The National Journal has an article up about the massive FAIL of Republican pollsters. It ends with a question/statement from an unnamed GOPer:
No matter what the answer is, the GOP knows it must come up with a more reliable method of measuring the electorate. It hurts to lose; it hurts more when a party doesn’t see it coming. And this year, Republicans were completely blindsided.
Democrats “must be looking at us like we’re the biggest f—– morons in the world,” one frustrated Republican said. “That’s what I’d be doing.”
Yep, that about sums it up.
The only folks dumber than the Republican candidates, fluffers and operatives would be the gullible suckers who vote for these idiots.
Cheers
liberal
Well, at least that one “frustrated” Republican has the humble beginnings of modest self-examination.
SparkleMotion!
Those gullible suckers may indeed be really dumb.
But there are still a lot of them out there, and they’ll likely continue to vote. So as happy as I am about the epic FAIL of the GOP’s 2012 efforts, I’m still fundamentally worried: For all their gaffes and goofs, they weren’t *that* far from winning.
c u n d gulag
Hey!
Congrat’s!
You finally got something right!
That’s the first intelligent thing I’ve heard out of a Republican’s mouth since… since… well… EVAH!
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Well, we didn’t need the pollster EPIC FAIL to know that. It’s an inevitable result of sucking the exhaust from the Conservative Infotainment Complex.
Waldo
They believed their own bullsh*t. That’s not dumb — it’s insane. And not easily fixed.
Villago Delenda Est
That’s because they’re reality based.
You people ARE the biggest fucking morons in the world.
That’s reality.
Villago Delenda Est
I might add, last Wednesday through Friday, the wingnutosphere was displaying, with colors flying, just how fucked up they are, with their “I’m taking my ball and going home!” bullshit about how America is doomed because the ni*CLANG* won a second term by defeating a really stupid android with white exoskeleton veneer.
catclub
@c u n d gulag: Oh, come on.
Ike had something intelligent to say about the MIC.
John Dean had some insights on cancer.
Xecky Gilchrist
No matter what the answer is, the GOP knows it must come up with a more reliable method of measuring the electorate.
I think “judicious study of discernible reality” oughtta cover it.
Dracula
Watching Fox News since Tuesday shows they havent learnt a damn thing. Benghazi all day and nite. Hannity with coverups and conspiracies. They just cannot get out of their coccoon, likely for fear of completely freaking out their audience, who havent lived in RealityVille for many years.
japa21
The Republican Party leadership made the mistake of sampling the drugs they were passing on to their voters. Any competent drug dealer knows never to do that shit.
The problem is that they may now be addicted to it. Knowing you have a problem is important, but just knowing it doesn’t mean you will be able to kick the habit. And based upon the reactions of the past week, it doesn’t look like they will be able to.
Xecky Gilchrist
@japa21: The Republican Party leadership made the mistake of sampling the drugs they were passing on to their voters.
And worse, they’ve now raised an entire generation of Young Republicans who’ve never seen any approach to politics other than thuggery and grift.
Villago Delenda Est
@catclub:
Ike would be driven out of the party as a commie and a socia1ist, and Dean is reviled by them today.
Hell, Eisenhower was practically accused of being a commie back in the day by a hero of the wingtards, Joseph McCarthy.
blingee
Let’s see. Me, just some guy, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt because..you know…I can find polls on the internet and poll aggregators and do simple math and read a graph and stuff.
But “Republicans were blindsided”. Yea ok whatever. Given they are the party of rape candidates my expectations are quite low and yet they still surprise me.
“the GOP knows it must come up with a more reliable method of measuring the electorate.”
Yea, if only there was some way to do that. There needs to be further discussion and investigation of possible answers. It’s an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, duct taped and then encased in cement.
