Sad to watch on several levels.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.
Tick tock motherfuckers!
Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.
Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.
Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.
A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
The worst democrat is better than the best republican.
I really should read my own blog.
It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.
Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.
Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?
You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.
I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.
Hot air and ill-informed banter
🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵
Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.
We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.
Infrastructure week. at last.
A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.
Corner Stone
Good God. You should put a warning on this piece, before watching.
Rabble Arouser
Damn. I mean, I know he then went on to throw Obama under the bus, but I am amazed that Dole wanted to call out the party like that, and that Chris Wallace would want to publish that interview. What on earth is happening to the GOP these days?
Steeplejack
Hard to feel sorry for old Bob Dole. He and his cohorts built the monster that became the current GOP. Thank you, Dr. Frankenstein.
PeakVT
Who cares what squishy Bob Dole has to say? /modern wingnut
NickT
If you want some quality whining, try this epistle to the Krgthulhu from Rogaine and Rhinestone:
http://www.carmenreinhart.com/letter-to-pk/
cathyx
Clearly Bob Dole is losing his marbles in his old age. Republicans are supposed to stick together, no matter what.
cathyx
@NickT: Clearly economists are supposed to stick together, no matter what.
Corner Stone
@cathyx: Follow the 11th Commandment!
Above all!!
Joeyess
Bob Dole has no complaint here. He used the Southern Strategy and GOP hatchetman tactics when those tools were available to him and they served their purpose of winning elections.
These fools laid down with the mangy fringe of this nation’s insane right wing long ago…. don’t come whinging to the country when your skin is aflame, you sorry pack of fucksticks..
becca
Sounds like Dole is hedging his bets as he approaches The Pearly Gates.
Lurking Canadian
@NickT: How dare you call us liars and cheaters just because we lied and cheated! That’s just unprofessional!
Yatsuno
@becca: Sorry Bob. Your Lee Atwater moment is too little too late.
Violet
@Steeplejack: Exactly. I don’t have tons of sympathy.
Sean
@Rabble Arouser:
Obviously Wallace is going to carry water for the GOP pretty much forever, but he’s been saying a few things over the last couple of years that show he understands just how much they are doing it all wrong, if they want to actually govern and attract more voters in national and senate races.
Too bad and too late, though – the GOPers have cast the die already. May as well grab the popcorn, enjoy the ride as much as possible while they tank the country and push us towards another civil war. Yeehaw.
Anya
@NickT: I thought Krugman was so restrained in his critism of their shoddy work. Civility is now the last refuge of scoundrels.
JD Rhoades
@NickT:
Wingnut 101: if you’re losing the argument, whine about the tone.
NickT
@Anya:
I bet Rogaine and Rhinestone are still driving their econo-Cadillacs and eating t-bone steaks in the Very Serious Persons Welfare Mansion.
Anya
@NickT: They should be handed to angry Greek protesters.
Spaghetti Lee
@NickT:
Shee-it. That reads like DougJ-style parody. Wonder what the ‘very personal terms’ were? ‘Your data is falsified and your argument is wrong?’ Poor dears.
cathyx
Seriously though, Bob Dole must be getting addled if he thinks the republicans can fix their problems in just 7 months.
oldster
Can anyone direct me to a transcript?
I don’t really like watching video, because the baud rate is too slow (i.e. I read faster than they can talk). Plus, I don’t like giving Fox any clicks.
NickT
@Spaghetti Lee:
It’s kind of a classic in the self-harming ragegasm genre. Clearly Krgthulhu’s application of the hickory stick has left a few bottoms burning.
PeakVT
Fuck civility. People’s lives are being ruined, or ended, because of austerity. Rogaine and Beerfart have blood on their hands. And like all VSPs, they are blind to it.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Anya: Well said. Or accusations of lack of civility, while being utterly uncivil yourself, is the last refuge. Check out comments at Krugman’s blog post. R&R accused that he “never seems to mention” their book, which had different conclusions from their flawed report about debt. In fact, he praised the book three times in April alone.
Way not to handle this, folks. I’m thinking that they read Thomas Friedman’s wisdom about holes:
Howard Beale IV
@NickT: The sad part of that that it wasn’t Krugman who pointed to the error of their ways. It was a gard student who hounded them for their data and found their error. The fact that Reinhart and Rogoff withheld the data on what they based their papers on now marks any subsequent papers they may write as being suspect-and that kind of damage won’t go away overnight. While those in the trade may forgive them for their error, for those who are on the outside it just further reinforces the belief that academics have now sunk to the level of politicians.
As the late Leo Buscagila once said on one of his PBS specials: ‘Some of the most stupidest people in the world have Ph.D.s – and I have one!”
Chris
@Steeplejack:
That’s more or less my reaction every time some well thinking “moderate” prick who just wanted his taxes cut complains that the party’s been taken over by crazies.
Howard Beale IV
@Sean: At least some of his father’s influence in asking the tough questions is starting to take hold-whether he can eclipse his father remains to be seen-but it’s a start nonetheless.
