The Kaplan Daily accidentally prints the blindingly obvious. One suspects that Sally Quinn will be very upset.
From the article:
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
I won’t keep pasting parts of this article into this posting–copyright and all that, but you ought to go and read it. I don’t know if this is going to finally be the beginning of the American press corps becoming useful again, and in fact I doubt it, but it is tiny, faint glimmer of hope.
EDIT: I missed some rather important information here. In other news, every vote against the Violence Against Women Act came from a Republican male. However, not all Republican males voted against it. Lamar Alexander, John McCain, Scott Brown, Dan Coats, Bob Corker, Mike Crapo, Dean Heller, Rob Portman, David Vitter, and every Republican female Senator voted to pass the bill. Sorry about that.
Note: Tonal Crow, at 32: “My God, they’ve committed journalism!” LOL
Open Thread
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
How long til Lane and Gerson attack for saying this?
Mino
I think I’m gonna faint.
Brachiator
The one nugget of hope to come from this is that women Republicans refused to go along with the insanity which has become GOP policy.
fasteddie9318
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
I’d recommend the cops pick Lane up and put him on 48 hour suicide watch. He may try to cut a motherfucker over this.
Chuck Butcher
quite usefully they did manage to mention the Democratic shift to the… left?
Some things are really hard to stop doing – I still smoke Camel Straights…
Dungheap
Point of clarification: All the Republicans that voted against it are males, but not all male Republicans voted against it.
That was the Lily Ledbetter Act (Specter don’t count as an R).
Soonergrunt
@Chuck Butcher: Baby steps…the tiny, faint glimmer and all that.
Bruce S
I’m wondering if Ornstein’s check from AEI keeps coming after this one. He’s their “Pet Moderate Democrat” but he could end up like David Frum (although Frum’s hardcore GOP identity made him that much more of a heretic when he started talking sense around the edges of his brand of conservatism.)
Schlemizel
GEE! If one were not a hyperpartisan loonie-lefty one might say the GOP is waging war on women.
I would never say that of course for fear of winning a sully
Soonergrunt
@Dungheap: There was a Republican male that didn’t vote against the VAWA re-auth today?
What is this strange creature of which you speak? Was it McCain, doing it for the sake of being mavricky one last time before he strokes out?
Joseph Nobles
OK, this is the first time I’ve seen “every single male Republican in the Senate.” Before, it’s only been that everyone who voted against it was a male Republican, but I’d hoped that at least a couple had voted against it. I mean, even if it was just Mitch, just to avoid this appearance. But, seriously, every male Republican in the Senate voted against the Violence Against Women Act? And they consisted of the only votes against it?
What bastards.
Schlemizel
@Chuck Butcher:
I saw that line & wanted to punch someone. Dems have moved to the GOP 25 yard line, not their own. Both Clinton & Obama would be quite comfortable in the GOP of my youth (well except for that whole “No Coloreds” thing they hitched their wagons to).
Legalize
This is incorrect. Several male GOPers, including Walnuts, Scott Brown, and Rob Portman voted to reauthorize.
Dungheap
@Soonergrunt:
There were several. Scott Brown. John McCain. Lamar Alexander. Bob Corker. Diapers Vitter. Among others.
BGinCHI
Cue the butthurt.
“Liberal WaPo…..”
fledermaus
Of course not. The DC courtiers can’t remember anything that happened after Reagan left office or less than 30 minutes ago. They’ll get back to both sides-ism by tea time today.
Chris
How shrill!
How uncivil!
How ill-mannered!
How upsetting!
More, please.
Mnemosyne
@Soonergrunt:
Believe it or not, McCain and Vitter were both in the “yea” group, and I see Scott Brown knows which side his bread is buttered on. These are the Republican “yeas”:
Alexander (R-TN)
Ayotte (R-NH)
Brown (R-MA)
Coats (R-IN)
Corker (R-TN)
Crapo (R-ID)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
McCain (R-AZ)
Portman (R-OH)
Reed (D-RI)
Vitter (R-LA)
ETA: So, yes, it is more accurate to say that the only Senators to vote against VAWA were male Republicans, because there are a few who voted in favor of it.
