If a 2012 Santorum nomination would be a disaster similar to the 1964 Goldwater nomination, what would Santorum’s girl with a daisy commercial look like? My guess is that it would be a gay teenager hanging himself while Santorum’s speech comparing homosexuality to incest and dog fucking plays in the background. But maybe that’s too literal. Here’s an open thread for other suggestions, or anything else on your minds.
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Davis X. Machina
Santorum’s odds of actually getting the nomination aren’t a whole lot better than Romney’s.
George Romney’s.
Jennifer
One wetsuit, two dildos.
West of the Cascades
Jackbooted Nazis hauling away a woman who was hiding contraceptives in her attic?
(btw, invoking the Santorum Exception to the Godwin Rule here)
Spiffy McBang
Still pictures of Obama with a backdrop of fetuses on nooses, followed by a montage of photos: a type of birth control, then a childless woman looking miserably at a portrait of a happy family, alternating until the end of the ad.
Hill Dweller
That stupid party has decided to double down on the contraception ban.
The charlatan Paul Ryan is out there whining about the compromise the President announced Friday, despite the fact Wisconsin has mandated Catholic universities, hospitals and even churches provide contraception coverage for years.
geg6
A tube of lube, Shakira shaking her booty (just her booty showing), and then a frothy brown explosion.
The Snufflupagus Show had everyone taking Ol’ Frothy waaaaay seriously. Liz Cheney seems to love him. And can someone please explain to me why this horrid dimwit is invited anywhere, let alone a Sunday morning bobblehead show?
kdaug
Diapers.
geg6
@Hill Dweller:
That smarmy Ayn Rand fanboi is Catholic, believe it or not. I don’t know what kind of cognitive dissonance you have to have to be a Catholic Randian objectivist.
Gin & Tonic
@geg6: Gotta have a girl, I guess.
burnspbesq
The Justice Department filed its sentencing memorandum in the Abdulmutallab case. It includes a factual appendix detailing the extent of al-Awlaki’s operational control of Andulmutallab.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2012/02/justice-department-memo-on-al-aulaqi-and-abdulmutallab/
There are a lot of reasonable arguments against the indiscriminate use of drones. But in the specific case of al-Awlaki, the “you got the wrong guy” argument seems to no longer be viable.
John M. Burt
Isn’t the “Daisy” ad considered one of the worst examples of an attack ad backfiring against its sponsor?
Joseph Nobles
Same commercial, with an Iranian girl counting in Arabic.
burnspbesq
@geg6:
“I don’t know what kind of cognitive dissonance you have to have to be a Catholic Randian objectivist.”
Severe.
Gin & Tonic
@Joseph Nobles: Then maybe she should be counting in Farsi?
Violet
Teenage girl who is shown in the commercial to be the child of two gay male parents. She says something along the lines of “I wish I had a mother.” Then discussion of how Liberal Values Are Destroying Our Nation. Or something.
dslak
@Gin & Tonic: How’s he going to show that all those Middle Easterners are basically the same if she speaks Farsi?
FridayNext
@John M. Burt:
I’ll need explanation there. LBJ won with over 90% of the electoral vote and 61% of the popular vote. The democrats were criticized for it by talking heads, but they were as out of touch then as they are now.
Jay C
@John M. Burt:
Yes, President Goldwater held resentments over it for his whole term of office….
Humanities Grad
@ John M. Burt
That’s not my understanding, no. I think it’s generally considered one of the most devastatingly effective attack ads in the history of U.S. politics.
Goldwater’s campaign was furious with Johnson for the ad, and IIRC Johnson had it pulled from use after a handful of showings (maybe only one, my command of the details is a little rusty).
But the point had been made. That ad perfectly encapsulated the “In your guts, you know he’s nuts” images that the Democrats were trying to hang around Goldwater’s neck.
maya
Ricky is just a mental facility without the I’s –
DonkeyKong
How bout this……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xUK9J_Qkr0&feature=related
OzoneR
In a world where a major news outlet publishes hate speech as an op ed, I wouldn’t be so sure such an ad would work in Obama’s favor.
geg6
@John M. Burt:
Don’t know what specialists in advertising or political messaging say about it these days, but back when I was an undergrad in poli-sci, my political rhetoric professor thought it was the most successful ad ever made. It got it’s message across, it made the VSPs and GOPers howl, and it wasn’t completely divorced from the things Goldwater was actually saying on the stump. It was only shown once but it’s still remembered today. Don’t know how that would be characterized as a backfire. But what do I know. You could be right.
mcd410x
@Humanities Grad: It only aired once as an ad, but got multiple repeats on the nightly news.
Ah, the nightly news. How quaint.
geg6
I’m in moderation and I don’t know why. Again.
