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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Ted Cruz, Professional Revanchist

Open Thread: Ted Cruz, Professional Revanchist

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Just so we don’t forget who our real enemies are (hint: neither Medea Benjamin nor President Obama), here’s an excellent, epic rant from Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly on “What Ted Cruz Means When He Says He Mistrusts Both Parties“:

… Does it mean, as political reporters often blandly repeat, that “Tea Party” pols like Cruz are hardy independents who care about principle rather than about the GOP, and represent a constituency that is up in the air?

No, and I might add: Hell no! Cruz specifically and Tea Party members generally, for all their independent posturing, are the most rigid of partisans, and are about as likely to vote with or for Democrats as a three-toed sloth is likely to win a Gold Medal in the 100-meter dash. Yes, they often threaten to form a Third Party, but never do (why should they when their power in one of the two major parties is overwhelming and still growing?), and even more often threaten to “stay home” during elections, but in fact tend to vote more than just about any other sizable bloc of Americans…

So when Tea Party champions or “true conservatives” or “constitutional conservatives” (three terms for the same people) say they’re not willing to sacrifice their principles to win elections, do they really mean it, and is that the difference between them and those “establishment Republicans” like John McCain that they are always attacking? No, not really. They want to win elections, too, but only in order to impose a governing order that they believe should be immune to any future election, immune from contrary popular majorities generally, and immune to any other of those “changing circumstances” that gutless RINOs always cite in the process of selling out “the base.” And that’s why they are willing to use anti-majoritarian tactics when they are in the minority, and anti-minority tactics when they are in the majority: the only thing that matters is bringing back the only legitimately conservative, the only legitimately American policies and enshrining them as powerfully as is possible.

So from that perspective, sure, they’re conservatives first and Republicans second. But this isn’t a “revolt” against the GOP, but a takeover bid, executed through primaries (e.g., Ted Cruz’s victory over “establishment Republican” David Dewhurst) and the power of money and ultimately sheer intimidation…

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    In short, they’re fascists.

    We learned in the ’40s how to deal with fascists.

  5. 5.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    This, times twelve. Republican=conservative=teatard=libertarian=fascist.

    Not a dime’s difference. Selfish and self-righteous, the lot of them.

  8. 8.

    lamh35

    Obama to sign Congressional Gold Medal Bill for four little girls

    President Obama will sign a bill Friday awarding the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously to the four girls killed in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, the White House said Thursday.

    The bombing at the church, which civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph David Abernathy used as a meeting place, by members of the Ku Klux Klan proved a pivotal turning point in the push for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

  9. 9.

    Comrade Jake

    @Yatsuno: a Texas Republican.

    Sorry for any double post that shows up later. For some reason the posts from my iPhone are going straight into moderation.

  12. 12.

    Yatsuno

    @Comrade Jake: Mine do that too. I find if I refresh the page the post shows up.

    Can we just cut Texas loose now? It’s obvious they’re not interested in playing nice with others.

  13. 13.

    lamh35

    I posted this in the last thread, but it may have gotten lost in the shuffle. But the video will def make ya LOL and smile real big.

    Jon Stewart’s takedown of Peggy Noonan was well worth seeing,

    It deserves a click, for the “50 Shades of Grey-Gan” graphic alone. Oh and the “Nooney Tunes” segment title was good too. Also, after listening to the recording of Nonnan reading her book on Reagan, please tell me I’m not the only one who was creeped out by the way she read it, like it was a sex scene from a trashy chick lit romance novel. I felt dirty (not in the good way) after hearing it.

    http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/05/23/peggy_noonan_take_down.html#054997a

  18. 18.

    Keith G

    Just so we don’t forget who our real enemies are (hint: neither Medea Benjamin nor President Obama),

    Sure, maybe a rhetorical device, but come on…..How many rational people to the left of Mary Landreu think Obama is the enemy? I think that this framing just feeds in to a mindset not helpful to Democratic politics.

  20. 20.

