One bit of good news on a gloomy Monday evening: Charles P. “Idiot America” Pierce has taken up his new position at Esquire‘s Politics blog, and he’s starting with a bang :
… It is not possible to run for president as a Republican these days without at some level having to become a parody of yourself. Running within a radicalized, self-contained universe with its own private, physical laws and its own private history, with its own vocabulary and syntax that has to be learned from scratch almost daily, requires an ongoing manic re-invention that can do nothing but make the candidate look ridiculous to people outside that universe.
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This is how we get Mitt Romney, with his $290 million, telling an audience that he doesn’t “try to define who is rich and who is not rich.” Here’s a hint, Mitt. You’re rich. You’re filthy, stinking rich. You reek of money. You belong on a card in a Monopoly set, okay? Buy a damn monocle already…
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(Since he took his act national, Mitt’s finest moment may well have been telling Brian Mooney of The Boston Globe that, when he was doing his Mormon mission in France, he really wanted to be fighting in Vietnam. In other words, rather than pestering wine-growers in Provence, Mitt really wanted to be humping the pig across the Central Highlands. This is so stupefyingly fraudulent as to be goddamn close to immortal.)
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It is possible — although certainly debatable — that Mitt Romney would be less of a phony if the Republican primary process were not controlled by the gibbering loon faction of the party. Unfortunately, as demonstrated clearly by the events in Florida just now, that remains the case. The obvious story of the whole weekend is that the party’s base is for the moment running utterly amuck. It screamed to be covered. A Republican may well get elected president next year. But, whoever that is, first has to answer, constantly, to the voices in the party’s head. It’s exhausting work. It’s already eaten Bachmann alive, and Herman Cain is next on the menu. Which is probably why so much energy seems to be going into the promotion of candidates who are not running. Right now, the non-candidate du jour is Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who replaced Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, who replaced Governor Rick Perry of Texas, who made the capital mistake of actually running, and who already has flummoxed and disappointed Bill Kristol, maker of public men and truly unnecessary wars.
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Kristol, of course, is the yeast behind the intellectual ferment that has produced, in order, Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin. A sane country party would be wondering at this point about a party that takes this person seriously as a political thinker and a public intellectual. If Bill Kristol went to the track, he’d bet on the fucking starting gate. Nevertheless, he is what passes for a wise man in a party that has surrendered utterly to its intellectual Id…
Much, much more at the link. Enjoy!
The Republic of Stupidity
Really, Mittens?
Really, truly?
You really, really really WANTED to be in Vietnam, potentially getting your balalaikas blown off in some Godforsaken rice paddy… but you WERE FORCED to stay, and suffer, in France?
And did Mittens happen to give a REASON as to WHY, pray tell, he couldn’t FIND HIS FRICKIN’ WAY TO VIETNAM?
Or at the very least, the nearest Army recruiting outlet?
I mean… if he really, really wanted to go…
Chris
@The Republic of Stupidity:
God called him, dude. Your facts can’t repel arguments of THAT magnitude!
MikeJ
@The Republic of Stupidity: His French would have still worked.
But please Charles, get a copy editor. Immortal? Intellectual ferment? I realise your setup doesn’t work ohterwise, but the standard phrase is foment.
Dr J
Here in Orlando I heard and read about two women who were attending the CPAC debate/conference. One stated that her major concern was social security and she wanted to hear what the candidates had to say about protecting it. Another said she had grandchildren in school and their Pell grants had been reduced because of–get this, the money being spent by children of illegal immigrants who were getting in-state tuition. I really have difficulty comprehending how they could be concerned about these issues and not even consider the possibility that the Democrats are the ones that protect them.
binzinerator
Jeez. I just finished reading the previous thread on she’s-a-he wingnutz blogger, and saw this post title and thought it said ‘Six Fags Over Dagny Taggart’. That was good for one last hee-yuck before turing in…
suzanne
I know that Mitt Romney is the least shitty candidate on the GOP side who has a snowball’s chance of winning. But he’s just such a spineless, sociopathic, pathological piece of shit that I almost think Perry would be better. At least Perry has a compass, yanno?
Brachiator
Gee. I always thought that Romney was naturally phony, with a splash of the same craven ambition that led Gramps McCain to surrender the last shreds of his honor to get the GOP nomination.
