Why do I do it to myself? The other night, foolish but fortified by several shots of whisky, I set out to read the Corner.
For those of you who may not have heard of it, o lucky souls ye, the Corner is the blog attached to National Review Online, which means that it is the piss-filled kiddie pool of the internet. It’s where Kathryn Jean Lopez takes her ovaries out for a dip and some sun; where you can hear multiple Pulitzer Prize nominated author Jonah Goldberg pontificating upon the jobs figures while he floats around in an inflatable ring, like some unspeakable and undercooked donut hole; and where the finest brains of the right hang out behind the changing rooms and smoke doobies and congratulate each other on their bravery in saying what needs to be said in slightly different ways and swap the occasional blowjob.
Essentially, it’s where you go if you want to know what stupid people think about politics. It’s kind of like Balloon Juice, but without the jokes and the animal pictures.
I read the Corner because it’s important to know what the stupid people are thinking. And so I can point and laugh, but that’s in the way of a bonus. I suffer this for the same reason I receive fifty seven emails every day with titles like “Morning Briefing: Enemy Collaborators” or “American Soil Has Been Attacked”, not to mention at least one email every day from either Marcus or Michele (and often both).
I read them, so you don’t have to. And then promptly ignore most of them – these people are incontinent loons, after all.
Anyway, I set out to read the Corner the other night, foolish and fortified etc., and woke up nine hours later with a mouth like a nun’s nasty, the imprint of a portable keyboard on my face and seven messages from various lawyers asking me not to drunk dial the members of the RNC again. Sadly, my notes of the evening seem to consist of the words “A strong smell of excrement prevails throughout” followed by the word “fuck” typed over and over, so that was a bit of a waste. Smashing scotch though.
Slightly chastened, I ventured over there again last night and this morning to see what they were saying about Mitt’s little video catastrophe as it happened. I’m afraid this post is a little long, and doesn’t really have a point. You have been warned.
Let me take you back to yesterday afternoon. 2.50pm. Michael Walsh writes about how the Politico article about Stuart Stevens is almost too depressing to contemplate, and then notes that:
Meanwhile, it’s a good thing for Romney that absolutely nothing of any interest has been going on in the world this past week, and steady-as-he-goes Mitt can keep reminding the American public, when he bothers to emerge from the foxhole into which the media has driven him, that President Obama’s a nice guy, but by golly he’s in over his head, and gee whiz I saved the Olympics and, dadgummit, a CFO is just what this country needs right now. (Although even that’s not working any more.)
Has anyone — well, since John McCain — ever made a more dispassionate case for himself or his candidacy? Here the anti-Obama commercials practically write themselves, and we’ve all seen the photographs of an American citizen taken into custody by the Thought Police, and yet Romney’s not even a hologram of a candidate at this point.
I think Walsh is a bit disappointed. Is there anyone who likes Mitt? Anywhere? Walsh writes well, I think:
This should be the most winnable election since Reagan crushed Mondale, but it won’t be, and not for any of the reasons Karl Rove and his krack kadre of GOP kampaign konsultants (who, like baseball managers with losing records, continue to be re-hired) think. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Boston, this election is not going to be decided strictly on jobs, tax policy, 59-point plans, economic issues, or managerial competence (Romney’s sounding more like Mike Dukakis every day). Unfortunately, it’s clear that Romney thinks it is, and that he’ll have the upper hand in that argument.
It’s not. Instead, it’s about one thing and one thing only: What kind of “America” is this country going to be? The constitutional republic of sovereign states founded by patriots in the 18th century, or the 20th century’s European-imported “progressive” dream of a federal leviathan? A nation of self-reliant yeomen or a country of beggars, supplicants, and bums? The Enlightenment’s dream or the Frankfurt School’s Communist nightmare?
If the “strategists” would pull their heads away from Rove’s chalkboard for a moment, they might see the larger picture, turn the tables on President Hopenchange, and reveal what his “change” was really about all along — the fundamental transformation of the United States of America, with the results we now see all around us. Indeed, that should be the salient issue of the campaign. But Romney doesn’t appear to be the guy who can explain that.
