Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

White supremacy is terrorism.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Consistently wrong since 2002

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You are here: Home / Politics / Crazification Factor / There’s that number again…

There’s that number again…

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Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire has an item on a Fox News poll that asked Republican voters which candidate was running a nasty campaign. The Professor came in second after “Don’t know” to win the honors and Mittens was third. But it was the question about positive campaigning that brought out the magical number of the wingnut base:

In contrast, 27% say Mitt Romney has waged the most positive campaign among the GOP candidates.

Willard is running a campaign of dog-whistles, outright lies and smears that would make Lee Atwater blush. Somehow I’m not surprised that the crazification factor thinks that kind of campaign is “positive”.

And with that how about an Open Thread.

Cheers

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  3. 3.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    So that’s 27% of the people that call themselves Republicans, which is approximately 27%. Getting kind of fractal. What color would the guy who is the .27**Infinity?

    White, obviously.

  4. 4.

    Greg

    I’d actually expect Romney to have gotten a higher percentage than the 27% crazies, simply because he really hasn’t been attacking the other loony candidates in the Republican primary all that much.

    To a Fox News viewer, all the lies and smears about Obama are just part of the background and hardly consciously register at all.

  6. 6.

    Stan of the Sawgrass

    Anybody else read the piece on Bain in the WaPo this morning? Not only did they suck the blood out of the companies, they sleazed their way out of the bid they’d made to win the contract. Money quote: “When Mitt Romney ran Bain Capital, his word was not his bond.”
    (sorry, no link.)

  7. 7.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    @The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:

    its hard out there for a player, i mean the essence of quality poop jokes is not that much different than satire. you have to walk the line of truth. in poop jokes, you don’t want an observer to say, that happened to me/had that done to me and it saved my life. kills the mood.

    of course just as one door opens….there is a whole world of donor poop jokes that have a brand new context to play in.

  8. 8.

    Mark S.

    If you live outside of Iowa (where Romney attacked the shit out of Gingrich), you could honestly say Romney has run the most positive campaign. I think Romney’s team has done a pretty good job of oppo research on the non-Mitt of the month and feeding the results to stenographers like Politico. I don’t have any proof, but I think Cain’s implosion had Mittens written all over it.

  9. 9.

    gnomedad

    Anything leading to trashing and defeating the Kenyan Muslim socialist Nazi racist narcissist usurper is “positive”.

    ETA: Ah, hells, forgot to misspell the s-word.

  10. 10.

    Drum Circles And Weed

    If calling the most right-wing Democrat of all time a soshilist is “positive”, then yeah, I guess you can say that Willard is running a positive campaign. At least he’s not calling anyone blah. Yet.

  12. 12.

    Punchy

    So….the news last nite in KC talks about a new proposed law in KS that requires not only a photo ID to vote, but also proof of citizenship. The old lady and I had an impromto argy-bargy about exactly what constitutes PoC. She said a passport, minny. I said no way…not nearly enough peeps have one. Birth cert is obvious, but how many poeple are going to schlepp that ID-theft-nightmare-waiting-to-happen-if-lost to the local church/school to vote?

    So what besides a birth certy and a passport could be used to demonstrate citizenship?

  16. 16.

    FridayNext

    I think there is also a huge problem with the lack of a clear definition of what is and is not a “negative” ad. Is it anything that points out ANY negative traits of your opponent? Does it have to lie? Stretch the truth? Is it a matter of tone?

    If I ran an ad telling the story of Mitt and traveling with his dog on the roof of his car, is that negative? How about if I use blood dripping fonts and sad little puppy faces and Sarah MacLachlan songs? Add devil horns to Mitt’s head and a dog on his pitchfork?

    I find that, like most everything else, people define negative campaigning as saying negative things about my candidate. If my candidate attacks the other person, well that’s just telling true stories.

  17. 17.

    Linda Featheringill

    @Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:

    Fecal transplants:

    Treatment for Clostridium difficile infection in the colon. C. diff can be VERY hard to cure. Sometimes they take out sections of the bowel that are infected. Fecal transplants are fairly new and used in an effort to prevent having to cut out the bowel and give the poor person an ostomy bag. The transplants have immune factors in them to fight the C. diff.

    This is sort of like giving a gamma globulin shot when you are exposed to hepatitis.

    C. diff can and does kill through complications associated with chronic diarrhea.

    And yes, the whole thing is somewhat weird.

  20. 20.

    Catsy

    @Yevgraf: And you just know there are specialists dealing in exactly this process.

    I can imagine their team motto: “Eat shit and live.”

    ETA: Fucking WP! I swear, whoever wrote this spam filter is the laziest, most incompetent motherfucker to ever have the poor judgment to call themselves a developer. Just how goddamn hard is it to change the fucking match method to whole word rather than substring, or to implement an “exclusion” list that skips over common dictionary words with that substring.