Ash Can
You could make a good argument that the Republican candidates, fluffers, and operatives are dumber than the suckers who vote GOP, because they’re the ones with the ready access to real information. The voters are just mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed horse manure, but the guys at the forefront of the campaign are the ones getting the poll results directly and keeping on top of campaign activities. Or at least they’re supposed to be doing this, and failure to do so is simply dereliction of duty. Romney and his top guys were the ones actually making the decision to ignore what the numbers were telling them for months; they were the ones making the decision that the things they wanted to be true were in fact true, based not on evidence but on their wishful thinking. Their voters believed them because, hey, these were the guys running the show and they of all people should know what’s going on, right?
aretino
the GOP knows it must come up with a more reliable method of measuring the electorate
effing polls … how do they work?
redshirt
I posted this below in a probably now dead thread, but it applies here as well:
My father has gone into a deep depression. His liberal wife has moved out; he cancelled Christmas. He doesn’t want to see his 1 year old grand-daughter because her mother voted Obama.
Fuck him. I wrote him off years and years ago as a greedy bastard, but I’ve always been civil, because he’s my Father, and for the sake of family gatherings etc. Yet I’ve never held my opinions, and I never will.
He made a fortune in his life on facts – investments. To make money here, you must have a strong handle on what’s factual and what’s BS. He was very good at it. But to now be so suckered by Fox Lies? It’s incredible, really.
I’ve got compassion, and some mercy. But I’m going to drive this home. If he wants to cut me off for the rest of his life, so be it. My hand will be open, but so too will be my mouth.
NotMax
Though the ubiquity, technology, frequency and metrics of polling have evolved and expanded since then, a fond look back at a not all that dissimilar occurrence.
Bubblegum Tate
@liberal:
And on the other side of the spectrum, a wingnut I know has changed his middle name to “Benghazi” on Facebook.
NotMax
Screwed up that link pretty well. Corrected:
Source
SFAW
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Perhaps, but then they’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you/they can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.
Eric U.
not sure I really care about the Republicans fooling themselves, but the fact that the media followed along was really a little disturbing. It really drove home to me that the media is dominated by republicans, but usually they hide it a little better
Atrios said that you could do almost as well as Nate Silver if you simply averaged the polls. I never really tried it, but that would always be a good starting place. The republicans just picked the polls they liked and disregarded the rest. We all like to see good poll numbers, but disregarding any bad news is a recipe for disappointment. OTOH, we libtards obsess over every bad poll even though we know the pollster has a demonstrated republican bias
elmo
Oh, thank FSM – a few posts down, somebody was talking about the end of the schadenfreude, and here you are just in time with another hit. Who knew this stuff could be so addictive so quickly!
Xecky Gilchrist
@SFAW: That was the best thing about Rove’s meltdown on election night – the vindication of the reality-based community.
Is it known for sure he was the one who said that?
General Stuck
You can take the wing out of the wingnut, but not the nut.
Cacti
@SparkleMotion!:
They weren’t that far behind in several states, but their current electoral model isn’t going to improve with time. This election was the stake in the heart of the southern strategy.
Romney took the biggest share of the white vote since 1988, with 59 percent. In 1988, that number led to a 426-111 EV, and 53.3-46.5 popular vote landslide for George Bush.
The GOP is in mortal danger nationally, and they know it.
SFAW
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I don’t think so, merely an edumacated guess from them’s what knows.
And you know what? Even if it wasn’t Rove (in reality), it’ll be Rove in legend. And when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
different-church-lady
They already have a more reliable method of measuring the electorate. It’s called “reality based polling.” They simply chose to ignore it.
elmo
@Bubblegum Tate:
He should be grateful there’s such slim pickings then. If he was on our side, his “middle name” would have to be something like “Hainan-9/11-Anthrax-Iraq-WMDs-US Attorneys-Minerals Management-Halliburton-Mission Accomplished-Katrina-Lehman-Bear Stearns-Housing Crash-Financial Panic.”
And what a mouthful that would be!
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
This truly was the epistemic closure election.
The righties just couldn’t imagine a reality where indies, moderates, and assorted fence sitters, didn’t hate Obambi with heat of 1,000 suns.
Aggregate sites that intruded on this reality could be dismissed out of hand, because Nate Silver is a homo.
HelpThe99ers
I believe it is our 43rd President who has the appropriate quote:
“Rarely is the question asked: is our GOPers learning?”
I’d like them to emerge from their bubble, but I fear they’re only going to strengthen it in response.
NotMax
Paul “The Incredible Shrinking Wonk” Ryan:
¹ can’t let that Comptometer-with-a-pulse facade down for a second
² This word “specific” that you use – it does not mean what you think it means.
