How many of you remember waiting around for the GOP’s rich overlords to step in and save us from teabagger hell? What a great feeling that was. I get the impression that John Boehner had the same thought – he would drive the White House to offer up the whole farm, minus a cow or two, and then a certain group of folks would sit Eric Cantor down and force him to take it. Blowing up the country over a rhetorical cow is pretty stupid.
Then the overlords did step in and Eric Cantor told them to eat a bag of dicks. And thus we settled the question of whether some shadowy oligarchs still pull the strings of the Republican party. They do not. To be sure John Boehner and grampa Mitch will still dance on command, and it still pays dividends to control the two highest ranking GOP officials, but that kind of control buys less than it did now that the supposed party chiefs need permission from Cantor, Bachmann, DeMint and Rand Paul to wipe their nose.
Tea party Republicans have exactly one kind of power, the suicide primary. If the base sets aside seniority or electability and makes an example out of anyone who steps over some arbitrary line, then they make it extremely unlikely that anyone will. As long as they demonstrate that winning elections comes second to keeping the doctrine pure, like they did in that NY-23 special election, the the suicide primary has almost the same effect as the Twilight Zone kid who could send people to an endless cornfield.
You can hardly call the new bosses ‘overlords’. Overlords you can talk with, work with and count on to at least understand strategic retreat and which policies help and hurt their interests. With the suicide primary, who do you talk to? If Congressional GOP had any more handle on this question than anyone else, they would hang up on Erick Erickson and burn the phone (link in this diary).
I’ve gotten lots of calls about compromise this weekend. Senators have called. Congressmen have called. Staffers have called.
[…] Here’s my response: don’t compromise.
Imagine for a second that Erickson told his DC friends to compromise with Obama. In a week David Frum and Bill Buckley’s kid would make room on their outcast bench for Erick and any politician who took his advice. Erickson is riding that tiger next to the politicians who phoned him. Read this to see Nate Silver make a similar point with numbers and shit.
If David Koch and Richard Mellon Scaife are overlords then I guess you could call the drooling mob behind the suicide primary the GOP’s underlords. With conciliation fever still strong in the administration, these nuts will most likely go on setting the agenda until either (a) America throws the entire idiot party on its ass in 2012, or else (b) a charismatic leader channels their incoherent rage into a near-unstoppable movement in the midst of financial and political chaos.
kansi
It’s “b” that is horrifying.
beltane
Wait, wait. Erickson just told us that as a Christian, he is “not of this world” and is just “passing through.” Why is this aspiring St. Simeon Stylite loitering on our fallen earth, ensnaring himself in the world of politics and lucre?
MikeBoyScout
Which is why the whacky overlords like the Koch brothers are waiting. This is No Limit Texas Hold ’em for the country, and the Kochs know that they have far more chips to play with than the Social Security recipients.
bkny
b. david petraeus.
allow me my tinfoil: brought back to wdc to learn the inner workings via cia position and conveniently steps forward late in the primaries following the implosion of the assorted gop nutjobs currently running.
if you have the time, this is an amazingly prophetic piece:
The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012
CHARLES J. DUNLAP, JR.
From Parameters, Winter 1992-93
http://www.uwec.edu/sfpj/Origins.pdf
Murc
You know… does anyone else think that maybe the right has ‘solved’ the problem of Democracy?
By solved I mean the age-old tension between ‘if we indulge our ideology to the fullest extreme, we’ll lose elections’ and ‘but if we don’t have an ideology, what the hell is the point of being in office?’
It really seems that they’ve realized ‘sure, we’ll lose elections sometimes. Christine O’Donnel, Sharon Angle, yeah yeah. But this is a two-party system dominated by low-information voters, bitches! Even if we lose, eventually the other side will fuck up, and we’ll be swept back into power and we can govern as we please. There might be a downside to never compromising for individual politicians, but fuck those guys, they work for us, not the other way around.’
Under that rubric there’s absolutely no downside to standing firm and never compromising and running suicide primaries. It will cost you elections at the margins but eventually you’ll be back, and if you maintain the purity of your cadre when you GET back you can do whatever the hell you want.
RalfW
(b) seems dangerously likely.
I hope to be wrong about that.
RalfW
Slightly shorter Erickson: whatever the fuck happens it’s not my fault.