Since this is an open thread, there was recently an interesting blog post protesting how DC Comics may have turned Catwoman and other female characters into little more than simplistic male fantasy sex kittens in their recent reboot of their main comics, despite the protests of women staffers (The Big Sexy Problem with Superheroines and Their ‘Liberated Sexuality’).
I am not sure if this may have come up before in a thread. I’ve been away from the InterTubes for a while.
Jenny
Is Mittens saying his dear father who he worships was wrong about Vietnam?
George Romney famously denounced the Vietnam war in September 1967 (while dear Mittens was using his college deferments), saying the war was built on a pack of military lies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSdSiBehQpI
Yutsano
@Dr J:
Because of shifty young bucks and teh ghey. If you think they’re voting only on those grounds I got a bridge to sell you.
The Dangerman
@Jenny:
If it gets him closer to the nomination, Pa goes under the bus.
It strikes me that 2012 may be the last time Viet Nam comes up in a national campaign; if Obama wins, 2016 is going to be 43 years since the end of the war.
Warren Terra
This is fantastic. I knew he wrote for Esquire‘s blog, but didn’t really want to bother to go through their blog picking him out, especially as he often wrote unsigned (recognizable, but unsigned – and to recognize him I’d have to read the others). His weekly letters to Eric Alterman’s otherwise moribund blog were the height of my political reading week.
Greyjoy
And about 3 minutes to the start of the next one.
300baud
@MikeJ:
Incorrect.
WeeBey
Well, now we can have a fucking election.
For serious.
No one of importance
Thanks for the link to a fabulously bitchy article, Anne Laurie. Very funny.
Chris
@suzanne:
When it comes to conservatives, I prefer a phony acting out of pure self-interest to someone who’s enough of a loon to actually believe all the shit he/she peddles to the voters. One of them’s still more bound by reality than the other.
Calouste
@suzanne:
Perry has a rudder. A deep, deep rudder. Not a compass. He’ll stay the course even though he doesn’t know where he is going.
Little Boots
love charles pierce. love him on stephanie miller, but really, just love him.
and these days, sincere, insincere, I just cannot imagine how anyone can vote Republican. anyone. really.
Warren Terra
Sadly, commenting there requires Facebook registration, which I refuse to do. Those folks just honestly scare me.
passerby
Thanks for linking to Pierce’s article Anne.
Had you not, I would never have known that someone could articulately, and so completely write down my exact opinion of current right wing politics.
ETA: “exact opinion” is a bit of an awkward phrase, but you know what I mean.
J. Michael Neal
@Chris: Romney has a compass. It just always points to himself.
Little Boots
one party in the two-party system is actually crazy. I don’t think we have really absorbed that, and what it means.
Little Boots
Romney may be the least crazy, which is something. and everyone despises him, but I still think he’ll pull it out in the end and be the nominee. and then things get really interesting. can the South swallow its ridiculous pride/bigotry and vote for the mormon over the darkie? we’ll see.
Spaghetti Lee
@suzanne:
If we have to have a Republican president, I’d vastly prefer the squishy, self-interested, unprincipled one, who can be reasoned with/compromised with/bought off, than a headcase like Perry who would drive this country off a cliff if he felt like it. Of course, the best solution would be no Republican presidents at all, ever.
Chris
@Little Boots:
This.
I acknowledge it, but I think my brain still hasn’t fully processed what it means. There’s just SO much of society based on the last five hundred or so years of progress and SO much of that they want to tear down…
Little Boots
yup, but there is that unemployment rate, and some people will hate it so much that they will vote for the party that never has and never will give a damn about the unemployment rate. we really do have a screwed up system in so many ways.
pete
@300baud: Thank you
The Dangerman
@Little Boots:
The PTB definitely wants Romney, so I could see him taking the nomination, but I don’t see how the Tea Party accepts Romney. 3rd party run? Are they more interested in taking out Obama or being “pure”?
Little Boots
@Chris:
it’s weird. and almost incomprehensible. I mean, I get it, but it’s still so unbelievable that I don’t quite accept it. it’s a problem.
Mark S.