NickT
@Howard Beale IV:
It’s noticeable that the Epistle to Krgthulhu tries to dance around that topic by claiming that the data was on her website all along. There’s also a certain interesting absence of acknowledgement that they just fucked up massively on the data in a way that you’d hope a reasonably intelligent undergraduate wouldn’t.
moderateindy
From a governing standpoint, Dole was part of the last bunch of Republicans that actually believed in being in the Congress to actually govern, and not just to try to blow up the so-called big government. Unfortunately, for him, he was also the first Repub presidential candidate that suffered from the same problem that all Repub pres candidates now face. As the campaign went along, he had to start pandering to his base, because they saw him as too moderate, and weren’t going to turn out for him. He embraced the whole supply side crapola, along with some other more conservative positions, and then lost the middle to Clinton, game over. I wonder, if he would have won as a moderate whether or not we would have had the Gingrich revolution, or if that movement would have lost steam.
Steeplejack
@oldster:
Don’t know about a transcript, but if you click the embedded video at the top of this page you’re not giving Fox a click. You’re not leaving this site.
Comrade Jake
Man Dole looks to be in fairly rough shape.
But yeah, put me in with the group of folks who are mildly astonished that Wallace is even asking these questions.
MikeJ
@NickT:
Depends on how you define “fucked up.” They got the answer they wanted and stopped. They never said it had any relation to reality.
NickT
@oldster:
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-wallace/2013/05/26/sens-graham-durbin-talk-doj-irs-scandals-rare-interview-americas-veteran-former-sen-bob
I’ve posted the transcript below (sorry for the huge comment!) so you don’t have to give Fox clicks. I’ll take that sin on my own broad, manly shoulders for the good of the community.
NickT
@NickT:
WALLACE: Up next, a rare interview with a man who some call America’s veteran, former Senator Bob Dole.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Was World War II the defining event in your life?
FORMER SEN. BOB DOLE, R-KAN.: No doubt about it. It has changed my life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOLE: I always thought the differences were a healthy thing and that’s why we’re also healthy, because we have a lot of differences in the chamber. I have never seen a healthier group in my life.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: That was Bob Dole in 1996, when he was master of the Senate and the favorite guest on Sunday talk shows. He’s been out of office now for 17 years but when we sat down with him last week for a rare interview, we found some things have not changed. He is as perceptive and as bitingly funny as ever.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DOLE: We will send the president, bill after bill, returning power and programs to the states to the people.
WALLACE (voice-over): Bob Dole was a man in full in the U.S. Congress. From 1961 to 1996, he represented Kansas on Capitol Hill, but he served the nation. He helped to save Social Security, expand food stamps and passed the American’s with Disabilities Act.
DOLE: There was once a time I doubted the future. But I have learned, as many of you have learned, that obstacles can be overcome.
WALLACE: That was his life’s call. A strapping young man, from Russell, Kansas, he enlisted to fight in World War II when he was just 19. Grievously wounded in Italy, he spent three years in the hospital and came out without a kidney or a functioning right arm.
Bob Dole today continues to be a portrait of courage, he is wheel chair-bound and losing his sight. But there is no self pity. Not a bit.
You turn 90 in July. And my father used to say, growing old isn’t for sissies, is it?
DOLE: No, it’s not for sissies, but there are a lot of benefits. You think about your past and what you have been able to accomplish, if anything.
WALLACE: When you see what is happening in Washington today, the chronic failure to be able to solve our problems —
DOLE: Yes.
WALLACE: — how frustrating is it for a legislator like you?
DOLE: It seems to be almost unreal that we can’t get together on a budget or legislation. I mean, we weren’t perfect by a long shot, but at least we got our work done.
WALLACE: So what’s the problem? Why can’t the president and Congress, why can’t Republicans and Democrats get together and make deals?
DOLE: I’m not a critic of the president, but I think one mistake he’s made was not getting together more with Congress earlier on, in his first administration. There’s nothing like knowing the person you’re talking to on the telephone if you’ve had an opportunity to sit down with that person and visit, not about anything, but just visit.
I was on a Social Security commission.
WALLACE: Let me ask you about that.
You were on the Greenspan Commission in the ’80s. And you made a deal. You said nobody got everything, everyone gave something.
DOLE: That’s the way it has to work.
WALLACE: But it doesn’t work that way anymore.
DOLE: I know, but it’s going to have to work or the country is going to suffer. And the American people, I think, are partly at fault. You take a survey and they say cut spending, 83 percent, maybe, or whatever. But if you cut something they have an interest in, they’re over you like a wet blanket.
They surely don’t want to cut Medicare or Social Security —
WALLACE: They want to cut somebody else’s program?
DOLE: Yes. If you leave me — exempt me, I’m — I’m all for you.
WALLACE: Is the Senate broken?
DOLE: Well, it’s bent really badly. As Howard Baker said, running the Senate is like herding cats. But it takes leadership. Somebody has to stand up and say, we’re going to do this.
And I used to — we’d get the group together responsible for that area and we’d work together and then I’d get up and leave. And I said, call me when you’ve reached an agreement.
And most of the time it worked, because they knew that I was willing to take the step with them.
WALLACE: You’d take the political heat with them?
DOLE: Yes, I’d take — the leader takes the heat. I mean there’s a penalty for leadership and one is you take a lot of heat.
WALLACE: In your first two years as a senator — there were seven motions filed, cloture motions to end debate. In the last two years, there were 115 cloture motions.
