It’s going to be interesting watching the GOP talk itself out of doing immigration reform. They’ll be engaging in slow-motion political suicide, but the bottom line is that they won’t do it because they don’t want to do it, and Republicans are very good at finding reasons they should do whatever it is they want to do. They don’t want to deal with global warming and you know the drill: global warming isn’t happening, if it is happening then it’s not caused by humans, if it is caused by humans then there’s nothing we can do about it, if there is something we can do about it then that something is not whatever Democrats are proposing. Also too: Al Gore is fat!
All humans are like this to some extent insofar as the wish to do usually precedes the justification to do. But Republicans take it farther, and that’s both a strength and a weakness. This is especially true with their leaders. George W. Bush was “a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius”, Maggie T’s opponents “knew they were toppling a person who was their political and moral superior”. And my favorite, from Josh Marshall (I’m self-linking because the TPM link died somehow):
(Fred) Barnes: Why is Jeb Bush the best? It’s very simple. His record is the best. No other governor, Republican or Democrat, comes close.
Josh Marshall: Why is Jeb the best? Because he is the best! No one rocks as hard as Jeb, bitch!
The greatness of Ronaldus Magnus is not a conclusion, it’s a premise.
With liberals, it’s the opposite. I can find plenty of faults with FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Obama.
My impression is that liberals have always been big handwringers, at least for the past 40 years or so, and that makes our arguments sound less forceful because they involve equivocation as well as assertion. But it probably also means we would never decide it was a good idea to completely alienate a rapidly growing segment of the population and doom ourselves to 20+ years of minority status.
danimal
I agree. You make a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.
Pass the popcorn, the GOP is about to score an own goal. Again.
c u n d gulag
One of the many things our authoritarian American Conservatives picked-up from the foreign Communists they once feared, was the “Cult Of Personality.”
In the USSR, it was Lenin, then Stalin.
In China, it was Mao.
In Cuba, it was Castro.
In Cambodia, it was Pol Pot.
Here in America, it’s Reagan.
Oh, and there was also a serious “Cult Of Personality” around that serious guy with the funny little mustache, whose name Godwin’s Law forbids me to name.
Mandatory photos of all, for all. OR, ELSE!!!
Why do you thing you see all of the Reagan stuff on Conservative websites, and in politicians offices?
Conservatives, “God-up” their hero’s, and want everyone praying to their leaders, like they icons in a Russian Orthodox Church.
askew
I see a lot of that thinking with Hillary supporters. Try asking them to explain why she is the best candidate for president without using poll numbers.
I think Republicans will kill immigration reform and the US English media will say both sides are to blame. The US Spanish media will rightly blame the Republicans. If that makes Hispanics angry enough to turn out in huge #s in 2014, it could tip the House to the Dems.
Redshirt
Ultimately, Progressives have a much harder time of it. A Progressive must appeal to the intellect, to compassion, to long term planning.
A Republican appeals to fear, hate, GIVE ME SOMETHING NOW! – all Id, all frantic emotion.
It’s easy to see why one can win more easily than the other.
Schlemizel
@askew:
From your lips to Her noodley appendage!
Edit: I actually feel bad because at the heart of it I am rooting for pain for a large number of my fellow humans that is totally unnecessary. What I should be hoping for is that the goopers wake up, become human (and humane), push through a good reform bill and not hurt people needlessly. But I don’t think that is going to happen so I hope the goopers get exactly what is coming to them – in triplicate!
BGinCHI
We wring our hands because we have arguments, and make arguments.
It’s called Critical Thinking.
It’s how you evolve and progress.
There is a reason the right is called “reactionary.”
Roger Moore
It’s the same old thing about forceful leadership. The best thing about having a forceful leader is that you don’t waste a bunch of time and effort arguing and deciding on what to do. The worst thing about having a forceful leader is that the lack of argument and rational decision making massively increases the chances that you’ll be heading in the wrong direction.
It’s an important thing to remember when the Republicans are talking about how China is going to overtake us because they don’t waste time arguing about what to do. That same impulse not to argue with leadership is what dug them into such a deep hole in the first place, what with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
schrodinger's cat
The people who vote in the GOP primaries by and large are against immigration reform, so until such a time that the GOP holds the House, comprehensive immigration reform is unlikely. We might get some of the individual pieces, may be.
moderateindy
One of my favorite ludicrous premises that I hear people say is that “they prayed on it” and God told them what to do. Amazing how often god’s reply coincides exactly with what is most beneficial to the person that did the praying. It’s almost like the FSM had no part in the decision at all.
Zifnab
It’s not quite the same. Republicans hold up Ronnie Raygun and insist he is the quintessential conservative. Answering a policy question typically involves invoking the mantra “WWRD?” before concluding that Reagan would totally agree with everything you planned to do anyway (which, in fairness, he probably would – Reagan had mastered the art of convincing people that he was saying what they wanted to hear). But you rarely see a conservative point out where Reagan went wrong, or how his policies weren’t in sync with modern conservative tenants, or how he might disagree with you. Ronald Reagan MUST agree with you, if you are spouting the most conservative opinion your brain is capable of processing.
Meanwhile, liberals tend to look at FDR or LBJ or Clinton or Obama and conclude that they weren’t liberal enough. FDR tried to balance the budget in ’37, which liberals openly proclaim was a mistake. LBJ got involved in Vietnam and took a hard line against the Soviet Union, when he should have embraced the peacenik liberal base. Clinton rolled back welfare and signed a number of anti-gay legislative bills that made him the ban of social liberals in his age.
Liberals are happy to acknowledge that their Presidents weren’t the Avatars of Liberalism, but practical moderates who knew how to win the majority of Americans the majority of the time. And they express displeasure at moderation, when it comes at the expense of good policy.
Meanwhile, Conservatives absolutely refuse to acknowledge that their Presidents were anything less than ideological purists. They reject moderation out of hand and presume their candidates won by being the most conservity-conservatives in Conservatopia.