FridayNext
For my Santorum “daisy” ad I would play the passage of him criticizing the founding fathers for putting “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence with images of people doing perfectly normal, perfectly legal, and perfectly conservative things to be happy and suggest Santorum thinks it is the government’s job to dictate how Americans can live. (Not to mention him criticizing the Founding Fathers)
A skilled propagandist could make this devastating.
inventor
@John M. Burt:
I’m pretty sure Goldwater lost that election.
PeakVT
It turns out plastic grocery bags don’t kill just sea turtles; they kill sperm whales, too.
Linkmeister
@Humanities Grad: Your memory isn’t faulty. It ran exactly once as a paid ad. But I think it was so compelling that it got multiple re-runs as the rest of the media picked it up to comment on it. Same thing that happens today with web ads. Did that Demon Sheep ad ever run on network or cable?
beltane
Good question. However, the handwringers at Dkos are afraid of Santorum because he is “sincere” and that his sincerity will obscure that fact that he is an authoritarian religious fanatic. Of course, these people were also afraid of Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and especially Newt Gingrich so maybe we should just ignore them.
A good ad for Santourm would be of a woman crying because her husband left her for another man. If contraception were illegal he would have stayed with her and their 14 children, and of course, the gays ruined her marriage.
Sly
A boot stamping on a human face – forever.
starscream
Santorum scares me more than Piece of Mitt…if McCain/Palin could get 46% then surely this fundie-inspiring asshat can get that much plus many who disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy.
Joseph Nobles
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, I typed that and was like, I’m going to be embarrassed if they speak something else in Iran. So I’m embarrassed.
Martin
@burnspbesq:
Considering how eager al-Awlaki himself was willing to publicly admit “you got the right guy”, I’m not at all surprised.
Martin
Regarding the Daisy ad, I don’t think you can evaluate it in the context of the results unless you can draw a correlation to it and to Johnson’s victory.
It was controversial because it was viewed in the same way that we here view Fox News – trying to win an argument by scaring the fuck out of people. Today, we’ve come to accept that as normal, but then it wasn’t and that ad was viewed as a serious overreach by Johnson – it was simply too much.
I don’t know if Santorum is another Goldwater. I think Newt best fits that mold as a direct comparison. But he might yield the same electoral results, which I think was the comparison sought. A Santorum ad would involve an unarmed faceless – possibly black or Arab or Latino, we can’t tell – army of soldiers in uniforms with pink triangles and Obama’s campaign symbol marching through a neighborhood taking all of the children, and the parents powerless to stop them – no guns in sight and marching to their base camp – a seized church – with the dateline 2015.
Gus diZerega
I think you are unfair to Goldwater. He was never a theocratic bigot and was a consistent and loud critic of the Sauronic religious right,and he actually cared about the environment. Today he would be rejected overwhelmingly by the sociopathic horde that attends Republiocan caucuses.
Benjamin Franklin
Yes, the Undiebomber connection has been well established.
However, this drone victim put’s a stink on the methodology.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/anwar-al-awlakis-family-speaks-out-against-his-sons-deaths/2011/10/17/gIQA8kFssL_story.html
rita forsyth
It would not mention Jesus or anything he said. The sermon on the Mount Jesus gave to guide us in his thoughts and teachings would never ever be part of a Santorium commercial. I am a catholic and I follow the teachings of Jesus Christ Santorum doesn’t seem to know what Jesus said or believed. I challenge anyone to quote one thing Rick santorum ever said regarding Jesus.
For that matter non of the religious right ever does. What is wrong that no speaks out on this? it outrages me daily
Billy Beane
Yawn, first of all mistermix these ads are not nearly as effective as some of you clowns seem to think. Just like I think Kerry would have lost anyways without the swiftboat attack ads. But people always want to find someone or something to blame.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@Martin: Don’t you have the ad backwards? Aren’t we trying to find an ad idea that Obama would run against Santorum to parallel the daisy ad? Something along the lines of #25 above…
Mino
How about a dead teenage girl on a bloodied bed sheet.
Martin
@Gus diZerega: No, I think it’s a valid comparison. Goldwater wasn’t theocratic so he wasn’t trying to escalate religion into a wedge issue, but he was trying to escalate race into one. That’s no better.
The last weeks’ screeching about ‘religious rights’ which is just a call for the rights of the majority (Christians and employers) to supersede that of the minority (employees and non-Christians), which is almost a direct parallel to the same screeching in 1964 over the rights of the majority whites to supersede those of blacks.
Mary Jane
@beltane: Are you still capable of being surprised by kossacks? I left that very ugly place over a year ago, yet still hang my head in shame for ever pointing friends toward it.
Smiling Mortician
@starscream:
But don’t forget that a good chunk of that 46% comprised people who were remembering the old “reasonable conservative” McCain of McCain/Feingold fame. Santorum has nothing in his past that your daddy’s Republican party can harken back to nostalgically.
As for Obama’s Daisy ad against Candidate Santorum, I think you just make an endless loop out of the clip of Santorum telling a reporter “A lot of Christians think contraception is OK. It’s not OK. It just gives people a license to do things in the sexual realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be.”
