Robert Prather at OTB on the debt ceiling hostage taking:
I’ve been moving to the left for a few years now, but these idiots are radicalizing me. I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life (full disclosure: I didn’t vote the last two elections due to moving), but I doubt I’ll ever vote for a Republican again. They’re either stupid or evil, but either way they’re dangerous and bad for the country.
I don’t know the specifics of Prather’s politics, but there’s a general lesson here. You can be a social conservative who thinks that Roe v Wade was the worst Supreme Court decision on record. You can be a paleocon who thinks that uncontrolled immigration is killing our domestic workforce. Or you can just be a Chamber of Commerce, Main Street, traditional “cut my taxes” Republican. No matter what your reason for voting Republican in the past, how can you vote again for a party that’s about to ruin our national credit rating and kill off an already halting recovery, all over a vote that, as Prather points out, is simply procedural?
balconesfault
Well, for one thing Obama is a black closet-Muslim foreign-born terrorist-loving sooocialist.
That will keep 27% or so voting GOP no matter what.
Gin & Tonic
Bad linky.
Jon Marcus
Link is all broki-fied.
captnkurt
404.
Fix your OTB link, mix. (‘pears to be missing one of the w’s in the redirect.
Jon Marcus
Think it should be http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-debt-ceiling-is-a-housekeeping-procedure/ ?
captnkurt
So say we all!
Joseph Nobles
Drunk with power. Jesus is coming back and he wouldn’t dare let the United States fall. We’re keeping Israel afloat until the 144,00 can convert to Christianity. That’s just Bible, y’all. Try to argue with the Bible.
Gin & Tonic
Is he coming this week? Cause I’ll probably have to clean the living room if he does, and it’s too darn hot.
John S.
Because Obama hurt your feelings and needs to be taught a lesson. See how easy that is?
Guster
Has Cole ever written the full story of his ‘come to DFH Jesus’ moment? I keep wanting to read that, but I’m not sure if it’s written.
Phyllis
Some folks, however, will always remain true believers. Example: Actual letter to the editor published in The State paper today in Columbia SC:
Here’s how U.S. can fix problems
It can be fairly easy to solve some of our governmental problems if we use progressive thinking:
1. Back off and let those men who want to marry men marry men.
2. Allow those women who want to marry women marry women.
3. Allow those folks who want abort their babies abort their babies.
If we all do this, within three generations there will be no more Democrats — and most of our problems will disappear.
As established in an open thread yesterday, I’m old, which means I can remember a time when a letter like this would never have seen the light of day on an editorial page.
HRA
Although I have been married to a Republican for 27 years, I did not see the type of Republican who supports the crazies running for office until my recent move in another area of work. It is truly amazing. I have to believe part of it has to do with a family legacy of Republicanism and a good portion most likely has to do with not making Dad disown you.
Steaming Pile
#11 – There are probably lots of folks out there, myself included, who hold a few beliefs that most would agree are pretty conservative. You know, like living within our means, paying our goddamned bills, taking responsibility for onesself, etc. (oh yeah, and supporting the President and letting him do his fucking job). Republicans used to believe in these things, too. Once upon a time. These Republicans in office today are nothing like that, and I don’t consider them conservative in the slightest. A real conservative wouldn’t think of doing what people like Eric Cantor are doing. You don’t get to be a conservative just by showing up in an 80s suit and wire-rimmed glasses.
kd bart
So, you’re never gonna fall in love again?
kd bart
#10-Phyllis
Are you sure that wasn’t an Op-Ed piece in The State?
agrippa
Steaming pile is right. They are not conservative.
These are radicals who are angry and afraid. The source/cause of their fear and anger is pretty opaque to them. Perhaps not opaque to others; but, it is opaque to them.
So, they are hotheads in search of a fight.
alwhite
This talk is all so reminiscent of 2003 and look how well the ’04 elections turned out.
Its not the firebaggers that are killing the Dems. There is still a vast sea of ignorance out there that laps on the shore every few years at the voting booth. Flotsam and jetsam of dull-witted inattention feed the vapid entertainment masquerading as news, wanting not to think, believing in easy, painless, simple solutions to all life’s problems.
