Not gonna link, but the Washington Post has Frank Luntz tell us about “five myths of conservative voters.” And then Jonah Goldberg tells us about “Liberals’ top five cliches.”
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Technically true, but collectively nonsense
Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.
You cannot shame the shameless.
We still have time to mess this up!
Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.
A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires
It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.
Peak wingnut was a lie.
They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.
Accountability, motherfuckers.
… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact
After roe, women are no longer free.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.
If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!
No one could have predicted…
Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?
rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius
The willow is too close to the house.
“Squeaker” McCarthy
Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
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Baud
I fail to see the problem.
Rev. Dada Grind
There is nothing as tyrannically clichéd as a top five list, is there?
Rekster
I threw up a little in my mouth when I saw the WaPo online Front Page this morning!
Brachiator
I always thought that Jonah Goldberg was his own cliché.
c u n d gulag
@Brachiator:
I don’t know about his own cliche.
I’m pretty sure though, that he’s his own Zip Code!
AkaDad
Were some of the myths being Republicans are honest, fiscally responsible, and want small government?
Warren Terra
That’s fkin’ amazing. What does Frank Luntz think the Conservatives get wrong? That they think their ideas are good, when actually they’re the bestest evahrr? I mean, usually the editors of a feature like this would at least get some milquetoast soi distant “liberal” – an Alan Colmes, if you will – to balance the extremist Conservative and whine that the Republicans have good ideas but need to be nicer to the other guys … the only balance here is that while both contributors are lying disingenuous Conservative hacks, Goldberg is a moron and Luntz isn’t.
MattR
FYI – The five conservative “myths” are
1 – Conservatives care most about the size of government.
2 – Conservatives want to deport all illegal immigrants.
3 – They worship Wall Street.
4 – Conservatives want to slash Social Security and Medicare.
5 – Conservatives don’t care about inequality.
It seems that these wualify as myths because the people Luntz talked to in his polling and focus groups give him responses other than the “myth” but at the same time they keep voting for Republican politicians who fully buy into all 5 of those supposed myths.
Despite the appearance of balance from the WaPost, Jonah’s list is actually “Top five cliches that liberals use to avoid real arguments”. So basically you have to top-five ways that liverals misrepresent reality. (Now that I realize that Jonah’s new book, “The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas” , is released on Tuesday it seems clear that these articles were nothing but a way to promote it)
Jonah’s top five are
1 – Diversity is strength
2 – Violence never solved anything
3 – The living Constitution
4 – Social Darwinism
5 – Better 10 guilty men go free . . .
Baud
1. Tax cuts solve all problems.
2. Republicans are the more moral than Democrats.
3. People are committing voter fraud.
4. Obama is [insert the opposite of what he actually is].
5. Liberals only care about sex.
Elizabelle
Guess the Washington Post was going for “balance”, since their other top story is Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann’s
Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
Norm Ornstein. Of the American Enterprise Institute.
Thomas Mann. Brookings Institution.
Dr. Squid
I was amused by Tbogg’s Shorter on this subject, especially the “Pass The Douchies On The Right Hand Side” tag.
Hill Dweller
Frank Luntz brags about having a ‘Run Obama Run’ sticker on the front bumper of his car. Still in good standing with the MSM…
MattR
@Elizabelle: You are right. I completely forgot that a conservative criticizing other conservatives with facts can only be balanced by two conservatives creating straw men to make conservatives look good and liberals look bad.
@Dr. Squid: The first comment at TBogg’s perfectly sums up the Luntz piece.
eldorado
my worst quality? well, it’s probably that i tend to work too hard, and put in long hours. it’s not the healthiest choice i could make…
General Stuck
Just when you thought the House republicans couldn’t go any lower
All this to hopefully, for the wingers, block the debt deal auto cuts to the military. And this time they plan to take hostage the hungry for the ransom, or the country gets it with another govt shutdown threat.
It is so depraved they even have lost the wingnut Catholic Bishops.
And of course, like always, there are any number of dems piss n pants that don’t want the military auto cuts to happen next year. No one knows yet, if it’s enough to over ride a potus veto.
debbie
Republicans will never begin their recovery from looniness (which is fine with me) until they get rid of Frank Luntz. He’s inflicted more damage than Barry Goldwater.
Walker
I notice that he did not include “they are racist” in his five myths.
jrg
@MattR: I had to get out of the boat for this one. Matt’s list is correct.
…Which makes me believe that most Republicans are not evil, they’re just stupid as shit.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Warren Terra:
But don’t you see that they’ve already balanced it, since the WaPo is already a loony lefty psycholibercommie rag. Matter of fact, these two op-eds simply aren’t enough to balance the rabid dangerous liberalism infesting the WaPo and that Marxist Fred Hiatt.
Valdivia
A little OT but more inspiring: just came from the women’s march and rally. Though not hugely attended (30 marchers+, 100 or so at the rally or more) Jennifer Granholm was the first speaker. She was awesome. She practically told the old men at the capitol to stop trying to occupy our uteri!
low-tech cyclist
The problem isn’t Luntz or Jonah, of course. The problem is that the WaPo gives them a forum and is still respected and influential. But be that as it may:
Jonah’s piece lacks something crucial: examples.