Link here just in case you think he didn’t really say that. It’s somewhere around the 18-minute mark.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@West of the Cascades:
close, but how bout when santormentum compared democrats fighting to save the filibuster to nazis?
easy to fire off some scare images plus voting records of gop senators. then maybe you throw in a wire hanger, talk about no birth control….
hell there is always the dead baby in a jar.
the santormentum daisy ad could be a full length faces of death like shockumentary.
inventor
A nice family: Mom, Dad and two boys are sitting at the dinner table in a Rockwellian scene just as a group of men wearing nondescript military uniforms break down the door.
The parents are quickly subdued and the two boys are lined up against the wall. The leader of the group examines the two boys like livestock and declares the older one “too old!”. “Take this one” he says as his men drag the younger boy away screaming.
Scene cuts to an ornate office where an opulently adorned religious official in a sweater vest sits behind a desk as the boy stands tattered between two of the same men that took him. “He’ll do nicely. Take him to my chambers.” the official says in the creepiest possible way. “Where are you taking me?” the boy says in a panic as he’s dragged away. Camera cuts to close-up of sinister official’s smiling face.
“Don’t let religious fanatics have their way with YOUR children” the voice-over says. “This year, it’s too important to stay home!”.
FridayNext
@Martin:
Good point, but if someone is going to claim it “backfired” against a candidate you have to bring something to the table to support your claim. Yes it was “controversial,” but as I said in my comment, that just means the pundits and other talking heads didn’t like it and slammed it. So what? How did it backfire? A backfiring gun can blow up your face. What negative consequences accrued to the creators? Temporarily blacklisted from Georgetown cocktail parties?
Your comparison to Fox is apt. But what Fox does works more or less. What airs on Fox drives our national conversation and makes participants rich. Where’s the backfire there?
Wagging fingers of contemporary pundits and tongue clucking by academics is not backfire.
Martin
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine: Well, perhaps, but I find the notion that Obama would run such an ad so distasteful and unlikely that I don’t want to play that game. But I could see Santorum doing it.
I want to play my game, dammit! :P
Mino
Or a screen capture of the market crashing with Back to Republican Policies as the title.
FuriousPhil
@Martin:
Were you a minister of propaganda in a previous life? It would have conservatives frothing at the mouth for cordon and capture operations against well-known liberal enclaves.
A sizable amount of the wingnut base sincerely believes this, I just know it. Ammo shortages everywhere already.
Doesn’t help that MSM now uses “CULTURE WARZ” to refer to any
difference of opinionright-wing insanity.cmorenc
@Linkmeister:
Ironically, the “Daisy” ad of the 2012 campaign may be an ad run by a GOP superpac (or even the nominee himself) which is unwittingly so tone-deaf to those outside the hermetically sealed worldview of the GOP’s base that it offends a large portion of the nonaffiliated general electorate, especially women. Perhaps an ad which comes across to most women as oozing contempt for their ability to access contraception, even though the sponsors of the ad think they’re framing an ad about religious liberty.
Billy Beane
All you gotta do to attack GOPers this cycle is run actual business news from July-Nov 2008 to remind people of the mess the GOPers left Obama.
shortstop
@John M. Burt: In the sense that everything that happened in the 2008 campaign was good for John McCain, yes.
shortstop
@Hill Dweller: Blunt’s bill goes so much farther; it allows any insurer to deny coverage for any treatment based on moral convictions. Hate gay people? No need to cover HIV/AIDS-related issues. Believe some people eat too much? Don’t cover their cancer treatment. Think tobacco users are weak? Fuck you, emphysema patients.
I’d really like to see Obama and the Dems get this off the “religious freedom” framing and pivot sharply to what it is, the GOP wanting to deny any and all health coverage based on any “moral” whim whatsoever.
patrick II
mistermix:
Not compared to the countdown ad.
At the time Goldwater was suggesting the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam, so Johnson’s ad was very literal — although so horrifying we pretend it was metaphorical and unfair.
The world just barely made it through the cold war without one of those assholes from either side actually starting nuclear genocide.
shortstop
@cmorenc: I think the chances of that happening are plus 100 percent. They really can’t stop themselves.
Mino
Put Abramov before the cameras to link Ricky’s role on K Street to the Mariana’s Chinese slavery ring with the forced abortions. That should settle his hash. If Abramov isn’t afraid to talk.
Martin
@FridayNext: As it relates to the election, I don’t think the ad had a meaningful effect one way or another. Elections are almost always a culmination of many factors, and the ad was a very small factor and from what I understand Johnson was already favored by a fairly large margin at that point. Now, if it suggested to be a turning point, then we would have some connection to the result. I don’t think that exists.