Firebaggers, corporate owned Dems, wishy-washy Dems the whole laundry list of fail under the donkey tent may aid and abet the great unwashed but blaming them for the situation solves nothing. The first step is flipping those votes. Boy Blunder and his Super Friends did it for us in ’05 but the memories of the voters is so short we can’t count on them to rescue us again.
mistermix
Sorry about the bad link – fixed.
kay
Right. True. As long as we acknowledge that when voters like that vote for Democrats or liberals, they bring those conservative single-issue views with them. They move the agenda Right on those issues (if there are enough of those voters in any coalition that elects a Democrat).
We can’t have it both ways. We can’t have the voter on one issue (here I guess the issue is “sanity”) and not get the whole package. The Chamber of Commerce Republican may vote for a Democrat in 2011 or 2012 based on “the other choice is insane” but that voter is not going to drop opposition to tax increases, and if there are enough Chamber of Commerce Republicans voting for any Democrat, that Democrat is going to move Right on taxes.
I’m a big tenter/welcome aboard person because I don’t see any other way to win elections, but voters influence organizations or coalitions as much as organizations or coalitions influence voters. It goes both ways. When they’re in, they change the nature of the thing, just by the fact that they’re in. I think we have to accept or at least grapple with that trade-off because it’s what happens, over and over.
Maude
@alwhite:
But I like blaming the Firebaggers.
Great name, Boy Blunder. Nice name to start out a soggy hot day.
DBrown
So, this is how a hyper military based economy falls when the elite start to reach the limit of ‘cheap’ energy as their host nation changes color (becomes more brown.) The South after the Civil War had many whites who acted the same way but they were lucky – whites from the North who held the real power fully agreed with their goals and looked the other way.
Peak oil is a bitch and I hope we have a few more years (looks likely.) Fear is ugly and repug-a-thugs are going to get even more ugly before they get violent (in a big way.) Religion is just further radicalizing the lower/middle class whites and further enflaming their stupidity to hide what the elite are doing at a more rapid rate – sucking all the money they can from a dying economy.
This debt cries was manufactured by them to strike at the black man in office and has no other purpose – truly sick actions by very sick people.
Phyllis
@ kd bart #15: It easily could have been, I’ll admit. The letter writer was from Darlington (upstate near Greenville); prolly has his vehicle plastered with DeMint stickers.
dedc79
Republicans like cantor have mistaken the fox news echo chamber for the mood of the country as a whole. these are the same people who think a mid-term election gives them a mandate that a presidential election didn’t give the president.
scav
but kay, they’re in the nation so we’re sorta arguing within the tent or between tents. (besides, the idea that the current tent is so cleanly liberal and in danger of contamination as a least a little laughable.) The scariest of the suicidal clown-squad have taken control of the car we’re all riding in. At this point, I don’t think the dignity or color-coordination of what we look like after escaping is the immediate issue.
JPL
Phyllis @ 11 The Log Cabin Republicans must be so proud.
Chris
I’ve read the joke. Fairly revealing of their way of thinking: they simply can’t imagine that someone, somewhere, might not want to marry a man but be okay with someone who is, or might not want to abort their fetuses but are okay with someone who is, or might not want abortion in general but needs one in this case because of whatever circumstances.
The totalitarian, static, uniform mentality is so ingrained in them they think everyone else plays by the same rules.
kay
Oh, I agree with you. I just think that when get a “terry Schiavo voter” ( I read the link and the comments, and they’re using Schiavo as an example) we shouldn’t assume we’ve persuaded them on everything, because that hasn’t been my experience. This has happened to me over and over again, where they tell me whatever the tipping point was, we’re all best buddies, and then I find myself defending the estate tax, or whatever. There’s nothing wrong with that, I’ll argue virtually anything with anyone, and I’m fine with persuasion but it’s reality.
People have this annoying thing where they insist on being what they are, and having a voice or influence in coalitions or organizations they feel they belong to :)
OzoneR
cause otherwise the liberals win.
aimai
Doug “say Al sharpton’s name, Bitch” Mataconis is down somewhere in that thread basically starting to sob that his party left him.
aimai
Chris
Re the whole “GOP is/isn’t conservative,”
Personally, I tend to split up political movements in any context into four groups – revolutionaries (who want to smash the system and start over), reformists (who want to change the system from the inside), conservatives (who want the system to stay as it is) and reactionaries (who want to change the system back to what they think it used to be).
Reactionaries are by far the stupidest and most unhinged in the group, but that’s unfortunately what the entire modern GOP is.