Liberals are practical, reasonable, and resentful of that fact. Conservatives are delusional and ideologically driven, and blissfully ignorant of why that might be a mistake.
pokeyblow
Sarah Palin is smart, and the results of her parenting are flawless.
Ramalama
Kind of reminds me of a recent article by Rick Perlstein:
RaflW
@Zifnab:
And if they weren’t ideological purists, they refuse to acknowledge that they were Republicans. Or presidents, nearly.
See Bush I for example. He’s been disappeared as much or more than his son.
schrodinger's cat
DougJ@top
Did have you read Bobo’s cringe inducing op-ed about Thatcher?
Schlemizel
@Redshirt:
Plus they are untroubled by doubt. Libs are painfully aware that there is always a cost no matter what you want to do and that even the best of intentions can lead to poor results.
Cons tiny brains do not see that, they only know that they are right about everything and nothing bad will ever happen as long as they get exactly what they demand. That ignorant confidence gives them an air of correctness that history has demonstrated time and again is unwarranted.
japa21
Liberals frequently expect perfection from their leaders which ultimately has to lead to disappointment.
Conservatives assume perfection from their leaders. Therefore anything their leaders do is correct.
Marmot
Wait–you’re saying conservatives’ penchant for hero worship stems from their tendency to make a set of ideological assumptions about any issue? So “Reagan is a hero” is one of those assumptions?
Not sure I agree. Hm.
taylormattd
You don’t say.
Schlemizel
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not just no, HELL NO! not even if they paid me & Bobo falaited me while reading it, no!
Interesting that the goopers and wingnuts all pray to God and to St. Ronald for guidance and both reply with exactly the same answer & it is the exact answer that the wingnuts wanted all along!
DougJ, Friend of Hamas
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, it was awful.
Cassidy
This is not a bad thing. It could be better if they were holding their sacred guns at the same time.
patroclus
Sure, you can find faults with FDR, LBJ, Clinton and Obama, but you didn’t list Truman, JFK, Carter or Wilson, so you’re just like the Republicans! Both sides do it!!
Supernumerary Charioteer
From the Politico piece: “Economists on the left and right have argued that the economic benefits outweigh the costs.
But armed with their own body of research, a network of opponents from Capitol Hill, a prominent Washington think tank and border-first groups are preparing to use the specter of the potential cost of an immigration overhaul and its drain on entitlements as their main line of attack.”
Don’t like the facts? Hire somebody to make some up. Empiricism is for the little people. What do economists matter? It’s not as if they have the will to power, which is apparently the only thing that matters when it comes to power.
MattF
Republicans would rather lose elections than deal with their own dysfunction. After all, when Dems are in power, there’s someone to blame who’s not a Republican, and they don’t have to rethink anything.
ETA: …which they wouldn’t do in any case.
piratedan
OT: http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/04/09/17671991-mcconnell-brand-hardball
sometimes I think that the best way to deal with the Republicans in elected offices is with a baseball bat to the knees. Then I remember that I am a cowardly liberal who is supposed to always compromise my values and swallow my outrage and be civil. Still, we may not get gun reform until someone mows down a swath of Republicans from relative safety before they get the point that with these types of weapons available to the public, no one is really safe.
Eric U.
@Schlemizel: Democratic Party motto: sometimes the worst that can happen is that you get what you want.
I would love to see the current Republican party go away, but the fact is that the gladhanders would just become Dems. This is why I suspect that the death of the Republican party will probably end the Democratic party too. Dunno how to resolve that problem should it occur.
@piratedan: it’s a little surprising that nobody has ever mowed down a Republican meet and greet. Crazy people develop hostility towards their congressman independent of party, as far as I can tell
jomo
The GOP are protected from the outcome of their decisions by Gerrymandered house districts and the Senate filibuster. They would have to be absolutely vanquished in an election to lose their ability to continue to throw a wrench in the works. Look at California which is overwhelmingly Democratic – and is brought to a legislative standstill by a shrill, intense GOP minority. Alas they will be with us for a while – and for them victory is screwing things up nationally – while oppressing the hell out of the states they control.
Violet
@askew:
Is that how the Spanish media is playing things re: immigration reform? Haven’t seen much said about what Spanish media is saying.
Cassidy
@piratedan:
ROAD TRIP!
MomSense
@Redshirt:
There is also the disproved economic hypotheses become assumptions that are accepted without question.
Have you ever been caught in the loop of asking for evidence that a certain economic assumption has worked — anywhere — only to get a response that uses other economic assumptions that have no supporting evidence until you finally come around to the place where the original economic assumption for which you asked for evidence is given as the proof of the efficacy of another economic assumption?
It is like poor George Jetson stuck on the dog walking conveyer belt. Whirlpool of stupidity.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Roger Moore: I’ve been there. The GOP is correct, they aren’t wasting one second arguing about what they’re going to do.
What they’re doing is driving themselves right into the abyss. If there’s a person alive there in fifty years I’ll be shocked.
askew
@Violet:
That is just a prediction based on how the Spanish media handled the election and the Arizona anti-immigration law. There was no sugar coating what the GOP were doing or spinning of the “both sides” nonsense.
Steve M.
Well, it helps the GOP that they’ve got the Supreme Court and some skilled and entrepreneurial vote-suppressors to minimize the near-term damage from that immigration decision.
Violet
@piratedan:
The Republican civil war might provide some situations where this might happen. Cast-out Libertarian shoots up Republican meeting, etc.