But I don’t think it matters whether the pundits or the public at large were the source of the pushback – the campaign pulled the ad. The campaign reinforces the notion that it was controversial by themselves treating it as controversial. Was the SGK policy toward PP controversial? Sure, not just because we pushed against it, but because SGK gave the appearance of reversing the policy, proving the case. Was JCPs choice of Ellen as spokesperson controversial because a group launched a campaign against the choice? No, JCP and Ellen held their ground and told them to DIAF, and no broader controversy ensued. Is Obama’s contraception policy controversial? Too early to tell – there was the usual freakout over it, but he stuck to his guns on the core of the issue. If that holds and there isn’t broad public pushback against it (which doesn’t appear to be coming) then I would say no, not controversial.
beltane
@shortstop: Religious freedom should only mean that a person does not have to submit to any medical procedure that conflicts with their religious views. It should never, ever be construed as the right to force others to comply with one’s religious views. The coercion of others is the antithesis of religious liberty.
Martin
@cmorenc: I would almost guarantee that we’ll see a Daisy ad from one of the nominee’s SuperPACs. I think that’s nearly assured given the lack of accountability that SuperPACs have, and the basic campaign framework run by everyone on the right which is “Obama is foreign, scary, etc.” I don’t see how we don’t get some unbelievably over-the-top ads out of this cycle. It’s like a perfect storm of circumstances to unleash the right-wing id.
Heh, Soros just hinted on GPS that he might back Obama’s SuperPAC as a counterbalance against the GOP SuperPACs. So, toss that development onto the pile as well.
piratedan
they don’t need any images, just print out in black letters on a white background five things that Santorum has stated publicly while holding or running for office. No spin, no lies, just what he said… that should do the trick. just pick the topics, foreign policy, women’s rights, the economy, the tax brackets and immigration. I’m sure that we can find enough stupid amongst us in fifteen minutes to illustrate the fallacy of his ability to be President.
Billy Beane
More ridiculous flatulation by mistermix over never gonna happen scenarios
BruceFromOhio
@Smiling Mortician: This. Ricky stunk so bad the Pennsylvanians that first voted for him threw him out. It’s not that hard to pick a context (war on women, hating on minorities, American Taliban) and plug in direct quotes from the man himself. The fundies will love it and waste their money and votes on him, everyone else will hate it and see what a wretched menace he presents as leadership, and no animals would be harmed in the making of these commercials.
cmorenc
@patrick II:
Those of us who were even just barely old enough in 1962 to be aware of national politics (I was 13) can remember the extreme level of tension that permeated every town in the country during the Cuban missile crisis, when everyone universally believed (quite accurately) that we were teetering on a knife’s edge from a real nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Many neighborhoods had at least one or two houses whose owners had built a nuclear bomb shelter in the backyard or as an extension from an existing basement. There was much discussion about what kinds of materials and how thick the walls and roof of the shelter needed to be to provide adequate radiation shielding from fallout, and how much protection burying part or all of the structure under how much of a layer of earth added. There was also much discussion in each town about what potentially inviting targets were within sufficient proximity to be lethally threatening, either from blast, heat, or direct radiation as opposed to simply fallout. In fact, the shelters were called “fallout” shelters rather than “bomb” shelters. Jeez, what a paranoid time it was.
Martin
@beltane: That’s slightly overstating it. It’s forcing you to PAY what your peers do not need to pay for, simply because of the moral views of your respective employers. There’s no argument being made that you can’t have the treatment, just that you have to pay for it (which we both know might reduce to the same thing for some people).
That fairness argument is what will sway most strongly with the public. I think the GOP has done a good job of tapping into people’s uncertainties and using that to cast doubt on Obama, but I think Obama has a very strong case to make that he’s really the one that’s putting a sound foundation beneath everyone. And that argument above – that your neighbors coverage might be better than yours through no fault of your own, just that your boss might have a different view of what’s right for you than your neighbor’s boss, should resonate well.
BruceFromOhio
@inventor: Dude, I’m concerned for you.
gex
@Spiffy McBang: You forgot roving bands of atheists burning down churches.
Dennis G.
Often lost when the Daisy ad is mentioned is that the Goldwater GOP platform rejected the idea that only the President should have the authority to launch nuclear weapons. It was Goldwater’s idea that any commander in the field should be able to start a nuclear exchange with the USSR. It was pure crazy and in that context (and the very real stakes of nuclear war) the Daisy ad was a pretty mild response.
gocart mozart
@geg6:
I except your invitation to blogwhore?
http://aynrandhatedjesus.blogspot.com/
trollhattan
@Gus diZerega:
I don’t think Goldwater could get nominated by today’s Republicans. Which says quite a bit about today’s Republicans.
Santorum’s fundie lunacy would be his second worst shortcoming, undercut by his stupidity. In a general campaign he couldn’t hide these two facts forever. His odd family life would emerge eventually as well.
And then, at what point would Frau Santorum’s…peculiar relationship with her own mother’s OBgyn become the topic of a MoDo column?
There’s a vast well of crazy just waiting for a bucket.
