Republican insiders are terrified of an awful lot of their leading Presidential candidates. I wonder what that means.
Also too. They seem to fear and loathe what effectively amounts to a majority of their own representation in the House. It’s all very strange.
Rafer Janders
I eagerly await a lot of “Republicans in Disarray” chin-stroking articles in the press…no? Only Democrats can be in disarray? OK, then. If those are the rules….
Wag
Strange, yes. But wonderful, too.
Jerzy Russian
Normally I would point and laugh, but the Republicans might take all of down with them.
gonzone
Blowback.
Thought they could use and control all the nuts. Now the nuts control them.
Palli
The trouble is they have the disciplined mechanism to command the “loyal” voters to do what they are told- once the Rovian bigwigs decide.
in fact, all this dumb stuff might be the well-planned prelude to mindless robotic republican voting when it counts in Nov. 2012.
Emma
Hold on. Let me find the smallest violin in the world… Somebody ought to have mentioned that all those cliches about riding the tiger exist for a reason.
Mino
I wonder if it is down ticket fear or fear of winning?
RossinDetroit
@gonzone:
This. The idiots were useful in winning a few elections. Now they want to run the show.
So much for our robust democracy. All it took was pandering to the wrong minority for a few years to tip a major party right off the rails. And there seems to be no center any more that’s interested in getting things back under control.
Cacti
I give big kudos to Obama and Reid for the way they divided the House and Senate GOP, and painted Boehner into a corner.
Boehner was told to take it or leave it on the Payroll Tax Cut extension, now he’s left flailing his hands and begging Harry Reid to bring the Senate back into session.
Loving the optics on this one.
rlrr
Brings to mind an old story about a scientist who creates a monster he is unable to control…
jibeaux
You know how homosexuality used to be considered a disorder, and was in the DSM, and then we stopped classifying it that way, most of us, and accepted it as not a big deal and just part of the buffet of people? The same thing needs to happen with people who self-identify as Republican, except in reverse.
Amir Khalid
@Emma:
The limerick goes:
There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
The classics, they have so much to say to us.
Cacti
@jibeaux:
They’ve already had Republicanism in there for a while.
Except they call it Antisocial Personality Disorder.
RossinDetroit
Is it just my imagination or were there once moderate Republicans who held sway and kept the party’s worst impulses more or less under control?
I mean, look at Reagan and Bush the First. By the ‘standards’ of the modern GOP they’re hopeless surrender monkeys.
JGabriel
Tim F.:
“My GOD, what have we done? When we decided to cobble together a short-term electoral majority by expanding Nixon’s Southern Strategy from racists to religious fundamentalists, homophobes, conspiracy theorists, and people stupid enough to trust Fox News, we never thought they would take over the party from the funding core of rich tax-evaders!”
.
rlrr
@RossinDetroit:
Back in the day, there were many Republicans in the House an Senate that weren’t totally insane.
Brian R.
This Wall Street Journal editorial is delicious.
RossinDetroit
The voters aren’t looking too delighted with the candidates either, if that’s any solace. They’re going through them like a Kardashian trying on party dresses. “Nope, this makes me look fat” (tosses on floor).
Maude
@RossinDetroit:
They were still pretending to be moderate.
The Republicans have a problem with the payroll tax cut no vote. People are angry and this is holiday time. They really screwed up.
Cacti
@RossinDetroit:
Congressional Rockefeller Republicans have gone the way of the dinosaur.
Jennifer
Churchill once said, “Dictators ride to and fro on tigers, but the tigers are growing hungry.” Same applies here. You can only taunt the mob with red meat for so long before it decides it’s ready to dine. And when it dines, the first to get eaten are the ones who were waving around the red meat.
dmsilev
That there’s a modicum of sanity shared among those insiders?
RossinDetroit
@Cacti:
Wiped out by climate change?
Cacti
@RossinDetroit:
Occasioned by the impact of a giant, world killing meteor known as the right wing.
dmsilev
@Brian R.: Tears of the wingnut.
Quoth the Journal:
Sweet, sweet schadenfreude.
El Tiburon
These republicans don’t know how nor really care to govern. What they do accel at is pissing in the punch bowl. They are Sean Hannity Ann Coulter incarnate.
They can toss out chum to their rabid zombies starving for liberal brains, but when it comes to actually leading and making tough choices, they don’t know whether to shit or wind their watch.
What have they done since taking the House? NAFT.
MattF
Not only were there once moderate Republicans, there were once Librul Republicans. My own congressional district was represented for many years by Connie Morella, who was well to the left of most Democrats.
But that was then. Now Republicans have a party that is identified with ideology (Winger), region (Greater Confederate States of America), race (Whiiiiite), and age (Gen Medicare Go-Kart).
