Charles Pierce has a must read post at Esquire:
By any conventional measure, and entirely through their own fault, the Republicans have produced a field of candidates so utterly comical, so completely devoid of conventional political merit, that the field itself is a strong evidence for the elimination of the Republican party. The frontrunner is a simuloid fake. The leading contender is a horndog as surprised to discover that women did not want him as he was to discover that China had The Bomb. The leading “intellectual” thinks Barack Obama “…is about as candid and accurate as Bernie Madoff in what he tells the American people” and then, of course, decries the incivility that is drowning out the important discussion we need to have about the issues facing This Great Nation. The rest of them are concerned about zygotes, black helicopters, and whatever else is simmering in the Bachmann-Paul-Santorum stewpot. And there is Jon Huntsman, the invisible former governor of Utah, reasonably sentient human, and proven non-horndog. This isn’t a primary campaign field. It’s a condo-board election at the Hell Country Estates.
And I must highlight this paragraph because of its sheer brilliance:
My god, Caligula died centuries too soon. Today, if he’d brought his horse into the Senate, some careerist Beltway journo would find that the horse had whinnied some “interesting new approaches” to our “entitlement crisis.” The horse would be on Meet the Press the following Sunday with David Gregory, who would ignore the fact that there is a fking horse sitting across the table from him and concentrate instead on something the horse had whinnied five years ago that seems to have been contradicted by something the horse whinnied the day before. And then Tom Brokaw would come on to mumble something about how horses were more politically savvy back in his day.
You’re going to want to read the whole thing. It’s perfect.
Open Thread, I guess.
[cross-posted at ABLC]
The prophet Nostradumbass
I read that post last night, it’s brilliant. Joe Bob says, “Check it out”.
cintibud
WIN!
Tom in NOLA
Maybe John should just hire Pierce and cut out the middleman?
I’m sure this has probably been suggested….
Seonachan
Yuck.
Calouste
Well, one bit of good news today, Berlusconi is going to resign. Hope that’s the last we see of that particular plutocrat.
Baud
Sorry to be contrarian, but I hate the meme that the Democratic Party is somehow responsible for the current state of the Republican Party. It’s our political culture’s (including media and voters) inability to make the Republican Party accountable for their own actions that has resulted in the current state of the GOP.
Elizabelle
Please let this be the death throes of the Republican party, and may the death not linger and linger and linger.
Time’s up. You’re proving it weekly with your ridiculous debates, both in who is debating, what they’re debating, and what they’re NOT debating.
Martin
After reading the Pierce post, I got to thinking of the Republican
presidential contenders as cast members on Gilligan’s Island. Here’s
my lineup:
Captain: Cain
Gilligan: Perry
Professor: Gingrich
Mr. Howell: Romney
Mary Ann: Bachmann
Ginger: ?
Mrs. Howell: Paul?
I think that they might have careers after Obama has been re-elected,
after all.
Cat Lady
I keep being told that the Villagers won’t pay any attention to criticisms of them, but Charlie and K-Thug are getting really hard to ignore when large chunks of the blogosphere picks up everything they write to trumpet it. One can only ignore large numbers of people pointing and laughing at you for so long (looking at you Bobo and Gregory). If I’ve learned anything from OWS, it’s that if you correctly identify the problem and pick the right target, amazing things happen.
Ben Cisco
Yeah, loved this too. I’ll add the comment I made on my blog:
__
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Baud: I agree. Democrats have talked about the Republicans and
1) The media dismisses it as whining
2) Voters keep electing Republicans.
Elizabelle
@Calouste:
From your lips.
Berlusconi has offered to resign.
“With conditions.”
The “conditions” should be entertaining.
gocart mozart
Obligatory Charles Pierce link? It’s all good though.
Citizen Alan
Just voted against the fetus fetish amendment. Sizable anti-26
crowd at polls but the line wasn’t too bad. I was disappointed to be reminded that Mississippi dems are so inept that three of the top five statewide offices had a Repuke running unopposed.
geg6
@Elizabelle:
I’m guessing naked dancing girls feature prominently.
RossinDetroit
Pierce is a treasure. Slack jawed in amazement at the political dumbitude yet able to express just the right amount of outrage. This would be way less fun without him.