The Moar You Know
Ain’t cause of your polling, Einstein.
roc
Uh… that’s just the thing. They don’t have to come up with some new method. Reliable methods have long since been out there and the best measures of objective reality were widely and freely distributed.
Their assumption that they need to develop some new way to understand reality, as if the rest of reality still does not exist, only underscores their fundamental disconnect.
What the GOP actually needs to do, is to tear down the reality-resistant bubble they cocooned themselves in.
They have an unwillingness to face new ideas or criticism. They refuse to recognize objective reality that runs counter to their theories and policies and to integrate that reality into new ideas.
Until they change that, they’re rearranging deck chairs.
NotMax
Worse still, internalizing their own incessant bleating that there is no iceberg and everything is just hunky-dory.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Funny how it ends badly when you don’t really believe in the most reliable method of all of measuring the electorate which is to encourage every eligible voter to show up and to count all the fucking ballots (see next thread re: AZ for details). I mean who could have seen that coming: Voter intimidation + vote suppression and reading polls wrong, going together like pancakes and maple syrup?
Big City Mary
Remember when exit polls in Ohio in 2004 had Gore up by 2% and Bush won? I believe that polls did not matter to the Rs as they felt they could make their own reality once again. Wish I knew how many votes we lost because of their efforts.
c u n d gulag
@catclub:
I guess I was leaning too much in the direction of something that happened in the lifetimes of most of readers and commenters here.
Jack Kemp also was right about a good idea or two.
That, of course, and W and Rove knowing that the countries demographics were changing, and would soon swamp them if they didn’t make adjustments.
Too reality-based for the rest of the party, though.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
They’re also the ones making money off the suckers, which creates a strong incentive to buy into the bullshit yourself.
The suckers, apparently, include billionaires. Rove and other SuperPAC grifters thought that they’d be doing victory laps after buying the election for Romney and billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. Now Rove’s under the microscope; they expected to win, and so they didn’t think they had to be competent.
SFAW
@Big City Mary:
Wow, still counting those votes, even four years later.
It was interesting to watch Ken Blackwell’s revisionist history last Tuesday. “No problems with the polling places when I was Secretary of State, nosirree!”
Paul in KY
@redshirt: Best of luck to you, redshirt. Sorry to hear that.
If he worked in Capitalism, surely he’s seen the situation where people/corporations lie to sell something? Tell him this is what they were doing to sell Rmoney.
And Fox News is like QVC in this regard.
Tone In DC
@Villago Delenda Est:
LULz.
gVOR08
I find a lot of the breast beating on their side and crowing on our side a bit premature. They’ll find it tough to win over Latinos, but next cycle they’ll have the most professional polsters they can get.
Cassidy
@redshirt: That sucks. Sorry to hear that.
Gindy51
@redshirt: My sympathies to all of your family. I am so glad all of mine are dead and i don’t have to deal with them anymore. It is horribly sad to say that. I do hope your father will break out of his prison of loneliness and learn that being angry is no way to live.
GregB
We were looking at them like the biggest fucking morons long before they deluded themselves with Rasumussen fairy dust in this election.
redshirt
@Gindy51: Thanks.
This is a pretty textbook case of “Foxification”. He’s always been Conservative (tax reasons only – he’s not religious, owns no guns, doesn’t care about abortion). But he retired a year ago and started watching Fox news regularly for the first time. It took a year to twist his brain into a fevered Wingnut.
Fox is a poison in this country, and this world.
gex
@redshirt: I’d add a good dose of Atwater in there. It seems that most of the fiscal arguments from the right sound just like Atwater’s strategy.
Argued with a former Dem, now a “fiscal conservative” who bemoans the religious right’s influence in the party. Wants to go back to Clinton era tax rates, but insists social spending must be cut.
Asked what programs, and why? He couldn’t name a thing. He just KNOWS social spending must be cut. Even when he supports tax rates that led to a budget surplus.
I’m sure the guy I talked to wouldn’t think himself racist, and perhaps he isn’t. But he sure does enjoy the fiscal wrapping paper around a giant package of racism.