Is the filibuster being abused wherever it now takes 60 votes to pass anything?
DOLE: No doubt about it. There are some cases we can probably justify it, but not many.
WALLACE: What do you think of your party, of the Republicans, today? DOLE: I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says closed for repairs until New Year’s Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas.
WALLACE: You describe the GOP of your generation as Eisenhower Republicans, moderate Republicans.
Could people like Bob Dole, even Ronald Reagan, could you make it in today’s Republican Party?
DOLE: I doubt it. And I — Reagan wouldn’t have made it. Certainly Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas and, we might have made it, but I doubt it. I mean —
WALLACE: Too moderate? Too willing to compromise?
DOLE: I just consider myself a Republican, none of this hyphenated stuff. I was a mainstream conservative Republican, and most people are in that category.
WALLACE (voice-over): I asked Dole for a quick reaction to some of the people and events he was involved in over the years. Including his 1988 contest with George H.W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination and his battle with Newt Gingrich in the ’90s when they led the House and Senate.
(on camera): What do you think of Barack Obama?
DOLE: He’s a great golfer.
(LAUGHTER)
DOLE: Very articulate.
WALLACE: As a president?
DOLE: I think, as a president, he lacks communication skills with his own party, let alone the Republican Party. And he’s on the road too much.
WALLACE: Richard Nixon.
DOLE: Brilliant, criminal. He could have been a great president. He just threw it away.
WALLACE: As long as we’re talking about controversies, when you were running for president in 1988 and you told Bush 41 —
(LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: You know what I’m going to say.
DOLE: That I was lying about my record.
WALLACE: Exactly.
(LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: Yes, he said you’d flip-flopped on taxes, I think.
DOLE: Yes. I guess the point is, I made a — I made a mistake. And I knew I had made a mistake.
WALLACE: New Gingrich.
DOLE: Newt is a brilliant in many respects. He’s the kind of a guy that can lead the revolution, but he can’t lead after he succeeds. It was always what he did, what Newt did.
And I was a tax collector for the welfare state. Well, I don’t have any quarrel with him now.
WALLACE: But you haven’t forgotten either.
DOLE: I haven’t forgotten.
(LAUGHTER)
DOLE: And I’m glad he wasn’t our nominee.
WALLACE: One last person, the guy who beat you in 1996, Bill Clinton.
DOLE: He’s a good guy. I remember getting a handwritten seven- page letter from Nixon telling me all about the race. And the last paragraph was: if the economy is good, you can’t beat Clinton. That’s probably not the only reason I didn’t beat Clinton, but it was a factor.
WALLACE: Was World War II the defining event in your life?
DOLE: Well, no doubt about it. It was a — it changed — it changed my life.
WALLACE: When you think back to that terrible injury, you were 21 years old. It put you in the hospital for three years.
What do you think about that now, that experience?
DOLE: I think I learned a lot about patience, some things take a long time and you’ve got to be patient. And I like to get things done yesterday. But I learned in the hospital it’s not possible.
WALLACE: Do you think you became Bob Dole in spite of your injury, or, in a funny way, because of our injury, because it made you the man who you were?
DOLE: I think the second —
WALLACE: Because of it?
DOLE: — description. I’ve never tried to use my disability, but I can’t hide it. You know, I’ve gone through the bitter stage where you kind of feel sorry for yourself. But then you look around and find somebody who’s in real trouble and it changes your perspective about who’s disabled and who’s not.
WALLACE: You still go out to greet veterans of World War II when they come to D.C. on these honor flights. How come?
DOLE: The veterans really like to see me. I don’t know — for what reason. But I’m, in their eyes, I’ve sort of become America’s veteran. And I think I’ve met groups from different states 161 times.
WALLACE: Wow!
DOLE: And I’ll be there this Saturday. I met a retired general who was in a wheelchair. He wanted to get a picture. But he said I don’t want to get a picture in this wheelchair, I want to stand up.
And with a little help, he stood up and very proud. It made you — it made me feel good.
WALLACE: The greatest generation.
DOLE: These guys don’t give up.
WALLACE: Finally, how would you like to be remembered? What do you want them to put on your tombstone?
DOLE: Veteran. Who gave his most for his country. Which I think is true. And I tried to make the most of it. And I think I did.
WALLACE: Let me just speak for everyone when I say …
DOLE: Thank you.
WALLACE: Thank you for your service, sir.
DOLE: Thank you.
WALLACE: Thank you for your service.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Richard Fox
My revulsion extends to “moderates” like Snowe and Collins who very moderately went along with their radicalized party in spite of their tender moderate objections, moderately conveyed over and over by them to our “both sides do it!” media. Party before country– each and every time. Dole had his good points but in so many instances over the years drank from the same cup of hemlock. Crying about the mess after the fact simply way too little, and extremely too late.
FlipYrWhig
@moderateindy: it’s a measure of just how far around the bend we’ve gone that the longed-for breakthrough would be a conservative politician who believes in conservative governance. Not a moderate; that ship sailed long ago. Just a commitment to the process of making laws and policies to address important social problems… THAT would be a step in the right direction. Yeesh.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Like Poppy Bush, Dole has a lot to answer for. They rode the tiger of right wing, race- and culture- based resentment, cynically exploited people they held in contempt (this is especially true of the senior Bushes, who were almost as patrician as they believe themselves to be). On balance, I think Dole is the better person, came across as worse because of personal temperament and psychology, and was often given the role of hatchet man by his party. But I remember his quaint (especially compared to today) insistence on calling Clinton his opponent, not his enemy, in the ’96 campaign, and IIRC being booed at this own convention.