On the serious side, WTF actually has happened to the GOP? They used to have such a deep bench and now they’re fitting the groundskeeper and water boy for pads and helmets. It’s like after McCain they just gave up trying.
geg6
@Citizen Alan:
It’s just the opposite in my township. There is not a single Dem running opposed. The county commissioner and row officers have opposition, but the Dems have a lock here in Beaver County.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@RossinDetroit: The manager kept complaining about how long the stars’ sideburns were, so they finally left.
gocart mozart
@Elizabelle:
I think Berlusconi and Putin should be sentenced to house arrest at a strip club. This will satisfy both themselves and the world.
Calouste
@Elizabelle:
He no longer has a majority in parliament, so he’s not in a position to set conditions.
sukabi
@Elizabelle: one could hope, but alas, the ‘beltway media’ have been providing life support for Republican corpse for the last 30 years… until they’re ready to pull the plug (or someone pulls theirs) they will linger and spread their sickness a bit further…
gocart mozart
@geg6:
I should have said that.
Baud
@efgoldman:
Read the last couple of paragraphs in the linked piece.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@RossinDetroit:
Their heavy hitters are sitting on the bench waiting for 2016, because even with the current economy nobody smart wants to be Obama’s punching bag next year, nor do they want to inherit the godawful mess that Obama is dealing with now.
ABL
@Ben Cisco: winner.
Jane2
Pierce is a national treasure.
RossinDetroit
@RossinDetroit:
Forgot to say I think the GOP hasn’t figured out how to co-opt the crazier elements of the Tea Party yet. Once they get all of the base back in line behind the establishment candidates again it will be whole different game.
This election might not be the end. It’s more likely a transitional stage. There’s just too much power and history behind the GOP establishment for them to be this incompetent forever.
JPL
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: What heavy hitters?
ABL
@gocart mozart: i normally wouldn’t simply cut and paste as i did without adding a little somethin’-somethin’, but gottdamn, that horse paragraph slayed me dead.
TG Chicago
@Tom in NOLA: I was kind of thinking the same thing. I just went back and checked, and each of the last 8 pages worth of posts has a Pierce mention. It’s getting close to parody.
JPL
From the NYTimes
link
Gin & Tonic
@TG Chicago: Better or worse than every third post being about what Sullivan said?
Ian
@JPL:
John Thune for one. As typical of a plains real white murkin as you can get, with out that whole Massachusetts thing and with a brand of religion that the born-again crowd does not happen to associate with the devil.
I happen to think he is an awful speaker, and does not have much accomplished, but I do not happen to vote in republican primaries.
To be a *rockstar* republican, you really only need to not get caught with your hand in someones pants. Though that explanation does not cover why Cain and Gingrich can still do so well?
Samara Morgan
@AL
i liek Pierce a lot better for you than Wiegel……but you are still a JAFI.
RossinDetroit
@TG Chicago:
If there were two people out there using a national forum to entertain us daily in hyperbolic style with the absurdities of our politics, you’d probably see half as much of Charlie here. Alas, he’s about all there is so he’s earned the attention.
RNoman
Since his debut on Esquire’s Political Blog, EVERY Charles Pierce item is must-read.
“the anticipation of a “major policy speech” from Mitt Romney… truly is like that breathless moment under the Mexican circus tent right before they bring out the monkey who can suck his own dick.”
“elite political journalism has become a whorehouse with 500 piano players”
“There ought not to be any surprises any more in politics. You knew what they were when you invited them in. You might as well be surprised and offended when your dog licks his nuts in front of the vicar.”
schlemizel
@Baud:
right – the truth is its the Republican Party that is responsible for the current state of the Democrats. If the Rs would have a sane candidate and intelligent polices the Ds would have to respond with actual Democratic candidates & polices instead of Republican Lite.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JPL:
Jeb at the top of the list. Rubio, and some others who either considered getting in this year or quickly dropped out after testing the waters (Thune, Pawlenty, Daniels, Christie). Huckabee still looks dangerous if he ever gets tired of his Fox gig and makes his peace with the big money men.
The thing is, who would want to try to thread the needle between dealing with the Tea Party loons in the primaries and Obama in the general election, unless you are somebody like Huntsman who is still just getting his feet wet as a practice run for later, or somebody like Mittens who is so close now he can almost taste it, and probably isn’t going to get another chance this good?
Baud
@schlemizel:
Yes, because the GOP wins far too many elections.
We have actual Democratic candidates running all the time. You want to sit in a corner waiting for mythical Jesus Democrat, go ahead.