    Chris

    But this isn’t a “revolt” against the GOP, but a takeover bid, executed through primaries

    No, it’s not even that. For this to be a “takeover bid” would imply that the teabaggers are replacing some other faction in the party, one that differed from them in even the slightest way. There was no such faction and no replacement – the Republicans of the teabagger age are the same ones from the Bush age preaching exactly the same things. The “takeover bid” happened years ago, in 1980 – at the very latest, in 1994, when the right wing of the party cemented its control. The Tea Party Movement wasn’t a takeover, it was a facelift.

  24. 24.

    NickT

    Epitaph: On this day, the Boy Scouts of America died, sacrificing their honor and the sexual integrity of young men.
    — @BryanJFischer via Twitter for iPad

    Just so we don’t forget the fundie-fascists.

  25. 25.

    Steeplejack

    If anyone needed any final proof of the utter craziness of Peggy Noonan, I give you “Nooney Tunes” from The Daily Show last night. I was gobsmacked. It’s almost all in her own words.

    ETA: I see @lamh35 noted this as well.

  26. 26.

    Poopyman

    OT, but I’ve heard rumors that an I-5 bridgeover the Skagit River has collapsed. Any PNW folks able to confirm?

  27. 27.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Chris:
    I disagree. The nature of the revolt, as we’ve seen, is that they got fed up with voting for assholes who talked in code words. They’ve been demanding candidates as crazy as they are, and in both 2010 and 2012 that’s resulted both in candidates too stupid and freakish to win any but the most gerrymandered election, and in public displays of crazy that hurt all national candidates. ‘Legitimate rape’ made Romney look terrible while he was exactly trying to pretend the GOP isn’t about that at all.

  29. 29.

    Another Halocene Human

    Fuck Ted Cruz. I’m still pissed about the Star Trek movie. Lazy. Insulting. Jumped the shark early, in that scene with the helicopter (if you saw it, you know what I’m talking about). Fuck. I still can’t get over the flashes of brilliance in the first act, followed up by literally the most predictable movie I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m talking Old School was less predictable than this movie. School of Rock. Sure, there’s a scene near the end of School of Rock where you can see the fucking boom mike. I mean, that’s pretty bad. And it’s dumb. But overall it’s a cheesy little movie with some heart. STID tries to go for cheap emotion but fails because it’s so preposterous. Dialogue so bad Harrison Ford couldn’t pull it off. Awkward pauses and overemoting by two perfectly competent actors whose talents are being wasted on this half-baked tripe. Did the writers get bored? Was the plot crafted by committee? Did Abrams, as some have speculated, really want to do a comic book movie and so tried to cram Trek into that genre. (It doesn’t work, btw, although there was this one fanfic writer on alt.startrek.creative years ago who did a series where Peter Kirk and Saavik are a couple, teach at Starfleet Academy, and have super powers. It was, um, strange.)

    Why?

    ABRAAAAAAAAAAMS!

  32. 32.

    2liberal

    the bruins had a hiccup today but have a good lead. next round in the NHL – the EF_Goldmans vs the John_Coles. I am pulling for the bruins even tho i haven’t watched any hockey on TV since the day of Bobby Orr / Phil Esposito.

  34. 34.

    Another Halocene Human

    @NickT: Who but a child molester tweets about the “sexual integrity of young men”?

    Like seriously, is this what Bryan Fisher obsesses about all day?

    I thought they wore yellow shirts and did crafts, I mean character-building activities in the “den”.

  37. 37.

    NickT

    @Another Halocene Human:

    Bryan Fischer has two main obsessions:1) other people possibly having sex and 2) ways of extracting money from gullible Christo-fascist fellow-travellers. Basically he’s the even chunkier Ross Douthat without the pubic facial fluff.

  38. 38.

    lamh35

    @Another Halocene Human: Wow, I actually liked the movie. Did I think it was the best thing since sliced bread, no, but I still liked it fine.

    But then again, I’m not much of a Trekkie, myself. I’ve said before, I’m a TNG girl, but still I’ve never been much of a “fan-boy” type, so I don’t immediately compare remakes to the original much. I take it as a new experience, I find it makes it better to enjoy mindless entertainment like the majority of summer blockbusters.

    Anyway, I liked it, but I seem to be in the minority only in the case of true “fan-boys”.