Anya
@NickT: Good Golfer? Fuck Dole with a rusty pitchfork. He’s no stateman.
Bill E Pilgrim
Cracked me up.
Mike in NC
Bob Dole. The name rhymed with Ass Hole. But he sure knew how to be a grifter back in the day.
piratedan
@NickT: maybe if they had spent as much time checking their data and spreadsheet formulae as they have on their hurt fee-fee’s maybe Khugzilla wouldn’t have to call them out on their masterwork which has provided the cover for the R’s to hamstring the national recovery for the sake of their own petty partisanship…. maybe/perhaps
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@piratedan: Bingo. That “Letter to PK” pisses me off. They should have just admitted their mistakes and moved on. But that would have been the end of the wingnut welfare train. Fuck them.
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And they’re only coming out in protest now. As long as their Southern Strategy crap was working, they couldn’t care less. It’s only now that they’re afraid it might doom their party that they’ve suddenly discovered their scruples.
Fuck them.
eemom
@Steeplejack:
srsly. Reminds me of the sickening deference afforded to retired witch Sandra Day O’Connor recently when she allowed as how maybe they shouldn’t have granted cert in Bush v. Gore, after all.
Fuck her, fuck Dole, and fuck all the rest of these old criminals with the sharpest and rustiest implements in the toolshed. Anyone with sympathy to spare for them can pitch in on a pasture near a toxic waste dump somewhere to put them out in. I am saving mine for the victims.
patroclus
@NickT: Thanks for the link to Reinhart’s spectacularly uncivil response to Krugman – I read the whole thing and her point seems to be that Krugman criticized her for being an austerian when she really isn’t. And she includes a number of quotes she and Rogoff made that would argue against it. But then, in her lengthy appendices, she comes right out and says she favors Simpson-Bowles and that she continues to favor it and that the quotes from the Tom Coburn book were out-of-context.
If she favors Simpson-Bowles, then she is an austerian, period. That simple fact overwhelms everything else she said about going slow in removing the stimulus and in drastically reducing spending. Simpson-Bowles does not go slow; it is not merely an incremental step. She says that some policians cite papers some times but that she “was not silent” about disagreeing with their policy proscriptions. But she attended the Gang of 6 meeting precisely because she supports Simpson-Bowles. She says that the intro that Rogoff made was full of caveats but that they both support Simpson-Bowles.
Why didn’t she write the letter to Paul Ryan or to Tom Coburn for supposedly mis-understanding her alleged non-austerity positions? Obviously, she didn’t do that because, while she doesn’t support their version of austerity, she does support Simpson-Bowles. Krugman opposes both. So her disagreement is with Krugman – the non-austerian – and her differences with Ryan and Coburn are merely disagreements about the precise nature of the austerity to be imposed. Hence, she believes Krugman is specatacularly uncivil in disagreeing with her whereas Ryan and Coburn’s disagreements aren’t personal enough to warrant criticism for allegedly misrepresenting her position.
No matter what she may have said elsewhere, supporting Simpson-Bowles makes her an austerian. She should own it and stop the personal criticism of Krugman for disagreeing with her austerity recommendations.
Narcissus
Remember when this guy hawked boner pills
Mustang Bobby
Ted Cruz has no idea who Bob Dole is.
NickT
@Narcissus:
From boner pills to Boehner shills: the Republican party 1996-2013.
Kay
Republicans have been saying this for ten years.
Political parties are not abstract, aspirational entities that exist off to the side of reality, no matter how many times media and Republicans tap their heels together and wish it to be so.
Why was the Bush ERA-GOP like it was? Because the people who were part of it were like that.
The GOP is how it is now. There isn’t some better GOP that is alive, yet undiscovered. There won’t be, either, until OTHER, DIFFERENT people make up the Party.
When they went full-tilt religious, there was this silly whine from the Chamber of Commerce types, “why are we so RELIGIOUS now?”
Oh, I don’t know, because 50% of your members are now religious fundamentalists?
There’s this wacky denial, a yearning, to somehow BE other than the sum total of the members. It isn’t going to happen without different members.
Derelict
As always, I consider it no mean feat on the part of the modern GOP that Nixon would now be considered an ultra-extreme leftist far to the left of Mao or Lenin, while Reagan would also be deemed to be part of the extreme left/socialist segment of the political spectrum.
Gex
@Chris: Hell, I think that whenever some libertarian complains about culture wars, drug wars, and the war machine.
For market fetishists (these moderate Rs and the whiny Ls) they sure don’t seem to understand incentives.
@Derelict: The media has pretty much allowed the definition of socialism to become government giving taxpayer money to corporations. That is one hell of an accomplishment.
Cacti
@Derelict:
Nixon pioneered the southern strategy and rode it to landslide victory in 1972. However, he wasn’t an anti-federal government radical like Reagan. One wonders what direction the GOP’s policies would have taken had Nixon not self-destructed while in office.
