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This post is in: Crazification Factor, Election 2012, Open Threads, Assholes
The modern conservative movement is carefully designed to appeal to the greedy, the stupid, the gullible and the fearful. At their annual Lack of Values Summit in DC, one of the movement’s biggest tools let the truth of it slip out. The Buzzfeed headline and story captured the moment:
No doubt!
How about an open thread…
Cheers
Comments are closed.
[…] effect among leftist Obamapologists at New York Magazine, Little Green Footballs, Gawker, Balloon Juice, etc. They assume themselves to be the “smart” people either because they cannot tell […]
EdTheRed
They’ve done studies, you know. Twenty seven percent of the time, it works every time.
piratedan
if only there was a cliff he could lead them all off of…..
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I have the ghost of Adlai Stevenson calling on line 1. He wants to know if we have a majority yet.
arguingwithsignposts
Rick Santorum really is a stupid fuck. I am amazed he can tie his shoes.
Hal
I’m really starting to feel this election has pivoted in Obama’s favor. Rachel Maddow mad a point that this was around the time in 2008 when the financial crisis hit and how much better Obama handled it than McCain, and this to me is much the same. Romney’s bungling of the Libyan embassy attack and and deaths has telegraphed to the world just how he handles foreign policy crisis.
I’m wondering if the debates will even matter as much with such a small number of people left undecided. By the time they take place, there may be hardly anyone left to appeal to anymore.
? Martin
Well, if he insists…
? Martin
@arguingwithsignposts:
Do you have proof he can tie his shoes? I’m skeptical.
Catherine D.
@arguingwithsignposts: He wears loafers …
quannlace
Today’s GOP: We’re proud to be Blockheads!
***************
But really, he’s appealing to that old ‘We’re not gonna let a bunch of East Coast elitist brainiacs tell US what to do.’ Still very popular.
Brachiator
Wow. Now that is a bold statement.
Dennis SGMM
One of the interesting aspects of this election cycle is that conservatives are verbalizing the things that they actually believe but, have usually kept on the down low. Don’t know why they are choosing this time to do so. OTOH, this year should pretty much finish off the notion of reaching them or of bargaining with them.
piratedan
I see a whole new re-purposing of those “I’m with stupid” t-shirts! business opportunities galore! It’s Mike Judge’s Idiotcracy come to fruition!
FlipYrWhig
@Dennis SGMM: But you still might hear Democrats saying that there are reasonable Republicans they can work with in a bipartisan fashion — not because it’s true, but because (1) people like the idea of politicians from Both Sides teaming up, and (2) it helps aggravate the rifts in the Republican party between those who believe in advancing conservative goals by engaging with Democrats to turn policy rightwards and those who are just flaming diehard nihilists.
Brachiator
@Dennis SGMM:
I agree that you can’t reach most of them. Unfortunately, you don’t have the option of not bargaining with them.
Mandalay
Is our Santorum learning?
FlipYrWhig
@Hal: I think the Romney criticisms might have worked, or at least had some traction, in 2008, when the impression of Obama was that he was an untested cosmopolitan peacenik. But I really don’t think they can run against a sitting president with a record of foreign policy achievements like this, especially not when their guy doesn’t have the chops, the swagger, or the statesmanship.
JPL
Really, values? My definition of values is different than any of the speakers at their convention. Dana Milbank discusses the convention in his column.
FlipYrWhig
@Hal: IOW it’d be a decent line for McCain 2008 against Obama 2008, but it’s piss-poor for Romney 2012 vs. Obama 2012. And it seems like the Republicans keep trying to re-run 2008, Groundhog Day style, until they change history and retroactively make it so Obama was never president.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Dennis SGMM:
__
The GOP’s Southern Strategy has run to its logical conclusion. Our political alignments today look very similar to those of 1900 in terms of the regional/demographic aspects. In terms of policy, not so much; for example Teddy Roosevelt’s GOP was backed by Wall St., whereas today they support the neo-Confederate party. Dogwhistles made more sense between 1960 and 2010 when the two parties were in the process of swapping their cultural identities and regional bases but today the bullhorn makes more sense than the dogwhistle.
c u n d gulag
Rick Santorum: Speaking truth to the powerless – and stupid!
Dennis SGMM
@FlipYrWhig:
Well and truthfully put.
@Brachiator:
That would be so except for the fact that they don’t want to bargain and if they do then they want to subsequently renege on whatever they agreed to and then blame the Democrats for the outcomes. Look at sequestration, they’re already whining and blaming Obama for not doing something more palatable to them.