ETA #2: Sorry, those are the MALE Republican “yeas.” I took out the female ones.
Mino
Now what poison pill can the House hang on its version? Oh, I know. Bush taxcuts!
Joseph Nobles
OK, I went and checked the vote. 10 Republican males voted for this act: Lamar Alexander, Scott Brown, Daniel Coats, Bob Corker, Mike Crapo, Dean Heller, John Hoeven, John McCain, Rob Portman, and David Vitter.
Interesting to note in the veep horserace that Portman did vote for this while Rubio voted against.
debg
@Dungheap: I was going to post the same thing–you saved me the trouble!
Rick Massimo
I thought it was an official, unsigned editorial, and that the Post was getting somewhere. But no – it’s by Mann and Ornstein, which means that within a week we’ll have Krauthammer or Thiessen writing “UH UH! Democrats are to blame for all of this, and it’s so blindingly obvious that I don’t even HAVE to provide any facts or evidence!”
Soonergrunt
@Legalize: @Mnemosyne:@Joseph Nobles:
I have corrected the posting. Thank you all. And thanks to the ten other inevitable posters who will soon correct me.
Chuck Butcher
@Schlemizel:
I’m not a “good ole days” sort of guy, but one of the hazzards about getting old…er is that you have things to campare to.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Mnemosyne:
__
I notice that Alexander, Corker and Vitter are the only ones in that list from southeastern states (and note that these are precisely the states which are well stocked with GOP senators). This reminds me of what David Hackett had to say in his book Albion’s Seed about regional American cultures and their differing attitudes towards gender and relationships.
__
Looks like there is some hope for TN after all. I don’t know what got in to Vitter. Maybe he made some promises at home after that whole diapir incident, chits that are still being cashed.
PeakVT
The change won’t come overnight, but to have Ornstein writing something like that is a significant event.
Valdivia
I am actually truly shocked that they printed that and came right out and said it in the first few graphs. Wow!
Linda Featheringill
I read the WaPo article. Wow.
danielx
@Chuck Butcher:
Ummm…I’m trying to think of how to put this politely, and I can’t. The idea that the Dems have moved to the left is unmitigated bullshit.
Clinton or Obama either one are more or less centrist Democrats; neither – regardless of the fevered imaginings of their opponents – was or is a soshulist commie liberal firebrand out to end capitalism and the American way of life.
Neither Eisenhower, nor Nixon, nor for that matter the late sainted Ronald Reagan would get past the Republican primary process today. All would be dismissed as hopelessly liberal RINOs – you know, Republicans In Name Only? I’ve noted this before, but it bears repeating: any candidate who is acceptable to the wingnut faction of the Republican party is unelectable in a general election. They can’t stand Mitt Romney, and the only reason he got the nomination was that he drowned his opponents in a tidal wave of money. Otherwise it would be Santorum or Gingrich, either of whom would have been crushed like a grape in the general election in November.
From what I can tell, the ideal conservative Republican candidate would be a reincarnated Jefferson Davis. The Dems, on the other hand, accept the basic legitimacy of government. As pointed out in the article, they gave George W. Bush pretty nearly everything he asked for six years, and didn’t didn’t do all that much to oppose him for two more. Obama has been opposed tooth and nail throughout his first term – from what I can tell the only way he could govern that would be acceptable to Republicans wold be to act like John McCain had won the election. Failing that, for him to resign and commit suicide in no particular order. Republicans do not accept him as a legitimate president, any more than they accepted Clinton as a legitimate president.
So I don’t want to hear any shit about the far left tendencies of the hard core Democratic party; there aren’t any. The only comparison with the rightist move of the Republicans over the past thirty years would have been a comparable rise of a hard core socialist party, and it wouldn’t be the Democrats. If it had, we might actually still have something called the rule of law in this country. Remember when that happened?
Yeah, me neither.
Linda Featheringill
Maybe this article will start a discussion on telling the truth. That would be nice.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@danielx:
__
Of course it is, and darn near everyone here, including even the most ardent Obots knows it. Most of us have said the same thing, in almost the same words, at one time or another. Chuck was snarking. Personally I thought the snark was pretty obvious, but I’ve been wrong before.