Spaghetti Lee
I don’t think they’re as powerless as you do, but I don’t think they’re as powerful as I thought they were like a week ago. Doesn’t a huge chunk of the TP’s money come from the overlords? Won’t they put a stopper on that money if the TP starts burning down the fiscal house. I mean, it’s not like the overlords care either which particular Republican (or Democrat) gets elected, they just want someone who will cater to them. If the TP doesn’t do that, won’t they suffer for it?
I guess the obvious conclusion is that the TP isn’t really thinking strategically about their own political future and who they need as allies, just going on a suicide mission like that guy from Strangelove riding the bomb down to earth.
Spaghetti Lee
I also think that the purity squad costing them winnable elections can’t be ignored forever. I mean, without the purity squad, they’d have gained Senate seats in Nevada and Delaware last year and it would be that much easier to get what they want. And it’s going to cost them a few house seats next year too, NY-23 and NY-26 already being examples, and I’m sure there’s going to be all sorts of teabaggers popping up in Senate primaries. I mean, yeah, as long as they have at least 41 seats in the Senate they can stop whatever they want, but there’s a difference between stopping things and actually getting your own goals into place.
Davis X. Machina
@Murc: In other words, American politics is a ratchet, not a pendulum, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was wrong.
rikyrah
OT:
WI Governor Scott Walker to cut DMV centers in Democratic districts
The Wisconsin legislature is finalizing a bill to close ten Department of Motor Vehicle centers located in Democratic districts within the state. The money saved will be used to extend operating hours at DMV centers in Republican districts. These cuts come on the heels of new voter ID laws that require voters to present a state-issued photo identification card at the poll booths.
The Wisconsin Republicans, led by Governor Scott Walker, have passed a myriad of unpopular bills that have alienated the public, specifically the public employees whose right to collectively bargain was stripped, their pensions cut and many of their jobs lost. Walker, who has strong ties to Koch Industries, Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has served as the poster child for conservative policy in the nation.
This story shows just how stupid neoconservatives think the public really is. Walker and his ilk pass a bill requiring voters to present valid photo identification at the polls. Then, in the same breath, Walker and his ilk propose a bill to close the identification issuing centers (the DMV’s) in the Democratic districts, making ID’s more difficult for low-income voters to obtain.
http://progressivetoo.com/2011/07/23/wi-governor-scott-walker-to-cut-dmv-centers-in-democratic-districts/
so, for those who said the ID Laws aren’t really voter suppression, now that they’ve made it harder for folks to get IDs, what say you NOW?
Rome Again
@beltane:
because he really IS of this world, but he just doesn’t realize it.
Davis X. Machina
@efgoldman: The Indiana case let the ID genie out of the bottle. I don’t think the same Court that decided Crawford v. Marion Co. will care. They signed off on a very very high level of deference to state government.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
this is what we are supposed to be working with
in jesus name, boogity, boogity, boogity.
Marty
If they were blowing up cars instead of the economy, we would call them terrorists. So why are we negotiating with terrorists?
WereBear
At this point, the monster doesn’t know he’s a cobbled together compendium of parts; he thinks he’s an actual independently acting creature!
Can the Tea Party exist without the gushers of right wing cash?
misterbones
OT, but it’s so awesome I must share. Fonzie Gillespie got thrashed by Maher. Here’s my favorite exchange:
vh
I live in East Tennessee, which is now very red, even though it used to pride itself on moderation and the region’s history of resisting secession in the Civil War. On Friday night I read on the web that it has recently dawned on the state government that if the US has its credit rating downgraded next week, Tennessee’s credit rating will IMMEDIATELY drop also, because Tennessee, like other Southern states (notably Virginia and the Carolinas) depends quite a bit on Federal moneys. GOP moderate governor Haslam issued a press release (and apparently is contacting legislators) warning that TN’s financial position—it prides itself on balanced budgets, don’t cha know, but achieves them only because it gets 30% more from the Feds than it pays in —will quickly deteriorate. Wingnut VA governor McDonnell already flip flopped on the debt ceiling earlier, after his finance people explained to him how VA’s borrowing costs would jump because of their dependence on Federal money. This info needs to be publicized—in fact, the vast majority of the red states depend heavily on Federal subsidies. Personally, I am delighted to see this get some attention. I have been waiting for years for the Obama administration to use the sweetheart Federal funding of projects in the Old Confederacy (which started as part of FDR’s New Deal, and built the solid South of his political base). SO SPREAD THE WORD. Failure to raise the debt ceiling, or even threats of failure to the debt ceiling, are going to lead to state tax increases and/or service cuts on the ignorant rubes who support the TeaParty.