Mike G
The John Birch Society called Reagan a communist back in the 80s. That’s basically where the entire Greedy Old Parasites party is now.
I wonder which Repuke hyena of today will express remorse for his political vandalism a decade or two from now, after they’ve safely retired. Cheney will be dead, or undead. Maybe KKKarl Rove will cry crocodile tears for being a destructive asshole and servant of evil his entire life.
Chris
@Cacti:
Yeah, the culture wars of the last fifty years were inevitable, but I’ve always wondered if the additional rollback of the New Deal’s achievements might have been avoided if Nixon had survived.
Jay
Lots of folks around here like the book, Nixonland. Count me among them.
One of the reasons the book works so well is because it captures, time and again, the nastiness Dole showed when he was in his prime through the 1970s. God on a crutch. The guy wanted to be on the top of a ticket so badly that he rolled in the mud until he became unrecognizable.
I would contend, though, that Dole started to fall out with Atwater & co. earlier than some people on this thread believe. Yes, Dole was a friend of Jesse Helms until Helms’s death, and that’s one of the many reasons I’d never vote for Dole, but if you watch Boogie Man, the great documentary on Atwater, there’s a moment from the ’88 campaign in which Dole just BLEW UP about the little fcker in full view of the cameras. He growled, “I DON’T WANNA TALK ABOUT ATWATER!” or something like that.
I ain’t saying Dole became a Bill Weld type from ’88 on, but I do think that, once the Atwater machine roughed him up, he began to see what it-and a good part of the GOP-was really about.
If anything, this speaks to a Palin – like, Fournieresque selfishness though, right? Indeed, just as those two probably wouldn’t advocate for the disabled if they didn’t have disabled kids, I doubt Dole would really point out the rottenness in his party if it didn’t attack him first.
Kay
When Dole says “most” Republicans are like him, why is that just accepted?
Obviously it’s not true, because if it were true they would act like it.
First we heard that the House was extreme nutjobs because it’s gerrymandered. But Senate and state-wide races aren’t, and they have absolute Right wing crazies in the Senate and states.
Who is electing these people if “most” Republicans are (secretly, I guess) “like” Bob Dole?
This imaginary Republican Party no longer exists.
Gex
@Cacti: I think the shift was inevitable. They just grasp for whatever they can to get enough votes. They wouldn’t chase the culture warriors if they could win outright.
ETA: The money always wanted to roll back the New Deal. Social issues were the tactic.
Kyle
@Gex:
The drop-of-a-hat screeching about “soshulism” is starting to backfire on the GOP. Surveys show that college-age students have a more favorable opinion of the word than they do of ‘capitalism’.
I’m guessing the shitty job prospects for grads provided by our rigged influence-peddling crony-financial-capitalism along with hearing media gasbags declaring “soshulism” about a bunch of stuff they life, like staying on their parents’ health insurance, student loans and decent college funding, is making them think it doesn’t sound so bad.
NickT
@Kyle:
Gotta remember too that the kids see the GOP trying to make it harder for students to vote in any state they can. That’s not exactly the best way to win friends and influence people.
Ruckus
@Joeyess:
This. A thousand times, this.
For how many decades has the conservative side had nothing. Nothing. They had to devise a crappy, hate filled strategy as the only way to win because they have nothing else, and never have. They have continued to build on that crappy, hate filled strategy because they have even less than nothing else now. They may have taken the country past the point of no return in hate filled bullshit. Maybe, just maybe it has started to backfire on them enough to stem the tide they started. We will always have people who will protect whatever they have as long as it is any amount better than some group they can hate. Always. What we have to do is make life better for enough of us to make those people insignificant.
Ruckus
@PeakVT:
If they were blind that would mean that they are incapable of seeing this. From all I’ve read they are not incapable nor are they blind. They are just wrong and see that they will lose all if they don’t act like everyone else is wrong. I once had a kid working for me who another employee nicknamed “Mad at the world”. Everything that went wrong in his life was the fault of someone else and he would try to find anyone else to blame. That’s the conservative party.
Chris
@Kyle:
It helps that “socialism,” like “fascism,” has been drained of all meaning by the way it’s used in politics. For eighty years they’ve been using the word to describe increasingly ridiculous things to the point that everyone understands it’s not much more than a shorthand for “Anything A Conservative Doesn’t Like.” And when that becomes the definition, all of a sudden it’s not such a bad thing.
It also helps that there’s no more Soviet Union or even much of a communist world nowadays. Conservatives who insist on beating the “scary socialism” horse are now reduced to pointing to places like Canada and Scandinavia as the bogeyman society we’re all supposed to be horrified of.
JPL
If Bob Dole had to kiss the right wingers ass in order to remain in office, he would.
Howard Beale IV
@NickT: But that’s the issue: it wasn’t. And once it was provided, that’s when all hell broke loose. Now couple that with what the Feds did in US vs. Reynolds (1953), you get a result that years later, makes the original ruling a travesty:
.
Memorial Day-indeed-but let’s not forget the civilians affected as well.