ETA: Not trying to say your father is a racist. It makes me immensely sad that true fiscal conservatism has been co-opted by the racists so we can’t have a reasonable discussion on fiscal policy.
Schlemizel
@redshirt:
My dad was a union member, Democratic operative and a liberal most of his life. Somewhere just past 70 he went around the bend. Part of it was a retirement move to AZ and proximity to the wingnut SIL part of it was his brain just stopped processing information the way it once did. HE was convinced that the Clinton healthcare plan was going to require euthanasia for retirees and no amount of reality could change his mind.
Its a horrible thing to watch, worse to go through and this was before FAUX news. I hope yours will see the light but wouldn’t count on it.
SparkleMotion!
@Cacti: Good points all, Cacti. And I appreciate the response.
But I guess I’m not as confident about the demographic shift as I wish I were. For one, not *all* of the current Democratic voters will stay Democratic voters. Some will, no doubt, but others will slip onto that long, aging slide to conservatism. There are always more old Republicans than old ones. Always.
For another, I don’t think the GOP is going to give up easily. Folks like Scott Gessler and John Husted will continue to fight, tooth and nail, to disenfranchise the young and the not-white. And candidates like Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio will continue to appeal to the basest, most deplorable instincts of American voters. Didn’t work this time — and I hope it won’t ever work again. But I’m still fearful that it might — and that it’s not so far off.
Please talk me out of it . . . .
Villago Delenda Est
@gex:
I’ll tell you what “social spending” should be cut. The DoD’s “social spending” that keeps Defense contractors in hookers and blow.
That’s where you cut. First step…terminate all KBR contracts. Period.
WereBear
I knew two elderly gentlemen, both pretty conservative, kind and intelligent. Both started watching Faux News exclusively… both were later revealed to be suffering from early stages of dementia.
I’m just saying “it helped.”
It is how propaganda works. It shuts out other information that is in conflict, then creates a new world where the propaganda is all there is. The information embeds itself in the brain and becomes something they “know” the way they know “the sky is blue.”
When do they stop watching other news? Does it matter, if CNN is so inept and stupid? Or does Faux exert a pull because when cognitive dissonance arises, they voluntarily watch only Faux?
I hope the future holds answers.
Cassidy
@redshirt: I’m gonna offer some differring advice, so take it or leave it. My Mom, is kinda batshit crazy. I love her, but some of the things she says or does make me angrier than hell. One time, she hung up on me because she was pissed and we didn’t speak for five years. I initiated contact again; too be fair she dind’t have my phone number, but email was available. Anyway, I’ve had to decide to just let some things go. Even now, after the revivla of our relationship she pisses me off, but I just shoose to not make an issue of it. My wife and I have some differences of opinion and I have certian boundaries to work in because of that, but sometimes you just have to make the choice to not be pissed.
quannlace
The sheer vitriol of it surprised me. Back in 2004, sure, I was pissed and depressed after the Election. But i didn’t go around screaming that America is DEAD! and the Constitution is shredded.
redshirt
@Cassidy: Good advice. But I’m not pissed at all. He’s not been a real part of my life for a long time – just someone I see once or twice a year. I could take it or leave it. I lost my Father when he brutally divorced my Mother and left her penniless, so he could marry a millionaire and be even richer – giving not a cent to an of his children. That was decades ago and I’ve long since absorbed it.
But, like I said, I could talk with him, until recently. The fact that he would cancel Xmas at his house for everyone JUST so he doesn’t have to face me makes me laugh and laugh. My sister took it hard though, and I feel for her.
Everyone’s getting more radical. Myself included.
redshirt
@Cassidy: Good advice. But I’m not pissed at all. He’s not been a real part of my life for a long time – just someone I see once or twice a year. I could take it or leave it. I lost my Father when he brutally divorced my Mother and left her penniless, so he could marry a millionaire and be even richer – giving not a cent to an of his children. That was decades ago and I’ve long since absorbed it.
But, like I said, I could talk with him, until recently. The fact that he would cancel Xmas at his house for everyone JUST so he doesn’t have to face me makes me laugh and laugh. My sister took it hard though, and I feel for her.