Linda Featheringill
@inventor:
Hee-hee. You have a terrible imagination!
But effective.
gocart mozart
@Martin:
You mean Like forcing me to pay for wars I don’t like, forcing me to pay for enforcing drug laws I don’t like, or forcing me to support a tax exemption for religions I don’t like?
gex
@Martin: Maybe. But they’ve worked hard to make it so pharmacists don’t have to fill prescriptions and they’ve tried to make it so Catholic hospitals can refuse to treat gay people. They’ve asserted that employers and insurance companies can have religious objections, they’ll more than happily take it all the way up to the provider level.
ETA: If you think the god botherers will shut up about the stuff they don’t like just because people pay for it out of pocket, I think you are wrong.
Joey Maloney
Frothy Mix speechifying about the evils of contraception on a tv in a filthy, makeshift operating room as a man in blood-spattered scrubs helps a young woman into the stirrups.
Gus diZerega
@Martin: Martin- I have to disagree, and in a way that might be relevant to understanding the viciousness of today’s Republicans. Goldwater said he opposed segregation but respected “states rights.” One reason I think he was sincere was that for a while I agreed. What changed my mind was not a changed view about Black Americans, but a changed view about property rights.
This connects to a larger point. In the broad conservative sphere Goldwater leaned strongly towards a libertarian position. I think there is nothing libertarian in Santorum. He is authoritarian all the way, from his demon deity to how people should relate to one another.
In Goldwater’s time conservatism was more complex and vastly less nihilistic than it is now. Back then Birchers were outliers. Today they are not. As I say, back then I was a conservative though I have voted Democratic or Progressive for decades now and my last political contribution was to Elizabeth Warren. The story of conservatism’s slide from something that to some degree connected with the Founders’ views to the authoritarian nihilism of today is one yet to be told well.
Librarian
Are you kidding? Obama is no LBJ, and his campaign doesn’t have a quarter of the guts that LBJ’s campaign had. The likelihood of the Obama campaign making an ad anything like the daisy girl ad about any opponent is in my opinion highly remote. It might, God forbid, offend those swing voters, dontcha know.
gex
@Joey Maloney: Or one of those already dead fetuses killing a mom on the way out. “If only we could have done something to save the mother…” With dad standing there without a child or his wife. Maybe let men know that he’d be more than happy to kill their wives for his religious dogma.
Martin
@gex:
Oh, they won’t shut up. They’re not the target of the message though. You’ll never win them over, so stop trying to. The target is the huge mass between their 27% and our 27% that are at least sympathetic to religious freedom but either don’t pay close enough attention to know if the charge is a valid one, or aren’t able to reason out the other side of the equation to know if that so-called religious freedom tramples some other right that they care more about.
The religious freedom screed isn’t designed to get the swing voters to be afraid of contraception – it’s designed to elicit sympathy by demonstrating how important an issue it is to a minority (devout Catholics) and by suggesting that if Obama is willing to trample the rights of this minority, then he’ll eventually get around to trampling the rights of Lutherans as well. Obama’s job is to point out that what they proclaim as a religious right is no right at all, but their desire to dictate what kind of health care their employees get and to extend that to all employers immediately tramples the rights of Lutherans, and he’s trying to prevent that.
Yutsano
@gex: This is starting to sound more and more like Akira without the cool motorcycles.
Mark S.
@Smiling Mortician:
Yeah, all you really have to do is quote is Ricky and let his craziness shine through. Here’s another good one:
GregB
A fleet of giant dirigible black penises playing rap over loudspeakers, a la Apocalypse Now, dropping bombs, Korans, fetuses and gay porn all over the heartland.
A few dramatic Sergio Leone style close-ups of Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Van Jones, Michelle Obama and the dessicated corpse of Saul Alinskey as the pilots.
Fade to Black as President Obama laughs and laughs and laughs as he shreds the Constitution.
bemused senior
@cmorenc: Yes, I am your age and my dad was in the Air Force, a pilot, at that time. He also led an AFROTC faculty as his duty assignment in the early 60s. The college president appointed him head of the “civil defense” committee, and he had to oversee distributing advice about sheltering in the event of a nuclear attack. At the time of the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis he had gone to an AF base a couple of hours away to put in his monthly flying time and later (when I was adult) told me that on his TDY there was high readiness for an imminent attack.
Mark S.
@inventor:
Too subtle.
eemom
I highly recommend this excellent piece from Religious Dispatches, “Sacrifice, Suffering and Rick Santorum.” It focuses on the Santorums’ daughter Isabella and how “the private tragedy” of her illness “cannot be separated from the kinds of misguided public policies for which Rick Santorum has always stood.”