    Gods, the sheer incompetence.

  26. 26.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Benjamin Franklin:

    I confess I never heard of Craig Murray. But I read some of the comments to his post (not the LATimes comments he linked to) and was a bit startled to see one of the commenters (“Crab”) citing, in a fairly hefty quote, the relevant John Cole BJ post of last Friday.

    Doesn’t really mean anything, I guess, except to illustrate once again how numerous are the threads that link everything. Love those Awareness of Synchronicity moments.

  27. 27.

    Amir Khalid

    Fecal transplants — from what I’ve read about them, never you mind why — don’t actually involve a doctor inserting somebody else’s post-digestion matter up your you-know-where. (I was kind of disappointed to learn this.) Just the bacterial flora, preferably from a close relative. But apparently they are a well-established procedure for treating ulcerative colitis, and not weird at all.

  29. 29.

    The Ancient Randonneur

    Imagine if Move On sent a bunch of activists out with hidden cameras and toy plastic pistols to show easy it is to rob liquor stores. I’m sure the GOP and the Tea Party would be calling for much stricter gun control, right?

  30. 30.

    Sly

    @Drum Circles And Weed:

    If calling the most right-wing Democrat of all time a soshilist is “positive”, then yeah, I guess you can say that Willard is running a positive campaign.

    How dare Mitt Romney say such nasty things about John C. Calhoun.

  33. 33.

    Comrade Dread

    It’s not negative campaigning if your target is a Democrat, especially if it’s a black Kenyan Socialist scarred by British colonialism, radical Muslim usurper who is black.

  34. 34.

    RSA

    Willard is running a campaign of dog-whistles, outright lies and smears that would make Lee Atwater blush. Somehow I’m not surprised that the crazification factor thinks that kind of campaign is “positive”.

    It’s a net-net thing. If you subtract out all the dog-whistles, outright lies and smears, then you end up with a positive campaign.

  37. 37.

    gnomedad

    @Amir Khalid:

    Fecal transplants — from what I’ve read about them, never you mind why — don’t actually involve a doctor inserting somebody else’s post-digestion matter up your you-know-where. (I was kind of disappointed to learn this.) Just the bacterial flora, preferably from a close relative.

    So why don’t they just call it a “flora transplant”? Because some joker thought it would be amusing the get the phrase “fecal transplant” out there?

  38. 38.

    El Cid

    Romney does talk a lot about how great he is. So does Newt, but it’s often just so god-damned weird and over-the-top that it puts off even my most Republican friends.

  39. 39.

    trollhattan

    In which I agree with Kathleen Parker.

    Despite the pain these critiques cause Mrs. Obama and other African American women who identify with her, I do believe that these feelings are not particularly widespread. Most see the first lady as she is: a beautiful, gracious, intelligent, elegant, devoted wife and mother of whom we can be proud.
    __
    Those who insult her insult us all, and, yes, we should be angry.

    Not that any right-thinking Patriots will pay her any mind, but it’s nice to see both a vigorous defense of FLOTUS and a realistic view of why she receives the hate she does.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/denigrating-michelle-obama-is-enough-to-make-anyone-angry/2012/01/13/gIQAmJcExP_story.html

  40. 40.

    4jkb4ia

    @Mark S.:

    And the whole thing was, that wasn’t technically Mitt. That was Restore Our Future, and the average voter won’t know that that was Mitt.

    Greg stole my comment, essentially. These voters are giving no credit to Kerry giving his damnedest not to attack Bush personally in a similar situation. They expect Mitt to attack the incumbent president as long as he is not attacking the other Republicans in the race.

    In I suppose the same poll, 40% of Republicans nationally are supporting Romney, so he is getting people who understand that he has campaigned negatively. Romney is looking so much like a winner that voters are failing to understand that Santorum is really the right answer to that question–his whole appeal is that he represents the religious right voter and you don’t need negativity to put that across.

  43. 43.

    burnspbesq

    Nothing that has been done in this campaign would have made Lee Atwater blush. Quite the contrary. He would be wondering when the gloves were coming off.

  44. 44.

    Amir Khalid

    @gnomedad:
    Per Wikipedia, the procedure also goes by other, not-so-OMFG names like “fecal microbiota therapy” or “human probiotic infusion”. I’m guessing that some doctors like to say “fecal transplant” just to see the look on a patient’s face.

  45. 45.

    Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)

    I keep seeing people say “The fundies will never embrace a Mormon except in the most grudging way” and variations of that.

    I’m not a fundamentalist – quite the opposite, I’d be considered an atheist in the eyes of most – but can I be worried about that Mormonism, too?

    I mean, I hate to go all “The White House will take orders from the Vatican!”/Nixon v. Kennedy redux here, but won’t the Mormonism worry/turn off more than just fundies? Does the Obama campaign dare play that card?