Anne Laurie
@moderateindy:
Even at the time, according to the political news I was reading, people thought Bob Dole got the nomination that year mostly because the GOP was on the pivot between “sensible moderate mainstreet Eisenhower Republicanism” and the new insurgents like Gingrich who just wanted to burn everything down and then sow the ground with salt. The guys who still had the levers to the nominating process didn’t trust the self-styled ‘young turks’ who saw a line between Nixon and Reagan that they wanted to extend beyond infinity, but the Very Serious Money didn’t want to get down in the mud with the snake-handlers & ratfckers, so Middling Bob finally got his chance at the head of the parade.
I feel sorry for the guy personally, because it’s never easy to see something you’ve given your whole life to turned into a circus for grifters and lunatics, but it’s not like he made more than a token effort to keep his party’s muckers from trashing the place, either.
Howard Beale IV
@Yatsuno: +1
Howard Beale IV
@Anne Laurie: Some days, you get the bear-on your last day, the bear gets you.
Howard Beale IV
@Chris: Indeed: Russia and China today are more like the US now than people will be willing to acknowledge.
WereBear
Humans have an extraordinary capacity to believe what they want to believe: who among us, offered the most powerful position on earth, would not lie to ourselves to achieve it?
But here is he is, money secured, legacy more-or-less in place, his career somewhat settled… why not speak the truth? Why not rip the lid off, when it would only put a cherry on top of his career sundae, instead of a big scoop of crap?
I guess… he wouldn’t have any friends, then. And so the world turns.
brettvk
Whaddya think? When Dole shuffles off this mortal coil (and it does look like that may be soon) will the GOP use the occasion for a big patriotic solemnface Celebration of Our Statesman, or will they ignore it because most of their base don’t remember who he is, and the part that does remember him despises him as a squishy loser?
NickT
@Howard Beale IV:
The funny thing is that they gave up their data to (relatively speaking) some snot-nosed kid on the academic corner. Which suggests to me that they genuinely had no idea of the colossal error they had made. Sometimes the universe has a wonderfully acid sense of humor.
catclub
@Comrade Jake: Wasn’t he also in pretty rough shape 60 years ago? So he’s had a pretty good long run.
Howard Beale IV
@brettvk: When Dole finally passes, I fully expect this.
moderateindy
Of course that’s true. Those powers are still around, which is why Romney got the nomination, having all the real money folks supporting him.
My question is, if Dole had won, would the extreme right wing have lost momentum? Would the main part of the party believed that being more moderate was the way to keep control. Moreover, would the Dems as a party have reacted by being more liberal, and not passing things like NAFTA, or embracing more conservative fiscal policies, like the Modernization Act that got rid of Glass Stiegel, and other policies that helped shift the entire country way to the right? When Clinton and Company moved the Democratic party to the center, they basically opened the door to an entire paradigm shift. They brought the Dem party to the right, thereby establishing a new “center” for all of American politics, because, the right used their brand new echo chamber of talk radio to define what was a very moderate Clinton administration, as being the same old liberal democrats. Unfortunately, not just the Republican base, but large swaths of the electorate bought into that portrayal.
Eric U.
@NickT: don’t think their data was wrong, it was the spreadsheet. And that is what they were keeping from everybody. Pretty sure if you just applied their formulas even-handedly to all of thier data, it showed their hypothesis was wrong. PK really has been pretty civil about this, the things you could say about R-R if you wanted to be nasty are really nasty. Seems to me that this is very close to a firing offense.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Eric U.:
It was the way they calculated the data, that is true. Don’t blame that on the spreadsheet. That’s human error.
Roger Moore
@brettvk:
They will use it as an occasion for a big patriotic solemnface Celebration of Our Statesman, then take advantage of the fact that nobody remembers him to lie through their teeth about what he stood for and make him look like a frothing at the mouth teabagger. It’s what they do.
Keith G
@JPL:
Ah…the profundity of self-evidence.
Nearly every office-seeking politician will identify the most powerful cohort of their party and tell them what they want to hear.
Howard Beale IV
@NickT: Ah-yep. And that in of itself is a problem. People at that level shouldn’t be making those kinds of mistakes. Some Pd.D candidate under their tutelage should have caught that and brought that to their attention. But that didn’t happen, and since their predictive model on austerity failed in the real world, you must go back to the model and validate it, which is what happened-and, turns out, it was wrong-and in the process, many European citizens have been suffering needlessly all because two people who are supposed to be domain experts made an error in the model, which spectacularly failed in the field when applied.
One of Old Uncle Ronnie’s quotes was: “Trust, but verify”. Looks like only one half of that was done before the feces hit to rotating blades, and when the error was discovered, it was already too late.
Now chew on this: Niall Ferguson’s wife (Ayaan Ali Hirsi) is part of Reinhart’s group at Havrard.
Here’s the sad part: in the business world, if you fsck up, you usually get fired. I don’t see the same thing in academia, especially if you’re tenured.
patroclus
@Eric U.: The data they used was okay – they just left out countries like New Zealand, Canada and Australia in years that did not suit their conclusion. So, it’s not like they cherry-picked the data; they just omitted some key data which would have altered the conclusion (and the magical “90%”) somewhat. And that was compounded by the spreadsheet error.
But read Reinhart’s letter – she admits that she’s a Simpson-Bowles fan in Appendix 2.