    Having said all of that, I suspect I just don’t have much of an emotional attachment to the series as some, now if/when they make a Wonder Woman movie, they had DAMN WELL better get it right, or I definitely wont be happy…lol.

  39. 39.

    Chris

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Fair enough, but doesn’t “facelift” qualify all that better than “takeover?” I mean, what’s changed, really, policy wise? To take your example, yes, now they say “legitimate rape” instead of “save the babies,” but the basic belief underlying it is the same – make abortion illegal, and, if that doesn’t work, make it inaccessible de facto. Same thing with economics (cut all taxes and regulations on the rich while making the poor’s shit sandwiches so they don’t even have bread anymore). Same thing with foreign policy (bomb the fuck out of people, torture the fuck out of people, and shovel money to the MIC). The only changes have been cosmetic. There’s nothing comparable to, say, the shift of the Republican Party from the moderate Eisenhower/Rockefeller wing to the conservative Goldwater/Reagan wing. All the same people are still calling the shots, and they’re largely the same shots.

    ETA: and to illustrate the point, look at the fate of the Tea Party Movement’s stars. People like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain had their five minutes in the sun as shiny toys for the audience, but now they’re gone. You don’t even hear much out of Paul Ryan anymore. Meanwhile, the old guard (and especially the financiers like the Kochs and Murdochs) still control the party.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    Poor Sen. Cruz.

    Stopped clocks worldwide unblinkingly gaze agog at his consistently getting through 24 hours without once being right.

  45. 45.

    lgerard

    I was listening to some John Birch Society recordings from the early 60’s yesterday, and they sound EXACTLY like the tea party….”constitutional conservatives” “restoring America” and fighting against “socialism” and “activist judges”.

    There is nothing new under the right wing sun.

  46. 46.

    Jeremy

    @Chris: Good point. The republican party of old has been dead for decades. After Nixon left office the radical right started taking control of the party and they pushed out the moderate and liberal / Rockefeller republicans. Many of them became independents or Democrats. Reagan cemented the course when he invited the social conservatives into the party.

    People forget that republican party was a lot more moderate and if you look at the old party platforms from the 50’s, 60’s, and early 70’s you think they were democratic platforms.

  47. 47.

    YellowJournalism

    @Yatsuno: Scary, huh? We still drive it when we visit my family in Wash. Hubby said it looked like it just snapped off. Can’t imagine what it would feel like to be one of those drivers in the water.

  48. 48.

    pseudonymous in nc

    I’m glad VCE named that tune in 1, because Tailgunner Ted is a bona fide fascist motherfucker.

    In other news, the US can fight trillion-dollar wars but can’t keep bridges from falling in the water.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    now if/when they make a Wonder Woman movie, they had DAMN WELL better get it right,

    If utilizng the original source material of WW’s creator and writer, that would include oodles of bondage and misandriny.

  51. 51.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Chris:
    It’s true that it’s a largely cosmetic change, but it’s a huge cosmetic change. The Tea Party is insisting on candidates that they feel are like themselves in primaries, and they have the power to get their way. These candidates have very similar policies to the old candidates, but completely different attitudes. The Reagan Revolution was ABOUT putting a mature and dignified face on policies of hate. The Tea Party won’t let the GOP wear that mask anymore, and what’s underneath is ugly, ugly, ugly. The GOP can’t do damage control with minorities anymore, because the Tea Party demands they be loud about their anti-minority hate. The Tea Party demands they be loud about their war on women. The Tea Party demands that they be loud about screwing the poor. The GOP’s popularity with everyone except the Tea Party is plummeting. Now, the Tea Party will vote for absolutely any GOP candidate in the general, but they’re using the primaries they control to cause this chaos.

    There is one substantive difference in this revolution. The Tea Party demands the gridlock currently gripping Washington, and old style ‘merely an asshole’ congressmen are too terrified of being primaried to vote for anything that Obama might ever agree to. We’ve never seen this kind of obstructionism before, so that is a difference.

  53. 53.

    pseudonymous in nc

    That bridge was built in 1955, so it’s relatively young in American terms. Though probably not engineered for today’s I-5 traffic between Seattle and Vancouver.

    Funny how sports stadiums and Vegas hotels are declared obsolete at 30, but bridges are expected to last a century.