I knew this Vietnam story was bullshit but I wanted to check it out. Willard finished his mission sometime in early 1969. Once back,
Why lie about this? Almost no one gives a shit about it. He probably succeeded in offending some Mormons by trivializing his mission (which, if you believe the fawning wikipedia article, was an important experience in his life). The man is just a pathological liar.
Little Boots
@The Dangerman:
I don’t either, except the old joke: Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. I think the Republicans are doomed, actually, but it could happen that they all fall in line behind the guy they hate and enough Independents join them. hopefully not, but still …
Redshift
Awesome. I knew he was going to be starting there, but I hadn’t checked it out yet. Once I started, I had to read through everything he’s posted there.
The Dangerman
@Little Boots:
Maybe, but if the Republicans put up Romney, another “squishy center type” like McCain, and lose to Obama, there will be Tea Party heads exploding from here to there (oh, what a sight to behold). I think they want their hard right winger and they damn well want him (or her) now.
Little Boots
@The Dangerman:
I know they do. but I don’t think they’ll get him. too much stupid. I could be wrong. it worked once before, with Bush, but this time something tells me they won’t get him. they’ll have to settle for the somewhat intelligent asshole. we’ll see, and obviously I could be totally wrong. but i see romney getting this nomination, through money and staying power and not being a complete clown.
Yutsano
@Little Boots:
Dubya did not run on teh crazy. In fact, he made it a point to sound as moderate and reasonable as possible then when he got
appointedelected he changed almost overnight into a hardcore Republican. Basically he lied to get into the office. Willard is trying that tack but his problem is he has no center to actually prevaricate from. Plus reasonable won’t win him the primary.The Dangerman
@Little Boots:
Oh, I agree there; there are some signals that the PTB doesn’t want Perry and Romney is the only one left in the current field that is playing with 52 cards in the deck. I guess I’m musing about a 3rd party run.
I’m probably beating a dead salmon, but I still think Palin is running; I won’t be convinced otherwise until the filing deadline passes. And, the shit of it is, I think she could zoom right to the top, just as Perry did.
Little Boots
@Yutsano:
good point. compassionate conservatism. and yes, Mitt has no center, but I still think he’ll outlast them. I could be totally wrong, obviously, but we’ll see.
MonkeyBoy
@Warren Terra:
Umm, you don’t have to pick through, you can subscribe to a RSS feed of just Charles Pierce.
Little Boots
and fun as it would be, I think Palin is going for the easy money and has no intention of doing anything as strenuous as running for president.
Little Boots
not entirely sure I blame her.
J. Michael Neal
Open thread bleg here. Anyone have any idea how to write some sort of brief advertising promo for my writing that I can post on Facebook and send around in a couple of LinkedIn networks I belong to? I just have no idea how to do that.
Yutsano
@The Dangerman:
I’m still not seeing a coalition of primary voters coalesce around Willard just yet. And if this goes to a brokered convention (which I already called weeks ago) then Mittens will get forced on the teahacks. They’ll vote for him to get rid of the near one, but they won’t be very enthusiastic.
Little Boots
they will. I think they will. when everyone else collapses. and again, I get that I could be totally wrong. there are reasons people would not vote for him, lots of reasons, but I think he will outlast the flakes. I do. and then he will implode in the general. may be totally fooling myself, but I think he will. we’ll see. then I’ll apologize4, for what it’s worth, but I don’t think so. I think Romney, then Obama in 2012. we’ll see, obviously.
Jeremy H
@MikeJ:
Yeast. Ferment. Do you get it now?
You might want to think a bit more before you mouth off like that. Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
amk
amen.
Yutsano
@J. Michael Neal: Can you distill what you are doing to about 20 words? If you can manage that, you can usually do a headline and a short blurb from there. And like, good luck, and stuff.
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
A brokered convention means Romney would almost be a sure loser in November; I can’t imagine the “brokering” not being extremely messy and not driving off a big chunk of the TPers.
Little Boots
mittens will prolly not be president anyway. but we cannot count on that.
Yutsano
@The Dangerman:
And I’ll have gourmet popcorn while watching the great meltdown.
Little Boots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0sAgm9Vz50
Little Boots
do not go away people. we have tina turner.