Everyone’s getting more radical. Myself included.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@NotMax:
Ryan’s statement, “We gave the country specific ideas and solutions, a different vision,” demonstrates how far the GOP has to go to even see reality from its porch – let alone to embrace it.
Neither Ryan nor Romney offered specific ideas beyond the one that they should be elected. Anyone who believes that Reagan-era policy leftovers amount to “A different vision” is a disturbingly shallow thinker.
Barbara
When you are left trying to decide whether it’s better to come across as having lied or as having been incredibly stupide and/or incompetent, I would still go with stupidity. That’s why I am still somewhat distrustful that Rove and Romney and Ryan are playing this straight — but especially Romney and Ryan, whose own internal polling data seems to have driven all the other players out there to conclude that it was in the bag.
Cassidy
@redshirt: Hell, in that case you don’t need the shit. If he wants to see his grandkids, he has to come to you. If he waits to long, he has to answer to them.
BGK
I keep trotting her out like Friedman’s cabbie, but my mother, never anyone’s conservative, it’s getting more stridently liberal as she advances into her 70s. Shrill, even. She loves the President as much as she did JFK, and calls out her friends as bigots and idiots. Good thing Ovenmitt never got within rnge of a roundhouse right, or I’d’ve needed a second mortgage for her bond.
redshirt
@Cassidy: Exactly. Furthermore, I’m rallying the rest of the family against him. I’ve been working my extended family hard over the past 5 years, and I’ve turned a few of them into Dems. They, too, are getting more committed to it. So, now, we surround him.
His third marriage was to a liberal Jewish professor, who just left him (temporarily, I’ve heard through the grapevine. For now). The dissonance is strong.
rumpole
Wanted: Unicorns (this was in my inbox today):
redshirt
@BGK: Your Mom sounds awesome!
Higgs Boson's Mate
@BGK:
Good for Mom! Hope she keeps on keepin’ on for many more years.
Barbara
@BGK: My mother and my sister both fall into this camp. They are absolutely strident — they live in Pennsylvania and were horrified by the voter suppression efforts (we’re white). When I find myself urging them to take it easy and not get too excited — well, that’s something, considering how strident I am myself.
RedKitten
@redshirt:
That is just sad as hell — way to prioritize, dude. I hope that Fox News is keeping him warm in his dotage as he drives away everything that is actually meaningful and real.
Barbara
@rumpole: I am laughing really hard. Do you know who actually might fall into this category? The lobbyists and other political professionals living in the non-NW blocks surrounding Capitol Hill, a few WSJ and other financial journalists who live there too, and, maybe a few people (really few) living in the Takoma Park side of D.C. (which is NE).
Not what you would call a representative group of voters.
slippy
People worried that the GOP might suddenly re-discover competence, numbers, or reality should not fret. The #1 rule of suckers and con-artists is that marks do not like to admit to themselves, let alone others, that they’ve been scammed. Expect next election’s GOP to double down on manufactured self-delusional horseshit. The post-election freakout has shown they’ve learned literally nothing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
That’s our Paul!
Barbara
@gex: The thing is, many Republican voters vote Republican precisely because of the social issues, and if you took those away AND threatened to cut their benefits, they would either switch allegiance overnight or stay home entirely. (It does seem that might have happened in Ohio, where reportedly, lots of white voters stayed home.)
There is no political party that has ever maintained a majority only by making an ideal of socially darwinistic, laissez-faire capitalism. That’s how we got FDR, when the capitalist party ended. Lee Atwater knew it — he also knew that you caould get people to look the other way by distracting them with “social” issues that correlated highly with racial resentment. He just didn’t quite see far enough ahead to envision the day when the objects of the racial animosity would comprise so many voters the strategy would no longer guarantee results.
Maude
@redshirt:
You can pick your friends, not your relatives.
Mine are all dead. When some were alive, the split was decades old.
It was not a close family.
rb
@BGK: Friedman’s cabbie
LOL, an underpolled demographic, to be sure.
Your mom sounds awesome.
Anoniminous
The GOP forgot two things:
1. We elect the President by states, not nationally.
2. It doesn’t matter how many white people vote for a president in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana once 50% + 1 is reached the additional votes are no longer affective. But these voters are “counted” in the national polls.