PeakVT
Reference for Tim F.’s pop-culture reference.
agrippa
(b) The super hero then forms a
“Committee of National Salvation”.
All is well.
Julia Grey
or else (b) a charismatic leader channels their incoherent rage into a near-unstoppable movement in the midst of financial and political chaos.
So, you’re saying the Anti-Christ is at hand?
Linda Featheringill
@Davis X. Machina: #11
Perhaps a ratchet propelled by a pendulum [in lieu of a hand working a lever]?
R. Porrofatto
The thing is, Erick Erickson sees himself as not just a “conservative CNN political analyst,” and the Editor-in-Chief of the vast empire that is RedState.com. He says his writings are eagerly read and passed around by Republicans in Congress. I hate to say this, but he considers himself an influential leader of the GOP. (Got to RedState and read about all the Republican leaders calling him for his advice — then you can read all his lunatic advice.) And he’s right. Making the leap from offensive, extreme right-wing blogger to CNN was bad enough, but now this twerp really has become a Leader of the Party. And that speaks volumes which nobody who cares about this country would ever want to hear. But there ya go.
Rome Again
@vh:
Won’t this shock the shit out of them when they realize the red states are getting most of the federal funding. LOL (I’ve been hoping this would gain traction too, glad to see it’s found a way).
trollhattan
I thank the deities for the Tea Party Express and their failed 2010 senate campaigns. If not for that pack of whackdoodles we’d have a Republican majority there, too.
I’m you.
rikyrah
the 5 states contacted about their IMMEDIATE downgrade if we go into default –
4 have GOP Governors.
Batocchio
Then the overlords did step in and Eric Cantor told them to eat a bag of dicks.
Good analysis. So conservatives have lied to their base for decades, who now believe their BS. Supply-Side Economics, government is the problem, no new taxes, welfare queens, global warming is a myth, Muslims are coming to kill them, Obama is a Kenyan usurper, etc. They were warned along that they were creating a monster, and a dumb, mean one at that, and now it’s come back to attack them. Hoocoodanode?
Geek footnote – the Twilight Zone story is “It’s a Good Life” by Jerome Bixby:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Good_Life
Mark S.
Just out of curiosity, why can’t our side every have one of those?
Rome Again
@Murc:
You’re insinuating that the Tea Party is one of the two major American political parties. It’s not. The Tea Party usurped one of the two major political parties and is currently trying to decide whether it can throw the original adherents to the Republican ideology out of party altogether or should it form a third way? I’ve seen lots of speculation on FreeperVille that they might need to form a third party.
steviez314
Sadly, my Reichmarks are on (b).
Rome Again
@Mark S.:
Because these charismatic leaders use emotion (FEAR) to get their message across and fear doesn’t work on our side. Authoritarians are triggered into action by fear, we’re not.
Davis X. Machina
@Mark S.:
You actually might not want one — because all but the very best revolutions are worse than all but the very worst status quo.
jprfrog
hear, hear vh #21!Could this be a rope-a-dope on Obama’s part? He agrees to cuts that hurt the TPers at least as much as everybody else (maybe more, given all the net Fed money — MY MONEY — that flows to the red States). A few missed SS checks are pretty strong persuaders.
And laid offstate workers can’t buy groceries either.
Then in the 2012 election he (and hopefully the rest of the Dems) point out again and again who demanded the cuts and what they really mean. Then the next congress can adjust the legislation — it is not part of the Constitution after all. Meanwhile, the debt limit is raised and the world economy while still hovering above the crapper, doesn’t immediately fall in.
Of course, there may still be no deal, with pretty much the same result but a lot more chaos, and hurt.
joel hanes, sp4
“No worse calamity can befall your people than to fall into the hands of a Hero”
kay
What needs to be publicized is the fact that the governor of Virginia doesn’t have any idea where the funding for his state comes from. That’s truly alarming. So much for “governors are directly engaged in practical governance”. Not that governor. That really shouldn’t have to be explained to him by “finance people”, at this point in his term.