Ash Can
QFT. This is the party that refused en masse to believe the polls, a.k.a. reality, all through the last presidential election campaign and ended up genuinely surprised when their candidate lost. This is a party that considers science the enemy and empirical, demonstrable evidence to be false. This is not a party that is going to discover reality all of a sudden, accept and work within its limitations, and acknowledge that what it really needs is a policy makeover, not just a cosmetic makeover. It’s a party that is convinced that brown people suck, brown immigrants suck more, and what it needs to do is to convince everyone else of that. Naturally, it follows that the GOP’s Hispanic outreach is going to consist of “you suck,” followed by, “if you’d only realize that yourselves, everything would be OK.” (Lather, rinse, repeat for AA outreach.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@piratedan: and McConnell is screaming like a stuck pig. He now looks like a sleazy bully, and he doesn’t even the benefit of running against the Tennessee carpetbagger freaky Hollywood chick.
People I don’t despise in the media tell me not underestimate Marco Rubio, but he’s always struck me as second-rater who got lucky– sweep year, divided opposition. Watching him stumble around with immigration confirms my impression. But then I thought Bush II was done when he said he was gonna stop Al Gore from turning Social Security in to some kinda /snort/ federal program.
patroclus
If the Republicans are really going to kill immigration reform, then it was a stupid decision on their part to engage on the issue at all because, if they kill it, they’re gonna be blamed for killing it. Sure, the media won’t blame them, they’ll blame both sides and focus on Obama and repeat Republican talking points like they always do. But Latinos (and other immigrants) will justifiably blame them because it clearly will be the Republicans’ fault despite what the media will say.
By merely engaging on the issue, the Republicans are taking a big risk that the whole thing will tank, bigtime. When you walk out on a ledge, there’s a good chance you might fall.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@jomo: Thanks to the last election, that is finally not the case any longer. The California GOP is now a superminority (less than 33% votes) in both houses of the state, and can no longer interfere with the workings of government.
Small tax hike, no more deficit. The Republicans are fit to be tied, but there is nothing they can do. We won, and wiped out the deficit in one year.
Hopefully other states will take note.
BC
This is a feature of liberalism, I think. We are never sure – sure – sure that our ideas work, we always leave room for empirical evidence to reshape our thought. This is why we can embrace scientific evidence and don’t have qualms when what we thought was true turns out to be not true or at least not as true as we had originally thought. We’re more pragmatic, less ideological. It was thought that communism was liberalism writ large, but the way the Soviet Union practiced communism, it was conservatism writ large – the ideology was paramount and could not be challenged even if it meant the collapse of the system itself. I think the current GOP is following the Soviets to collapse by being so rigid on ideology. I don’t think the conservatives of the 1970s or 1980s or, hell, even the 1990s were so ideological.
Gex
@Redshirt: Especially since stimulating the reptile brain is a really good way to take resources away from the cerebral cortex.
@Schlemizel: Which is why when bad things happen, it is because liberals failed to clap for them hard enough.
Keith G
@Zifnab:
I think part of this may stem from the notion that for many liberals it is about formulating and then installing the precisely correct governmental policy/action. In our very complicated world, there is much debate over what qualifies as good enough, let alone perfect. Conservatives do have a much lower bar to cross on that. Doing nothing is often a pretty good outcome for them.
Also it seems to me that many conservatives try to think in longer term strategies than liberals and that adds to this dynamic – though this seems to now be changing.
Chris
@c u n d gulag:
I remember my uncle and some of his buddies having a bitching party on Facebook about Obama, until my sister asked “so what do YOU think should be done?” One of the buddies: “If we could elect Reagan again, that would be great! Since we can’t, elect Romney.”
Cult of personality: check.
Yutsano
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Yup. And according to Jerry’s promise, if the budget gets balanced, single payer is next. The budget just got balanced…this could start the endgame.
ericblair
@MattF:
I don’t know if they ever get that far in the analysis: it seems that they assume a vast groundswell of support for whatever nutso position they take. Couple that with the sort of Reservior-Dogs-style Mexican standoff between the various single-issue factions in the Republican party and the only real path is no significant change. I’ve never seen any gooper say that they’d rather lose than change, because they’re still assuming that they’ll win and whatever setback is a temporary aberration due to ACORN/47%/vote fraud/young bucks/whatever.
pokeyblow
It bothers liberal individuals when people accuse them of stupidity. They consider the accusation, wondering whether what they’ve said/done indeed qualifies as idiotic.
Conservatives (at least the non-cynical teabagger types) seem unwilling to seriously consider the suggestion that their opinions are poorly formed. Perhaps a defense mechanism… being called stupid (backward, inbred, whatever) for one’s whole life might lead to a defensive wholesale rejection of any intellect-based criticism.
That doesn’t mean the answer is to be more kind to our stumpjumping friends. Indeed, pointing out cretinous republican stupidity is a noble joy.
Violet
@askew: Thanks. I guess I’d forgotten what Spanish media coverage was during the election. I wonder if there are some current English summaries of Spanish media coverage. I’d be especially interested in Spanish media coverage in red states, like Texas and Arizona. Anyone know of anything like that?
Villago Delenda Est
The ultimate irony of “conservatism” is that there are vociferous cults of personality around “individualist” leaders like Ayn Rand and Ron Paul.
Yutsano
@Violet: I bet Valdiva has her pulse on the Latin media. If she pops around we could always check with her, she’s discussed it here before.
Roger Moore
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I had something of a delayed shock when I was talking to some of my Chinese coworkers about the possibility of retiring in China, and one of their objections to going back was that the air pollution was so bad. The basis of their comparison here in the US is Los Angeles! Somehow, the idea that anyone would prefer LA to any other city using air pollution as a major point for why it’s so much better here boggles my mind.
Valdivia
awesome apt title DougJ.
Emerald
@jomo: @jomo: Look at California which is overwhelmingly Democratic – and
isWAS brought to a legislative standstill by a shrill, intense GOP minority.FTFY
We got rid of ’em in our last election. They are now less than one-third of both houses in the state legislature, and can’t stop policy any more.
True, they did so much damage to the state over the last 30 years that it will take many, many years to fix the wreckage, but we’ve started.