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
Ain’t no popcorn gourmet enough for such an event; I’m thinking something that would go well with a fine local Pinot. Maybe some local Abalone for all the baloney that would be coming out of Tampa.
It will be fascinating to watch it unfold; Romney should get his ass handed to him in 2 of the first 3 contests. After those three, the field could narrow to the top two fairly quickly; yeah, I could see Romney not having enough by the time the convention rolled around. The PTB’s have to prevent it, but they have hitched their wagons to a bunch of fucking whack jobs (there’s a Donner Party joke in there someplace, but I’m too damn tired or +’d to figure it out right now).
Little Boots
yay, dangerman is here.
Redshift
@Little Boots: A month or so ago, there were reports that Romney had the Hillary problem with fundraising — most of his money came from a (relatively) small number of donors who were tapped out. Has anyone hear anything more about that? I’m wondering if it was real, or if it was just one of those oppo rumors to try to get the Villagers to write him off.
Yutsano
@The Dangerman:
I would never insult a fine mollusk in such a fashion. I’m thinking these folks need to dig deep down into their roots. I’m talking pure Oscar Meyer fried bologna sandwiches.
There is, but I’m too flipping exhausted to tease it out right now. Having houses blow up in your neighborhood will do that though.
Short Bus Bully
Hot damn! I needed this kind of article today. Was a really shitty day and reading this made me chortle just a bit. Yeah, chortle. Sometimes that’s all you need.
Little Boots
@Redshift:
something tells me money ain’t his problem ever. he’s gotta have enough rich friends, and people like Karl Rove are more than willing to bankroll him.
Redshift
@The Dangerman: Hmm, a sufficiently wingnutty VP pick might be enough to head that off. As I recall, the wingnuts fell in line pretty well for McCain, even though they hated him, once he dangled the bright shiny wingnut Palin in front of them.
Maybe they’ll buck for the top of the ticket this time, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Royston Vasey
Time for USA vs Italy in the Rugby World Cup.
Live from Nelson (in the South Island) starting about now.
Foam Finger time!
USA! USA! USA!
Calouste
@The Dangerman:
Filing deadlines for the early primaries are late October – early November I read somewhere today.
Little Boots
it’s romney. just cause.
Royston Vasey
3mins
TRY!!!!!! Italy 5-0 USA; He plunges over for the score. USA tackling was poor though. Bergamasco gets the conversion.
Italy 7-0 USA.
The Dangerman
@Little Boots:
He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere, so beware.
I figure the cartoon that came from is several decades old, but … still memorable. That’s the trick for the business and writer above; to write something that will be remembered. Call it the “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles” rule.
@Yutsano:
No, in memory of the dearly “departed” Anthony and his wiener, no Oscar Meyer food.
J. Michael Neal
@The Dangerman:
We’re Democrats, so those had better be free range clams.
Royston Vasey
17 mins Holy Heck!
TRY!!!!! Italy 7-5 USA:
Italy really aren’t helping themselves by giving away penalties. There’s another one for not rolling away and it allows the Eagles to kick deep into the opposition half again. USA win the line-out Emmerich powers forward and passes to Wyles who jogs in to score.
Wyles gets the conversion too Italy 7-7 USA.
Spaghetti Lee
Thing is, there is a lot of “purity” stuff to attack Perry on. Gardasil, immigration policy, etc. I know Jen Rubin is execrable, but apparently her column today was about how Perry lives in that big fancy taxpayer-owned mansion, while that nice Chris Christie lives in his private house in the suburbs. I don’t know, maybe that’s stupid enough to be a wingnut line of attack.
I think there’s a lot of pushback on Perry, who’s supposed to be the great true conservative savior and all, and the more I think about it, it does make me think that there’s some people who still don’t want him around. And I wouldn’t bet against the GOP’s money wing. It might be the Wingers who vote, but it’s the Money that provides all the propaganda and the think tanks and the hey hey that tell them what to vote for and why. And if they want to steer the masses away from Perry, I think the opportunity’s there.
I’d rather have Perry, obviously, so I hope they either crash and burn, or Perry’s people recognize what’s going on and deliberately amp up his populist cred, allowing him to beat Romney’s money. Either way, I’d rather face Mr. Ponzi Scheme in the general then the moderate who gets sucked off my the press corps on a daily basis.