Cacti
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
(catching breath)
Snort! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
FlipYrWhig
@JPL: Be fair. They have two values: Muslims should die and the anus is an exit not an entrance.
quannlace
I thought it was 1980 they’re trying to resurrect.
Yutsano
@JPL: Poor Paulie. No wonder he threw Saint Ayn under the bus. He found a new crew of kool kidz.
Dennis SGMM
@FlipYrWhig:
They made it so Bush was never president.
Cacti
How did the word “values” become a euphemism for hating gays?
I’ve read the New Testament multiple times, and Jesus had nary a word to say about buttsecks.
Paul was the guy who was down on it. He was also the one who gave the sage advice about women being subject to their husbands, and keeping their yaps shut in worship services.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
We have to hope it’s true, as well.
Cacti
@quannlace:
1980 in terms of campaign dynamics.
1380 in terms of policies.
different-church-lady
[scoops jaw up off floor]
[jaw drops to floor again]
[re-scoops]
[runs finger over lips and makes “bwweebble bweebble” noises]
You know, until this very moment I thought the Ni-CLANG Event Horizon was just a bit of snark. But now I’m a believer. It’s just a matter of time. Not only have they lost the ability to hide any of it, they’ve lost the very idea that they need to hide it.
balconesfault
In the face of polling that showed a majority of Republicans feel Romney had more to do with capturing Bin Laden than Obama did … I’d say Santorum is right.
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/10/15_percent_of_ohio_gopers_credit_romney_with_bin_ladens_death/
different-church-lady
Reminder: this guy was the GOP front runner for a bit. In that context Mitt makes a whole lot more sense, right?
Mandalay
This statement makes no sense at all. As that smart elitist Pauli might say, it is not even wrong.
Santorum is right up there with Palin in the word salad department.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, duh.
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
I think Frothy actually would have done better with the base in the general. He comes by his religious insanity honestly.
Hungry Joe
Billy Carter (!) once said something like, “Ninety percent of journalists are stupid.” His comment didn’t make any of them mad, he said, because “they all assume they’re in the other ten percent.” Same thing here, I suspect — Santorum’s crowd will think, Well, he’s not talking about me.
Full disclosure: I once bought and drank a six-pack of Billy Beer.
Jay C
This is the kind of crap from rightwingers that really chaps my backside: maybe Mr. Santorum might find a more receptive audience among “libertarians” if he didn’t promote ideals of “religion and family” that weren’t just a transparent front for an agenda of enacting sex-obsessed bigotry, sexism, and exclusionary self-congratulatory pietism into the legal and political arenas of this country. Based on little more than a general impression that “Because God says so!” was inadvertently left out of the US Constitution. Or for the more authoritarian/paranoid: deliberately.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Yep. You got it. Team Romney seems to think that McCain was too soft on Obama’s lack of Real American bona fides, so they are going to do it right this time. Problem is, what was lame then is still lame now.
And I thought that Romney had a brain, but was afraid to use it. But he may really believe that Obama is the Unworthy Other. He is certainly stuck on this foolishness as a campaign strategy.
But not only is this failing to work with voters, Romney is also losing it with an otherwise compliant media, which is filing stories with an openly mocking, “can you believe the stupid shit these people are trying to pull” tone.
Ruckus
@arguingwithsignposts:
Rick Santorum really is a stupid fuck. I am amazed he can tie his shoes.
That’s why he prefers loafers, and he’s light in those.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
One wouldn’t have thought he was smart enough to make it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Mandalay:
__
This phrase is a code-word for “Liberal Jooze control the nooze”, which has been a commonplace on the right for decades. Santorum passed on wearing the traditional garb of white sheet and conical hat while he was saying it. Which is a bit ironic given that the KKK used to be down on Catholics as well, but then politics makes for strange bedfellows.
Chyron HR
“We’ll send scouting parties to collect books and stuff, and men like you’ll teach the kids! Not science and rubbish, but the BIBLE!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
Who said anything about bargaining with them?
Four word solution.
He/She/It/They can be killed.
Cacti
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Turn back the clock 70 years, and a guy with the last name “Santorum” wouldn’t have even been considered white.
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
“the anus is an exit not an entrance” – to be fair to Ryan and his friends, there’s good reason to believe that when you’re pulling all of your “ideas” out of your butt.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jay C:
Oh, it was. Most assuredly left out of the US Constitution deliberately, and with malice aforethought.