Roger Moore
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Sure, but that’s still based on austerity level government services, and our prisons are still a nightmare caused largely by inadequate funding. We need some real economic growth to recover to a decent position.
Gex
One question for my free market evangelists on the right. It is taken as given that goods and capital should cross borders freely in a free market. The same should be true for labor. Certainly a good fiscally conservative party would defend the primacy of the free market by tackling immigration reform, right?
Oh yeah, because their free market isn’t as beloved as they think it is. And the only way they can sell serfdom to white Americans is to make them hate gays, browns, and foreigners. Some of us understand that their version of the “free market” is a loaded version designed to advantage you over everyone else. It’s depressing that the GOP base will vote themselves into serfdom and then blame everyone else for their poverty.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Yutsano: The only mention I can find of Brown endorsing single payer is from 21 years ago. Do you have a link to this where he says he will sign such a bill, explicitly?
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: To be fair though, LA has gotten so much better than it was just 10 years ago. Last time I was down there it was remarkably clear. I’m certain there are still bad smog days (I still have my orange cloud story) but they seem to be fewer.
Skippy-san
Once again chunky Bobo decides to stand on the wrong side of an issue. The bottom line was Thatcher had screwed over too many people and it was time for her to go. Bobo, of course, is too stupid to see that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yutsano: Jose Diaz-Balart appears fairly frequently on MSNBC* (Telemundo is part of the NBC borg). He has both-sides tendencies, and the fact that he is the brother of one proto-Tea Bagger congress critter and one ex-critter of similar leanings is never mentioned, which drives me nuts, but I think he mostly has the GOP’s number on immigration.
*usually limited to discussions of immigration, which I find to be a weird ghetto-ization from the “Lean Forward” network.
Violet
@Valdivia: Yutsano mentioned that you were following the Spanish media during the election. Any insight into how US Spanish media is covering the immigration debate? Are they blaming Republicans or is it Both Sides Do It?
MomSense
@Gex:
It is not free at all! The public bears a lot of the costs that make it possible for businesses to function–but these are just “externalities” and never appreciated.
Violet
@Yutsano: Salt Lake City is another story. It’s kind of a basin and collects smog and dust and is just awful at certain times of year. I saw a network news show do a piece on it. I think kids have much higher incidences of asthma and other health problems in SLC than elsewhere.
Cacti
Let’s not kid ourselves here. The GOP’s electoral model of the past 50 years has been white resentment/racism. If they pass immigration reform, in the short term they’re flipping the bird to the only group that still reliably votes for them…crackers.
sherparick
@Cacti: Yes, in a way, although it would really be an attempt to siphon off 40% of the Hispanic vote by giving them honorary “white” status. Unfortunately, somewhat like the Republican Party of the 1920s who had hard time accepting Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants into the “Anglo-Saxon” party, their base really does not want to grant that status to the “Brownhns.”
Yutsano
@Forum Transmitted Disease: All the stuff I can find is over a year old. Hmm. I think Martin might know more about it. I do know that Jerry’s big reason to oppose it is now gone.
@Violet: SLC just gives me the creeps. When I visited there I couldn’t stay. There was some weird psychic vibe about the place.
ricky
Not supporting immigration reform (by which I presume Friend of Hamas means a proposal which leads to citizenship
for those who entered and/or stayed in the country without legal authority to do so) is slow motion suicide for the GOP?
How so. You think it is opposition to reform policy that is the driving force of their electoral troubles with Hispanics and Asians, or the often unrestrained and quite visible racism behind that opposition?
Gex
@MomSense: I get that. But they are always arguing for a “free market” and it would be nice for them to answer to why they actively resist a free market in one of the most fundamental aspects. If nothing else to make them demonstrate to their ignorant base that 1) they aren’t voting for a free market and 2) they don’t WANT a truly free market. I think if we could get them to philosophically divest themselves of this false notion that a truly free market is the best thing, then maybe we can get them to start thinking about how we manage an economy that needs to serve the entire population, not just 1% of us.
Bubblegum Tate
@Zifnab:
You ever tell a conservative that Reagan would’ve been teabagged out of the GOP today and tarred-and-feathered as a RINO? Man, do they flip out. “I voted for Reagan, and I’m a TPer! So shut it, lib!”
“So you would’ve supported Reagan’s many tax increases? Amnesty? His increase of federal spending?”
“REAGAN WAS A TAX CUTTER!”
…and so on.
Violet
@Yutsano: I haven’t stayed there–just flown into the airport and gone on to ski or stay at Park City or elsewhere. The surrounding area is gorgeous.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Yutsano: I do not recall him running on it, mentioning it, and I can’t find anything on his webpage about it. In fact, there’s nothing about healthcare at all.
I follow Brown pretty closely, he’s always been one of my favorite politicians. I think this was a rumor, based on his 1992 remarks.
Here’s my issue – estimates to do single payer for California start at 250 billion dollars and go up from there. Yeah, we’re technically solvent, but I don’t see where that kind of money comes from.
Cacti
@Bubblegum Tate:
That’s why I avoid discussing politics with my Republican parents if at all possible.
When they start ranting about Obama’s runaway spending, I ask them “Didn’t you vote for Reagan twice, even though he tripled the national debt in 8 years?”
The answer is always some variation of “La la la, I’m not listening”.
Lihtox
@Eric U.: If the Republican party suddenly disappeared, the Democratic party would split in two (in name or in truth). Part of what holds the Democratic coalition together is the fear of being voted out of office by Republicans. And there’s nothing wrong with that…in fact that’s what I’m hoping will happen. We need two parties, and a conservative party of Max Baucus and Mary Landrieu is much preferable to a conservative party of Michele Bachmann and Ted Cruz.
Gex
@ricky: Demographic changes. Mitt Romney had to get an incredibly high percentage of white voters, and that was to lose.
I thought it was understood that appealing to white racial resentment was bounded by the ability of whites to maintain a viable political majority.