And OFA has to be given credit for getting people to the polls. It’s commonplaces in US politics actual voters are much less than Registered Voters and that the Registered Voter demographic is more apt to support Democrats than Republicans.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@redshirt:
To me it appears that our side isn’t becoming more radical. If anything many of us are beginning to realize that the normal human ways of getting along with an opponent; conciliation, negotiation, finding a middle ground, are about as effective with Republicans as they would be with a scorpion. The question inherent in that is “What do we do next?” The “next” would be easy if our opponents were just a party with some loony ideas, but they’ve shown psychosis-level enthusiasm for damaging anything as long as it also damages us. We would be well-served if, as a party, we devoted some thought to how we deal with the other side.
El Cid
@slippy: They’re like scam artists realizing they have to refresh and up the game: they’re not going to give up the scam, but they do have to make it more convincing.
After all, you can still apparently make a fortune selling men and women fairy pills (magic herbs! secret vitamin formulas!) which will make their pen1ses or breasts grow bigger, because fuck genetics and actual biology, I wanna believe!
El Cid
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I don’t see the Democratic / Democratic-leaning side as becoming more ideologically radical, rather, that they’re becoming more methodologically and ideologically assertive.
It just appears to a bullying rightwing party used to 30+ years of getting what they want to be radicalism. They’re used to the overall trend of Democrats and supporters of Democrats (over Republicans) as generally conceding the game while occasionally winning office.
redshirt
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Perhaps “radical” is the wrong word. For myself, I was apolitical for most of my life. I was completely unconcerned during Bush Sr’s presidency, as I was solidly in the “both sides are basically the same” camp. I figured it didn’t really matter who was in charge.
Flash forward to 2002 or so, and ever year since, I get more and more involved. More and more passionate. I’m super political now, and hunger for more. I want to put these Repukes in the ground (metaphoricall! As a Party!). I feel more radical in my thinking now too – heck, I think Marx got most of his points right! That viewpoint would not have been possible for me 20 years ago.
It seems there are many like me. Hence my use of the word “radical”.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Democrats “must be looking at us like we’re the biggest f——- morons in the world,” one frustrated Republican said. “That’s what I’d be doing.”
Finally – a Republican who can produce accurate predictions…
LongHairedWeirdo
Don’t blame the voters who vote for the morons. The Very Serious People agree that the morons are, in fact, brilliant, wonky, and so forth. Exempli grati: Paul Ryan is a budget wonk, because he presented a budget that said “we’ll cut certain things to levels lower than they’ve ever been in history – we just *will*, but we won’t tell you how. Then the budget gets balanced!”
Sure, crazy bearded professors who are *rude*, and clearly not Very Serious, might say that he’s not really presenting a budget plan, but the kind of people you meet at the Applebee’s Salad Bar ™ agree that he’s a courageous, wonky budget man. (Unless Joe Biden is at Applebees, to point out that they don’t have a salad bar, and to make good the line SNL put in his mouth: “No, Irish is I come over there and wipe that stupid look off your face.”)
El Cid
@LongHairedWeirdo: The sorts of media and lazy political class idiots who truthfully get convinced that Paul Ryan is a “policy wonk” would be the ideal marks for some would-be inventor to convince that he has whatever miracle impossible invention which deserves millions of dollars of their money. Because they wouldn’t hire professional evaluation of the claim — they’d trust their guts, and what they heard from peers.
I can only imagine the NASA missions which would be designed by such “policy wonks”.
liberal
@El Cid:
They’re the same type who think Gingrich is an intellectual/historian.
El Cid
@liberal: I hate to admit it, but given his competition in the right wing these days, Newt Gingrich is now among the leading intellectuals and/or historians they have.
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
Sounds like he’s busily blaming everyone else for his own shortcomings. I’m guessing that this is not new behavior on his part, which is why you’re not too surprised.
My dad is a conservative Fox-watcher and I haven’t talked to him since before the election. For all I know, our Christmas has been canceled, too. (Though probably not since my brother and his wife are still Republicans.)
trollhattan
@Bubblegum Tate:
SippyCupp was on Maher, Friday, and generally contained herself until late in the program when Benghazi came up (or maybe she brought it up, I can’t recall) at which point she began screeching at the top of her lungs, spraying RW talking points throughout the studio. It was startling.