Romney was a well-financed weak candidate in a field of weak candidates, an ’08 retread who successfully exploited his rivals’ vulnerabilities during the primaries, but has since done almost nothing to convince the broader electorate that he ought to be president. It’s as if, having won the nomination, he’s essentially vanished. He’s (so far) squandered the Ryan veep pick and retreated in the face of hostile, partisan media criticism over his Libya statement. Some pushback, properly applied, might have done wonders for his image as a leader, instead of a bloodless McKinsey & Co. efficiency expert, the kind of clipboard-wielding, grinning chap who fired you in an effort to make your company leaner and meaner, just before it went out of business.
Frankly, if you ignore the Ferawferaw School’s Transformationalist nightmare guff, he’s pretty much got Mitt’s problems down, although he immediately descends into full wingnuttery again:
Mitt Romney would make a very competent, Coolidge-like president, and one who would be blissfully absent from America’s airwaves for much of his term as he went about dismantling the odious rules of engagement that currently hamstring America both militarily and economically. He’s clearly a good man and a nice guy — but nice guys finish last.
Yeah. Calvin Coolidge was cool, man, and a hardass.
Then, an update. That video is out there.
UPDATE: The Left apparently thinks this hidden-camera video of Romney speaking candidly is going to hurt him, but more blunt talk like this would only help.
Apparently the answer is for Mitt to go on air and tell the nation they are self-entitled moochers who have been sucking on Mother Liberty’s tit for too long. By 6.09pm, at least, that seems to be the argument that Patrick Brennan is going for.
Even more damning, after the CBO released its report in July about the distribution of federal tax payments and household income, Harvard economics professor (and Romney adviser) Gregory Mankiw did a little back-of-the-envelope math to look at how transfers received by various quintiles compared to the amount people pay in taxes. Below is their net income either received in transfers or paid in taxes, expressed as a percentage of market income earned by each quintile:
Bottom quintile: -301 percent
Second quintile: -42 percent
Middle quintile: -5 percent
Fourth quintile: 10 percent
Highest quintile: 22 percentThat is, looked at as a whole, even the middle quintile of Americans receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes to the federal government. Romney’s comments may still strike many Americans as ill-advised or offensive, but they’re not entirely detached from reality. A disturbingly large share of Americans do rely on government entitlements, and their protectiveness toward them is of immense political importance.
You’re all fucking leeches, essentially, and by 8.42pm John O’Sullivan knows how Mitt should sell this.
If Romney responds to the Mother Jones story by backing off from his basic argument that far too many Americans are dependent upon the government and that this dependency skews their votes, he will weaken his campaign enormously. This audio revelation does not destroy his chance of winning in November, as over-excitable commentators have argued. There are inaccuracies in it, as Patrick Brennan points out, but the basic argument is reasonable. (If over-deterministic — many people receiving welfare and other forms of government aid dislike their situation and would much prefer to be self-reliant.) But Romney cannot make that and other arguments if he begins by withdrawing his remarks or, worse, by apologizing for them. An apology, moreover, would confirm the still-latent suspicion that he is unduly nervous and a flip-flopper.
I like that “many people receiving welfare and other forms of government aid dislike their situation and would much prefer to be self-reliant.” So caring and understanding about the leeches.
So Mr O’Sullivan lays out his 8 point plan for a Mitt press conference. It involves charts, and this magnificent incoherence:
3. Many people receiving benefits are getting back from the government some or all of what they paid in through hidden taxes. But government takes a heavy service charge from us when it circulates our money back and forth to us. [Picture of one of those GSA parties at this point.]
4. Those voters who pull the Democratic lever because of what the government gives them are not just being bribed, they’re being bribed with their own money. Don’t be a sucker — especially not a two-time sucker.
5. Most people receiving tax-funded benefits are the victims of excess government (point 4) or of the Obama economy and large-scale long-term unemployment. What they want is not a life on the dole but a chance to get a decent job to support their families. Excess government threatens that chance — and Obama believes in excess government.
and ends with this, presumably step 9:
Romney should then leave without taking questions, perhaps issuing a detailed statement of these points later.
A fine plan. Let me know how that works out for you.
9:06pm and Jonah is heard from. I’m only going to quote a little bit of Jonah because his writing can induce seizures and I’m not having any of you bloodsuckers falling off your chairs and trying to sue me.
No, I don’t think this video is good news for Romney. But if Romney showed a little more of the spirit he shows in this video, I’m not sure it wouldn’t help.
10:30 pm EST – Mitt gives a press conference during in which he babbles while looking like he spent the last six hours shouting at people, and then inserted a gerbil just before he went on air.
11.19pm – Daniel Foster is underwhelmed. However, when needed he can call on a great American hero for hope.