OzoneR
It’s both, because the former refuses to acknowledge the latter exists.
kay
When I look at what we’re saying here, that Republicans took the House and statehouses, etc. and then went too far Right, into crazy, and that might mean moderate or sane voters swing back, that means something. Those moderate Republicans (okay, “those not insane Republicans”) who are (supposedly) swinging our way are still Republicans on the issues mistermix listed. That has to be true, right? That’s what they’re saying. I think we should take them at their word.
I myself am not convinced anyone is swinging, so this is a hypothetical.
WereBear
@Phyllis: Then why don’t they? Sheesh!
Sly
Because Eisenhower is a willing agent of the communist conspiracy and because Kennedy’s putting mind-control juice in our water and because the Federal Reserve is a plot by Jews to take over the world and because integration is a plot by satanists to mongrelize the white race and because extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!
OzoneR
Yes, and that ends up being the problem. These are people who have voted Republican before (Reagan, 1994, 2004, 2010) and would like to again, but they’re crazy, so they look for Republican alternatives and some Democrats are trying to be them.
It’s not surprise Blue Dogs are Republicans from 1990, those are the voters Democrats need to permanently take from Republicans
Phyllis
@Werebear #33: My sentiments exactly.
General Stuck
Can we please get back on topic of Obama gutting Medicare, and Obots being crypto republican operatives, out to pollute the dem parties precious bodily fluids? Thanky you.
kay
I don’t really think of it as a “problem”. I don’t like the whole concept of “problem voters”, but you already know I’m impatient with broad categories.
I think the majority of the country has been persuaded that we have to raise taxes. I think the polling is really conclusive on that.
That’s good. That’s a win. That’s as far as I’ll go, with my victory lap, but I do count that as a win, because the whole conservative brand hinges on “no new taxes”. Everything else follows from that. They lost on that. Grover Norquist lost. Americans “get” the fairness of raising taxes. His whole freaking ideology is based on “unfair”. “Fair” must scare the shit out of him.
That’s a problem for Republicans, certainly, because they lost the argument they’ve relied on since George H.W. Bush, but I don’t know that it’s a “problem” for voters, or that any of this makes voters “the problem”.
scav
well, I never managed to believe in any 1000-year reich or permanent majority but sorta expect everything to be Passchendaele all over again ad infinitum. Practically speaking, how people vote may be just as important as what they think: like Elizabeth I, I don’t want to open a window into men’s souls. I guess I just see politics as a massively dull, never ending game of compromise, or maybe that’s actually more of an ideal because we haven’t seem much of that lately.
ah, well, I see where I got confused, while I’ve got the first part down pat, the thought of influencing democrats, let alone the democratic party, reduces me to hysterical laughter. I simply must be miswired.
jayjaybear
You BachaROCK, mistermix…
WereBear
I see people voting for Republicans for the same reason people keep going back to parasitic, abusive dating partners.
They fall for lies. Sometimes, they prefer the lies!
If we are dating a real person, they have likes and dislikes and we negotiate around each other. But the con artist creates a false persona that is PERFECT. They do not have real likes and dislikes; they are faking it from the getgo and so they always know exactly the right things to say and do and be because they are faking it.
Once the trap is fully set, it springs!
Some voters are the same way. The Republicans tell them they, too, can be rolling in money, and god will love them and not roast them on a spit, and they are superior just because of their ‘nads or skin tone; or whatever they want to hear. Republicans can lie and lie because that is all they have to offer.
So they can say whatever it takes to get votes. A certain number may not be part of the crazy 27%, but a certain number will always fall for the lies they want to hear.
Slowbama
Phyllis: Darlington is in the Pee Dee, on the other end of SC from Greenville.
OzoneR
Yes, but that needs to translate into votes and it doesn’t. Going back to my family in Indiana, they agree we need to raise taxes on the super rich, but they never vote for politicians who would support that because those same politicians will take away their guns and allows gays to marry.
That makes Republicans were very powerful because that means they can ignore those polls showing the public sides with progressives on taxes.
My uncle is suffering from vertigo and because of it, he cannot work and now has to go out on disability. You know who he blames for disability being unable to meet his financial needs? black welfare mothers…not “we need to tax the rich so we have more money to give to people like me,” he wants it taken away from black welfare mothers and illegal immigrants first.
kay
We’ve been around on this typa thing before, and I just hate the whole “Republicans are so powerful and scary they’re unbeatable they’re masters at politics they all stick together waah waah waah ” theme. In a way, I think it’s self-fulfilling.
They’re not mastering this debt issue debate, they’re not all sticking together, they often stumble or screw up, just as Democrats are not consistently or constantly ineffective or hapless.