Yutsano
@Royston Vasey: Hakas. I demand hakas. :)
RareSanity
@Spaghetti Lee:
This sentence has either one too many “heys”, or one too few…
I’m relying on my vast “What’s Happening” knowledge for the “one too few” option…Not “What’s Happening, Now” though, that show sucked.
Chuck Butcher
@Chris:
The consequences go much farther than the election of loons by one Party, much farther. It also means that the stupidly almost insane is acceptable in the other Party. Pragmatists will wring their hands and advocate going with the almost insane – and then fucking call that a win.
James E. Powell
It also means that stupidly almost insane is now one part of the mainstream, one half of the ‘both sides do it,’ that will be presented to the no-information voters as reasonable, pragamatic, and more authentically American than anything that black fella can come up with.
Keith G
@Spaghetti Lee: Dream on.
It will be Romney. Sadly, the socio-economic landscape will lead to the election being a coin toss.
WereBear
Can you send links in a LinkedIn message? Or would it have to be in a your profile somehow?
Which leads to what always snagged me on Facebook: people who are not Facebookers get the blank wall of your welcome page; unless you do have a welcome page, and that’s where you also put your sample.
Davis X. Machina
@Yutsano: You want a haka? Try this: Teletubbies haka. And everything’s better with Lego guys. And gingerbread men.
Davis X. Machina
And gingerbread men. (Moderated. The three-link limit strikes again.)
burritoboy
No, I think the crazification of the Republican Party was actually always unavoidable for them. Here’s my argument.
1. In modern democracies (i.e. modern being after the French Revolution), there is always a political party whose platform is to defend whatever elite is created by modern capitalism. This is effectively nearly universal.
2. The strength of that political party varies from one modern democracy to another. Modern capitalism is, among other things, effectively an ideology – an ideology that was created primarily in the UK during the 18th and 19th centuries. Since, until very recently, intellectual discourse in English really also meant the intellectual discourse in the UK simply – the other English-speaking countries, while growing in prosperity and size, took until the 1950s to displace the UK as centers of discourse. So it makes sense that adherence to modern capitalism is especially strong in English-speaking countries (which includes the United States).
2a. That discourse of the 18th and 19th century was merely one inseparable part of the discourse that established the entire modern political regime of the English-speaking states. So, an unchanging and highly idealized theory of modern capitalism is ultimately baked into the foundation of all English-speaking polities.
3. Modern capitalism has business cycles. Business cycles inherently mean that modern capitalism is effectively irrational – both the over-expansions of the up cycles and under-performance of the down cycles are irrational behaviors.
4. That means that a political party whose platform is “modern capitalism” MUST be forced into defending irrationality as business cycles continue.
5. What this ends up meaning is that the political party whose platform is too closely wedded to modern capitalism will always be seeking to marry additional irrationalisms to its own core irrationality. What those additional irrationalisms are varies from time to time and from place to place.
Michael Bersin
Whoa, wait a minute. Mitt Romney spent a lengthy amount of time in France? Speaking French? Anyone think the republican base and defenders of the one true ideology are gonna let that one slide by? I think not. See 2004.
aimai
@The Republic of Stupidity:
That may have been the interview with Ann Romney in which she expressed her sympathetic understanding of what it was like to be poor and struggling by telling the readers that she and Mitt had “struggled” and lived in a basement apartment, sometimes even having to sell Stock to get buy. Yes: stock. Not livestock. Stock.
Oh the humanity!
aimai
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: An underground lair à la James Bond villain does not count as a basement.
RSA
@Michael Bersin:
Well, he did claim that he’d rather have been in a war zone.
jibeaux
I. Am. Dying.
Nemesis
Truly frightening is the prospect of the gop losing in 2012. If yet another national election is lost by goopers, then look out. One assumes the gop will reconstitute even farther to the right, which is exactly the SOP of the gop when national elections are lost.
Its difficult to imagine just how the goopers could rally together in an even more bat shit crazy clusterfucked disturbingly dysfunctional team following 2012, but dont put it past them.
Any predictions?