Romney doesn’t exactly do it as elegantly (which is why they pay me the big bucks) but he does gesture at some of this. I found the presser not horrible, which is about as much praise as I can muster right now.
I don’t think there is any way to spin the release of this video as a positive for Romney, but I do think — and I said as much on Twitter — that now that it has happened, Romney’s only play is to turn into the approaching torpedoes at flank speed, Marko Ramius style.
In other words, the more fully Romney owns these comments the less the press can report them as a “gaffe.” Romney is now in a position that he has to bring the fight to Obama on the entitlement state. He can’t coast on poor economic indicators. Which, I think, is to the good, since the polls are showing that that is not a guaranteed winner, anyway.
Do you think these men ever read 538 or Mr Wang, or ever play with an election map to see what Romney actually has to do in order to win? Or do they genuinely believe that the election would be a lock if Mitt could only sell the evil of the welfare state to poor welfare trash?
Then, night and silence, a silence broken at 7.11am by Michael ‘Mitt crapped in my weeties” Walsh, who still hates Mitt, but hates everyone else more, particularly anyone named Carter:
Milk-Carton Mitt’s surprise turn upon the stage — did you know he was running for president? — came courtesy of the currently unemployed James Earl Carter IV, son of James Earl Carter III and grandson of the ineffable James Earl Carter, Jr., and a big fan of Barack Hussein Obama II, who found and relayed a surreptitiously recorded video in which Romney sounded remarkably like . . . a real conservative.
He ought to own it.
For sure, even Team Romney knows what’s coming next. The barrage of media criticism. The shrieks of “how dare you?” The tsk-tsking of ostensible friendlies. The constant press corps demands for clarification or, better yet, groveling abnegation. And more video’s on the way — be sure to read this story by David Corn for the full details. It’s going to get very, very ugly very, very quickly.
Walsh makes fun of David Brooks (see, he’s not all bad), and then there is this:
But let’s move on to some Brit or other:
When was the last time a president fighting for re-election was handed such a gift? Remind me, someone: how did the GOP end up with this idiot as their candidate?
Hey, buddy — he’s our idiot, so don’t get this Irish-American started on your idiots, the House of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, the family of Germans who’ve been ruling your country since Queen Victoria snuggled up with Prince Albert and produced Edward VII and, thanks to a family squabble among Georgie, Willie, and Nicky, drove your country right into World War I — a disaster from which it’s never recovered.
Um. OK. Some unresolved issues there. Moving quietly on.
Well, as Jonah has famously said, the hell with them. This is Mitt’s time, this is his moment. As at the Battle of Gettysburg, neither side was really looking for this fight at this time and in this place, but here it is. And that means going all in.
Sure, Mitt might have phrased things more elegantly — and certainly would have had he known there was a rat in the audience. (Every candidate — hell, everybody — simply must assume henceforth that their every word and email, thanks to technology and the Bush administration’s overwrought defensive reaction to 9/11, is being monitored, taped and weaponized, if need be.)
But now he has a choice — to back away from the implication of his off-the-cuff remarks, and try to blame his sentiments on infelicity, or to embrace the stark dichotomy he laid out and go with it. This chance encounter should be the thing that forces Romney out of his crouch, away from his krack kadre of kampaign konsultants, and fleeing from his over-reliance on conventional wisdom and polls.
When Lee — on his way to Harrisburg or even Philadelphia — collided with Union troops while searching for shoes, he precipitated the biggest battle of the Civil War. It was not a battle he sought, but once started it was a battle he had to win. And he lost. Similarly, Meade — fresh to his command of the Army of the Potomac — was taken by surprise, but organized a skillful defense in the face of the Confederate onslaught and emerged victorious. For three days, the fate of the nation hung in the balance.
Will Romney rise to the occasion and fight? Or will he retreat? Only one path can lead to victory in November.
The fate of his candidacy will hinge on the answer.
Sadly for Mr Walsh, the answer is that Mitt is going to spend the next seven weeks looking like that gerbil has taken up residence in his colon.
Now the rest of the morning on the Corner is a bit of a washout, as they seem to want to talk about anything but Romney. I’d give honorable mentions to Victor Davis Hanson for asking if Obama has been Carterized (duh, yes, but not enough), and to Mark Krikorian for finding evidence of widespread voter fraud:
I saw up close how serious the problem of ballot integrity is just this weekend, when I was out door-knocking with voter-registration lists — at least one of the registered voters listed hadn’t lived at that address for decades.