The whole ninja-master magic SCARY Republicans theme bugs me. It’s self-defeating, it plays right into their hands, and it’s not objectively true.
Original Lee
I am only staying registered as Republican so I can be a poll worker. I have voted for the Democratic Party candidates the last few times and have thought long and hard about changing my registration. But they need both registered Republicans and Democrats at the polls, and I figure this way I can be a stealth force for good. For instance, last election, when I was getting illegal robocalls funded by conservative whackjobs, I reported them. So I think there’s some value to being a RINO.
...now I try to be amused
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create reality. And while you are studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
OzoneR
No, but the one thing the GOP has is a strong loyal base of voters who will never desert them, that’s what makes them powerful
...now I try to be amused
Depressingly true. They won’t achieve the permanent majority that Karl Rove dreamed of, but they can can skim off 24% here and there to add to their solid 27% and make a lot of temporary majorities.
OzoneR
they don’t even have to, half the country doesn’t vote and most of them come from the other 73%. Just double the 27% and you have the Republican ceiling.
Chris
@ OzoneR @ 43,
I’m sorry to restart this fight, but I’ve been reading through what I missed last night and stumbled across your argument in the “Just Let It All Burn” post:
And yet, when you give your uncle as an example, it turns out he’s not flipping out at “noisy rich liberals.” He’s flipping out at “black welfare mothers” (because no white person ever cheated on welfare, my hand to God!) and “illegal immigrants.” In other words, people who’re as working class as himself, but that he feels entitled to denigrate (the same way he thinks the “coastal elites” are denigrating him, by the way) because they’re not like him. Or something.
Sooo…
1) Do you really think any amount of groveling and humility on the part of perceived liberal elitists would get him to stop blaming blacks and Hispanics? Cause I’ve known people who share his politics and it seems damn near impossible from where I’m standing.
2) So, it’s not really the arrogant liberal elitists who are his problem after all, is it? They’re convenient hippie punching material, much like the DFHs of the 1960s, but as with the DFHs of the 1960s, the root cause often seems to be something that wouldn’t sound nearly as righteous if broadcast on national television.
Admiral_Komack
“I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life (full disclosure: I didn’t vote the last two elections due to moving)(…)
Where was he moving to, the planet Krypton?
Stillwater
@kay:
Good point. If only we had those government re-education camps up and running…
OzoneR
He’s flipping out at both, because they see lack of action from the left against what they perceive to be a plague of welfare cheats as an example of why rich coast liberals don’t really care about them. it’s one of those “you claim to care about us, but what are you doing about all these welfare cheats, illegal immigrants, etc.”
I have no idea, part me believes its better for Democrats to just stop being the working class party and start being the socially liberal, fiscally moderate party because you’ve probably lost the white working class forever unless you go back to targeting minorities like the pre-Civil Rights era. Democrats are fighting a battle with a significant portion of the people they’re fighting for are aiding the enemy.
You can be the party of civil rights or you can be the party of the working class, I don’t think you can be both.
kay
Oh, I don’t know. That’s too broad for me. An example. One faction of the local Democrats were freaking out because Sherrod Brown is below 50%. I think he’s at 49% :)
But he beats Portman and Kasich, who just came in on the (supposedly) earth-shattering Tea Party wave that signalled some dramatic shift to rabid conservatives.
Sherrod Brown is the most popular politician in Ohio, and he’s a liberal. That’s fact. It may not be something to dance in the aisles about, he’s still vulnerable, but this idea that they’re MASTERS who cannot be stopped strikes me as silly. They’ve been in for a year and they’re tanking. Right now, right here, that’s true. The rest is conjecture and punditry.
OzoneR
I don’t think they’re masters who cannot be stopped, I just think there is no way to drive down their support far enough that they’ll be completely powerless like they were in the 1930s.
Because they have an unbreakable level of support, they’re always going to be a force, and they’re always going to have some relevance.
Chris
I don’t know if I’d go that far. Rural Protestants and urban Catholics had a huge, huge gap between them back in the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras (complete with Ku Klux Klan and gang violence), but they somehow managed to hold their nose and vote with each other starting in the 1930s and gradually coming to forget their differences over the next generation (I’d love to know more about how that happened, by the way).
But it took exceptional circumstances to break down the barriers. I don’t see that happening right now as far as civil rights are concerned.
OzoneR
but they did so because civil rights was not an issue, it was ignored and pushed aside.