They’re truly hardwired to take this thing forward, but where, I cannot imagine.
aimai
@El Cid:
After reading the account of the infighting in Connecticut between Shays and Linda McMahon’s campaign manager it occurs to me that the real reason why Steve Forbes, those two women in California and McMahon et al run for office is that they are surrounded by con men who see them as easy marks. Its really, really, obvious that McMahon’s campaign guy essentially defrauded her of the entire 100 million she brought to the table and he,f or one, has no regrets that she wasn’t a competent candidate.
aimai
redshirt
@Mnemosyne: Indeed. Why I mentioned his profession before is that it deals with facts. It has to. However, I could have pointed him to Nate Silver’s blog, Wang’s blog, TPM, etc, weeks before the election, and said “Romney’s chance are extremely slim”. That was a fact.
For him to be so SHELLSHOCKED means he’s ignored facts, and has entered the Fox Bubble. Reap what you sow, says I.
Next time I talk with him – if ever! – I’ll be sure and remind him of this. I’m itching for a fight.
Tonal Crow
@Waldo:
Bingo, on all three points. Foxtardation has spread like rot through the entire Republican party, from the lowliest backwoods racist all the way to Jack Welch, Paul Ryan, and Mitt Romney. They truly believe (to varying, but significant, degrees) that Obama is a racist sockialist atheist radical Muslim communist fascist subversive who wasn’t born in America and who’s bent on selling America to Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro. That’s not the kind of belief of which a person is readily disabused.
[BTW, the S-word once again causes posts to disappear into the ether, with not so much as a moderation warning. Can’t you fix this site permanently?]
Steeplejack
@Tonal Crow:
Can it be? Is socialist broken again?
ETA: Hmm, worked okay for me.
LanceThruster
I know it’s sometimes hard to say conclusively not having met every single moron, but Rethuglicans certainly have established the metrics of peak moron having no visible boundaries. I also fear their mercurial nature as their overall stability or lack thereof certainly inhabits an oscillating universe where we can’t be sure that any given movement can be used to chart a trend. They’ve shown that any claims of foundational bedrock can just as easily be anomalies.
El Cid
@aimai: What is truly, truly awesome is that the Romney campaign was run by people who saw the Romney campaign itself as a lucrative target to profit from.
The vulture capitalist hires people he believes in, people like himself, who then turn out to in fact be people much like himself.
They see him, Romney, as the mark, the company to be taken over with leveraged funds. Romney himself at a higher level is going out and bringing in big money donations by selling his company (his campaign) as exactly the sort of company they want to invest in.
Yet at the same time, the staffers are brought in and bleed the campaign of fees and pay and commission, and they hand contracts out to their allies and those to whom they owe favors, and thus things like voter turnout databases and recruitment apps are run as scam projects designed at best to turn in just before deadline so that all the money’s gone before any backing-out can be done.
However, at the same time, these peoples’ long-term interests would have been served much, much better had they actually performed competently and gotten Romney elected.
But they can’t. They can’t do that.
These people can’t delay their greed for just a few more months. Their very natures are tuned to obsess upon that golden coin right in front of them whether or not stopping right now to pick that up means they lose out on the treasure the other team is riding toward in the distance.
Romney, the guy whose fortunes were built upon borrowing money to take over companies and using their resources and assets to bleed them of value to extract fees, commissions, and payback to funders with interest, and who was running to both pursue the highest level of such asset control himself and on the promise to reward people like him, was himself the target of the people he brought along to help him do it.
Yet it’s also inevitable, because those are exactly the sorts of people who would so strongly believe in the rightness of a Romney Presidency.
Romney’s very nature led him to bring to work for him the sort of people who shared his values and outlook, and they repaid him by behaving exactly as Romney had in business, and in return, he not only lost the Presidency but realized that he had made of himself his own mark.
It is an awesome, awesomely beautiful irony.
Benghazi Benghazborne
@Bubblegum Tate:
So did I!