I would take it a step further. Not saying it actually happened, but IMO Santorum is such a thoroughly utterly loathsome, compassion-devoid monster of a human being that I wouldn’t put it past him to WANT a child this severely disabled to use as a political prop.
eemom
@Mark S.:
yes, that article I just linked speaks directly to that quote.
gex
@Martin: Did you not say “There’s no argument being made that you can’t have the treatment, just that you have to pay for it ”
I’m saying that there has indeed been an argument that you can’t have the treatment. But whatever.
Gus diZerega
@Mark S.: Perhaps we can all help Santorum to suffer mightily during and after his campaign to rule us. By doing so we can give him years and years of growing opportunities.
Martin
@Gus diZerega:
“States rights” has only meant one thing: discrimination. It means that today, it meant that in 1964, and it meant that in 1789. Property rights were ceded to the states because slaves were property, and the 3/5ths compromise wouldn’t work any other way. You could try and tie all manner of other things to ‘states rights’ to mask your ultimate goal of discrimination, but that was, is, and has always been the intent. Always.
And the founders views centered around various schemes to make slavery work in a conceptual ideal that should have made it abhorrent. What libertarians embrace is that compromise between the nations ideals, a compromise that we ultimately reconciled, and that libertarians would now revert, whether race is their motive or not. A libertarian ideal is one that in practice allows our worse natures to emerge, for power to aggregate and be used to subjugate others. It is one that would put us right back into a workable framework for slavery, since slavery was the main problem that the founders were seeking a solution to.
So while libertarians/conservatives of the 60s sought some ideal of liberty, they would have simply traded us back to an authoritarian state ruled by those with money under the guise of individual liberty – since that’s the very state that blacks in the south were in. I don’t find an authoritarian state of those privileged through money any more noble than an authoritarian state of those privileged through religious social contract.
Chris
@Martin:
This.
Reasons Goldwater got his ass kicked so, so badly in 1964:
1) The Kennedy assassination gave a lot of sympathy brownie points to the Democrats, as a lot of people like to point out. So there’s that.
2) Goldwater was running just a couple years after the Cuban Missile Crisis came close to starting World War Three. So his “let’s use nukes in Vietnam!” rhetoric, which might have sounded patriotic and awesome in the 1950s, now sounded reckless and dangerous.
3) Goldwater was openly running on reversing the New Deal. If you look at the Ryan Plan, the Bush SS/privatization attempt, Gingrich’s attempt to kill Medicare and Reagan’s SS/privatization attempt… those things were all done after the election had put them safely in office. But Goldwater actually thought the country would like what he had to say… oops.
4) The Nixon strategy, of running on racial and cultural resentments and avoiding the issues completely, hadn’t become their trademark back then – it was adopted largely because Goldwater’s attempt to run on the issues was such a disaster, IMO.
5) The Republican Party itself was divided and still had a powerful liberal, anti-Goldwater wing, while the Goldwater faction had only begun to make inroads into conservative Democratic groups at the time (partly because of 4). On the other hand, the liberal consensus and the Democratic coalition were much more powerful than they are now.
Basically, it was a perfect storm of Bad News For The Republican Candidate. The daisy ad was just Johnson underlining point 2: plenty of people were already queasy because of Goldwater’s own pronouncements on the subject.
pj
Here is the sort of ad Obama would use against Santorum….
To the music of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare For The Common Man, a montage of film and still photos are displayed to highlight the work of gay artists. Film, theater, music (including a reference to Aaron Copland )and dance, all interspersed with scenes of gay folk enjoying and working through everyday life. Including military life. Perhaps a few wedding photos are shown. There is no narration, just the music.
Ad ends with a cut to the President: “My name is Barack Obama, and I approve this message.”
patrick II
@cmorenc:
I don’t know if you can call it paranoia if there was something to actually fear. There possibility of nuclear war was real, bomb shelters were not irrational in the sense that they were a response to an imaginary threat, but only irrational in that they wouldn’t do much good for long term survival.
Fear and paranoia seemed to have worked in downard spirals, I guess like money does in a depression, where each real event to be feared causes projections of bad possibilities (paranoia) which in turn increases the chances of the bad possibilities becoming themselves real and to be feared.
stickler
@Librarian: Obama’s campaign doesn’t have to have balls, or make mean ads. If his people know what they’re doing — and I’d bet 10 million Reichsmarks that they do — they’ll run only sunshine and happiness ads.
Under the new rules, shadowy PACs (see the comments about Soros above) will run the nasty Daisy ads. Santorum or Gingrich or the Romneytron will be cast as the nutcases they really are. Count on it.
Plus, people, when you are defending Goldwater, keep in mind which Goldwater you’re talking about. Late-career Goldwater was pretty admirable in many ways; pro-gay rights, libertarian, suspicious of the God-botherers.
But 1964 Goldwater? That guy really was nuts. 1964 was the equivalent of the Tea Party taking over the GOP. The most conservative wing of the party took over and let its John Birch Society freak flag fly. Best decision Nixon ever made was to keep his mouth shut in ’64, and let the wingnuts crash and burn. LBJ absolutely crushed the Conservative Revolution, and left salted earth in their wake.
eemom
damn, linkie fucked up. Here’s fixie.