Which drives the asshole invisible sky buddy bothered absolutely batshit insane.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
Funny. I don’t see that they ever tried to hide it. A lot of people simply tried to ignore what was plainly in front of them.
@Dennis SGMM:
OK. Let me re-phrase it. You don’t have the option of not dealing with them, especially if the GOP retains a majority in the House.
The Democrats will have to decide how much shit they will be willing to eat to get anything done. That’s the cold, hard political reality. And I am assuming the most optimistic outcome, that Obama will be re-elected.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Villago Delenda Est:
__
Hey, you try to roll back The Enlightenment with the Constitution you wished you had, not the Constitution you have.
/Reverse Rumsfeld
Mandalay
@Dennis SGMM:
Santorum’s statement is completely in line with previous comments he has made, such as claiming that Obama was a “snob” for wanting every American to go to college.
His use of words like “smart” and “elite” and “snob” are designed to make Democrats appear to be the party of (working) class warfare. His approach is out of the Rove playbook of attacking your enemy for your own weakness.
Santorum is trying to appeal to voters without college degrees, which would be tough for Romney who is obviously part of that “elite”. He was using the word “smart” sarcastically, and it probably went down well when he said it, but in print…not so much.
different-church-lady
@Hungry Joe:
Clearly you survived, so other than that how was the experience?
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
My favorite written evidence for the founding generation’s opinion on our allegedly Christian nation is Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli (1797):
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Islamic) nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Citizen_X
Or, as the saying goes, in the original German, “Kinder, Kirche, Kuche.”
jwb
@quannlace: Ah, but you don’t say “smart people,” you say “intellectuals,” because first of all, you don’t want your audience thinking you believe them and yourself to be “not smart,” and second what you are trying to activate is the notion that book learning and abstract speculative thought run contrary to good, old common sense, the repository of “true” knowledge, possessed by the “people.”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Brachiator:
__
I’m starting to wonder just how likely it is that Obama wins but the GOP retains the House. In aggregate House distrincts have to be a reasonably close approximation to the electoral college: if Obama wins by a clear margin in the EC then almost by definition he has to win the popular vote total in a majority of House districts, unless there are states in which the statewide vote totals reflect overwhelming pro-Obama margins (ie. well beyond the statewide mean) but those are concentrated in only a few of the House districts for that state, and the majority of the other districts in that state are anti-Obama.
__
So if Obama wins the popular vote total in a majority of House districts, then in order for the GOP to retain the House the local Dems would need to underperform compared with Obama’s vote. Is that likely to happen on a large enough scale for the GOP to lose the WH but keep the House? Are our congressional candidates that weak?
different-church-lady
@efgoldman:
He absolutely will if someone in the tea-nut underbelly* manages to do it before election day. At this point it is obvious that a huge part of his campaign strategy is imitating wingnut flash-memes that he doesn’t actually comprehend (imagine a karaoke singer who doesn’t speak English belting out Journey from phonetic memory).
*[yes, I know, redundant…]
Cacti
@Citizen_X:
Ein reich, ein volk, ein GOP.
I wonder if they could get chairman Reinhart Priebus to lead the chant.
dance around in your bones
♫ ♬Buzzwords, buzzwords, roly-poly buzzwords♩ ♪
elite, Hollywood, librul media, jump through hoops, church and family, basic values
What a wanker.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hungry Joe:
I opened one can of my six pack, took a sip, and that was it. About as refreshing as stagnant pond water.
Dunno what happened to the unopened five cans, but the remainder of the opened one went down the drain.
Eric U.
the founders didn’t want a Christian nation because the Spanish Inquisition was still going on when they wrote the Constitution. Pretty simple when you have that example staring you in the face.
jwb
@Mandalay: “Smart” doesn’t fit with “elite” and “snob.” The word he was looking for was “intellectual”; if he really knew what he was doing, he might have pushed it toward “clever.”
Dennis SGMM
@Brachiator:
You are correct. And, I didn’t make my point very well. The GOP has become so antagonistic that it escapes me how they can be bargained with in any effective way. IIRC, Obama offered them everything they wanted during the debt ceiling negotiations. Because it was Obama making the offer they turned their backs on their own wish list. Obama is a demonstrably better man than I am because I would have incarcerated every one of them as terrorists.