RossinDetroit
@RNoman:
His return, actually. He was tearing it up pretty good 4 years ago on The Politics Blog. After that I found him only on Boston.com, and apparently he wrote a book as well.
schlemizel
BTW – I think there is a horse on Press The Meat every Sunday – well, half a horse, the back half.
And usually he is anus to anus feeding softballs to similar entities whos names all end in (r)
Elizabelle
@geg6:
That was my first impression too.
I am wondering if Berlusconi’s trying to negotiate a “do not prosecute” clause for once he shuffles off to Milan, or wherever he hails from.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@RNoman: You are killin me!
Jay in Oregon
That cartoon is fantastic; especially the last panel.
Elizabelle
@sukabi:
Maybe it will be easier to turn on the Villagers than it will on the worst of the Republican politicians.
Times are changing, and if the Villagers’ brand isn’t selling, or is openly mocked and derided …
Would love to see how much Charlie Pierce improves traffic to Esquire’s site.
(And especially if he and writers like him can help improve our civil discourse. Snarkily and accurately.)
JPL
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Huntsman appeared to be sane and he has 1 percent of the repubs supporting him. Thune might be a possibility because the party can not identify him with the Obama Administration. One of the new criteria of the repub party is to love the Edison light bulb and you have to believe global warming is a myth.
Samara Morgan
@ABL
you can only comment at Pierce via Facebook.
fuckin’ frictionless sharing asswipes.
no thnx on giving my demographics to be farmed for PROFIT!
schlemizel
@Baud:
Actually I work my ass off & send money to every Dem I can vote for & a few others I think worth my limited resources. Of the 3 National (a Congressman & 2 Senators) are two mythical Jesus Democrats & one R Lite. She is still better than the actual scumbag she replaced but we should be able to do better.
Unless they are forced to do better, by our whining at them & Republicans offering at least a viable alternative, there is still a strong chance of Social Security and Medicare being gutted for additional tax cuts for the 1%. Thats not magical thinking.
Ken
@RossinDetroit: It’s like after McCain they just gave up trying.
After?
Baud
@schlemizel: Glad to hear it. But I don’t believe for a minute that if the Democrats controlled Congress, there would be any chance that we would gut Social Security and Medicare for tax cuts. But I would love to have the opportunity to test that theory.
Davis X. Machina
I can’t read it at school due to the fact that Esquire is adult content.
Trend Micro InterScan for CSC SSM
Access to this URL is currently restricted due to a blocking rule.
URL: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/2012-election-field-6547238
Blocking rule: Block URLs of Adult
The web site you are attempting to access has been blocked.
sublime33
From now on, can we refer to the Republican field as “The Insane Clown Posse”?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@schlemizel: A very big part of the problem is that only one party turns out consistently: Republicans. They show up for midterms, off year elections (state level, like the amendments and special elections occurring in Texas today), and the presidental elections. The Democrats can only be reliably counted on during the presidential elections. Yes, I know the “base” shows up at most elections, but until we get most of the people into the polls in the off years, Democrats will continue to cater to the right to get reelected.
Linda Featheringill
@Tom in NOLA:
Pierce is under contract to the Magazine and cannot post here. He does visit the blog and enjoys it.
[I asked him, and he emailed me that answer.]
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Martin: Huntsman is Ginger, clearly.
JCT
I read that out loud to my husband last night and it took me five minutes to get through the Caligula’s horse bit because I was laughing too hard. Fucking funny. But probably could happen.
handsmile
BOY HOWDY! What a spectacular day this is shaping up to be!
Silvio Berlusconi is negotiating his resignation as Italian prime minister (according to the Guardian)!
Joe Paterno will be stepping down “within days or weeks” as football coach of Penn State (according to NYT)!
Herman Cain’s sole electoral asset, his supposed “likeability,” is about to self-destruct as his campaign goes full-smear against the women accusing him of sexual harassment (according to TPM)!
John Kasich and anti-union zealots are about to suffer a humiliating defeat in Ohio (according to kay here at BJ, et al)!
What a frabjous day! The only real piece of bad news I’ve come across is that the White House Office of Science and Technology has issued a statement that there is no evidence that aliens exist. But that’s undoubtedly another cover-up by the Obama administration (according, I’d have to expect, to any number of far-right organs.)