Roger Moore
@Eric U.:
Not really. The problem wasn’t so much that they applied their formula wrong- the countries they accidentally left out shifted the results only marginally- as that their approach itself was laughably bad. It was seriously bad enough that I think an undergraduate who tried that method in a paper would get a failing grade.
Howard Beale IV
@Eric U.: As someone once said: “You can abuse/torture data to make it say whatever you want it to say.”
And THAT is the issue. The spreadsheet is a tool, nothing more. HOW and WHY they used the tool the way they did against the data is the question.
PeakVT
@Eric U.: No. R&R excluded certain data, weighed the data they used in weird ways, grouped the data in weird ways, and didn’t do any kind of test for causality. Their formulas were fucked up from the get-go. The spreadsheet coding error was trivial compared to the other errors they made.
PeakVT
Krugman says fuck R&R’s fee-fees.
Anne Laurie
@moderateindy:
I’m afraid that’s like the old jape “If your aunt had wheels, would she be a tea cart?” Dole got the nomination because the strong candidates, the party insiders who might have had the ability to lever the GOP back off the crazy spur, didn’t want to risk trying and failing. Clinton and the DLCers (may they burn in ten thousand hells of their own making) spent the next eight years jinking with the Overton Window because they saw the “sane” GOP steadily losing ground to what snarkists of the day called the Congressional Nutty Buddies. If Dole had won, would he have been in a better position to call the Gingriches and Barrs to heel? If they thought the President still had that kind of power, I don’t think Dole would have been the GOP nominee in the first place!
Howard Beale IV
@patroclus: And now the real truth (and proof) comes out. Now the problem is that she and Rogoff are damaged goods, and with her appendix 2 statement, she can no longer be considered objective in any way, shape or form.
Keith G
@brettvk:
I don’t like his politics, but Dole is a true American hero who served his (and my) country in a way that no one I know from here has. As a party leader emeritus, I assume his passing will be noted with the ceremony and respect it deserves. I assume that there will be those on either side who will go to an extreme.
nineone
He’s pissed because he got faced by these CSA reprobates a few months back. They humiliated him, rejected him- again. Still, he’s not so pissed that he can’t take a shot at O like a good little Supremacist.
Lacks communication skills? On the road too much? Is this some kind of code? Some kind of Rovian Ratfuck-Fu? Nah. Just another puffed up, bone dumb, mean as a snake, crypto-Nazi fuckhead who got his ass beat and still can’t let it go.
Ruckus
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
An error? These people make their living with numbers and statistics. A spreadsheet is an essential tool, like a wrench to a mechanic, a stethoscope to a doctor or a micrometer to me. To make this an error they would have had to be asleep or drunk. To come back with the rhetoric that they have only re-enforces to me that this was intentional. It is in no way an error.
Keith G
@nineone:
This statement is rather lacking in judgement and intellectual prowess. It’s fascinating to see folks on this side act like the idiots on the other side.
James E. Powell
@Gex:
The money always wanted to roll back the New Deal. Social issues were the tactic.
That’s pretty much the story of American politics after the Great Society. I would add that, in addition to social issues, good old race-baiting became a central feature of every Republican campaign. If you do a lot of door-to-door politics, or pay attention to the talk in the places where consistent Republican voters gather, the belief that the Democrats are going to raise taxes and give the money to the [insert racist epithet] is widely and deeply held.
Ruckus
@Keith G:
I agree on the service part of your post. He served and honorably. He gave a lot and has lived with that every day since.
But. You knew there would be a but didn’t you?
He is still the conservative that he played in politics the rest of that life. The politics and things he did since his military service can not be dismissed, just like his military service can not be.
We are all flawed human beings, we deserve praise for the good or necessary things we have done, we don’t necessarily deserve complete forgiveness for the rest of our choices.
Keith G
@Ruckus: Of course!
I see little of his political agenda and behavior to agree with – but there is some. Further, he said and did some things in his career that were beyond the pale. And I can run that through the filter that Dole was a man of his time and a very competitive politician – so I can choose to confront his wrong thinking without dumbing the evaluation with ad homiem attacks.
He was a vocal and an out-in-front leader. Since Teddy died, we have no one like that, and we need a few.
Lurking Canadian
@Eric U.: Making a mistake is not a firing offense.
Deliberately monkeying with your data and your parameters until the model gives you the answer you want might be.
To me this looks more like the latter than the former.
nineone
@Keith G: Yes, it certainly is fascinating. Now you can fuck off and take your war hero with you. Ta.
Keith G
@nineone: How sweet.
Ruckus
@Eric U.:
These two are supposed to be world class economists. There are only two ways to see this because of that first statement.
1. They are stupid and can’t use one of the major tools of their trade.
2. They are dishonest because they manipulated the data to get the answer they wanted.
Number one seems to be right out. Even many of their detractors, PK for example, have said they are world class economists. That leaves number 2, dishonesty. I’m going to go with the bet with the best odds, #2.
Steeplejack
@Eric U.:
They had errors in the spreadsheet, but their data was bad too. The omitted all but one (bad) year for New Zealand, and I think there were some other hijinks as well.
NickT
@Eric U.:
I was speaking of the data in the spreadsheet – which was unquestionably incomplete and so, in effect, wrong.
