What pisses me off about the GOP is that finally… finally after a decade, my retirement plan is going somewhere besides down, in part because we’ve started spending money on our own economy, rather than “spreading Democracy”, and we’ve put some controls on Wall Street (though not enough), and these fucking GOP morons are howling…. HOWLING… about “social1sm”.
Heaven forbid someone who actually works for a living see some benefit from the government, rather than using all our money on tax cuts for the rich, Medicare part D for a bunch of geriatric, tea-bagging ingrates, and a trillion dollar war.
I’ve come to the conclusion that all that’s left of the GOP are idiotic, rural “populists” and Jeebus freaks. Anyone with a dime to invest should be voting straight ticket Dem.
Suck It Up!
I’m glad he finally recognizes that Ryan is a fraud. Now I’ll patiently wait for him to post the same “fraud” pic of Mitch Daniels.
El Cid
As Cheney correctly said (said former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill), “Reagan showed that deficits don’t matter.”
And he was right. Because he didn’t mean fiscally or economically — he meant politically, as a disadvantage for Republicans.
What would surprise me is that there would be any real price to pay for increasing the deficit & debt tremendously, and giving money to the super-rich and using the hype to attack social programs, while lying about it and blaming it all on the Democrats.
Ross Hershberger
Sully FTW today.
Tomorrow…?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I hope this eye-openness among conservatives continues, but at the same time, we’re still not ready for large government spending cuts. I would take shifting defense spending to other projects, especially R&D type work, but I don’t want “whack off a quarter of the budget to eliminate the deficit” because right now it actually wouldn’t.
Comrade Javamanphil
@ed:
Sadly, yes. As long as he gets read by the Beltway cocktail club and Edroso, Tbogg, Atrios do not, we need to keep patting him on the back for finding the nuts liberals found and laced into his mustache 20 years ago.
Mike in NC
Sully does offer up some good links, like David Cole’s “Conservative Constitution of the United States”. I hope the GOP House members propose adopting it as an official document, to remove any lingering doubts about how insane they are.
Villago Delenda Est
Sullivan is really a mixed bag. Sometimes he does indeed come right to the heart of the matter and call a lying asshole a lying asshole. He’s particularly good at chronicling the pathological lies of Sarah Palin. Not that it does any good with Sarah’s fan base, who love her for her platitudes and ignore her outright whoppers when she utters him. One thing you can say about Palin…she rarely prevaricates. She just lies outright and baldly, and her cretinous fan base (to include the vermin of the VIllage) eats it up. It’s all about the attitude with them, not the substance.
Of course, more and more, attitude and platitude and not substance applys to Rethugs in general. Which is what that second paragraph you blockquoted is all about.
cleek
@ed:
not everybody knows the sky is blue.
not everybody is a political junkie, or a diehard lefty, nor does everybody the same opinion of all the people Sully goes after in those posts. what Sully writes in those two posts might actually be news to many.
Zach
… and then he lines up squarely behind the Simpson-Bowles plan which is just as (1) equally unlikely to pass Congress, (2) full of incredibly regressive changes to the tax code, and (3) damaging to the interests of the poor and elderly as Paul Ryan’s plan in the short- to medium-term (Ryan’s plan does a lot more damage to the safety net in the long-term).
Viva BrisVegas
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I kinda like Sully, I’ve been reading him since about 2004 when he finally woke up from his 911 induced coma, looked at Bush and said WTF!
The Bell curve thing is beyond the pale, but the Trig thing is a prime example of the hold that Palin has over the Village, and Sully is the only one with the balls to even bring it up.
The birth story is either a complete fabrication or else the woman is clinically insane and should not be trusted with an infant. But the Village doesn’t want to know about it, and Palin gets yet another free pass.
So because of things like that I cut Sully lots of slack. He may be prone to parroting libertarian nonsense, he may be in love with a form of Toryism that has no historical reality, he may have an absurdly sentimental soft spot for those heroes of the class war against the poor, Thatcher and Reagan, but he surprisingly often does understand when he is wrong. Which is more than can be said for pundits of all stripes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Alwhite:
Fixed, in light of yesterday’s Kwanzaa Cake discussion.
cleek
@cleek:
…and there is rarely any harm in restating the “obvious” in a forceful and persuasive (or funny) way. it’s 90% of what 90% of bloggers do, after all.
Legalize
When Sully is “on” it’s only after months and months of others pointing out the obvious to him. Sully is the proverbial blind squirrel that finds an acorn in a barrel full of acorns.
Villago Delenda Est
Breaking news: Massachusetts Supreme Court revealed to be a nest of socialists and Islamists.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@cleek: This.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
lolz
Hope there was a couch behind you when you fainted.