  54. 54.

    Another Halocene Human

    @lamh35: It’s the mindlessness killed me. The movie just dissolved into incoherence and stupidity by the end. The jokes were no longer funny, the tone was off. My expectations were raised by the first act and then horribly dashed.

    I washed Skyfall. It’s pretty brainless and I expected as much and enjoyed it for the seductive visuals and silly nods at the original. I didn’t favor the ending but it worked.

    I’ve watched a LOT of bad movies because for some reason I like pain. (I also like mocking it.) This movie was bad in a way that I’ve never seen before. It wasn’t incompetent. Oh, far from it. I mean, it was just weird. I stopped watching Sandler movies some time ago but it was a little bit like what I’ve heard about Jack & Jill. It’s just this little project oh and the audience? Fuck you.

    Maybe if it had not been Star Trek I just wouldn’t have seen it at all because I don’t watch tons of stupid action flicks every year. Like, I skipped the new Transformers movies, and I catch a lot of action flicks on video after I know they’re worth my time. So maybe I ended up watching the kind of movie I wouldn’t normally watch because of the name. Maybe that’s it.

    I gotta say, it kind of reminded me of this movie. Like, some of the elements to make a movie were there, but it never gelled into anything recognizable by a sane human being.

    If that’s what movies are just like these days I’m staying home.

  55. 55.

    NickT

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    One thing that’s helpful is that the teabaggers hate Obamacare – but Latinos apparently really like it. Let the hate-mob try and repeal it for the zillionth time – and wonder just why they can’t win a national election.

  56. 56.

    Jeremy

    The republican party is so out of the mainstream today that the ACA that was based on Richard Nixon’s health care proposal in the 70’s and considered a middle ground solution is considered socialist tyranny.

  58. 58.

    lamh35

    @NotMax: I’m a superfanatic of the television series. Linda Carter will always be Wonder Woman to me. She’s the one I watched as a lil girl in my Wonder Woman underoos…lol

    Does she have a daughter who can act…lol

  60. 60.

    Another Halocene Human

    @NickT: Ha ha, my job just got around to telling us about the healthcare mandate today. There was some initial angst about the individual mandate until it was revealed that the fine is $95.

    It’s so much less than the coverage cap + premiums that they’re expecting that people will DROP instead of sign up!!

    Oh, and my state didn’t extend Medicaid. Fuck you, and you, and you, and YOUUUUUUUU.

  61. 61.

    Yatsuno

    @YellowJournalism: That’s also the main route from Seattle to BC. And there really aren’t many detours to get to Vancouver from there. This is gonna be a huge logistical nightmare. Good test for the new gov here.

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    @lamh35

    She’s the one I watched as a lil girl in my Wonder Woman underoos…lol

    And how she got into your underoos, we’ll never know.

    /Groucho

  64. 64.

    lamh35

    @Another Halocene Human:
    ah. Well I admit to being a big summer blockbuster action watcher. I do enjoy the big bang, large crashes, extreme actions flicks that are characteristic of summer movies…lol.

    Give me, Vin Diesel, The Rock (yes I plan on seeing Fast & Furious 1,000,001), Jason Statham or whatever newest biggest comic flick and I am there (well not really ALL comic flicks, I’m a Marvel girl mostly, but I WILL be seeing Man of Steele).

    I’m easy when it comes to mindless action flicks :-D

  66. 66.

    Another Halocene Human

    @NotMax: Original WW did not involve misandry. I have a nice reprint edition. Oodles of bondage, though.

    While the comic is out there (definitely pre “seduction of the innocent era”, the creator earnestly insisting these stories were good for child development) it’s not stupid by any means. WW’s weapons are symbolic. Her universe is very moral. It’s just the simple tale of an innocent young woman from a backwoods island who has to survive in the big bad city where people cheat and lie and conk you in the head, tie you up in the back room, and try to steal your boyfriend.

  67. 67.