NancyDarling
@Catherine D.: Velcro.
quannlace
Ya know, I kinda feel sorry for HIS family. I’d sometime glimpse them standing behind him at campaign stops. And the daughters especially, had a glazed, scared look in their eyes.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
I disagree: I think they gave Lee Atwater a try for a while and decided code talk just doesn’t hit the g-spot the way they need it to.
Gex
@arguingwithsignposts: If he’s not careful, these guys might find there are other things that lead to liberty other than tax cuts.
Oh, who am I kidding?
Villago Delenda Est
@Eric U.:
See, that’s the thing. Rick Santorum wants to bring back the Inquisition. He wants to punish those who do not believe precisely as he does.
If there was ever an enemy of the U.S. Constitution, it is Rick Santorum.
Maude
@Dennis SGMM:
63 You’re too kind. I think that the London Bridge is out in AZ. That’s where in Merry Ole England, they used to put heads on pikes. A fine tradition I think we should institute here for Republicans. Doesn’t matter if there are sane ones. They didn’t denounce the rotten crazies and so I decree that they are guilty by aiding and abetting them.
Garbo
@dance around in your bones: Eat them up, YUM!
Brachiator
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Don’t know. Most of the stuff I have seen suggests that the GOP will comfortably keep the House. Maybe this is just political conventional wisdom. Also, I don’t pay much attention to the polling about Congress until much closer to the election.
Also, it’s not just that Congressional candidates are weak; voters have different issues in mind when it comes to who they like or don’t like for Congress.
Gex
@JPL: I don’t understand why Milbank thinks FRC can’t be a hate group because they aren’t violent enough. They HATE, isn’t that the requirement? And sure, they rely on making kids kill themselves to achieve their ends, but they also torture kids in ex-gay camps.
Who needs assholes like this providing cover for FRC? Holy shit. If they are moderate, I’d hate to see what’s extreme.
? Martin
@Dennis SGMM:
They’re losing. Not just this election, but their appeal to electorate as a whole. They’re having to work a lot harder to retain their members and drawing ever starker lines is one way to try and do that. They’re not trying to win anyone over here. In fact, they don’t want you and I in their party – because we’re just going to fuck it up asking for higher taxes and gay marriage and shit.
They’ve drawn a box and you belong either in the box or out of the box. They just want to keep everyone who belongs in the box, actually in the box. They’re not interested in redrawing the lines at all.
Dennis SGMM
@Maude:
Heh. They all deserve to be caught with a live boy or a sheep. What disturbs me even more than their behavior is the fact that people elect them.
If I had my way, another item on the ballot this November would be a binding vote on whether or not you wanted your state to remain in the Union.
Mandalay
@jwb:
This. Santorum pissed in his own bath water by sneering at “smart” people rather than intellectuals.
But it is worth noting that the opening post links to a BuzzFeed article titled Rick Santorum Says “Smart People Will Never Be On Our Side”.
That quote is FABRICATED by BuzzFeed, and was unfortunately perpetuated by the BJ poster. What Santorum actually said was We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.
Not quite so damning, right? I loathe Santorum, but nothing he said was as bad as what BuzzFeed did: fabricate a quote. BuzzFeeed is not a reliable source of information.
? Martin
@Gex:
Because like white privilege, there is Christian privilege in this country. They’re always going to be given the benefit of the doubt until it becomes impossible to defend.
Maude
@Dennis SGMM:
Hey! /live boy, sheep.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Dennis SGMM:
This.
I’ve noticed it, too. Nothing being said out loud is new. But it’s never been so… obvious. And said out loud.
I have no idea why this is happening now, either.
Hungry Joe
@different-church-lady:
I was young. It was beer.
FlipYrWhig
@quannlace: See, if anything, I have the opposite reaction: to me it looks like the Daughters Santorum adore their father in an overwhelmed, open-the-eyes-of-my-heart-Lord way. Like they’re practically weeping with bliss. It’s super creepy.
? Martin
@Dennis SGMM:
Careful, you might lose California. We’re getting tired of this shit and we can actually afford to leave.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
I very much doubt that the majority of contemporary voters know who Lee Atwater was. I doubt if they know who Karl Rove is.
The fear and trembling that Obama has engendered in the souls of many anxious white folks has been apparent since the 2008 primaries. Even the Democrats had to deal with it and overcome it. The Republicans decided instead to wallow in it.
Political junkies can sometimes miss the forest while wending their way through the political history trees.