NobodySpecial
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yeah, she seems to think being dismissive of the little racist Sullivan is a bad thing. Mercy.
Shinobi
Y’know this article does give me a vague hope that maybe someday there will be worthwhile republicans in office somewhere. (Not the part about Jan Brewer, but the Il Rep who is trying to help her find a solution she is apparently uninterested in finding.)
bloodstar
@Legalize:
I’m curious how Sully was late to the party on the entire torture madness? Blind Squirrel or not, Sully was ahead of the curve on that one and running headlong into a public that didn’t know or want to know and was willing to bury their head into the sand, or worse yet, try to justify it. The Ammo and information he found has been vital for me to help turn the debate amongst some of my friends who were honestly ignorant or misinformed. Maybe that’s not a lot, but for every few people convinced, is a few less people who will stand for that type of evil.
Even if he only gets something right twice a year (and I think he does a bit better than that), He’s spectacularly, utterly, amazingly dead on target.
Sasha
@ed:
To quote Mr. Orwell:
“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
burnspbesq
@ed:
Yes, it has. There are at least 60 million people in the country, who are likely to vote in the next Presidential election, who devoutly believe that the sky is pink with purple polka-dots. Are you suggesting that such beliefs should be allowed to go unchallenged?
burnspbesq
@Just Some Fuckhead: @NobodySpecial:
Get a room, you two.
burnspbesq
@bloodstar:
Before he sank into self-parody, Greenwald was awesome on these issues, and so was Scott Horton, but the real superstar was Marty Lederman.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/09/anti-torture-memos-balkinization-posts.html
Starfish
@Elvis Elvisberg: You can’t factually discount Sully’s obsessiveness with things that are not easily proven without climbing up someone’s vagina?
I thought it was weird that Palin would get on a plane while going into labor until I went into labor. People who have had previous children know what labor feels like and may have some idea of how long it takes them from when they first feel labor pains until they have major contractions. The various hospital people said please do not show up until you are having contractions that are one minute long and five minutes or less apart. It can take quite a few hours to go from feeling an occasional contraction to feeling one minute long contractions that are five minutes apart.
Whether or not Sarah Palin is lying about this is somewhat irrelevant because we know that she lies about important things. Whether she lies about this thing or not, it is just one of the many things that she may or may not be lying about. The problem is that Sullivan likes to go on the attack with various women and accuse them of lying when his point is not easily provable and what they are lying about may not be highly relevant to anything. What he did in trying to out Elena Kagan is analogous to what he did to Sarah Palin, and this habit of attacking women tells us more about Sully than it tells us about Palin or Kagan.
Fang
Nope, can’t quit Sully either. In fact, I’ve discussed this with my friends. It comes down to two things:
1) When he is right he is right, and in a witty manner. I can frankly say I have had some fantastic insights reading him.
2) He’s very human even when he says something terribly wrong. I think the Sully we get is pretty much the real thing, and his moments of weirdness and WTFery are part of that.
Sully is on my reading list as he’s a sane conservative. He helps keep my perspective broad.
David Hunt
@Elvis Elvisberg:
I always assumed that she did it because of her heavy involvement with that party of Alaskan separatists. I figured that she wanted the kid to be born in Alaska so they’d be a native born Alaskan when they broke off from the U.S. Normally I’d say that was silly and no one would do anything that insane when Alaska is never going to leave the U.S., but this is Sarah Palin we’re talking about.
Comrade Javamanphil
Sully lost me for good with his Shut Up and Sing award. I found the premise insulting (artists can’t express opinions in their art?) as well as remarkably insensitive given the death threats the Dixie Chicks received were wrapped in the banner of “just shut up and sing.”
worn
@cleek:
Exactly!
Susan of Texas
Sullivan’s behavior is consistent if you remember that he’s extremely elitist. It’s why he can’t stand to see his tribe do stupid, embarrassing things that affect his status or image of himself, why he can be an unabashedly out gay man in the Republican party, why he is racist, why he is sexist. The problem with treating him with respect is that it gives some tacit acceptance, if not approval, of his bad qualities.
Bill Murray
Sully said “He has no serious plans to cut entitlements now (anyone only focusing on discretionary spending is a demonstrable fraud)”
i would say anyone with a plan to cut entitlements now is a demonstrable fraud, which is pretty much what I think of Sully; that and if he represents intelligent conversation, the Algonquin round table are rolling in their graves
Angela
I’ve seen Glenn Beck only once (I don’t have cable). He said that he voted for Obama and that he would have voted for Hillary if she’d been the Democrat on the ticket.
What a fucking liar.
norbizness
GUshing over Sullivan and/or agonizing about removing him from your daily reading list is the blogging equivalent of Rush’s rap interlude in Roll The Bones: supremely pathetic.