I need a drink, kiddies, so I will leave you with these last two pieces of pure wingnut word on the Romney, glimmering amongst the dross like rancid fat. First, K-LO, Our Lady of the Tiny Innocent Souls (and I note that this is her post this morning in its entirety:
The only reason the Mother Jones leaks have traction is, of course, because of the “Mittbot” narrative. Ironically though, while we pretend not to know Romney, who does have a record as governor, we still seem to continue ignore the radicalism of Barack Obama and his administration, with now near-four years of a record in the White House.
and Peter Kirsanow with… this, which … I don’t even know what this is:
Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, proclaiming Mitt Romney’s comments “shocking,” states (with a straight face), “It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the population.”
Americans who’ve lost their ambition and imagination and willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge, American soldiers who just air-raid villages and kill civilians, typical white people, the unpatriotic who don’t pay their fair share, Americans who’ve gotten soft, midwesterners who cling to guns and religion, Catholics, the entire state of Arizona, and delusional businessmen who believe they built their own businesses — to name just a few — apparently add up to less than half the population.
Now, fuck off, you leeches.
The Moar You Know
“Quick, send an intern out to Wal-Mart or one of those places and get us some ‘normal guy’ shirts!” is what I’m seeing here.
spudvol
Only the Three Wolf Moon shirt can save Romney now.
flukebucket
That is not what those guys are clutching.
Chris
The video WILL help with the right, that’s true. But they’re not the whole of the country.
Villago Delenda Est
These assholes had better start sharing whatever it is they’re drinking/smoking/snorting/mainlining, or with FSM as my witness, I’ll narc on them in a heartbeat.
Laura
Sarah, you obviously put a lot of work into this post, and I sincerely apologize for not having the stomach to read it.
beltane
@spudvol: Not enough. He’ll need Three Wolf Moon shirt and a beer belly (can’t wear it without a beer belly). Oddly enough, Ann has a T-shirt that looks very much like that except she paid $1,000 for hers.
SatanicPanic
nice guys finish last is one of those phrases that tells me that I should stop listening to the person who said it
Xecky Gilchrist
Romney’s comments may still strike many Americans as ill-advised or offensive, but they’re not entirely detached from reality.
Faint praise, or high praise? Depends on if you’re reality-based or a conservative.
But if Romney showed a little more of the spirit he shows in this video, I’m not sure it wouldn’t help.
Typical Jonah – more hedge than the Bathurst Estate.
BGinCHI
Jesus, that’s a sad parade of sad.
The worst part is that they think their ideas are the best and most surefire way to enable the American economy. It’s just that the candidate isn’t being forceful enough in making the case.
It’s fucking delusional. There is not a single new idea from these hacks and absolutely nothing that differs from the GWB playbook.
I honestly think that they do not understand capitalism.
KG
Sorry, I couldn’t get past this phrase:
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they don’t know what that word means or what it implies within the context of the early republic.
ETA: this proves again, these people are reactionaries, they are anti-federalists who are opposed to pretty much anything after the 1780 (about the only exception is slavery, though I would not be surprised to see one of these assholes try to pull the “the blahs were better off when they were property” arguments)
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
I’ll bet $10,000 that not one of these asstards has ever cracked open The Wealth of Nations.
Felinious Wench
I love you.
ChrisNYC
Nice post.
But does Jonah write about jobs numbers? Every time I go there, he’s making pathetic pop culture observations. “Last night’s episode proved again how great Mad Men is. The detail in the styling blather boring blather…” So sad.
Frankensteinbeck
We *are* quite witty.
Hey, who told YOU the secret of the universe?!
Dennis SGMM
@Villago Delenda Est:
Their intellectual rigor suggests that they huff disk brake cleaner.
Bulworth
The 18th century. Yes. That’s it.
Citizen_X
EVERYTHING I KNOW I LEARNED FROM TOM CLANCY.
norbizness
Been there, drunk that.
Alison
If Obama wants my vote, Sarah better get one of them Medals of Freedom, stat. Because *lordy*. These fucking people…
Cassidy
@SatanicPanic: Right there with “I’m a libertarian”.
@spudvol: I’d pay to see that.
Bulworth
@Citizen_X: Wolverines!
The Bearded Blogger
@BGinCHI: They think they are yeowmen, for pete’s sake. They don’t understand what work is.
