Gods bless “The Editors” at Esquire, and all those whose acrid dyspepsia battles the saccharine lather bathing this weekend’s Republican freakshow:
Two remarkable events occurred over the past month that, taken together, give us all some idea of the forces gathering even now among Republicans and conservatives as they begin the long — and, if you’re a political consultant or a local TV station in Nashua, New Hampshire, very lucrative — process of trying to find someone to run against Barack Obama in 2012. The first is a now marginally viral video of a focus group brought together for Sean Hannity by Frank Luntz, the boyish charlatan who’s been concocting spin for conservative candidates and causes for what seems like a century now, but who still manages to look like the evil Cleaver brother. Anyway, Luntz got a group together made up of people who are likely to be voting in the Iowa caucuses, a quadrennial gathering of snowbound Caucasians given entirely too much responsibility for winnowing the field of candidates prior to the whole shebang’s moving along to the even crankier white people of New Hampshire. An unhealthy number of the people in the group told Luntz that they believed that the president was a Muslim. This made even Luntz’s wattles quiver, and Hannity felt compelled to step in and explain that, as far as he was concerned, the president was not a follower of The Prophet, but merely an adherent to a radical form of Christianity devoted to the Gospel According to John Shaft.
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Not long before Luntz gathered this group of our more mal-informed fellow primates, the new Republican majority in the Missouri state legislature made one of its first orders of business the repeal of a ballot initiative that established a series of regulations governing the state’s notorious “puppy mills.” Yes, there are conservative legislators out in the American heartland who take it upon themselves to go against the expressed will of the electorate in order to come out in favor of torturing puppies. Of course, many of these people likely will be delegates to the 2012 Republican National Convention, where they will choose a nominee and, if there is a just god paying attention, get bitten in the balls by a police dog…
Click the link for more excellent snark, and an illustration that makes me wonder whether Donald Trump’s newborn “exploratory campaign” might not be based largely on a potentially lethal case of Hair Envy.
roshan
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LMFAO!
Odie Hugh Manatee
Is there a battle looming between The Donald and Governor Rick Goodhair of Tejas?
Call it The Battle of the (H)air-heads!
Luntz looks like bad vanilla pudding. I mean really bad pudding. I saw that clip and those people are really bitter looking, angry and looking for a scapegoat. The question about Egypt was very telling in that they couldn’t give a shit about it.
All they were focused on was Obama. Oh yeah, they were a Fox Focus group so that makes sense.
Sad, misinformed people, every single one of them. It’s really sad to see that shit.
Ash Can
Kudos to Esquire for calling the GOP freak show what it is.
cleek
Trump’s just looking for free publicity.
Dennis SGMM
Pure gold.
bkny
radical form of Christianity devoted to the Gospel According to John Shaft.
oh hell … lol
Jark
Most of the “cranky white people” in NH are carpetbagging massholes, Anne. Those of us who actually grew up here, not so much.
AliceBlue
“A gleaming diamond of pure goobery.”
Perfect.
The Republic of Stupidity
Heh… first time in years I’ve actually WANTED to believe in God…
JGabriel
Jark:
STOP THE ASSHOLE INFLUX! Best reason EVER to institute income and sales taxes in New Hampshire.
.
A Farmer
That contains so much awesome. The republican freak show is really beyond belief. At the time he announced that he was running for governor, I thought John Kasich would be one of the “better” possibilities for a Republican candidate. Then I found out he’s a narcisstic asshole, who seems to be a complete wingnut. He’s been blowing off his mouth like crazy, today there was this quote on Ohio public radio about “attracting” Chinese businesses to Ohio. You really have to listen to it to believe it. My summary was posted here.
kay, you must just be losing your shit that Strickland lost to this asshole.
A Farmer
Also, sorry to try to direct you to my post, I would like some feedback as to whether I read this news right, and Balloon Juicers are never short on comment.
cmorenc
@Anne Laurie : (quoting Esquire)
Although Luntz does indeed make a handsome living helping the GOP craft mendacious propaganda, it’s a bad mistake to frame Luntz as a “charlatan”, as if he belonged in the same class as e.g. Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity, because it dangerously underestimates Luntz’s abilities as a cooly accurate, objective researcher and student of people and psychology. Luntz is in fact one of the most genuinely curious, brilliantly talented social scientists of our time, which is precisely why he is so devastatingly good at devising strategies for effectively persuasive propaganda. The fact that he is also something of a sociopath who has harnessed his talents for hire to mendaciously dishonest ends does not change the fact that his effectiveness rests on his ability to not drink the GOP’s own psychotropic kool-aid which they’re giving to the masses to drink. Clearly, Luntz is bona fide ideologically simpatico with the GOP and conservative philosophies in general. That doesn’t mean he deceives himself when he’s researching where the most effective levers of persuasion are with groups of people.
It’s a huge mistake to underestimate your enemies. To get the upper hand against them and defeat them, you must first respect their genuine abilities and strengths, so that you don’t engage them in battle on the wrong fields, with the wrong strategies, that inadvertently plays into their strengths rather than their weaknesses.
Waldo
Esquire.com’s no-bullshit political writing has been outstanding. Sort of how I remember the magazine back in the ’90s — but thankfully minus the stanky cologne ads.
Jark
@JGabriel:
That would only hurt the working class. The moneyed massholes who have ruined places as diverse as Peterborough, the Newfound lake area and the southern triangle can afford the accountants and tax lawyers who make a living hiding money.
IrishGirl
Speaking of a dogfight, my latest comic with a dog in it–Gov. Jan Brewer http://wp.me/pYORZ-6m
Paula
@Waldo:
I think this the style and tone that Matt Taibbi was trying to get to in 2008 in RS (with which he failed).
MaximusNYC
In the grand tradition of Mitt Romney and Bill Frist.
Seriously, there is a well-documented link between animal abuse and sociopathy.
Kathy in St. Louis
Missouri legislators do this all the time. We had a concealed carry item on the ballot a few years ago. The majority said no, so, of course, the Missouri state legislator passed conceal carry. I have utterly no idea why these items are placed on the ballot in our state, unless it’s to get out the vote. No one pays the slightest attention to the results. It’s such a backward state that it’s really embarrassing to tell people about the hokey yahoos who run for office here.
Sleeping Dog
When I lived in St Louis a few years ago the practice that the Repugs tried to protect was bestiality. The local papers, particularly the alternative weeklies were having a great old time harpooning these advocates of beef bayoneting. It finally took an alliance of women legislators, a feminist, city Dem, and a Christianist country Repug to shame their male counterparts on making carnal knowledge of your dog, horse, sheep or other animal illegal.