Kuvasz
Reading Sullivan’s continuing astonishment with the constant perfidity of Republicans reminds me of the scene in Jaws where the shark eats the captain from the feet up. But with Sullivan and the Republicans the shark is already nawing on his sternum yet still fails to realize he is being eaten.
norbizness
@Kuvasz: I would definitely read Quint’s blog; I think it’s at asharksdigestivesystem.blogspot.com
wasabi gasp
There isn’t enough mustard in the world.
va
Wow, those are some, uh, penetrating insights. Sullivan is in equal measures articulate, impassioned, and shallow.
WereBear
Since he has such a megaphone, I think it’s akin to the relief the family feels when Pop’s on a “happy drunk” instead of the other kind.
debbie
I for one am glad Sullivan’s obsessed with documenting Palin’s lies. It saves me a lot of clicking around. His linking to the USA Today column today is worth the price of admission, especially this part:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-01-06-column06_ST_N.htm?POE=click-refer
It reminds me of the scene in “Into Thin Air” where sherpas literally carried Sandy Pittman the final leg to the summit so she could say she’d been there. Turns out Palin’s just as coddled. And it seems to me that in getting the same kind of treatment, it’s Sarah Palin who’s the real elitist.
Just Some Fuckhead
@burnspbesq: Suck my dick, Burns.
NobodySpecial
@burnspbesq: Aww, poor BABY! Two people agreed on something you don’t like!
File a lawsuit or something.
burnspbesq
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Prove that you have one.
burnspbesq
@NobodySpecial:
I expect that someday you will have an idea worth being taken seriously.
I also expect the Mets to someday win another World Series.
Both events seem about equally likely to happen any time in the foreseeable future.
NonyNony
@David Hunt:
This.
Her behavior is perfectly consistent with someone who wants to make sure that if the Revolution comes her family is on the right side of it. Why she was off traveling to Texas in the first place when she was that close in a tricky pregnancy is a different question (one easily answered if you look at her personality and her general intelligence level and realize that she probably didn’t think it was going to be a problem because, well, she generally doesn’t think), but hopping on a plane to make sure her son is a native-born Alaskan is not at all a surprising thing given her family and her politics.
NobodySpecial
@burnspbesq: Your objection is duly noted, Mr. Phoenix Wright.
freelancer
And when he’s off, he’s off:
The left-liberal online response is anything but subjective. It’s right there, online, for all to see. That’s like saying numerical data isn’t quantitative, it’s qualitative.
Silver
If Sullivan hadn’t spent a bunch of time giving Ryan a sloppy blow job over the last bunch of months, I’d agree with you.
Of course, now that Ryan’s come in his mouth and has left the apartment instead of returning the favor, he’s a fraud. No one could have ever predicted that turn of events.
Fuck U II: The Duckening
Heaven forfend that one should be dismissive of Cole’s latest blowing of Sully the Pooh.
Jim C.
Meh.
I love reading Sully’s work. He’s not right on everything. He has his moments that make me roll my eyes, but, hell, he’s one of the few sane and principled conservatives left in the country.
Sometimes he takes a while to get to the right conclusion, and sometimes he NEVER gets there, but he’s open minded, thoughtful and interesting. More important than any of these things, he’s a CONSERVATIVE willing to take dead aim at other conservatives.
Liberals, who find it weird when they/we AREN’T in a constant circular firing squad, tend to forget just how valuable having principled conservatives willing to stand up to the Becks and Palins and Rushes of the world is.
There’s an arrogance in some of the comments that speaks to a closed-mindedness that is unattractive. We’ve all been wrong many, many times in our lives. The difference with Sullivan is that he’s been incredibly wrong a few times PUBLICLY. One of the things that is rather inspiring about reading his work is how willing he is to do completely, totally open “mea culpas” when he comes to the conclusion he was wrong.
Not as often as some people would like, but way more often than most people are willing to admit they screwed something up.
lllphd
ain’t it the kicker? he does stuff like this, and then he turns around and defends rich folks’ taxes. he invests a lot of blog space to let victims of the recession tell their stories, then he is all weak-kneed about the BS plan (bowles-simpson; i just have to call it as i see it).
he and i had a brief exchange several months ago about the sad state of the catholic church, in which i highly encouraged him to just leave. nor can he leave the conservative ideology. there is, riddled in with all that authoritarianism and elitism, somewhere in there a truly good soul. he just can’t figure out how to be true to it entirely.
sad. but, he does write quite well, i’ll give him that.