Steeplejack
@spudvol:
Ha! Win.
maody
SPIC-Clang!
Taco Jockeys. sa-WEET!
Is Rmoney toast yet?
dmsilev
Have some mercy, please! It’s lunchtime around here, and I don’t think my boss would approve if I downed enough alcohol to make it through those articles.
beltane
Obama now leading by 8 among likely voters in Virginia http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/18/1133387/-WAPO-Poll-VA-Obama-52-Romney-44-LV
Mind you this was taken before Romney’s “DIAF peasant scum” comments.
Cassidy
@beltane: I’m waiting for the day when the polls show that Mitt is losing the white bigot vote.
azlib
Given most European countries pay a lot less per GDP for healthcare and get the same or better outcomes, I am OK with that model.
beltane
@Cassidy: It would feel yummy in the tummy to see exit polling showing that Romney lost among voters who say that religion was “very important” to their decision.
SatanicPanic
@Cassidy: I start getting antsy when I hear “I’m an independent” but I generallly won’t make a run for it just yet.
Haydnseek
The real kicker here is that Rmoney is shitting on most of his own potential voters. 11 of the 15 states that receive more money from the feds than they send are red states. The 10 poorest states? Red. 12 of the 15 states with the highest high school dropout rates? Red. Poor states with high dropout rates receive enormous amounts of federal aid. Mittens thinks he’s slamming all those inconvenient, Obama bedazzled black and brown moochers, but he’s really describing an enormous percentage of repubs, whose votes he desperately needs to even have a chance of victory. But IOKIYAR, and the wingnuts may be poor, but at least they’re white, and no one can ever take that away from them…
Frankensteinbeck
I have now read through the extensive article quotations. Thank you for providing them, Sarah. This is something we need to see. The semi-intellectuals that speak for the conservative base don’t just agree with Romney’s rhetoric, they lust after the hate and contempt with which he expressed it. The idea that they could scream ‘Fuck you, you losers!’ at half the country fills them with glee, and they think it’s morally correct to do so.
Come to think of it, they’re all Andrew Breitbart.
Citizen_X
@maody: It’s a satirical site.
Patricia Kayden
“9:06pm and Jonah is heard from. I’m only going to quote a little bit of Jonah because his writing can induce seizures and I’m not having any of you bloodsuckers falling off your chairs and trying to sue me.”
Okay, this was funny. Never read (or will read) The Corner. Sounds like I’m not missing much.
Schlemizel
I love the Gettysburg allusion! People who have actually studied the ACW can tell you that the actual death knell for the secessionist bastards came on July 4th 1863 but that it came several hundred miles West at Vicksburg when Grant split the South, denied them access to the Mississippi and opened the heart of D
ixouchie to the tender mercies of General Sherman.While the corner morons are sweating the great battle out East they are failing to notice they have lost the war. Sure the ACW dragged on for a couple more years & thousands more useless deaths but the end was written. We may well have hit peak wingnut (thats the first time I have allowed myself to think that let alone say it out loud). We still have a few years of needless suffering and the messy end but we simply must soldier on.
“I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.”
“Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.”
– U.S. Grant
A moocher
Hey look at me: I know how to drop the name “Frankfurt School” in conversation to make me sound all learned and intelligent and impressive. This lends extra mighty, mighty weight to my imaginary arguments. My actual arguments, well I don’t have any of those.
It also flatters the size of my penis. Or so my sophomore girlfriend told me. And by “girlfriend” I mean, some classmate who I managed to get drunk enough to give me a sympathy fcuck only because she did not know me very well yet. Way to make my fist time memorable.
maody
@Citizen_X: i fucked that pooch, didn’t i. oh well. PoliticalWire has the video – his comments are about Palestinians.
John PM
Yes!!! Mitt look very dishevelled during this press conference, like he literally murdered someone and then tried to clean up after himself…
Violet
Ha. That’s perfect. Mitt seemed to have lost his comb and jar of pomade as well. His hair was a mess.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
THERE’S A BLACK GUY IN THE WHITE HOUSE
TribalistMeathead
@ChrisNYC –
Mad Men references? Since when does he make references to television episodes that have aired less than five years ago?
GxB
It’s where Kathryn Jean Lopez takes her ovaries out for a dip and some sun
And if there is a God that’s the only action they ever get.
Comrade Dread
Gah! The Stupid! It burns!