Marmot
@Violet: I know this is a minor point, but I think it’s important. You’re talking about Spanish-language media, right? Not the media in Spain? “Spanish” means “of Spain.”
drkrick
Take out the “rapidly growing” part and you’re describing the Dem decision to fully support civil rights in the ’60’s. But that was the right call anyway.
Violet
@Marmot: Yes, sorry. US Spanish-language media. If I’m not making sense, it’s maybe because I’m home on the sofa with a fever for the second day. Picked up some virus on my recent trip. Ugh.
askew
@Marmot:
It was quite clear what she was talking about. No need to get bent out of shape about shorthand in comments section.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
Yes, LA has gotten a lot better, especially since the smog check rules were tightened about 15 years ago. We still have the worst air of any major metro area in the country, so it’s a surprise to be a positive base for comparison.
ETA: I wonder how much improved air quality has to do with LA’s increasing liberalism. It’s a powerful example of a very intrusive, massively successful government program, and hence of what good, liberal government can do.
Trollhattan
The Ronaldus Magnus White House operated for all intents and purposes, as a criminal enterprise. That must ‘splain why he’s so venerated by today’s Republicans–and toasted (hourly) by Nooners.
“I lurved that li’l rascal [hic].”
MomSense
@Gex:
My understanding is that “free market” is one of those terms that was cooked up at one of the special Republican lingo think tanks–think Frank Luntz–in order to convey an emotional association. It has nothing to do with the economics of the market.
Lihtox
This sounds like the reverse of the Republican claim that Democrats are “brainwashed Obama supporters”. I think it’s just perception bias. Republicans don’t hear us complaining about Obama because we don’t do it around them…why give them any ammunition? And Republicans close ranks when Democrats are listening, but in private I bet they are just as hard on their candidates as we are. Maybe they don’t argue about Reagan, but I don’t see much slavish devotion for the two Bush presidencies.
Mike G
@c u n d gulag:
Conservatives “God-up” everything, from the US flag to gun laws to their wars and tax cuts. It’s classic authoritarian tactics to squelch debate — everything is an ICON to be VENERATED rather than a policy or person to be evaluated and discussed on its pros and cons, and to question the orthodoxy makes you BAD. And it’s essential when you are running a deceptive con game.
Some people are most comfortable being followers in a sharply-defined self-contained bubble world where they aren’t quite at the bottom of the heirarchy and are fed plenty of scapegoats, vid. Fox Noise.
PsiFighter37
@Roger Moore: I went to Shanghai and Beijing last summer and had a grand total of 1 half day of pure sunshine in both cities. It was in Beijing before I flew out, when they had 6 inches of rainfall that washed out all the smog. It was pretty shocking how polluted the air was in these cities. Even LA circa mid-1990s was nowhere near as bad.
minutemaid
Do you write annoying stuff on purpose Doug of the BJ Doug’s or are you just annoying?
Just shut up and vote. The problem with people like you and Cole is you sit around pissing and moaning about how Democrats suck but Republicans suck more. Then when it comes time to vote you piss and moan even more and threaten not to vote or whatever. Doing everything you can to demoralize Democrats. Then when Republicans win you piss and moan about “our failed Democracy”.
Just shut the fuck up and vote…mkay. Nobody needs to hear your annoying bullshit. Do what Cole is starting to do which is talk less about stuff he is not intellectually capable of..and more about shit he knows like cat’s coughing up hairballs and dogs sitting on his lap and how to make crab cakes.
Marmot
@Violet: Ah! Thx. :)
Feel better soon–I’m off to SLC in a couple days, so that very well might be me in a week!
Turgidson
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
The recovery, such as it is, helped with that, but yes. It’s remarkable, though not at all surprising, how much better government works once anti-government zealot morons can no longer sabotage it every step of the way.
Marmot
@askew: I wasn’t angry–sorry if I came off that way. I grew up on the border and always ask for clarification about that point. In any case, now I’m curious what the media in Spain say about our immigration squabble.
Hoodie
That’s kind of silly. FDR, and now Clinton, are pretty lionized by dems. Republicans single out Reagan for the same reason, he was politically successful or, at least, his presidency could be spun that way because enough good things happened during it and the bad things are easier to forget. Remember, Reagan did not get us into any big wars and did negotiate arms reductions.
There is bit a fallacy of the excluded middle here, because Dems do have something to learn from Republicans. Republicans are better at loyalty, and loyalty has some value. Loyalty does not require slavish following of the leader, and Republicans didn’t do that when Reagan was president. Loyalty first and foremost means you don’t attack the motives of your president, even if you disagree on policy. Republicans generally do that better than Democrats, who often attack the motives of their own presidents.
Marmot
@Mike G: Totally. Everything us = good. Everything them = bad.
It’s pretentious to say, but they’re Manichean to the last. Speaking of which, is that book by Glenn Greenwald any good? The one about teh Manichean Bush gang?
Violet
@PsiFighter37: Can’t seem to find it, but I remember when James Fallows was living in China, he did a post on air in Los Angeles in the 1970’s (I think it was a view from his childhood home) and the view now. It’s obviously much clearer now. He did that to accompany his many posts on smog in Beijing or Shanghai or wherever he was living. The point was, it can be fixed.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@PsiFighter37: I have a different frame of reference. LA in the mid-1990s was GREAT in comparison to what it had been. LA around 1975 wasn’t the worst air pollution I’ve ever seen – that honor goes to Shanghai hands down – but it was horrific. The air was yellow. Literally yellow. You’d watch the Santa Anas kick up and this great wall of yellow-brown shit would appear to the north (I grew up in San Diego) and just get bigger and bigger and bigger, until we were engulfed in it. It hurt to breathe.
liberal
@moderateindy:
One of the most egregious examples that I read about was early Mormon leaders. IIRC it went something like “man, it feels good when we rape each other’s daughters, so God must have intended us to have polygamy.”
askew
@Marmot:
No problem. I just wish there would be an easier way to say Spanish Language US-Based Media. We need an acronym or something. I’d imagine the media in Spain is busy with their economic collapse. Also, I would guess U.S. immigration reform doesn’t impact Spaniards as much as it does people in the Americas, since there probably aren’t a whole lot of Spaniards immigrating to the U.S.