Martin
@gex: Not in the context of Obama’s policy. Those arguments are being waged elsewhere, and with no real traction, so we shouldn’t get distracted by them until they appear to go somewhere.
The right looks pretty bonkers when they fight enemies unseen by the public. We do too.
Chris
@Martin:
Quoted For Truth.
@stickler:
The Party evolved in certain directions Goldwater didn’t approve of, and he didn’t like it and said so. Whether I’d go so far as to call him “admirable”… The guy was basically Ron Paul. He sometimes disagreed with the mainstream of his party, which made him an ally of convenience on some issues, but the guy’s ideology was still completely batshit and would have been disastrous for foreign policy, economics and civil rights alike if he’d been elected.
He wasn’t the same kind of far right, but was still far right.
inventor
@Linda Featheringill:
The hypocrisy of the same gang that oversaw a child rape ring for decades trying to impose their will on any issue of human sexuality has almost caused my head to explode.
petesmom
@Martin: No. Originally the Catholic church objected to having to pay for contraceptive coverage. When the president offered as ‘compromise’ that their employees would be covered but they wouldn’t have to pay for it, the bishops’ demand changed. Now they don’t want anyone to have contraceptive coverage.
Thymezone
@Chris:
6) Goldwater talked like an extremist, before extremism was cool. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” That idea is still keeping the GOP mired in crazy shit and sold out to crazy voters.
inventor
@pj: Great ad. It would be especially good in swing states where gay marriage polls >50%.
Not Sure
@Mino: With a coat-hanger lying next to her. That part is important. And the girl should be blonde, pretty, and about 15 or so.
gex
@Martin: Fair enough. I think it’s useful to add as a contrast to their claim that it is just that they don’t want to pay for it. Because really they don’t want to allow it. Making people pay for it themselves doesn’t put off right wingers or independents, that’s just good old bootstrap freedom marketplace magic.
Amanda in the South Bay
@patrick II:
No nuclear war in 1962 could’ve wiped America out, or reduced civilization in North America to dark ages levels. The American/Soviet OOBs say otherwise.
scav
@inventor: That’s ok: we’ve also got the party that shrieked over government death panels putting Bishops in between you and your doctor and Championing Religious Freedom Über Alles! in tandem with their Save Us From Sharia Freak Flag. The logic drive of this country is so corrupted.
inventor
@Mark S.: You’re probably right.
patrick II
@Amanda in the South Bay:
In 1962 there were 31,600 nuclear warheads. At the peak the combined U.S. and Soviet union warheads numbered over 50,000 nuclear warheads. I congratulate you on your optimism.
dogwood
At this point there is no evidence that the contraception issue is going to have much of an impact in the election. Mitt Romney can’t be the spokesman for this culture war crusade, and I just don’t see outside money running ads against the Pressident’s so-called war on religion having much effect either when it comes to persuadable voters. If Republicans want to rally the base with birth control the way they do with abortion, gays, and guns, let em. Even if the economy continues to improve, it won’t be enough to turn this election into a culture war referendum.
Martin
@gex:
No, I agree. But like I said, fighting unseen enemies is a loser with the public. Once the public accuses you of that, whatever good arguments you had get tossed because your credibility is lost.
@petesmom: Rereading the bishop’s statement, you might be right. I didn’t quite understand their last piece, and read it as a restatement of their previous position but I now see that it probably is an expanding argument. If I understand it, they’re now saying that even if contraception wasn’t mandatory but the employee and insurer were to agree to an out-of-pocket rider, that still is problematic because the church as employer is subsidizing a system that would allow that rider to be cost-effective. This is a ‘one-drop’ rule applied to the entire health care system. By that argument, the GOPs proposal doesn’t solve the problem either – it’s not broad enough.
Regardless, the WH has been to supporters making the case that health care is part of compensation and owned by the employee, not the employer. At some point they’ll decide they’ve baited the GOP and the bishops far enough into taking a stupid position and roll that other defense out. They’re clearly aware that it’s a winning position or they wouldn’t have been using it on us.
WereBear
Asked and answered.
And I’ve been hopin’ and prayin’ for this to finally spiral in on itself… Conservatives only win when they lie and obscure and cheat. LET THEM TELL US WHO THEY ARE. It’s reached that point and I couldn’t be happier.
Gypsy Howell
I dunno – Santorum strikes me as the perfect republican nominee. He’s completely owned by the 1%, as his KStreet background will attest, and he’s a complete wackadoodle fundie who will appeal to the rubes on social issues. I don’t believe the 1% really fear a theocratic takeover of our country as long as it goes hand in hand with reducing regulations and tax rates, because they’ll never have to worry about public schools or affording contraception or the issue of choice for their daughters, or any of the kind of stuff the rest of us have to concern ourselves with. Santorum could be the perfect nominee for the big money boys.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
@Martin: Thanks to SuperPACs Obama doesn’t get a say about the ads that get run in support of his candidacy.