Sweet f***ing Buddha, four years of governing as a left-leaning moderate Keynesian, a foreign policy hawk, and implementing a health care reform plan that largely came out of the Heritage Foundation is radical to her.
Pick up a book. Read about f***ing Mao and Stalin and then come back and try to sell me that the President is a radical socialist.
F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***.F***
Pass the damn scotch already, will ya?
Bulworth
Rmney Record = passed health care reform with mandate
Obma Radicalsim = passed health care reform with mandate
nemesis
21st century Shakespeare, right there. Breath-taking.
romney is clearly losing the race. So, for the bench-warmers, the answer is to simply do as the bench-warmers suggest. Go Gault and all is well. Forget Lyan.
Yutsano
Tell the truth now, dear. The whole point of this post was just so you could write Mr. Wang and get teh giggles from the gin overload.
Chris
@Bulworth:
You know, there’s something funny about the people who constantly diss the EU as a doomed experiment in “transnationalism” wanting to return us to an age when the states of the U.S.A. acted like a loose confederation of independent countries rather than, you know, a nation.
Just One More Canuck
@beltane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYpYs9GBXwY
Rafer Janders
This would make a great campaign sticker: “Romney-Ryan ’12: Not Entirely Detached From Reality!”
Chris
@Haydnseek:
They don’t care. The average red state voter isn’t remotely aware of the amount of help his state receives from the feds. Plenty of that help is dismissed and thought of as something other than “welfare” – including Social Security and Medicare. And the country’s absolutely stuffed with people who’ve used government assistance, even including food stamps or Medicaid, but are now totally in favor of eliminating them because IGMFY.
Anonymous At Work
Am I the only one who was struck by Romney’s name having a blue/Democratic background, yet Ryan’s name having both a red/Republican background AND a thinner font designed to highlight the red? Or am I over-reading?
trollhattan
Have not the foggiest idea who Peter Kirsanow might be, other than evidently one of the blessed Cornerites, but not a single phrase of that “prose” makes sense. Which I guess is why he posts there.
Thanks for the report from the Monkeyhouse. Quite the group of Patriots(tm) they have there, but the aim of their poo-flinging seems rather off.
Jay C
@A moocher:
If not a typo for “first”, then TMI dude, TMI….
Maude
@Anonymous At Work:
You’re right.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
Ah, I see the required nods conservative to Hollywood version of war is in their with Gettysburg and Hunt for the Red October. That a piece of a fiction defines conflict to them says to much about the modern conservatives.
1badbaba3
@spudvol: Oooh,oooh, I can haz the cool unicorn shirt at the bottom of the page? Mor glitter plz.
@Comrade Dread: No, what’s ‘radical’ to her is that the President is one of “those people” and everyone knows those 47% motherfuckers should neither be seen nor heard.
Mike G
They look like the retarded brothers from Newhart — Larry and his brother Daryl, without his other brother Daryl.
Cassidy
@Comrade Dread: Coming from someone who thinks sex solely involves a bottle of Boone’s Farm and the jets on her bathtub, I”m not real worried about her definitions of anything.
trollhattan
@Mike G:
Now, which one is Larry?
1badbaba3
@Cassidy: Pardon me, but there are no “white bigots”, only Patriots here.
Sorry for the confusion.
Carry on.
Haydnseek
@Chris: Your point is very well taken. Most of them won’t care, as they aren’t aware of the situation or just rationalize it away. Still, I’m not quite sure that they can all be written off just yet. A lot of these people are very skeptical with regard to Romney, and might not take kindly to what can only be described as a vicious insult. In any event, these tapes will be pure gold for the campaign in swing states. Look for huge ad buys.
catclub
@Chris: “constitutional republic of sovereign states founded by patriots”
Why does Treason in Defense of Slavery spring to mind with this phrase?
Cassidy
@1badbaba3: Ahhh…that would be the source of the confusion on my FB feed. I thought they knew they were being shitheads and just felt that permission had been given.
Hal
Hey-Zeus Christo! Those fucking shirts! Who knew osh kosh b’gosh had an adults section.
http://www.carters.com/oshkoshbgosh/baby-boy-tops-button-front/oshkosh-baby-boy-button-front,default,sc.html
So I was listening to Tell Me More on NPR today with Mary Kay Carey, some Republican something or other, blogger and USA Today writer who basically said this was fucking fantastic for Mitt Romney. (The fucking is my emphasis, but still.) so Mary Carey says we need to have a convo about entitlements, and gosh, that media will make a big deal about anything.