    Another Halocene Human

    @lamh35: I got mad at the movie when all these buildings full of people get crushed and the movie Just. Doesn’t. Care. I used to watch Schwarzenegger flicks and I don’t remember that kind of attitude. Sometimes the world the movie takes place in is really dark and people are dying everywhere but I don’t remember such a lack of connection. Maybe in the Phantom Menace when you have two battles going on at the same time and stuff whizzing everywhere and dorky robots getting mowed down. Except, I’m instinctively thinking, this is like five 9/11’s worth of carnage, why is nobody reacting to that?

    AVENGERS did this much, much better.

  69. 69.

    NotMax

    @Another Halocene Human

    Having read all of Moulton Marston’s stories and the WW appearances contemporary with his in their unbowdlerized form*, there is but little doubt that the entirety of her home island’s teachings were rooted in the misandriny of men as being corrupting pollutants.

    *all the reprint volumes edit, selectively alter or redraw some elements of the original comics, and not just in the case of WW.

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne

    @Another Halocene Human:

    Die Hard 2 is like that. They crash entire planes full of passengers — planes where we actually got to see some of the people interacting with each other — and the movie doesn’t give a single shit, and mocks you for being upset.

    So STID sounds slightly better, morals-wise, since it’s at least indifferent to the suffering of innocents rather than reveling it in.

  74. 74.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Keith G:

    How many rational people to the left of Mary Landreu think Obama is the enemy?

    You’ve created a syllogism by using “rational” and “to the left of Mary Landreu”. Heck, if you just leave rational in, it’s already a true statement.

  75. 75.

    Mnemosyne

    @Chris:

    I don’t remember. I was still too pissed off at the flat-out sadism of having a scene where the flight attendant reassures the elderly woman who is terrified of flying that everything was going to be okay right before the director smashes the plane into the tarmac. It was a giant Fuck you for caring! to the entire audience.

    The fact that McClane’s reaction was to murder people even more sadistically than before wasn’t really much of a catharsis.

    ETA: Not to mention that it came out the same summer as Thelma & Louise, which was going to END THE FUCKING WORLD AS WE KNOW IT by showing the on-screen death of one (1) man at the hands of two women, but it was A-OK and just good entertainment to kill 300+ people in an airliner.

  76. 76.

    Ruckus

    @lgerard:
    That is why I have been saying for a while that raygun was not the start of the conservative crazy. The Birch society has every bit as fucked up as the current crop of assholes. They did use bigger words, you know ones with more than 2 syllables. They were hoping that people wouldn’t understand how fucked up they were. They weren’t any less vile, disgusting and empathy deficient.

  77. 77.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ruckus:
    No, Reagan definitely wasn’t the start of the conservative crazy. He did have a very important place in the chain, unifying rich assholes with religious assholes with racist assholes with a set of lies that sounded very mainstream. That’s exactly why they want him back so badly.

  79. 79.

    Another Halocene Human

    @NotMax: Men has two meanings, however: it also means the mortal world (of men and women) whereas they are deathless, incorrupt beings. Not everyone who assaults, cheats, and lies to WW is a male.

    I think there’s some female chauvinism (but it’s not real female chauvinism–look, the guy really liked dommes, okay?) but misandry or even misanthropy seems like a bit much.

  80. 80.

    Another Halocene Human

    @Suffern ACE: That’s makes barely more sense than the whole “Kirk is in love with his ship” routine. Made even funnier by the number of documented cases of women who are objectum-sexual. (Often Europeans, and they coined the phrase–do Americans just not admit to it?)

  81. 81.

    Alien Radio

    @Another Halocene Human: Orci and Kurtzman are genuinely awful writers and I have no idea why they keep getting work, Transformers, Transformers 2, The Island, It’s an unmitigated track record of failure. and considering I was irritated by the first abrahms star trekand thought the Script was weak, ST:ID exceeded my expectations by not being a completely cringeworthy trainwreck. this did not mean that there weren’t several cringeworth monemts and moments where my suspension of disbelief collapsed like a black hole, its just that compared to what I was expecting it wasn’t an unremitting agony like most of the films they worked on and so significantly better than I expected.

  82. 82.

    ericblair

    @Another Halocene Human:

    Made even funnier by the number of documented cases of women who are objectum-sexual. (Often Europeans, and they coined the phrase–do Americans just not admit to it?)

    “He treats objects like women, man!”

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