Redshirt
@Marmot: That is the true formula to Conservative thought. What’s great about it is whatever they consider “Us” can change on a moment’s notice. Very flexible Black/White philosophy.
So, once again, Obama should come out publicly and loudly against drinking household poisons.
Conservatives would quickly show us Obama ain’t the boss of them!
liberal
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
You guys are pretty much screwed until you get rid of Prop 13.
You can’t shovel that much money into the pockets of people for nothing and expect it not to harm your economy.
Ash Can
@Lihtox:
No kidding. Reasons: Bush I was a loser one-timer who was too liberal anyway, and Bush II screwed up so badly that even the rest of the party noticed — but they reacted by declaring he was never really “one of us” in the first place. Conservatism can’t fail, can only be failed, etc.
askew
@Hoodie:
Democrats seem to pride themselves on attacking Dem presidents like it somehow makes them more pure or some nonsense. Look at MSNBC. Just as anti-Obama as CNN, just with different complaints. Today, Karen Finney bitched that Obama was doing enough on birth control issues for women. Seriously?
Trollhattan
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
My first time to LA (Pasadena, to be specific) was in the mid-late 70s and yeah, the air was fucking yellow. Never saw anything like it before. Third night there I noticed airplane lights in the sky but oddly, they weren’t moving. This was a considerable puzzle until morning, when for the first time I saw the San Gabriels looming right there, in front of me.
Had no idea they were there, and the antennas scattered across the ridgeline were my “airplanes.”
Unlike China, we primarily needed to harness automobile exhaust to deal with the main source of SoCal smog. More than cars, China must deal with powerplants and industry, first, and seem unwilling to do so, at least in a meaningful way. I suspect it will take a second revolution, sparked by the middle class (who travel enough to know this ain’t normal) and backed by the poor, to effect meaningful environmental change.
And to the possibility of that I say, good luck.
patroclus
@Hoodie: Are you joking? Clinton signed DOMA and instituted DADT, which were some of the most discriminatory policies in the history of the Republic. FDR locked up the Japanese-Americans via EO 3066 in internment camps and did practically nothing about civil rights (other than the wartime FEPC which was implemented only after a threat of a March on Washington during the height of WWII). Sure, they did some good things too, but liberals do not forget the bad stuff at all. It’s a matter of perspective.
@Hoodie: Well, if you don’t count Lebanon, where we lost 298 troops in a one-time shot, or Nicaragua, or El Salvador or Grenada, I’d agree with you on the no wars by Reagan thing. Otherwise not so much – neither the Lebanese, the Nicaraguans, the Salvadoreans nor the Grenadans have forgotten.
Mike G
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
LA air is way better than it was two decades ago. Statistically, it had 42 Stage 1 smog alert days in 1990 (and routinely over 100 in the 70s), now there are almost none. My dad grew up in LA and remembers it far worse in the 1950s. Now it just has typical junky big-city air, but not egregiously bad by big metro standards. Houston is worse, and the big Chinese cities are FAR worse.
Yutsano
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
This is where the ACA could step in. Since Vermont got permission from the feds to use their Medicaid expansion* dollars to start up their single payer there’s no reason CA couldn’t do the same thing. The rules say it has to match or be better than the standard set by HHS, so single payer meets that standard.
*Or it was the money for the exchanges. Or both. I forget the exact details now.
Redshirt
@askew: Indeed. It was “The Left” that destroyed LBJ’s Presidency despite his amazing accomplishments, and opened the door for Nixon, the Southern Strategy, Reagan, and the rest of the last 40 year horror show.
Marmot
@Redshirt: heh. That’s awesome. And it might just work!
@askew: An acronym would sure save a lot of syllables. And is there a Spain-based news service that’s consumed across the Spanish-speaking world? I’m embarassed to say I don’t know if there is.
Arrik
patroclus
@Redshirt: Well, I think it was LBJ who destroyed the LBJ Presidency by becoming utterly paranoid about the domino theory of worldwide communism and drastically increasing troop levels in Vietnam and invading the Dominican Republic. If you merely mean that “the Left” pointed to these facts and opposed the policies, I agree.
taylormattd
Also, thanks for the Madonna. :)
PsiFighter37
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Wasn’t born into the world then, so hard for me to compare!
That said, Beijing is definitely much worse than Shanghai. At least in Shanghai, the smog wasn’t as low-hanging as it is in Beijing.
Valdivia
@Yutsano:
I only saw this now. Univision is definitely holding people accountable on the immigration thing. Though the debate in the Fall they allowed Mitt to stack the hall with his supporters.
Roger Moore
@Violet: @Forum Transmitted Disease:
Actually, the 1970s weren’t the worst in the LA area; the 50s and 60s were worse. The terrible pollution back then prompted regulations like the Air Quality Act, which helped to fix the problem.
Chris
@Lihtox:
No. They’re not. At least not in my experience.
I started out conservative as a teenager when I was first paying attention to politics, and latching onto a couple of their blogs (reading what they really believed did a lot to turn me liberal, but that’s another story…) This was at the height of the Bush years, and I don’t remember a single criticism of George Bush or the Republican government being uttered in the entire two or three years I was reading. Ever. Not even from the right in a “I don’t think he’s being conservative enough here.” Not from the blog host, and not from any of his commenters except for the occasional liberal troll.