Snowball
@Brian R.:
It is delicious. But it amuses how they can’t even get the simplest of facts correct. For example:
The tax increases Obama has proposed would only hit the very wealthiest. Most people wouldn’t even see an increase. As a matter of fact, a big part of the 2009 stimulus package included tax cuts for small businesses etc.
I used to go to the WSJ for my business information. I changed sources a long time ago due to the fact that I couldn’t trust what the WSJ said anymore.
Cacti
I think Cantor made a power play to finally wrest the Speaker’s gavel from Boehner’s hands.
Seeing the House and Senate GOP divided like this just doesn’t happen, unless someone wanted it to.
Humpty Dumpty Boehner was pushed.
JGabriel
@RossinDetroit:
That must have been the Gingrich dress.
“This Bachmann dress makes me look crazy, the Paul dress makes me look like Frank Perdue, the variegated shifting moire pattern of the Romney dress is giving me epilepsy, the Perry dress makes me look dumb, and I don’t even want to look at the Santorum dress.”
“What about the Huntsman dress?”
“What about it?”
.
Schlemizel
What scares me is that the Masters Of the Universe will not tolerate this sort of thing. They need control and if the Republicans really have spun out of control there is only one other option.
Personally I feel they already have their hands up the backsides of more than a few Democrats(heck they can even drink a glass of water while some Dems speak). How hard would it be for them to get a working majority that allow things to remain pretty much unchanged while they bleed the last few drops of life out of all of us?
MattF
@Schlemizel: Fortunately, the Democrats are not an organized political party.
steve
wonder if right now grover’s minions are shrieking into Reps’ phones all over the hill, for them voting to let a tax cut expire.
GregB
Mitt the Zombie Mannequin was, just this week, making a campaign pitch that called President Obama divisive.
The same asshole was touting his endorsement from Ann Coulter last week.
They are a party full of sociopaths.
Ben Cisco
Fixed.
Schlemizel
@MattF:
Which means they don’t have to own all of them just enough
Brian R.
@Snowball:
The reporting, I think, is still solid, but that Op-Ed page went batshit crazy about a decade or so ago. Remember the “Lucky Duckies” bullshit?
Elizabelle
@Brian R.:
The WSJ op ed page has been bat crazy since the Reagan administration.
I used to marvel how the editorial writers seemed not to read the reporting in their own very good first section.
Cognitive dissonance.
(And yes — letting that Bush” temporary” tax cut for high earners is indeed a massive “tax increase.” Yes indeed.)
ChrisNYC
Luke Russert is, no kidding, on the verge of tears over how difficult things are for House GOPers. Really, his aspect is the same as it would be if he was talking about a sitting President being killed. So dolorous.
Cliff in NH
Don’t forget that News corp owns the WSJ
Napoleon
@Brian R.:
It has been batshit since at least the late 80s when I first started reading it. It was always hilarious to see something on the editorial page that was directly contridicted by a story 2 pages away.
300baud
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
JPL
@Napoleon: The Washington Post is the same. During the run-up to Bush’s war on Iraq, Walter Pincus article’s debunked most of what was said but you wouldn’t know from their editorials. It’s the new MSM. They all copy Murdoch.
Cliff in NH
@JPL:
Murdoch Owns the Wall st Journal.
kindness
This morning the GOS had a link to a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed The GOP’s Payroll Tax Fiasco; How did Republicans manage to lose the tax issue to Obama?
I linked over and read it. It was correct about several things (how the repubs are sucking in this fight) and wrong about several (it’s a Murdoch buttwipe paper, c’mon now!). Then I went to the comments & read a bunch of them. Maybe I’m dating myself but it wasn’t that long ago the comments at the Wall Street Journal articles were, how shall I say this…a little more cerebral and a little less troglodite republican teahaddist than they are now. Maybe I’m confusing the paper with the pre-Murdoch one. I just found it surprising that so many brain dead Teabaggers now go there to slander their mortal enemies & ideas (you know, everyone but the 27%). It’s a sad thing that you don’t hear actual conservatives complaining about the idiots in their midst.
Napoleon
@Cliff in NH:
The WSJ was like that long before it was sold to Murdoch.
NickM
That’s because they are the idiots in their midst.
Geeno
@JGabriel: Spot on.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
Tom DuhLay is a fascist shitstain, but he isn’t stupid…about some things, and this is one of them. He knew that to exercise power most effectively, he could not be the Speaker. That’s what Hastert was selected to be the front man for the DuhLay regime.
Cantor, on the other hand, wants to wear the crown, and all this will do is insure he’ll never get a chance to do so, because the reversal of 2010 in 2012 will be a wondrous thing to behold. Furthermore, what’s left of the mob of shit throwing monkeys that remain will blame Cantor for this fuckup, and he’ll never be Speaker, even in the GOP retakes the House sometime in the future.