Rihilism
Sullivan is appalled, appalled I tells ya, that the republican party is full of duplicitous, disingenuous, dishonest, derogatory no-do-gooders. Apparently, he just found this out…
Quick,someone from Sully’s staff needs to help him to the fainting sling…
In all seriousness, if there actually are Sullivan readers (whom I suspect are mostly masochistic liberals seeking a “sane” conservative they can have an “adult” conversation with) are unaware of this “phenomenon” within the republican party, then perhaps the fault does not lay with those who refuse to read Sullivan but with those who read him exclusively. For them (if they exist), it would be rather jarring to have Sully say these things and if after hearing Sully says these things they aquire a more objective view of “conservatism”, then good on him.
I, on the other hand, will continue my self imposed Sully “no read/watch cause it might be construed as complicity and besides it give me a headache” exhile until such time as the Sully/Levi sex tape is released….
Midnight Marauder
Because it can never be said enough:
@Silver:
And that’s really the main issue with Sullivan. Yes, when he finds a topic that he can really sink his teeth into, he can produce some amazing insights and string together elegant and piercing prose. However, there is no consistency to the nature and development of those insights, which severely undermines the credibility and legitimacy of the “insight” he eventually comes to (like accepting that Paul Ryan is a fucking fraud, through and through).
Nope, this isn’t a new insight for people who have been paying attention, but considering some of the pieces Sullivan wrote last year–you know, the ones where he talked about how fucking awesome Paul Ryan was and how Paul Ryan was the future of the Republican Party–you have to be pretty fucking generous to grant him some kind of respect for this newfound discovery. Has Paul Ryan fundamentally changed his tune on any issue regarding the fiscal situation in this country? Has his rhetoric developed or matured in any way over the past year on slashing entitlements and deficit inanity?
I mean, I am pretty fucking sure Ryan is saying the same thing now that he was saying in March 2010 when Sullivan wrote this bullshit:
Oh, is that so, Sullivan? Are you talking about the same budget proposals that led you to write “He is the problem with Republicanism today, not its solution” almost 10 months later, after you so joyously gushed over them?
Paul Ryan is to fraud what Andrew Sullivan is to intellectual consistency.
Rihilism
@Jim C.: “There’s an arrogance in some of the comments that speaks to a closed-mindedness that is unattractive.”
My intention here, it not to pick a fight with you or any other commenter. We must agree to disagree. I don’t feel that I must listen to/read absolutely everyone in order to maintain a healthy open mind any more than I need to read every single blog post of every single blogger (I have a reasonable facsimile of a life).
You believe that Sully is a sane and principled conservative. Great! (and I agree that mea culpas and self-doubt are admirable traits) I, on the other hand, believe he’s repressed, prone to authoritarian anti-democratic streaks, and clings to Catholic moral dogma when it suits him. I have not come to these conclusions recently but from years of “exposure” to Sully. In the end, it boils down to personal preference and past experience.
If my tendency is to mock him, then shame on me, but I refuse to believe that I must read him else I achieve epistemic closure…
ornery curmudgeon
Oh, Andrew Sullivan wrote something … no, two things!
Thank you for the very interesting and important information.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
“When he is on, he is on.”
First of all, so the fuck what? My grandmother was on now and then, but the baseline for her was that she couldn’t figure out how to change the station on an AM radio without asking for help.
Secondly, what is so great about the stuff he wrote in your quoted blurbs? Shit that good shows up in your comments on a daily basis.
What the FUCK is with the endless trollish Sullivan worship?
Tattoosydney
@Rihilism:
Win.
ETA:
I am taking back your win. That image made my eyes hurt.
Sasha
As a practicing Catholic (practicing because I’m still no good at it ), I perfectly understand Sully’s refusal to leave. Although the Catholic Church has in many respects lost its way, it existed as a true force for fairness and justice in the world and often still does. Its flaws will only be rectified through the efforts of those who believe its precepts but do not accept its failings as inevitable or irreversible.
Think of it the same way we stubborn lefties refuse to “just leave” and allow the US, which has also lost its way, to simply slide into entropy.
Sully’s problem is that the party that he identifies as “the conservative party” in US politics (i.e., the Republicans) hasn’t been “conservative” for decades, and are about as unconservative as a group can ideologically get.
Like many “sane” conservatives, when he thinks of the GOP, Sully pines for the Republicans that Kung-Fu Monkey laments in the classic “I Miss Republicans” and often forgets that the GOP of today is not the GOP of Eisenhower. That’s a truth that many sane conservatives have problems reconciling.
Jaim
Sully will happily switch to fellating Thune or Romney if they get the GOP nomination.
He is an opportunist above all else.
And really — recognizing Republican writers are hacks and that Republican politicians are liars is “on a roll”?
Your standards are way too low Mr. Cole.
Rishi Gajria
“I can’t quit you, babe
So I’m gonna put you down for a while”
Led Zeppelin – I Cant Quit You
bob h
“When he is on, he is on.”
But this is a little like shooting fish in a barrel.