Dennis SGMM
@? Martin:
Californian by choice. I’m all for it.
Gex
@quannlace: You have to start grooming them for Bachmann eyes quite early.
dance around in your bones
@Garbo:
Heh, I knew somebody here would get the Barnes and Barnes ref :)
jimmiraybob
They use a centrifuge-like technology to purify the stupid/ignorance. The end state is defined as achieving the highest practical theoretical purity. 98% Right now most wing nuts are only at 80-85%. The final Santorum/Values Voters process is the last in the series of purification steps. They have mobile processing units already deployed.
Once they hit 98%, they’re identified by an eerie glowing smirk and an ability to transcend the space-time continuum as evidenced by an ability to hoover, unaided by Medicaid, above solid and factual surfaces.
Should two units in this state actually collide, critical mass will be attained and the resulting release of anti-energy will be complete annihilation of reality. Limited but growing stockpiles of these ultra-weaponized wing nuts are being critically staged across the nation and two of the highest power units are currently undergoing the Santorum/Values Voters process and are targeting the White House.
Residual Santorum, left over from the finishing process, is being collected by expendable moocher and looter bots for packaging and long-term storage at Yucca Mountain.
I’m hoping that I haven’t given too much away. If something happens to me get this message to Judy Miller. I’d hate to just be disappeared like……[internets disconnection]
jwb
@Mandalay: This is a good point, placing the “elite” in front of “smart” qualifies it to an extent, and in the actual quote he’s clearly trying to mark out a segment of the smart as rigid and unpersuadable. Still, he would have been better to go with “intellectual elites” since “smart” grants more rhetorically than he means to.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t know. Depending on how Libya &Co turn out, they may still have traction.
Mandalay
@Mandalay:
I see BuzzFeed have now corrected their false headline from Rick Santorum Says “Smart People Will Never Be On Our Side” to Rick Santorum: Conservatives Will “Never Have The Elite, Smart People On Our Side”, but with no correction statement.
Do not trust BuzzFeed for accurate information.
jwb
@Mandalay: I don’t know. Frequently, the NY TImes doesn’t issue corrections or indicate updates even when they more or less replace their original article.
Chris
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Whoa, time out. Wall Street supported Teddy Trust Buster Roosevelt?
Chris
@different-church-lady:
Is there a betting pool for who’ll use the N word first? My money goes on Sheriff Joe.
Mandalay
@jwb:
Well we all make mistakes, but the original BuzzFeed headline was more than that. Someone clearly went to the trouble of inventing a damning statement, and then put quotes around it and attributed to Santorum. It wasn’t a cut and paste error.
Is that the first time BuzzFeed have ever done this? Maybe, but I very much doubt it.
Cacti
@Mandalay:
You’re right. That sounds much better.
(snicker)
Donut
@FlipYrWhig:
Problem is, they are such fucking racists they can’t allow themselves to see how much good the Prez has done since inauguration.
Fuck it, I’m really glad they are letting their freak flags fly this year. Their inability to constrain their lizard brain impulses any longer means swing voters really can’t deny they don’t know exactly how clear their choice is this fall. They have no one to thank save themselves and some really well-done messaging from the Obama camp.
Cacti
@Donut:
They’ve just about reached the end of the line with the white resentment/southern strategy electoral calculus. They’re going out with a bang rather than a whimper.
Over the next 20 years, the GOP will reinvent itself of necessity.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: I dunno. I think American voters are actually OK with the idea that sometimes foreign policy decisions don’t work out, and that there are things beyond the president’s control. I don’t think votes are going to swing based on “Obama lost Libya.”. It’d have to become, instead, “Obama is always doing this kind of thing and fucking it up, and I want it to stop, so I refuse to vote for him.” But I don’t think there’s a Kind Of Thing that Obama can be said to tend to do. Romney has been trying with that “apology” point, but I don’t think it sticks. Republicans used to tar all Democrats for their tendency to “cut and run,” but they clearly can’t say that anymore. So I don’t think the line that Obama blew Libya because of his inescapable Obama-ness is going to get into the popular consciousness. It got into the anti-intervention left hive-mind, but that’s not very widespread.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@Chris: Louie Goehmert, Steve King, Joe Barton, that evil little elf senator from Alabama whose name is escaping me … If I had to put money in the pool, I’d go with Goehmert.
Calouste
@Maude:
Not on that London Bridge. The one in Arizona is from the 19th Century, and replaced the medieval London Bridge, on which indeed heads were put up on pikes on occassion.