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Davis X. Machina:
Esquire is one of the few sites not blocked by the filtering software at work…
ruemara
I do wonder why the problem with the Republican Party is that the Democratic Party has failed to make them accountable. That was a jarring conclusion to what was a fully epic rant. And that is why Charles Pierce is not always on my must read. He has a great grasp of the problems and issues, then the oddest conclusions, at times.
geg6
@Samara Morgan:
Um, you can say you don’t want your comments posted to Facebook. There’s a little box that you check. Surely a genius like you can figure that out.
harlana
@JPL: The problem I have with Huntsman, aside from the fact that he’s republican, is he tries to present himself as the outlier, yet he is in complete denial with regard to (or rather refuses to acknowledge) what has become of the republican party. He is either too timid or in complete denial.
As someone noted earlier in the thread, you must be able to identify the problem before something can be fixed. I say it all the time but, until recently, I got shushed a lot.
xian
an awesome political blog that matoko_loco can’t/won’t comment on? sounds too good to be true, walla.
geg6
@ruemara:
Are you kidding? Are you telling me that elected Democrats have done a single thing to make the Republicans accountable for their bullshit for the last 30 years? I’ll sit and wait while you wrack your brain to try to come up with any examples of where they actually have (though there are a couple of exceptions, no one ever pays attention to them because they are DFHs like Al Franken).
Obama is starting to but it’s been since my childhood (and LBJ) since anyone has called them the greedy, cretinous liars that they are. Hell, even during Watergate, they pussed out and let Ford pardon Nixon. He should have been impeached for that himself. At the very least, they should have refrained from bestowing the “Great Savior of Democracy” award on him for it. But instead, they joined in to all the paens to Jerry for moving forward and not wallowing in the past.
dmsilev
@handsmile:
They’re obviously covering up Obama’s *real* birth certificate. The one from Proxima Centauri.
I mean, duh.
Mino
@geg6: Boy, did that mistake come back to bite us in the ass.
I don’t know who did the worse damage, Ford, by subverting the law, loud an proud, without a word of oppo from Congress or Bush, by just flatly ignoring the law and daring anyone to do anything about it. I guess Bush knew his critics pretty well.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@geg6: But you just dismissed evidence in the exact same way the media does: Their DFH’s so they don’t count, and also, both sides do it.
Mino
@dmsilev: Hell, I could wish for aliens to save us from ourselves.
ruemara
@geg6: I’m sure screaming at me will work, but I still don’t see what elected democrats should do, when you have a sizable portion of the electorate that rewards their lunacy. You want “calling them out” (which I’d like to know what that entails). There’s only one problem, that works as theatre. But it does not get progressives, independents and dems out to the polls in non-presidential elections. Using the example of Franken, his pundit personality differs from his elected personality. I’m on his list, I supported him, he hardly ever uses the language that seems to count as calling Republicans out. So, you can scream at me a bit more over the internets, but I don’t see where you are correct. The Republicans get rewarded where it truly counts, votes from a devoted majority. Democrats don’t, they get the random groups who pull together to vote for, sadly, the political version of American Idol. Every 4 years.
geg6
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
If no one pays attention to them (believe me, I do but I’m just a DFH, too), then they don’t exist. I accept the world I live in as it is, not as I wish it would be. Same with the media.
But if Dems of all stripes would get behind an effort to call out the GOPers, I think the media would suddenly notice all those DFHs.
geg6
@ruemara:
Hmmm, looked at my post and whaddya know? No all caps or even bolding. Just me being a bit incredulous that you can say that Dems have no responsibility for where we are, politically, today.
That’s just bullshit, but if you want to wallow in blissful ignorance about your own side because it’s too painful to accept any responsibility, feel free. Myself, I prefer to look back in anger and use that to fuel my actions in the future.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JPL:
Agreed.
However when looking into the future (i.e. 2016 and beyond) I tend to discount somewhat the current ideological state of the party, since these things can change, and especially in the wake of a deeply disappointing and unexpected loss when the knives come out and folks inside the party look to settle scores and shore up their positions for the future (e.g. look at the rollercoaster ride the GOP took from 1960 thru 1968). I don’t think the GOP is headed for a 1964 style shellacking in 2012, but I do think that the expectations their base has of gaining a crushing victory over Obama and the Dems are wildly out of line with reality and they are going to be massively disappointed with the results, in the wake of which we may get a real Night of the Long Knives amongst the GOP leadership. Which means the ideological landscape come 2016 may look rather different than it does today, assuming they continue to follow the priorities set from the top down when it comes to issues.