Geeno
@NickM: All actual conservatives are Diane Fosse now?
Villago Delenda Est
@ChrisNYC:
I revel in the pain of the vile little shit.
He’s the poster boy for tumbrels for the families of Villagers, just to be sure.
kdaug
@Cacti: I think this is right.
And, lo, behold the coalition Cantor wants to ride – the Teahadist Brigade and the Zealots.
Cheers, Cantor.
But I believe that “tiger” you’re riding has a name.
Cerberus.
David Hunt
@steve:
Well in public (twitter) he’s saying that the whole mess in Democrats’ fault and implying that they’ve actually planned it this way. Digby’s got the screen capture.
He might be sceeching at the Rethugsin private, but I’m not sure. What I’ve read about Grover has led me to believe that what he’s really about it lowing income taxes, especially on rich people. my impression is that his “Shrink government until we can drown it in the bathtub” schtick has always translated to “shrink revenues to the point that government can no longer afford social programs and has to kill them.” Anything that makes people less trusting of Social Security would serve that goal.
redshirt
Y’all think Grover cares? That would imply his “CUT TAXES ALL THE TIME” ethos is sincere, but I ask you – when is anything a Conservative does “sincere”. If the Rethugs are doing a tax increase, I’m sure it will be A-OK in Norquist Central Command, as long as the 1% is not overly troubled by it.
Taxes on poor people is just fine for these tax cutting zealots.
The Republic of Stupidity
@JGabriel:
Sounds suspiciously like Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles…
Judas Escargot
@steve:
I seem to remember little Grover not being concerned much with letting the tax holiday expire. (He gave Congress some rhetorical room by defining a tax holiday expiration as “not a tax increase”).
That might have changed, but I haven’t seen anything to the contrary (yet).
burnspbesq
@kindness:
If the Wall Street Journal had pictures of Mark Sanchez on the back page, it would be indistinguishable from the New York Post.
Zach
Yet they’re not rallying around Romney who is the only electable candidate aside from Huntsman (who may not be different enough from Romney to be the next flavor-of-the-week). Rove trashes all of the other candidates, but doesn’t praise Romney. The WSJ trashes everyone, but doesn’t praise Romney. It looks like the powers-that-be are trying to weed out the crazy candidates with some level of support before a savior steps forward to take over.
I’m not a huge conspiracy person, but I saw what happened to Huckabee in 2008 and what happened to Gingrich this week. I think that even post-tea-party there’s enough of an organized GOP machine to turn this around on a dime and the math works fine if someone announcing today wins every primary they can get on the ballot for.
Schlemizel
@The Republic of Stupidity:
for those, like me that can’t view video I am going to guess it is this line:
I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.
They have been using Hedley Lamarr’s “plan B” for 40 years now
Linda Featheringill
@kdaug:
Ceberus:
Okay. I had to look it up. The hell hound guarding the gates of Hades.
Are you saying that Cantor might be volunteering for a tragedy of mythical proportions?
Villago Delenda Est
@Zach:
The idea of a brokered convention that presents the drooling teatard masses with the designated in smoke filled rooms messiah of the GOP seems to be in play here. Jeb? Christie? Daniels? Who can they find to carry the flag onto a battlefield where they’re most likely to give their political lives for the most lost cause since the slaveholding assholes of the 19th century?
FormerSwingVoter
@RossinDetroit:
Heh. “For a few years”. That’s adorable.
FormerSwingVoter
@MattF:
Yeah, because the Democratic party consists entirely of folks that our Galtian overlords decided must be destroyed. Union factory workers and environmentalists don’t seem like a natural coalition to me.
Zach
@Villago Delenda Est: You can’t have a brokered convention without a tightly contested primary where multiple candidates earn many delegates and no candidate or coalition can easily form a majority. It’s harder in the GOP because there are no super delegates. Presumably most delegates that Romney doesn’t win will go to the designated not-Romney candidate, but at this point Romney is the only one with a well-funded, organized campaign and the only one who stands to win any states outside of the first few. If it’s even close, the other candidates are mostly such glory hogs that they’ll bite at the first cabinet post Romney offers them to pledge their delegates:
“Newt, what do you think about your GA, SC, and FL delegates for Secretary of Space and Moon Science?”
kdaug
@Linda Featheringill: I’m saying he’s saddlin’ up for a ride and don’t know the destination.
(Read: End o’ GOP).
SRW1
The revolution devouring its spawn. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
Betsy
@Villago Delenda Est: Funny you should mention that. The poor whites of the South have been dragooned and/or bamboozled into dragging around the rich slaveholding (now, just substitute “thieves-of-other-people’s-labor”) assholes’ pro-wealthy agenda for a long time now.