    In any case, I would love to see the other side dust off Jeremiah Wright this time around. All anyone would have to say back would be “Well, let’s see some tape of your preacher. Wait, what? Nobody except Mormons are allowed into your churches? Really? Why? And Romney was, what? A Bishop? How high up is that? Interesting!”

  47. 47.

    trollhattan

    @Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy):

    If Santorum were more than a [nasty] flavor of the month I’d sure love for a reporter to ask him about the Kennedy campaign and in view of the concerns about Catholicism, what steps he’d take to assure the nation he doesn’t take “orders from the Vatican” given his his contraception lunacy.

  48. 48.

    Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)

    @trollhattan: With all due respect, Santorum’s a sideshow at this point. All we need concern ourselves with vis a vis Santorum, Paul, Gingrich, et al, is how much damage they can do to Romney and the party before they bow out. All anyone needs to be asking Santorum at this point is “Are you REALLY going to let this freak-ass, cult-belonging, vulture capitalist motherfucker beat you like this? Are you going to take this Godless shit sitting down?”

  51. 51.

    cmorenc

    I was curious whether the number 27 has any notably interesting mathematical significance, apart from its statistical convergence with wingnutosity. Here’s what I’ve found (omitting excessively esoteric results no one but a few math Phds on the planet understand):

    1) 27 is a perfect cube; i.e. 3x3x3 = 27. So maybe things that occur in 3s that correspond with wingnutosity might be significant.

    2) 27 is obviously comprised of the digits 2 and 7, but less obviously, if you add the digits between 2 and 7 inclusively, you get: 2+3+4+5+6+7 = 27

    3) With regard to the hugely significant number Pi (3.14…) if you begin counting at the first digit following the decimal place, the first occurrence of the digit string “27” starts at (shezam!) the 27th digit to the right of the decimal place! We already knew how much pie converges with wingnutosity, but this perhaps helps explain why. BTW: π = 3.14159265358979323846264338327…(look at the last two digits).

    4) With regard to the hugely significant number ‘e’ (2.718…) note that the first two digits are….27 (!)

    I’m sure that with more thorough investigation by those with a deeper mathematical background than I have, a grand unified theory of why wingnutosity is convergent with 27 can be constructed. Alas, it is beyond my capabilities.

  52. 52.

    Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)

    @Lolis: Sounds like you’d make a helluva consultant for a pro-Obama Super PAC, Lolis. Just don’t tell Obama about what y’all are doing. Can’t have any coordination going on.

    Coordination. The very word sounds so … dirty.

  53. 53.

    Calouste

    Willard is running a campaign of dog-whistles, outright lies and smears that would make Lee Atwater blush.

    The only reason it would make Lee Atwater blush is because Willard is doing things so clumsily and transparently.

  55. 55.

    Amir Khalid

    @trollhattan:
    Not fond of Kathleen Parker who is, after all on the Washington Post’s righty columnist page alongside the bonkers Cabbagehammer. But this is a much better piece than the one I remember from a few years back: Parker, saying she was Barack Obama’s ninth cousin several times removed (or some similarly distant blood relationship), decided to be affronted by Obama’s identifying as black. I particularly remember her addressing President Obama as “cousin” while berating him over it.

  59. 59.

    Brachiator

    @Lolis:

    the church’s blatant racism and discrimination, the secret ceremonies, the current belief in polygamy in the after life.

    Is this current Mormon practice? And what secret ceremonies? And how would this relate to any decisions that Mitt would make?

  61. 61.

    Hill Dweller

    @trollhattan: By Parker’s standards that is a good article, but she still pretends the obvious racism in her party is confined to the comment section of blogs.

  62. 62.

    Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)

    @Brachiator:

    [W]hat secret ceremonies? And how would this relate to any decisions that Mitt would make?

    How would you ever know if they’re secret?

    I suspect you’ll know something if President R-Money ever demanded that if gays were given the right to marry, then by the sacred balls of Brigham Young, men ought to be able to have more than one wife.

  64. 64.

    Roger Moore

    @Punchy:

    So what besides a birth certy and a passport could be used to demonstrate citizenship?

    Skin that’s the right color and an accent that sounds right. If you look and sound like a Real American(TM) you don’t need no stinking papers to prove your citizenship.

  66. 66.

    BO_Bill

    27 is a very powerful number as 27 divided by 3 equals 9; and 9 minus 4 equals 5. Therefore, within the number 27 we can observe the numbers 3-4-5; emblematic to all with Knowledge of the 47th Proposition of Euclid.

    The 47th Proposition of Euclid is Pythagoras’ gift to posterity of the measure of Absolute Truth.

    Which is pre-ordained to re-emerge.

  67. 67.

    Benjamin Franklin

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Missed your comment….