What is more constant in politics from year to year than ideology is organization and financial backing. And the striking thing about this upcoming 2012 contest is how thin the current GOP field is in these areas, which tells me that the real pros in the GOP are keeping their powder dry and waiting for 2016.
Tony J
@ruemara:
I didn’t read it that way. To me Pierce appears to be saying that the Republican Party has been pushing the same insane and destructive policies for decades, with the Democratic Party, as an institution, not only failing to call them insane and destructive, but giving them mainstream credibility by accepting them as legitimate political differences ammenable to compromise in the give-and-take of a healthy democratic system.
Combine that with the vitriolic hatred for anything ‘Democratic’ the Republican Party has spent decades instilling into its base’s ID, and you get here. With the Republicans about to select a Presidential ticket based on “Who would offend Democrats the most?”, saddled with a platform groaning under the dead weight of every wingnut brainfart of the last three decades and more.
Shorter – The Democrats should have done the decent thing and put the Republicans out of their misery years ago, but they held fire, and now the beast’s gone rabid and slipped its chain.
geg6
@Tony J:
Exactly.
ruemara
@geg6:
Yes, I am wallowing in ignorance and you are not indulging in anyway in an angry response to what I got from Pierce’s writing. OK.
@Tony J:
I get what you’re saying in this
but I think that the fact that there is a viable base that will crawl over broken glass to vote in every election for an ever more extreme right wing and as you said, has a vitriolic hatred of anything Democratic, you answer why they give them credibility in any way shape or form. What can I say, you think it’s the party’s job, I say it’s the voters job to not be such a collection of incredibly gullible saps. If people voted against Republicans and frankly, tossed out right leaning Dems, you’d see more progressive policies. Shorter – If voters would do the decent thing and quit humping the low taxes, hate the other guy, you too can be rich, zombie corpse, we could have nice things. We are going to disagree on this, but I do get your point. I just don’t think that it’s fair to say that the biggest linchpin in this simply the other party. Voters make up both parties, but only one is hegemonic in thought.
slightly-peeved
Americans have a starker choice in terms of elections than any other democratic nation as is. Americans vote less than almost any other democratic nation. The Democrats need to get over the idea that message discipline is a bad thing (it’s called solidarity, and it’s actually quite popular in the worldwide left). But I don’t think the Democrats created this strange American view that leaders should not just be competent, but exciting.
luc
These type of essays are all nice and the candidates are indeed unintentionally funny and tragic in their own ways. However, these are THE candidates because the Republican electorate likes and wants these type of candidates.
How does this lead to an implosion of the party, if about half of the electorate does not recognize the stupidity of it all, likes their candidates this way, as do most of our valued pundits????? Select a different electorate ?
ruemara
@slightly-peeved:
@luc:
exactly.
xian
@luc: well, my mom, a lifelong Republican, just left the party.
she has been convinced by Morning Joke that Obama is spineless and “in over his head” but she can see that the Republicans are no longer the party of sensible main street businessmen like her father.
xian
this whole idea that Gingrich is smart because of his pedantic community-college professor speaking style is ridiculous, btw. He is only smart in comparison with the average Republican presidential candidate, but so is pond scum.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@luc:
American turnout averages less than 50% of registered voters, so it is more like half of less-than-half of the electorate likes these candidates. The obvious solution select a different electorate is not as impossible as it sounds, you just have to mobilize some non-trivial fraction of the 50+ percent of voters who rarely or never actually vote. That was (I think) the theory behind the Obama campaign’s coalition building in the 2008 election.
Where Obama has failed up to this point with this theory is that he and his team were not able to get that same group to turn out for a mid-term election, or else 2010 would have gone very differently. Time will tell whether this is a long term project that will eventually prove out, or whether Obama’s attempt at broadening the electorate was doomed to failure and Karl Rove’s more Manichean view of the American electorate is a more accurate one. But I have to give Obama credit for trying to do it, as I think in the long run the path he has outlined is the most credible one we have for getting a more progressive govt and better policies out of that govt. The smaller the actual voter base is, the better it is for the right wing.
Ruckus
@RossinDetroit:
McCain was them giving up.
mclaren
@RossinDetroit:
Ronald Reagan.
Every insanity that spews from the drooling mouths of these lunatics first came out of Ronald Reagan’s lips back in the 1980s. He simply made the craziness sound so folksy and so homey and so charming that the press fell in love with him and the American people giggled at his faux pas, because he was so delightful and warm and kindly they didn’t bother to listen to the rampant lunacy he was spouting.