Then, after 2008, I got into the habit of reading through PJMedia every day (which the blog I used to read had become a part of) just to see what the other side was thinking – this time reading a half dozen different authors instead of just one or two. And same thing again. Sure, now that Bush had become unpopular and McCain was safely not running for office anymore, it was okay to call them RINOs and liberals now… but the current stars of the movement (Sarah Palin, Scott Brown, Michelle Bachmann, Allen West) were treated with the same reverence that the Bush administration had received in the Bush years.
I rarely ever saw policy debate, either. The blog host saying “this is what conservatism requires of us and this is why liberals are wrong” on a given topic, followed by a long stream of commenters repeating “bravo!” Bur arguments over what it was that conservatism required of them? I can’t recall a single instance.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, I just thought it was standard fare for any political blogs. After discovering Sadly, No! and then Balloon Juice, though, with all the abuse we here heap onto our politicians and all the energy that’s spent arguing between liberals, I thought the contrast was pretty glaring. I still do.
It’s just not the same mentality.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@liberal: We might be able to convince the populace to get rid of it for corporate and business properties.
You’d pull vastly more votes for a bill that would demand everyone’s grandmother be burned at the stake than you would for a bill that repeals it on homeowners.
Since it rewards longtime residents and natives and punishes the shit out of new buyers, I’m kind of for keeping the homeowner part of it. We’ve got too many people here as it is.
Redshirt
@patroclus: A rich subject, to be sure, but I feel that without the extreme – crazy – pressure from the Left, LBJ would have got us out of Vietnam faster than Nixon did. AND we could have maintained our political/cultural trajectory, rather then descending into evil madness.
Chris
@Redshirt:
I’m not sure how. As I understand it the problem in Vietnam wasn’t crazy pressure from the left but crazy pressure from the right – specifically the result of twenty years of escalating anticommunist posturing that essentially meant that being seen as softer on communism than your opponent was a death sentence. That’s what kept LBJ in Vietnam in the first place. I fail to see how the absence of a popular opposition to the war could have done anything except make it even harder to withdraw by leaving the “just nuke Hanoi” crowd the only pressure group worked up about the war.
(And no one but the left could have led the opposition to the war, if only because any group of citizens that spoke up against it, no matter how civil, ordinary and otherwise apolitical, would have immediately been labeled “leftist,” as well as “appeaser, “radical” and “objectively pro-communist” as soon as it opened its mouth).
Hoodie
@patroclus: Yeah, and no one talks about Clinton’s transgressions now. Nope, it’s mostly warm fuzzies about the big dog, how great things were in the 1990’s, and what a great politician he was. He is the embodiment of the Democrats’ first success in getting a president re-elected in decades. FDR hagiography is pretty much the same, most liberals don’t spend time kvetching on FDR’s mistakes because he is the embodiment of the New Deal. Not everything from the New Deal worked; in fact, a lot of the programs failed and/or was corrected by succeeding administrations. Just like Reagan didn’t win the Cold War all by hisself, but does deserve some credit.
Reagan’s wars, in the scheme of things, are on the same level as Kosovo or Somalia for Clinton. I’m not talking about whether they were “good” — they weren’t. They were just small and, thus, more easily forgotten. I disagreed with Reagan on just about everything, but he was not a fuckup in the mold of GWB, or LBJ, for that matter. He was also kind of lucky. That’s a big reason why Republicans revere him. He represents a successful brand, just like Clinton.
Bubblegum Tate
@Chris:
That was one of my favorite bits of revisionism that the then-nascent teabagger movement came up with. “I criticized Bush!” Really? Where and when? And about what? “Uh…I criticized Bush!”
I mean, they seemed to seriously believe that they criticized Bush, but they were unable to offer a single example.
patroclus
@Hoodie: I just don’t agree. In the financial realm, there are lots of critics of repealing Glass-Stegall (in Gramm-Leach-Bliley – 1999), there are lots of analyses blaming the CFTC Modernization Act of 2000 in part for the 2008 crisis and frontline did a whole episode on Brooksley Born’s failed efforts to get OTC derivatives regulation done in the 90’s. In the war realm, there are a LOT of critics who point out the idiotic adoption of “regime change” as a goal in Iraq in the 90’s and the failed efforts to get OBL then. And I’ve already mentioned DOMA and DADT. And there’s the termination of AFDC as well in the welfare reform bill. All of that happened under Clinton; none of it good.
On FDR, there is plenty of criticism for court-packing, for the original AAA, for the NRA, for the Smith Act, for the creation of the Dies Committee (HUAC), for not de-segregating the armed forces, for continuing Hoover in power at the FBI and for a wide variety of bizarre appointments (in addition to the Japanese Americans and the go-slow approach to civil rights). I just disagree with your premise.
Reagan wasn’t as bad as W. but no one was – GWB, with Buchanan, are the two worst Presidents ever, hands down. But Reagan had Alzheimer’s during most of his 2nd term and wasn’t really capable of doing so much, and even then, we got Iran-Contra and the absurd de-regulation that led to the utter collapse of the thrift indutry and three successive massive taxpayer funded bailout bills. (As well as all the ridiculous wars I already mentioned). He was a terrible President by virtually any analysis.
Redshirt
@Chris: Certainly it was crazy times, but at the height of the crazy, LBJ was getting attacked by prominent Democrats all the time. RFK for example. So he was fighting on two fronts all the time. Given the man he was, backing down was not an option in that environment.
Look at the next twenty years of Democratic “leadership” for proof. Hell, this same battle fought in the mid 60’s was still being fought in 1980 with Ted Kennedy backstabbing Carter at the Democratic convention.
patroclus
@Redshirt: And, in my view, LBJ richly deserved getting attacked on all fronts for his idiotic misguided ahistorical ignorant paranoid delusional actions – especially in Vietnam. (As a very young kid in 1964, I was a HUGE fan, with LBJ stickers on my bedroom walls, which greatly annoyed my parents). Yeah, sure, the Civil Rights bills were fantastic and everyone likes Medicare and Medicaid, but that doesn’t excuse his monumental fuck-ups. My view is that liberals lambaste every President – and should when it is warranted. Nixon was, of course, much much worse, but LBJ deserved the scorn and historians should heap it on him, in my opinion.