    It’s amazing that Brits seem so clueless about the progressives here.

    They talk about Ron Paul as though he is the answer for Amerika.

    I was shocked.

  68. 68.

    gaz

    @bemused: I’m thinking “Raw”, or was it “Delirious” when Eddie Murphy (still funny back then), was going on about how all he did when he was young was crack poop jokes – and then he heard richard pryor

  71. 71.

    Brachiator

    @Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy): RE: [W]hat secret ceremonies? And how would this relate to any decisions that Mitt would make?

    How would you ever know if they’re secret?

    Makes for an good interview and debate question.

    And the poster at @49 suggested some knowledge about these things. Shouldn’t be that hard to get some inside scoop.

  72. 72.

    kindness

    @gaz: if you don’t see the statement

    No. When’s the last time you’ve seen a liquor store owned by a white person?

    as potentially racist you are an idiot.

  73. 73.

    gaz

    @schrodinger’s cat: Totally. My white wife would not be allowed to vote. Her dad is from DC, her father’s parents live in Virginia, and her mother’s parents and grand parents are all from WA state. However, she gets complimented on her English all the time. heh.

  74. 74.

    gaz

    @kindness: It was offered as a satirical comment on the racism of the 27%ers.

    This doesn’t even rise to the racism of CK Lewis’ “Ni**er deer” remarks, and yet a plurality of “not racist” commenters here love him. Weak sauce, on your part.

  75. 75.

    gaz

    @gaz: meh Louis CK – my fingers got away from me.

    Edit: OTOH, if someone *did* find it offensive I apologize.

    But from looking out the window, I’m betting that the motivation behind kindness’ response had more to do with the fact that it’s mushroom season.

  76. 76.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Based on the ads that are being shown in SC, Mittens has done a pretty good job of making sure that any ads under his own name are glossy and positive; it’s the not-coordinated at all SuperPAC ads that run either side of Business Leader Mittens hagiography spots that are low-budget, standard-template slams on Santorum and Gingrich. Nice bit of smear-laundering.

  77. 77.

    Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)

    @pseudonymous in nc:

    smear-laundering.

    Hey, if you haven’t copyrighted or trademarked that yet, may I steal it? I swear I will credit it to “something I saw on this blog I read by some person who calls him- or herself ‘pseudonymous in nc.'” (Greetings from a newly-minted Triangle dweller, by the way.)

  78. 78.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Roger Moore:

    Skin that’s the right color and an accent that sounds right. If you look and sound like a Real American™ you don’t need no stinking papers to prove your citizenship.

    That’s flippant, but it’s also true. As I said in an earlier thread, “proof” doesn’t come from paperwork, but from people’s willingness to trust it, which is why no amount of documentation is going to be enough for the remaining Birthers. Ultimately, the political question for a modern nation where vouching won’t suffice is to establishing acceptable documentary standards to take its place, and Voter ID laws are an example of one side pushing standards that are clearly unacceptable, in part because they inherently mistrust the opposing side’s right to vote.

    A related example: there are many American Jews who are Jewish enough to be admitted under the Law of Return, but aren’t Jewish enough to be married in Israel, because the rabbinical authorities who have the final say in those matters demand documentary proof going back to one’s great-grandmother.

  83. 83.

    gaz

    @Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy): I’m glad you caught the satire in it, but also:

    I’d like to reiterate that I’m genuinely sorry if that comment did happen to offend anyone. It was meant in parody of racist stereotypes – and so it was a fine line to walk. Maybe too fine for a whitey like me to navigate. I never intended to hurt anyone with it, though. If it offended, it was a clumsy mistake on my part, FWIW.

  84. 84.

    Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)

    @gaz: Quit apologizing. If a fucking “/snark” tag doesn’t do the trick, well, fuck ’em.

  85. 85.

    Jay in Oregon

    This is why I’m glad I never discuss politics on Facebook. Or anything, really.

    http://allthingsd.com/20120112/facebook-gives-politico-deep-access-to-users-political-sentiments/

    But some social media analysis of politics is going beyond that. A partnership between Facebook and Politico announced today is one of the more far-reaching efforts. It will consist of sentiment analysis reports and voting-age user surveys, accompanied by stories by Politico reporters.
    __
    Most notably, the Facebook-Politico data set will include Facebook users’ private status messages and comments. While that may alarm some people, Facebook and Politico say the entire process is automated and no Facebook employees read the posts.
    __
    Rather, every post and comment — both public and private — by a U.S. user that mentions a presidential candidate’s name will be fed through a sentiment analysis tool that spits out anonymized measures of the general U.S. Facebook population

  86. 86.

    fourmorewars

    You know, you haven’t studied your 27% hard enough if you think this 27% intersects with it in the slightest. The real 27% is the Rapture-Ready cretin constituency. Defending Romney? You’ve gotta be kidding me.

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