Catsy
I think we came dangerously close to (b) during the lost decade of the Bush Years. Say what you want about their administrative incompetence, policy abominations and toxic politics, the Bush administration really played 9/11 for everything it was worth. If they hadn’t been so mind-blowingly incompetent and arrogant, they really could’ve ridden that wave into a (near-)permanent Republican hegemony. It sure as hell wasn’t for lack of trying.
Our other close call so far, I think, was Glenn Beck. If he had been a bit less clownish and steered clear of the more ridiculous conspiracy theories, he could’ve been a major player. He had that dangerous combination of charisma, paranoia and religious conviction, and it was a good thing we were able to make him a laughingstock that started hitting Fox’s bottom line. In some ways, Beck reminded me quite a lot of Jake Featherston from the Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory series.
Villago Delenda Est
Forming an actual third party…with all the apparatus of same…is a formidable and time consuming task.
Far easier to simply co opt an existing party infrastructure. Which is what Grover Norquist has been working on doing for the last 30 years.
Villago Delenda Est
There are very few very best revolutions…England 1689 for example, but keep in mind that it was preceded by a great deal of pain and agony in the form of the Stuarts and Cromwell.
Violet
@Rome Again:
I would love to see this happen. Let them build it up with lots of talk about how the Republicans overthrew the Whigs, etc. Do it, Tea Partiers!
jheartney
One thing to bear in mind is that if the teahadists find themselves definitively thrown out of power in 2012, they have plenty of potential Anders Behring Breiviks in their ranks, plus lots and lots of guns.
Joel
God, this is depressing.
The Republicans really are playing for the end of democracy right now.
Rome Again
@efgoldman:
Yes, I know. I laugh with glee when I read those comments. :)
Rome Again
@Villago Delenda Est:
But, if they can’t get rid of the RINOs, they are thinking they may have to. The Freeper threads constantly agonize about Boehner not allowing the economy go down the tubes. They want the economy to fall and if Boehner doesn’t (and he keeps saying he doesn’t) they again find themselves stuck with leaders who refuse to do their bidding. They usurped the Republican party for the purpose of making it their own, but it hasn’t been easy.
Mark S.
@Davis X. Machina:
I realize that. It’s just odd that the populist movement in this country is built on policies that enrich the oligarchs and fuck the rest of us.
Well, maybe it’s not that odd when you think about it. But you’d think just for the hell of it some politician might try leftist populism.
Calouste
Status quo tends to be pretty bad by the time a revolution comes around.
Rome Again
@jheartney:
Surely. I just a little while ago reported a thread on the Fox News site to the FBI – there were a bunch of rightwingers on there egging each other on saying it was time to start taking action.
They will have their civil war one way or another. They are chomping at the bit for it. If the debt ceiling is raised, guns will not be far behind, I think.
cat48
beergoggles
I don’t think your theory is believable. The corporate media isn’t owned by the teaparty. The teabaggers are Rupert’s and Koch’s astroturf. If the Republican overlords didn’t agree with Erickson, he would no longer be working for CNN and wouldn’t get his crazy message out. If the plutocrats wanted the teabaggers silenced in the national debate they could accomplish it by pulling funding. The fact that they haven’t means they’re waiting for someone else to blink.
Yutsano
@beergoggles:
You just contradicted yourself there.
Dennis SGMM
From a news item:
We’ve already heard that, I know. What struck me about Boehner’s statement is that the GOP loves them some Unitary. They were all jerking off over the Unitary Executive when Bush the Lesser was president and now that the the House is all they have they’re getting a woody for the Unitary House.
The word “dictatorship” aptly describes a government that combines the executive, legislative and judicial in a single
branch. There are many words for those who consciously try to accomplish that, so many in fact that you have to work alphabetically from “Assholes” to “Traitors.”
superdestroyer
The former Republican overlords gave the Republicans Bush I, Bush II, nominated Bob Dole, and nominated John McCain. If anyone is not interested in winning elections, it would appear to be the former overlords. If there is anyone who is short-sighted and not thinking about the future, it was not the former overlords.
The former overlords, as represented by their mouthpiece Karl Rove, that that the Republicans could survive as the Democratic-lite party, could spend like drunken sailors, and could out pander the Democrats for Hispanics votes. The former overlords have been shown to be massive failures.