Samara Morgan
@Nemesis: the Wingularity menace.
i tole you guys– you will see men bark like dogs and speak in tongues in the run-up to Nov 2012.
After Obama is re-elected, then you will see the republican party tear itself in half like Rumpelstiltskin when the Queen guessed his name.
:)
4jkb4ia
Too depressed almost to post, but that made me smile.
Chris
@burritoboy:
I agree with this but I think it’s even more simple: in any democracy, there will always be a party representing the interests of the elites (whether they’re business elite or aristocracy or whatever). Despite being an elitist party, it needs popular votes to compete in the democratic world, and since it can’t do that by being on the side of the people, it more or less has to use things like identity politics, religious rhetoric and tons and tons of lies to rally people. All of which has its own momentum.
This already happened in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: elites stirred up antisemitism and played that card for all it was worth against their liberal and soshulist enemies in a sort of 1.0 version of the Southern Strategy. We know how that ended, and in your own words it was in some way unavoidable – Nazi Germany is what happens when so many people believe in things like Jewish conspiracies and liberal stabs in the back, and so many politicians have these people as their go-to constituency.
Kola Noscopy
Then, at long last we have a diagnosis: The Republican party has a grotesque Yeast Infection (Type Kristol), run amok for 30 years.
Ew.
Rommie
@ Nemesis: If they still have effective control of either half of Congress, they’ll Go Galt, blame the 4 years of results on the other guys, and go for 2016.
And that’s the best case scenario I can think up. Winning back the House helps a lot, but it’s hard to see 60 solid votes in the Senate – we’ll have one or more Kingmakers off to Six Flags over Dagny Taggart as the cars pile into each other in the fog.
Catsy
@Nemesis:
I’m counting on it. Because it means they’re screwed at the national level.
The biggest problem for the GOP is that at this point it really has degenerated to a cult. In order to vote Republican–let alone run as one–you have to internalize a vast number of completely irrational falsehoods to maintain the bubble of alternate reality they live in. They’ve dug themselves into a deep, deep hole of bullshit from which the only way out is for their leaders to commit electoral suicide by publicly acknowledging–and repudiating–the last 20+ years of lying and insanity. And for Republican voters to get it and seriously re-examine their beliefs rather than react with the predictable outraged denial typical of indoctrinated cult members.
A few big names have come close in recent years, but can’t penetrate the bubble. I think it would take an exhaustive discrediting and dismantling of the conservative media industry to really break through all the decades of disinformation. It’s not going to happen until the nominally non-partisan media outlets stop playing ball with the Republicans, and that’s not going to happen unless they see them as weak and out of power. You started to see glimmers of that between 2006 and 2008, and I think we’ll see it again if Obama gets a second term and the Republicans take heavy losses as a result of their growing extremism.
burritoboy
Chris,
I’m not sure I agree with you. I think it’s perfectly possible to have an elite that is genuinely popular with the population. For example, one can easily imagine a military elite whom a population likes because they are victorious militarily. After all, the United States had Presidents Grant, Washington, Jackson and Eisenhower; the UK PM Wellington, France De Gaulle and so forth. You can imagine other elites who are popular for other sorts of notable services for the people.
The difficulty is precisely with the business elite created by modern capitalism specifically. They are not elite because of any service to the state or people, or have notable accomplishments in a public realm and so on. Nor even are they particularly connected to providing goods that the population undoubtedly needs – at least the landowning aristocrat is primarily involved in growing food.
But the business elites of modern capitalism don’t fit any of those descriptions whatsoever, and thus their claims to legitimately rule are particularly dubious and unpopular. Anyone can see why Eisenhower is a plausible President, but it’s entirely unclear what success in building casinos (Donald Trump), running a pizza chain (Herman Cain), and doing deals for an electricity conglomerate (Wendell Wilkie) are supposed to mean for their abilities to serve the population.
Greyjoy
The crazification of the Republican party was inevitable once they started pandering to religious extremists like the Christian Coalition for donations and votes.
SFAW
But, please, MikeJ, either buy a dictionary or go to Dictionary.com.
Yeah, I know I shoulda (or as some people would say, “should of”) resisted the urge to pile on, but I’m pissier than usual today.
OK, I’ll say 10 Ave Marias and 10 Paternosters as penance.