Mandalay
@Cacti:
This thread would not even exist if BuzzFeed hadn’t fabricated the quote.
(snicker)
Another Halocene Human
@Dennis SGMM: Just had a thought, y’all tell me if I’m off base:
Louisiana is a deep red wingnutty state that lives on government cheese.
But if Lousy Anna became its own state, it would suddenly have control of a strategic port (Port of New Orleans) and could demand fees/tariffs on traffic between Port of Chicago and other intermediate points on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Gulf and therefore Atlantic traffic. The barge traffic, at the very least, would be easy pickings. If it weren’t for the St. Lawrence Seaway in the north they’d actually have the ability to beggar much of the Midwest/grain belt area, much as Amsterdam beggared Belgium from the time of the Spanish withdrawal until WWI.
The thing is, Louisiana is holding onto a fucking valuable thing. And they’re just giving it away because we’re all under one political boundary and its illegal under our current constitution for one state to set tariffs on the commerce of another.
So that said, doesn’t it behoove us to engage in some sort of Marshall Plan or TVA project for Louisiana. Okay, so the Army Corps of Engineers is kind of like the TVA, but we effed that up. This state is going batshit wingnut crazy fast, with public schools being outsourced to Bible video daycare mills, recidivist ethnic violence and reprisals on the rise since the GWB administration, and a damaged economy combined with no protections for workers against powerful multinationals, spreading the misery far and wide through the sticky swamps.
Don’t we owe it to ourselves to drain the swamps of ignorance that allow the mosquitoes of
communismviolent wingnuttery to breed?Cutting them loose is not a real actual option. Letting the whole state go to seed will destroy our gardens in a season or two.
Time to get serious. Time to engage in the only “nation building” that has ever worked. Time for a Marshall Plan for the South.
fester
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: No, the median house district is roughly 4 to5 points more Republican than th e nation as a whole. The GOP has a decent sized structural cushion in the house and any Dem majority is hobbled by a couple dozen Blue Dogs
different-church-lady
@Brachiator: When I say “they” I mean politicians, not voters. I have absolutely no doubt that for a lot of their voters the N-word is as ubiquitous as salt.
different-church-lady
@Mandalay: It’s a distinction without a difference, as far as I can tell.
scav
I rather like that Santorum is announcing loudly that The Rombot is either A) Non-Elite and of variable intelligence, B) Elite and Stupid or C) Not really with them. Discuss.
Chris
@? Martin:
This.
A normal party would be thinking about altering its message and widening its appeal at this point (as Bush and Rove tried to do with Hispanics). But that’s very hard for them to do because the entire composition of the current party was based on narrowing their appeal in the first place, and the people that strategy appealed to aren’t willing to see that reversed. You could, of course, tell these people to go fuck themselves, but it’s doubtful that you’d win enough nonwhite and nonbigoted voters to make up for what you’d lose in white voters (a problem the Democratic Party experienced in 1968).
Rock and a hard place. Only going to get worse.
karen marie
@Villago Delenda Est: If this is meant to be funny, it’s not. If it is meant seriously, you need to consider talking to someone about your issues.
JustAnotherBob
@Brachiator:
“Comfortably” no longer belongs in this sentence.
There’s a very good chance that the House is now ours if we want it badly enough.
JustAnotherBob
@? Martin:
And we are getting tired of carrying the welfare states that vote Republican and talk trash about us. Feeling like time for some tough love, cut them loose to sink or swim on their own.
Let Jindal beg some disaster aid from South Carolina or Alabama.
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
Actually, I thought that this is what Santorum meant all along. The clarification is consistent with his other statements in this area.
It’s still damning. Santorum doesn’t hate smart people. He hates thinking. He believes that America would be better off if it yielded to medieval religious authority. He sees the elites as standing in the way of the joy of blind acceptance and obedience.
And yeah, the source should have got the quote right.
Villago Delenda Est
@karen marie:
Your concern has been noted, and filed appropriately.
Mandalay
@different-church-lady:
Really? You think “elite, smart people” and “elite people” are exactly the same thing?
Santorum was attacking the “elite”. BuzzFeed fabricated a quote to make it seem that he was attacking all “smart” people. But I guess if I have to explain that it will not persuade you anyway.