Benjamin Franklin
Isn’t it a federal crime to aid and abet terrorist orgs?
“The enemy of my enemy, is my friend” We have seen the enemy, and it is
US….
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/10/israel_mek_and_state_sponsor_of_terror_groups/singleton/
Gus diZerega
@Martin: My point was not to defend the idea. It was expressly repudiated by Madison. My point was to say that many who believed in the concept at the time did so for reasons unconnected to approving segregation. I know that for a fact because I was one of them.
If we cannot perceive differences within the right, we cannot learn how to communicate with them. Some are so devoid of integrity that there is little point in communicating. They are sick people and either a therapist or the unexpected opening of their own hearts are all that might work.
Others sincerely believe their arguments. If you do not understand their arguments and attribute false motives to them, you will not do much to improve matters. Often people close down or go on offense when attacked. Yes, libertarians will not create the society they believe their principles lead to. You will not demonstrate that to them by attacking their motives, you just make it harder for them to differentiate themselves from the NeoConfederate jerks they ally with due to “states rights” and other errors.
gex
@Martin: Excellent point on the unseen enemies. My way should be a winning argument, but that’s just not how you reach the other side. If too much thought is involved and not enough gut, it won’t fly.
On another point you made, I wonder why the fungibility of money doesn’t come up when we pay the Catholics $3bn a year. Why are we paying for the defense and settlements of child rape cases?
petesmom
@Martin:
Oh, I agree with you there. As I told my son on Friday, I’m still chuckling about Pres. Obama’s ninja moves. Although it’s really more jujitsu; he got them moving in the wrong direction, then used their momentum to force them off the cliff.
David Koch
I couldn’t disagree more.
Romney is the weakest candidate.
And once his tax returns come out, Romney will be lucky to win Utah.
J.W. Hamner
Why am I getting all these RC copter ads all of a sudden? Why don’t I get the same “Hot Chicks!!!” ads as everyone else? Apparently Google has pegged me as a giant nerd.
Chris
@Gypsy Howell:
I agree. Though I don’t think it’s really on their agenda either.
So what if their sisters, wives and daughters aren’t allowed to have abortions – they can always put them on a jet to Canada and have them have the abortion there nice and quiet, then come right back. Assuming they don’t have ways of getting it done under the table right here in the U.S, which, with their amount of money, is always possible.
Suffern ACE
My guess is the ad of the 2012 campaign will be some kind of dredged up “Aqua Buddha” that will leave everyone scratching their heads because they don’t follow the internet news, and when they find out it was about something done by someone in their college days, they’ll just get angry that everyone was wasting their time. In other words, an own-goal ad about Romney in France or Michelle’s college thesis or the President’s grades at Occidental.
gex
@Chris: They’ll get safe abortions in hospitals here like they did before Roe v. Wade. It’s kind of applied the same way we enforce drug laws. It’s essentially legal for the right kind of people.
Svensker
@Benjamin Franklin:
Not if they are for or against the right people. It all depends!
gex
@Svensker: @gex:
Funny how we are talking two different things, but the answer to both depends on whether they are the right kind of people or not.
WereBear
@gex: Hell yes. It takes an actual body, that has been discovered, to get the 1% in trouble.
b-psycho
@Thymezone:
Um…where does liberty actually come into play with any of the shit they’ve been saying?
BTW: y’all should read up on the guy that passed on that phrase to Goldwater, his speechwriter Karl Hess. For all the dismissal as wingnuttery that line gets, Hess pretty much burned his conservative cred card afterwards, embracing anarchism.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@petesmom:
This distinction is important… the Bishops have basically formed an alliance with the GOP in Congress. The right wing now asserts the right of any employer to essentially “own” the reproductive lives of their employees, regardless of their religion.
To my memory, this is something completely new. And it assaults the whole idea of what it means to be a secular Republic.
This isn’t really the time for the liberal empathy-nicey-nicey approach. It’s war.
WereBear
Damn. That sounds like… slavery, don’t it?
Van Buren
@beltane: I’m not scared of Santorum, but having once known him, I can vouch for the fact that he is nucking futs.
Smedley the Uncertain
@beltane: Right On!
Why are we not talking about Freedom FROM Religion? The bishops’ position denies care to non Catholics regardless of belief.
Tonybrown74
@gex:
This.
I would have doctors and nurses in an ER of some sort frantically wondering what to do while her husband and son/daughter watching the scene with horror as the woman passes away. No sound, other than the recording of Santorum saying that statement someone quoted above: “A lot of Christians think contraception is OK. It’s not OK. It just gives people a license to do things in the sexual realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be.”
JMochaCat
The logical extension/companion piece of employers owning your reproductive health is Henry Ford going around the houses in his company town on Sunday morning making sure people weren’t slacking off church.