She hopes that Mittens is questioned about his comments in the debates, and man, oh man, is this good news for you know who.
What are these folks smoking?
Comrade Dread
@Cassidy: It’s just the willful stupid ignorance that sets me off.
It’s all well and good to say “Hey, I think in the long run conservative principles and policies offer a far better future for America than moderately liberal ones do.”
I mean, as long as you cognitively disassociate conservative principles from the GOP you don’t sound like a complete fool.
But looking at reality and actively reinterpreting it to maintain some sort of stunted Manichean outlook of GOP = Good; Democrat = Bad even when Democrats are largely doing things that Republicans wouldn’t have found objectionable 20-30 years ago and elevating your f***ing hysterics to paint very moderate political actions as soshalism makes me want to scream obscenities like a drunken, wounded pirate.
Because it takes some real f***ing work to do that. More than it does to admit that you’re wrong. You’ve got to look reality square in the eyes, kick it in its balls and construct a world where Barack Obama is Josef Stalin, Tom Jefferson was a born again Evangelical abolitionist, and the Heritage Foundation health care plan is a government plot to kill the old and disabled.
cmorenc
If you’ve got a calm enough mind and stomach for the exercise, a visit to the comments section at RedState is a hilarious visit to a bizzaro-world funhouse of self-deluded nutcases. FOR BUT ONE ENTERTAINING EXAMPLE: read “Mitt Romney’s Solid Week…”.
Lordwhorfin
@Villago Delenda Est:
No, too busy reading John Christopher’s “The Guardians” (aka Hunger Games Zero).
Lordwhorfin
@Bulworth:
Huffing brake cleaner erases the entire 20th Century from memory except for the Lieburl Fascism portions.
McJulie
It is, baby, it is. It’s just that we’ve got the Reagan this time around, and they’ve got the Mondale.
BruceFromOhio
Oddly, this could’ve been written by any of the trolls recently infesting TBogg’s place. Somewhere, the universe is sobbing quietly into its irony hankie.
JustAnotherBob
@Comrade Dread:
And I fvcking love that he did exactly this.
He went to where the wagon was stuck in the mud, pulled it out and got it going.
He did not go to where he wished the wagon was, wait for it, and wonder why it never showed.
AA+ Bonds
The Corner is fun but it’s sort of obsolete IMO, it’s full of the right’s Bill Buckley wannabe pseudo-intellectuals, now loathed by the party at large and considered suspicious by Republican candidates
The people on it are no longer loud or rude or adventurous enough to craft the narrative, they are nowadays mostly followers so it is really just sort of a second-order clearinghouse for Republican trial balloons
AA+ Bonds
I do thank you for consuming right-wing media, something smart people on the Left do on the reg, every goddamn day if they can manage it, and yes it does get easier to stomach if it makes you queasy
AA+ Bonds
If you want to see Romney’s debate strategy against the video release, give a listen to his full Neil Cavuto CYA interview, where apparently he has decided to follow the track that it is his job to care about the Little People and make them have enough income to pay more taxes, and anyway everyone is a parasite except for the military and retirees receiving Medicare
His campaign is becoming completely reactive and everyone smells blood
AA+ Bonds
Also LOL at “the Frankfurt’s School Communist nightmare”, oh shit yes, the well-known radical Maoism of defeatist OSA academics
The Corner lives in 1996, during a time when Republicans thought it made strategic sense to appear well-read; they have yet to realize that in American right-wing rhetoric nowadays, the President of the United States is always head Red, followed by people who may have met Obama at some point, followed by Chavez and then by the Chinese that make all our consumer products (whose leaders’ names are too complicated to write or say or remember)
Rome Again
@Comrade Dread:
Yes. I constantly remind myself that if McCain had won in 2008, we’d be screaming about the number of soldiers being lost daily in Iranian terrain, meanwhile Osama bin Laden would still be alive.
Rome Again
@A moocher:
Posting drunk is not recommended. Just saying.
Snarki, child of Loki
From where-ever he is now, the shade of Hunter S. Thompson looks down on this post, and smiles.
Djur
I wonder if Mankiw’s “back of the envelope” work considered the value the rich get from the police, military, the availability of educated workers, transportation, the legal system, the social stability provided by the existence of a safety net, the heads of the rich not being mounted on pikes, etc.?
Ellyn
I laughed so hard I almost choked to death on my Commit lozenge.