Barry
@askew: “I think Republicans will kill immigration reform and the US English media will say both sides are to blame. The US Spanish media will rightly blame the Republicans. If that makes Hispanics angry enough to turn out in huge #s in 2014, it could tip the House to the Dems. ”
And that’s what voter suppression is for.
Redshirt
@patroclus: No doubt, Vietnam was a clusterfuck. But he did so many monumental good things. Consider a “What if” where he wins a 2nd term, and thus Nixon is probably done in national politics.
If Nixon isn’t President from 68-72, does the Southern Strategy ever take hold? Do the Dems sacrifice a generation to the most vile Republicans ever to walk the Earth? Does the “Reagan Revolution” take place?
We’ll never know, of course, but it seems Nixon was a particularly malignant cancer on the body politic of America, and we’re still living with the symptoms today.
Vietnam, in comparison, was a minor matter with little long term consequences in and of itself.
David Koch
sadly that’s not a joke.
look at how they freaked out over light bulbs. even though it was Bush who signed into law, they didn’t freak out until Obummer became president.
look at tow they’re freaking out over raw milk. they never cared about raw milk until the Kenyan dictator seized control
Chris
@Redshirt:
The Southern Strategy was destined to become a thing as soon as Democrats started pushing for civil rights, and Nixon wasn’t the first or the only one to think of it, just the first politician who was in a position to make it really matter nationally. If it hadn’t been Nixon, it would’ve been Reagan a couple election cycles later.
David Koch
Except with FDR. Most liberals, even on this blog, give FDR a pass on all his atrocities and war crimes.
can you imagine if Obomber fired bombed a civilian city and killed 120,000 women and children in one night? But it’s okay if you are Roosevelt (IOKIYAR).
Redshirt
@Chris: Perhaps eventually, but Nixon and his team were particularly ruthless in conceiving it and executing it. Could any other politician have done so? Also, it was Nixon who brought Roger Ailes into politics, and look at the consequences of that one act.
Again, it’s all “What If”, so who knows. But I would have much rather have had LBJ for a second term then Nixon in his first, and that we did not is in large part due to pressure on LBJ from the Left.
Keith G
@Redshirt:
LBJ did much good and much bad, but you are trying to rewrite history. Being a creature of legislative politics, he loved making deals. But with Vietnam there were no deals to be made that he wanted to buy into. So the conflict got strung along.
The same Southerners who would soon flip to the GOP, were then Democrats chomping on Johnson’s ass to man up and fight the commie g**ks with all out war. To get his domestic programs through he had to please that crowd.
I assume you were alive back then. Don’t you remember Johnson wounding Humprey’s chances by forcing him to stay loyal to the administration’s policies?
Bubblegum Tate
@David Koch:
Raw milk was purely a hippie trustafarian loony lib thing, but then, it somehow became FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY!
Amazing how that works.
Chris
@Redshirt:
If LBJ had gotten a second term, I think we can safely assume that the war would have ended earlier. But without all the pressure from antiwar people, I’m not sure he would’ve been pressed to push for a peace treaty.
patroclus
I was alive then; albeit not of voting age. But, Vietnam so stained LBJ that he would NEVER have gotten my vote nor anyone like me for all of eternity. It was not a “minor matter.” It utterly ruined America’s reputation; it killed friends of mine and destroyed the lives of many many others. It tore the country apart in many ways from which we have yet to recover. And it wasn’t “the Left” that did it; it was LBJ himself. He richly deserves history’s scorn and he’ll get it too. Despite the other tremendous stuff he did. Doris Goodwin entitled her book The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson for a reason.
Yes, Nixon was worse. He continued the war based on lies, he invaded Cambodia, which then turned into an utter massacre; he subverted the Constitution, he empowered the conservatives, he committed crimes, he was amoral, he overthrew Allende, he continued the assassination policy, he intervened all around the world, almost always with ill-intent and horrific results. He infilitrated the anti-war movement, the kids at Kent State died because of him – I could go on and on… Prior to GWB, he would have ranked as the worst President. But that doesn’t excuse LBJ. At all.
My preferred What If game would have kept JFK alive and then we might never have had either LBJ or Nixon as President. RFK or Gene McCarthy would have been far better.
Keith G
@David Koch: So….you are tying the movement in a couple of states to change state laws that would re-allow consumer sales of raw milk to a racist reaction against Obama?
Redshirt
@patroclus: Medicare and Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act, and desegregation are all things which were, and are, far more important than Vietnam.
I know it was terrible and I’m not trying to argue against that, but what ultimately were the long term consequences of Vietnam? Vietnam today is nominally capitalist, the USSR is gone, Red China is capitalist as hell, no dominoes fell, etc. Yes, many lives were lost and ruined, on all sides, but that’s what happens in war. Wars have always been and probably will always be with us. Not so with equal rights, just for example.
I would have much rather had LBJ in a second term to end Vietnam than Tricky Dick is all I’m saying really, but he got eaten alive by his own side.
Chris
@patroclus:
Huh. Actually, my favorite “what if” is “what if Nixon had stayed in office and what if he’d been able to make his brand of conservatism” – which was different from the Goldwater/Reagan brand – “stick?” Is it possible that we could’ve still had the culture wars, white backlash and militarization, but without the revival of economic royalism and the assault on the welfare state that was Reagan’s big achievement?
Cacti
@Chris:
That’s the more interesting question, I would say.
Despite Tricky Dick’s legion of faults, he wasn’t out to destroy the social contract.
In Reagan you got the criminality of Nixon plus hatred for the social contract, with a warm, telegenic personality to sell working people on slitting their own throats.
OmerosPeanut
If Reagan is Ronaldus Maximus, can we start calling Cheney Biggus Dickus?