Chris
I’m saying that the divide between those two groups in the North was almost as explosive as the civil rights divide (e.g. between blacks and whites). The height of the Ku Klux Klan’s power wasn’t in the South in the 1870s, it was in the Midwest in the 1920s when it managed to expand out of the South by exploiting anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic rhetoric.
Somehow, they overcame the hate. I’m just wondering how.
OzoneR
I don’t think they overcame the hate, I think they didn’t have each other on their mind.
Part of that was the candidate; Roosevelt was blue blood, (Al Smith was not), part of it was party control, there was no Republican Party in the South, so Roosevelt wins by default, and part of it was the strength of the communist and socialist movement worldwide at the time.
But the main reason I’d say is that there was no civil rights debate. There was no effort to make the lives of immigrants better, there was no Immigrants Rights Act or anything like that, it was all economics.
Resentment is what drives people like my family to the Republicans, there was nothing to be resentful of in the 1930s. Roosevelt wasn’t “protecting” immigrants, if anything he was abusing them, look at Japanese internment.
Dr.BDH
Michelle Bachmann polling well in Iowa and South Carolina + Michelle Bachmann stating she will never vote to raise the debt ceiling = all you need to know about the Republican Party in 2011/12.
tomvox1
Prather:
Also, too, earth is round and revolves around sun.
Rome Again
@Joseph Nobles:
The Bible is very easy to refute, despite some people’s insistence that it’s the very words of God. There are so many contradictions, and quite often the belief that events occurred as people have been made to believe does not comport with the very words contained in said book. – example: Paul says in Acts 21: 12-13 that he is willing to die in Jerusalem for the cause of being a Christian. When the time to make that choice happens, Paul doesn’t choose to die at the hands of the Jews, but instead in Acts 25:9-12 he appeals to Caesar to save him. If God directed every word to be written, he needs a mental check up.
Rome Again
@Guster:
It wasn’t a moment, it was a culmination over time which started with Terri Schiavo. Do a search on the Schiavo story and you’ll be at the begining.
Rome Again
@dedc79:
They believe they are advocating what the country wants based on Gallup polls only. The Gallup polls are outliers and they never cite any other polls. They are willing to bet the entire farm on Gallup.
Rome Again
@OzoneR:
I find it ironic that this was posted on a thread where a Republican is calling out his party for this insanity. Are you serious? I’m sorry if it isn’t happening fast enough or deep enough for you. The true test will be the 2012 election.
Chris
Well, with respect, that particular one isn’t necessarily a contradition, though I’m sure they’re out there.
The Operative: “Are you willing to die for that belief?”
Mal Reynolds: “I am.”
[Pulls out his gun and shoots the Operative’s weapon out of his hand]
Mal Reynolds: “Course, that ain’t exactly Plan A.”
Rome Again
Chris, appealing to Rome is not dying for that belief. Paul stated he was willing to die in Jerusalem at the hands of the Jews, and instead when that appears to be his reality, he appeals to Rome. It is not only a contradiction, it is also a lie.
Moreover, if you go to Skeptics Annotated Bible and choose their Contradictions tab, you’ll find over 600 contradictions. Yes, there are, at least, a few.
lou
@rome again:
I think you mean Rasmusseen. That’s the one that leans heavily Republican in its samples.
My dad was a died-in-the-wool Republican. He voted for Ronald Reagan against Gerald Ford in the 1976 primaries. He convinced his mother-in-law to vote for Nixon instead of Wallace in 1968 (yes, my grandmother is racist and proud of it).
Now he vows never to vote for another Republican again for the rest of his life, thanks to George W Bush, and is aghast that his brothers buy the crap that Fox is selling.
Rome Again
@lou:
No Lou, I’ve been lurking on Freeperville to see what they are up to, multiple times over the last few weeks and every time they cite that the country is with them, they use Gallup as their source. All they cite is Gallup.
My father too was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who loved Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, adored Nixon and worshipped Reagan’s tax cuts (he worked in sales to Government Services Administration and made a killing during the Reagan years). He died in 1986, but I fear if he were alive, he would only be turning his back on the GOP now because it would have affected his personal bottom line (government programs).
Comrade Luke
Well, I consider myself a single issue voter: I have an issue with Republicans.
(shrug)
Paul in KY
Rome Again, I always believe what some asswipe on Free Republic says. Always.
Rome Again
I never do, Paul. I just have a strange obsession I like to watch them when they squirm.