He gives no examples at all for three of his five cliches. For the ‘diversity is strength’ cliche, he quotes a college president on the subject of college admissions. (Jonah, if you can’t find something that matters, then give it up.)
The only real, live example he gives of someone left of center that most of you might have actually heard of uttering one of his cliches is Obama slamming the House GOP budget as “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” Jonah’s beef: libruls are using it wrong.
But no, we’re not. The phrase has a clear meaning: survival of the fittest should be allowed to play out in the economic sphere. If you’re on the bottom, and can’t fight your way up without help from do-gooders of whatever sort, then you belong on the bottom, and society is worse off if it tries to help you out.
That is pretty much what the Republicans are selling these days: unemployed people are loafers and their meager benefits shouldn’t be extended. If women can’t afford the cost of contraceptives, then tough luck, And so forth. Yes, they’re selling social Darwinism. If they don’t like the label, they should stop pushing a social Darwinist program.
Bruce S
I love that the author of “Liberal Fascism” objects to use of the term “social darwinism”, because by his lights “there was no intellectual movement called Social Darwinism.” Also the little turd claims that liberals believe that “violence never solves anything.” Hell, by the canon of every liberal I know violence “solved” the problems of British colonialism, Confederate secessionism, and mid-20th Century fascism. Goldberg, I think, isn’t as dishonest as he consistently sounds. He’s mostly butt stupid, with the dishonesty thrown in so he can fabricate some delusional sense of self worth.
Jager
A guy I know from my days in radio is working on a “new concept” for a high power, big signal talk station. I told him he was full of shit and why. Then I told him what would work, now he is pissed at me.
Good luck on dropping the average age of the male conservative talk listener 20 plus years.
KFI works here because of Rush and Hannity bookended by two bat-shit crazy local shows in morning and afternoon drive.
Put somebody on who says nothing but Obama is a naz-isocialist-facist-commie-balacketyblackblackblack-take your guns-hates white people-islamic-wasn’t-born here-kenyan-ni**r and you’ll maybe get your head above water. Then maybe the tea party rubes will tune in.
Remember the signs “Keep the government out of my Medicare” that’s how dumbed down it has to be.
Put Allen West on and get him to talk about the 80 members of the House of Representatives he knows are communist party members.
Get the governor on to explain how important it is to drug test folks applying for state benefits.
Spend hours talking about how scary blacks and hispanics are, but not Cubans, just those other hispanics who are the majority of brown people in your state.
If you are going to get the station out of the swamp its in, you are going to have to go full out tin foil hat, utterly and completely disconnected from reality.
If you aren’t willing to go that far, make it the 5th Sports station in the market, that’ll fucking work!
Soonergrunt
So yesterday’s commentary was either a fluke or somebody hacked their content management system.
Amir Khalid
OFF-TOPIC:
Here’s a chronological eye-witness account of the Bersih 3.0 rally in KL today (Saturday, April 28). Start at the bottom and scroll up.
Highlights:
— Estimated as many as 200k demonstrators gathered at various points to march to Dataran Merdeka, a playing field in the middle of KL and a historic site.
— Police block access to Dataran Merdeka and close off Masjid Jamek LRT (light-rail transit) station as well as surrounding roads, preventing crowd from dispersing.
— Police use tear gas and water cannon on nonviolent protesters.
— Police car rams demonstrators, is overturned by more demonstrators; unconfirmed report that one demonstrator killed. Fate of cop at the wheel unknown.
— Estimated scores of arrests, maybe 100 or more. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim not among the arrested.
BGinCHI
Problem for stupid Goldberg is that a “cliche” is something that’s generally true but that is just not big news when anyone repeats it.
So I’d say yeah, Jonah, those are cliches, because they are correct.
Dick.
Bnut
I think Jonah needs what I learned in the Marine Corps as a “dick punch”. Violence does seem to solves some things.
GregB
Wait a minute? I thought the liberal fascists were going to solve the problem of conservatism by rounding up all of the cons and then putting them in FEMA camps and then deal with them via death panels?
Problem solved Jonah! Find a different number 2.
DH
The Kaplan Prep Test Daily cannot go out of business fast enough. Also, note that the earlier trolling article in the Times was written partly by Peter Baker, who used to work for, you guessed it, Kaplan. Perhaps it isn’t enough that the Post go out of business. How about a ban on all their editorial writers and political writers writing for any publication for the next 10 years? One can dream….
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@jrg: Indeed that’s probably true. But the evil ones are kept in place to fuck us all over because of the stupid as shit ones.
Jager
I got a phone call in the middle of my edit and now you all have my name, address and phone number. WTF, cocktails at 5.
Redshift
I’m guessing there’s enough projection in those two “articles” to open a multiplex…
Chuck Butcher
@Jager:
do I have to call first?
cmorenc
@Baud:
OK, this one just might be sort of true, if you modify it slightly to “liberals care a lot about their sexuality in a fondly positive way, and don’t want a bunch of prudishly repressed wankers telling them what to do.” Or, more sharply to the point, we think it’s healthy to be horny and want to do something about it with another consenting adult, so fuck off if you don’t approve.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Be fair you guys. Of all the sons of panty-sniffing old rat fuckers, Jonah Goldberg is the most qualified to be a pundit.