Marmot
Dennis G, I often get the feeling you don’t know any Republicans. Partly it’s your constant, self-aggrandizing insistence that their motivations are purely racist. Anyone who knows these people knows that a lot of them are racists. But that they can also be motivated by much more vague fears that undeserving people of any color are getting a handout. Or that tradition is fading, or that the country is in danger of military attack, and so on.
When you say they’re dumb, that’s my mom you’re talking about. She’s a smart woman. She’s been fooled, and I blame a non-stop right-wing propaganda operation.
You should read Billmon’s diary about his feelings concerning the pics of disappointed white Romney voters. Billmon knows Republicans, and he doesn’t revel in his feelings of superiority. You do.
NotMax
@Marmot
Well put.
Gloating Road is within easy walking distance of Schadenfreude Street, a jaunt to be avoided.
SFAW
@Marmot:
Change “any color” to “certain colors” and I think you’ve got it.
Look, I know you love your mom, and I’m truly not trying to be disrespectful, but those two statements are contradictory: she’s either smart, or she’s been fooled. She may be smart about some things, but (apparently) politics and social issues aren’t included in the “some things” umbrella. Doesn’t make her a bad person. But it’s up to YOU to educate her. If she refuses to listen, and is so locked in to parroting the Fox party line, then you might need to reassess.
And, yes, I know that smart people have been fooled in the past (See Madoff’s clientele, for example), but generally, when presented with rational, counterbalancing information, they can make the right choice. Unless there’s some reason they don’t want to.
Tonal Crow
@Steeplejack: Didn’t work for me. I changed it to “sockialist” and had no problem. Hmm.
pluege
The only folks dumber than the Republican candidates, fluffers and operatives would be the gullible suckers who vote for these idiots.
idiocy, insidiousness, and all around dumbassery are apparently identity traits.
Dennis G.
@Marmot: I know plenty of Republicans and see quite a few at any family gathering. You confuse my condemnation of the tactics of the Party with what might or might not be in any given individual’s heart. It is the systematic and organized use of racism as a political tool that I condemn (over and over and over).
The individual Republicans I know are all mostly decent folks. And yet, so many of them (most really) seem addicted to Fox News and wingnut talking points. It would be great if you could have a serious conversation about issues with them, but you can’t. Their bubble of reality will not allow it and the lies that the Party and the Wingnut potentates craft for them are repeated over and over in answer to any challenge.
I can think of a few Republicans that I know who do not fit this mold, but they are rare (and I think most of them ended up voting for President Obama).
The Republican Party is the problem. It relies on racism as its core organizing tool. It sucks a lot of decent people down the rabbit hole of hate and fear.
There is nothing ‘superior’ in pointing out that reality of our politics. It is simple a statement of fact. The situation is just sad. Sorry if you feel that I called your mom ‘dumb’. That was not my intent, but if she is repeating GOP talking points I would say that she–like almost every Republican I know–has a problem. I hope she snaps out of it one day.
Cheers
mandarama
@redshirt: My very beloved Irish-New-Yorker 84-year-old FIL, since losing my MIL 3 years ago, has lost the person he used to rant about politics to (she never disagreed with him). There’s no doubt in my mind that Fox has had a horrible, deleterious effect on his rational processes. I had one fight with him, before the 2008 election, when I was really fired up and ready to go and he backed me into a corner. I said something about one of Obama’s books, and he said, “Those books are just full of crap!” I said, “Have you read them?” and he said, “I don’t have to read them to know they’re full of crap.” I love the man dearly and he’s like another parent to me, plus I want to respect my elders, but I looked at him and said, “How can you expect me to take you seriously when you have no evidence but television talking heads?” That was a really awkward fight, but he hasn’t broached the subject of politics with me since. I love him, but he really has no critical thinking skills when it comes to Fox. I think it actually accelerates dementia or lowers IQs.
Of course, he’s also asked me (since I’m from MS): “Why can’t blacks get past the idea of slavery? It was 150 years ago; why are they still harping on about it?” I replied, “Well, why do you still resent the English for their subjugation of the Irish and complain about it when you were born in Manhattan?” He admitted he hadn’t thought of it that way. Sigh.
Starlit
@SparkleMotion!: The gap between winning and whining? Too small. Way too small.
Stentor
The joke’s on them, we always look at them like they’re the biggest fucking morons on the planet, because they are.