Tonal Crow
My God, they’ve committed journalism!
PeakVT
@danielx: There’s still too much both-sides-do-it crap in the article, but he does explicitly say two important things: 1) Republicans are extremists and Democrats are not, and 2) the Senate is not a 60-vote body. Since Ornstein is sort of a wonky version of Broder – a slightly right-of-center guy who tries very hard to look balanced – Villagers are a lot more likely to internalize what he says once than what DFHs and pesky bloggers have been saying endlessly since March of 2009.
TooManyJens
I can only assume Norm Orenstein has his retirement fund all squared away, because now that he’s told the truth his name will become anathema in conservative circles. Even now, I’ve no doubt that Breitbart’s minions are digging for evidence that he’s been a secret liberal all along. I eagerly await their expose of his arugula-eating habits.
Kirk was also a co-sponsor, but didn’t vote because he’s not back from his stroke yet.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@TooManyJens:
__
They won’t have to look at his lettuce. He used to do interviews for Air America Radio. I remember him forecasting the results of the upcoming 2006 elections with uncanny accuracy back when it was the Village conventional wisdom that the GOP had nothing to worry about and Nancy Pelosi was just some congresswoman from San Francisco. Also, too, he wrote a book called The Broken Branch all about what a mess Congress was and especially how badly the GOP behaved in it during the W administration, to a degree which while it had some historical precedent in past Congresses, was taking things to a whole new low. It was full of facts ‘n stuff.
__
That’s just how your low-down, dirty, hard-core liberal operates. Children’s ice cream, Mandrake, children’s ice cream.
WaterGirl
Holy crap. I finally have something to post on the “Tell me something I don’t know” post by DougJ:
Pigs are Flying and Hell has apparently frozen over.
TooManyJens
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Oh, he’s definitely fucked then.
Martin
Christ, what liberal claptrap. In order for one party to be extremist as they state, the other party has to be just as extreme. Anti-exstemist extremists, as it were. So clearly both sides are at fault.
El Cid
@Martin:
It depends on whether you’re playing trivial games with analogies or are using fairly conventional political definitions of terms like “moderate” or “extreme”.
On the one hand, yes, no matter where the overal range would move, one side of a representation of a left-right line would be on the “extreme” and vice versa. Any stick has at least two ends. This is the trivial version.
Or you could use objective measures where ever possible (as established from generations of legislative activities and scholarly research) and compose nationally-relevant, statistically accessible definitions of terms (historically contingent, of course) like “liberal”, “moderate”, “conservative”, “center,” or “extreme”.
If the temperature of an area varied between 100 degrees F and 110 degrees F, it’s true that one “extreme” would be 100 F and the other “extreme” would be 110 F, but there would not be the range of “extremes” if the temperature varied between -10 F and 110 F.
If an area at one point in the past averaged a temperature variation from -10 to 110 and then changed to varying between 100 and 110, then no amount of wordplay about “extreme” would remove the objective fact that the range of variation now lay within the formerly established upper bound of temperatures.
Snowwy
@PeakVT:
FTFY
Death Panel Truck
I’m not going to get too excited about this. Basically it’s a guest editorial. It’s not like Fred Hiatt penned this on behalf of the editorial board. Newspapers publish a lot of shit management doesn’t agree with, and I’m afraid this is probably one of them. I’m not going to look for the WaPo to find religion anytime soon.
mdblanche
Brown and Heller voted for, Lugar and Hatch voted against. From this I conclude that support for wife-beating hurts you in the general election but helps you in Republican primaries.
Brian
Oh she is soooo fired…. Does she have granite countertops?
Margarita
Have these gentlemen ever seen a footall game? How does this metaphor work on any level?
Merp
Alternatively:
My God, the journalism is coming from inside the Kaplan Daily!
Basilisc
Vitter thought he was voting for the “Women’s Violence Against Me, But Only Because I’m a Bad, Bad Boy Act”.
Sorry, that was in poor taste.