Regardless, the larger point is that any news organization should not put quotes around anything that was not actually said or written by the person being quoted.
scav
FWIW, it’s being written up as a gaffe now: Guardian Rick Santorum: smart people got no reason to vote conservative
One-time presidential hope tells conservative Republican summit the ‘we will never have the elite, smart people on our side’
So, mixed blessing, unless it’s his goal to be the unlovable Biden of the far right.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Gex:
I can’t link to it from my iPhone, but track down the David Blight course about the Civil War on iTunes U. He walks through a lot of pre-war philosophy and says that the Confederate notion of liberty was basically the liberty to treat those lower in the hierarchy as you saw fit. It’s really fascinating stuff and demonstrates Dennis G’s frequent point that Republicans all over the US have adopted the philosophical stances of the Confederacy.
@Another Halocene Human:
I would be more willing to agree with that if the Democrats hadn’t been thoroughly rejected by the South as soon as it looked like they were going to have to share all the good stuff FDR gave them with black people. Sparrow, curtain rod, etc.
There are few things more annoying to me than those red state residents who get more of MY tax dollars than my home state does bragging about what rugged individualists they are. Fine, then give me back the money I gave you, a-hole!
J.D. Rhoades
@quannlace:
!
A substantial number of the negative comments I get from wingnuts about my newspaper column include some variation of a sarcastic “I guess you’re soooo much smarter than us,” as if that was something to be ashamed of.
Well, yeah, Bubba, I kinda am.
Chris
@J.D. Rhoades:
As am I. Though I don’t think that’s a credit to my abilities so much as their stupidity.
Also – I’m sure this has already been said, but “being smart” is the white conservative version of “acting white” for successful black kids.
Matt McIrvin
@Cacti:
I think it’s still going to be effective for a while in midterm and off-year elections, because it still has a superior ability to turn out the base.
Its effectiveness in presidential election years is already evaporating; Obama’s election in 2008 was the first sign.
Villago Delenda Est
@J.D. Rhoades:
You know, as I drive down the freeway, I see people doing incredibly stupid things (like eating a bowl of cereal or their McDonald’s “big breakfast” as they drive, or putting on makeup) and I think to myself, “I can’t possibly be that much smarter than these idiots”.
Then I realize that’s exactly what is going on.
karen marie
@jwb: I don’t think any of those are really an improvement in terms of the implications. My guess is he chose “smart” over “intellectual” because “intellectual” has five syllables and few in his audience can spell it; whereas “smart” has only five letters and most in the audience can spell it.
Emma
@Mandalay: Lord God, the one you quote is even worse!
Mandalay
@scav:
Wow! It is very disappointing to see the Guardian sinking so low with their distorted headline “Rick Santorum: smart people got no reason to vote conservative”. You can’t glibly equate “elite, smart people” to “smart people” just because it suits your agenda.
This is similar to distortions from the right when Obama said “You didn’t build that”. I loathe Santorum, but we all lose when the media grossly distort events, regardless of which side does it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay:
Concern troll is concerned.
Again, noted and filed appropriately.
Cap'n Magic
@Mandalay: The elite is just a modifier. But his overall statement still stands.
Cacti
@Mandalay:
You misspelled love.
Cacti
@Cap’n Magic:
If you turn it into a positive statement it would read:
“Conservatives will always have the common, stupid people on our side.”
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
You have said this twice now, and keep ignoring the larger issue. Cleaned up, amplified, and put in context, Santorum’s statement is still pretty stupid.
Ruckus
Maybe mandalay is santorum and he is just trying to correct the record.
Doesn’t make his point any stronger. Stupid is still stupid.
different-church-lady
@Mandalay: OK, come clean: how much they paying you for this?
Dennis G.
As mentioned in the thread above, the problem wingnuts have is with the very existence of thinking and rational thought. That Rick believes using the word ‘elites’ somehow makes what he says any less stupid speaks volumes. Of course he thinks smart people are elites and elites are bad, how could the dumb fuck think anything else.
I have decided that anybody who votes for Republicans–at any level–is just a dumb shit. Full stop. When I learn that somebody is supporting Romney or any GOPer in this current election cycle, I give up on them as a thinking person. They have earned that dismissal, IMHO.
Cheers
karen marie
@Another Halocene Human:
Hahahaha, yeah, until it collapses under the weight of the Mississippi and the river mouth moves.
Patricia Kayden
@arguingwithsignposts: So according to Santorum, only conservative Republicans are concerned about family and religion? Good to know that all Democrats are anti-religious and anti-family.