The problems that the Republicans have is they still have not figured out how to overcome the failures of the Bush Administrations.
Sko Hayes
All this last minute posturing reminds me not of the Terry Schaivo debacle, but a disaster on a smaller scale that happened last year.
Remember reading (last October) about the family in Tennessee, whose house burned down, while the fire department stood and watched? All because the family had not paid their annual fee to the fire department. Story here for those who missed it:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/tennessee-firefighters-watch-home-burn/
Now we have the Teabaggers, who have decided that they don’t want to pay for things they don’t need (though other people certainly do need them), want the country to default (IOW, let the house burn down) and when the walls are smoldering ashes around their feet, will blame Obama, just like the owners of the house blamed the fire department (even though the fire was caused by burning trash too close to the house and leaving it unattended) for the house burning down.
Tehanu
Reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, in which Screwtape is constantly talking about the head of the Lowerarchy, Our Father Below (a.k.a. Dick Cheney….)
Glidwrith
Has anyone entertained the notion that the teabaggers are doing exactly what the Overlords want? Case in point: Goldman Sachs and others shorted the CDS’s and made a shitload of money when it all went south. There are already reports of Eric Cantor shorting the U.S. Bonds – doesn’t it stand to reason there’s a huge shorting of the bonds by our overlords and they WANT a default so they can make another shitload of money?
beergoggles
@#55 Yutsano:
There is no contradiction. The Koch/Murdoch astroturf groups are doing exactly what they want. It spurs their narrative and they’re still making money on it.
Carolina Dave
Kudos to 21 VH in east TN. Just met my relatives from ET at a family renuion and was suprised to hear they weren’t buying the BS. Very religious folk, and with both NC and TN state gov going Republican I expected to hear some tea party rhetoric. big surprise.
It’s all anecdotal but everybody there was in the sweet spot of where you hear “white” people are trending Republican according to the polling. I was suprised to hear comments such as “Sara Palin just needs to be quiet, she’s not even running for gosh sake.” and “Michelle Bachman? that lady is just crazy or crazy mistaken.” from WOMEN.
my Conservative cross border family seemed to accept that the current (R) idiots at fed and state levels had gone way beyond the mandate of what was expected. But, just like with progressives and Obama, who will vote with him even though he has pissed (us) off, my conservative family may all ultimately vote for Repubilicans because of who they fear is worse.
A first step is recognizing the crazy or irrational. I am optimistic until Obama sells us out.
Rome Again
@Glidwrith:
If they sent the economy into a tailspin, it would be the LAST shitload of money they made. Is it time to tally the toy count?
fuckwit
I’m going full-Godwin on this.
This is the same Frankenstein monster that the Overlords of Germany lost control of with Hitler in the Weimar era. A drooling, xenophobic, ideological, doctrinaire, insane maniac cult of uneducated, over-propagandized rabble, which initially served their purposes, but then got out of control and shoved the Overlords out of the way.
Hindenburg wasn’t just the name of a blimp, mind you.
The wealthy industrialists of Germany were ever so happy to see Hitler’s thugs take out the Communists, and the unions, and the anarchists, and every other non-right-wing obstacle to the Overlords. It was wonderful to them. And then… suddenly Chancellor Hitler, and then war and atrocity, and then disastrous defeat.
This is exactly the same thing playing out now. The corporate overlords and masters of the universe were ever so happy to see the teabaggers driving the “no new taxes!” charge, until they decided to drive it off of a cliff. Shit, even GROVER FUCKING NORQUIST has realized how out of control this is.
There are no brakes on this thing. This deal with the devil that the overlords have done was a deeply stupid thing, and now the country is destined for ruin.
Nemesis
Too much has been made of the “Wall Street doesnt want default” meme.
Wealthy interests are willing to put up tens of millions of dollars to effect political change around the world. A Wall Street drop would be painful for the elite, but not unwanted. Yes, the well-healed could short CDS’s. That looks like its as good as printing free money. Point being, the wealthy willingly sacrifice money (as an investment in change that benefits themselves) where necessary. Its their brand of pitchfork.
If we default, there will be uncertainty, fear and chaos. This creates the perfect environment for unpopular ideas to be made into bad policy.