Bruce S
My favorite line in Goldberg’s column is, regarding the notion that “it’s better that 10 guilty men go free…”:
No it’s not an “argument”, douchebag. It’s an assertion of a fundamental moral value that, even by your own lights, “no reasonable disagrees with.” If there’s a point there that’s worth even the time it takes to read a couple of this idiot’s paragraphs, it eludes me…and presumably every “reasonable person.”
But he can’t stop when he assumes he’s marginally “ahead.” Separating himself from the consensus of “reasonable people”, Goldberg actually asserts, even after that bland admission, that the opposite of this moral principle is true – that there is less harm “to society” in convicting one innocent person than in letting any of the possibly guilty go free.
This, of course, is the stock fascist and Stalinist approach to “justice.” Thus the author of “Liberal Fascism” constructs a theory of jurisprudence that can best be described as “National Review Fascism” – informed, of course, by certain of the insights of classic Social Darwinism. It’s not the first time for his crowd, of course. William F. Buckley pioneered it when he concluded that segregation and denial of black folks’ voting rights were appropriate and beneficial “cultural” choices in the context of the traditional Southern gentlemen’s desire – all in the interest of society, of course – for white racial hegemony, rationalized as “rule of the fittest”, in their corner of the world.
Jonah carries on a long tradition of reactionary gasbags peddling right-wing extremist nonsense.
Jager
@Chuck Butcher: At this point I don’t give a shit, what do you drink? I’m doing Bulleit bourbon-rocks.
Jebediah
Jager- maybe a front-pager can delete the personal info for you? Its already there but maybe deletion will minimize the damage… and anyway, you are far enough from Culver City that Otto, Juno and I will not likely be coming around to bother you. Probably.
Chris
Saw the “five conservative myths” this morning. It kind of ignores the fact that there’s a huge discrepancy between what conservative voters say they want, and what they’ll vote for once the right wing media puts everything into the proper (tribal) context for them.
Like I’ve said before, it’s not exactly hard to get conservatives to start spewing liberal, even socialist rhetoric, if you’re just talking in a “what do YOU think?” context. The problem is that the second Fox News points out that it is in fact liberal rhetoric, they’ll drop it like a hot potato and obediently root for the other side.
“What conservative voters really think” is completely irrelevant as long as they rate other people’s thoughts above their own.
Ksmiami
Don’t care what conservatives think or feel. They are dead wrong on pretty much everything at this point
grandpa john
@Bruce S: “Doughy pants load” is the classic example of the evils of Nepotism
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Norm Ornstein is doing his best to get fired from the AEI by speaking truth. I hope he’s got a decent severance package and a job offer from Brookings or ThinkProgress, ‘cos it’s hard to see how he can write that Op-Ed and still stay at the AEI.
danielx
@Baud:
Yep. They got me. I care about sex and nothing else. Well, almost nothing anyway.
In my case they got one out of five, which for conservatives ain’t bad. Luntz’s top five “myths” are demonstrably not myths, but then Luntz isn’t writing the truth – he’s writing complete horseshit to convince Villagers that conservative voters are reasonable people. They’re not.
Luntz’s bullshit is sort of understandable; he’s a true Republican and you can pretty much predict what a true Republican will do. Just follow the money – Frank Luntz is a whore who pretty much says what he’s paid to say.
As to Jonah Goldberg…well, it’s Jonah, that pretty much says it all. The gem that I really liked was the following:
Because that innocent sap certainly won’t be Jonah, and besides, the more people that get locked up the better the Corrections Corporation of America will do, and the more contributions they’ll make to conservative candidates.
Y’know, even as Regnery Press remaindered specials, I wouldn’t use shredded copies of Jonah Goldberg’s book(s) to insulate my house for fear of indoor air pollution.
This particular close or variations thereof seems to be on my mind today, but it truly does fit, especially after re-reading Goodbye To All That (see link below).
Fuck Jonah Goldberg. Because why? Because fuck him.
http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=3079:goodbye-to-all-that-reflections-of-a-gop-operative-who-left-the-cult
Geeno
@Jager: good to know there’s people so honest in your profession. Won’t post my guess by the name.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Amir Khalid:
Wow… “acid water”? They are spraying “acid water” on the people? Holy shit, that’s just unreal! It sounds like absolute mayhem there, what a disaster.
I really don’t know what else to say but holy shit and my heart goes out to those who are suffering.
Wow.
Jager
@Geeno: I’ve been out of the business for a couple of years. I get askd to do some consulting from time to time and turn it down. The last consulting gig I did the owner stiffed me for 20k.
BTW, there was nobody at my house at 5, so I locked the door. I’m on the patio drinking waiting for Mrs J to show up. I did hear somebody beating on the door 20 minutes ago and let the German Shepherd out to chase them away….
AA+ Bonds
People click on headlines that describe lists because they seem like they will be easy to read