Kay
@WereBear:
Dole is a lobbyist. That’s how he makes his living. It’s probably not in his best interest to get too specific or honest on the problems within the GOP.
I still think they should run a crawl under interviews with the names of the employers of the speaker.
Why can’t we do that? It’s such a simple solution, and it’s MORE speech, not less!
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Ruckus:
FWIW, I agree with you here. “error” in the intentional sense.
Another Halocene Human
@Keith G: but Dole is a true American hero who served his (and my) country in a way that no one I know from here has
Indeed? So all the combat vets who post in the comments are lying? Wasn’t the blog owner in combat too?
What makes their “service” different? How you feel about the outcome of the conflict?
Maude
After Nixon died, Bob Dole said, God bless Richard Nixon.
It struck me as awful then and that statement is the tell about Dole’s political career.
Dole treated the Democrats as enemies, not a political opposition.
Keith G
@Another Halocene Human: The nature of his service and its outcome (and what he did as a result), put Dole in a bit of a different category than most who have served and have come back alive.
Smiling Mortician
@Howard Beale IV:
Really? You think we’re suffering more from too-big-to-fail professors who fuck up than from too-big-to-fail businessmen who fuck up?
Alan
@Bill E Pilgrim:
pat
@NickT:
Thank you for that. Bob Dole came across as an honorable, thoughtful person.
Mike G
@Ruckus:
1. They are stupid and can’t use one of the major tools of their trade.
2. They are dishonest because they manipulated the data to get the answer they wanted.
The idea that the rightards care about the academic integrity of the research papers that justify what they want to do, is a sick joke. Their contempt for science and evidence is total.
These are the clowns who used the ridiculous Laffer Curve (whose peak was ALWAYS somewhere lower than the current tax rate, no matter what it was) to justify decades of magical thinking that tax cuts increase revenue, resulting in trillions in deficits. No matter how egregiously wrong-headed, this “idea” dominated DC for years because it served powerful interests.
The paper served its purpose. It wasn’t a quest for truth, it was intellectual prostitution to justify austerians’ self-serving policies. Rogaine and Beefheart are just pissed that they got caught.
moderateindy
@Anne Laurie:
I don’t really think it’s about Dole’s ability to ride herd over the Gingrich crazies. I think alot of that would be a given, as Gingrich & friends would not have been able to be as simply reactionary with Dole the way they were with Clinton. The Dems on the other hand could have been much more combative regarding their own principles under a Dole presidency than they were with Clinton. It was easier for Clinton to pull the Dems to the right, and pass things like NAFTA, something that never had a chance in hell of passing during Reagan, or Bush 1 because of fairly unified Democratic oppo. (of course NAFTA would still be with us, as it was a first term achievement, but I’m using it as an example of how Clinton helped redefine where the Dems stood on things) Also, the election of Clinton for another 4 years really helped solidify the right wing noise machine, as it had a big easy target to attack. Also, Dole winning by being fairly moderate, may have mitigated some of the meme that the current right wing developed about the real reason that they don’t win the white house is that the candidate isn’t conservative enough.
Ruckus
@Mike G:
So you are going with #2 as well?
Bob, for example...
@Ruckus:
“1. They are stupid and can’t use one of the major tools of their trade.
2. They are dishonest because they manipulated the data to get the answer they wanted.”
3. Their spreadsheet had honest/careless mistakes but since the end result matched their beliefs they didn’t go back and carefully check their inputs.
I don’t know the answer, but I can see multiple explanations.
The important thing is, a number of people should independently crank through the numbers and give us some accurate outcomes.
Ruckus
@Keith G:
This is where I disagree. Any one who served could be called upon at any time to do things that they did not want to do such as kill humans. It is part of the gig. That not everyone got put in that situation is not dependent on them. It is dependent on the situation. I have an ex marine friend who was sent to Vietnam but never had to fire his M16 that he had to carry everywhere at anyone. Have another friend who got sent to CO to learn and teach language and spent his entire tour there. The point is that most vets did what they were told and went where they were sent. Most of the one’s who didn’t suffered for that. Dole did what he did, he suffered what he suffered but he is no different than my friends. Getting shot is not an honor, it is just what it is, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being dead is really not different in this context either except that there is no rest of your life. We have two different holidays because being dead is asking of you all that can be asked and surviving isn’t. And yes heroes who take extraordinary risks do deserve thanks from those whose lives they saved. Are they more honorable? I don’t think so but I may be in the minority. They certainly aren’t less honorable.
BTW I did a long post on this once before and stated that I didn’t feel honorable for having served, I did what I felt I had to do. I went where I was sent and did what I was taught and told. That is not honor, that is duty.
Ruckus
@Bob, for example…:
And that has been done. And it has been shown that several of the inconsistencies can not have been simple spreadsheet errors.
Why do so many people want to still give these so called “professional” assholes the benefit of the doubt? If I or probably most of the people here made these kinds of “mistakes” in our work, we’d be out on our asses and if those “mistakes” were public, we probably would never work in that same field again. And yet here we are still questioning those pointing out their very public lack of competence and ethics.
Sasha
Curious how Wallace didn’t ask Dole to comment on Bush 43 …
TCG
@NickT: Articulate? Fuck, that old bastard.
Lori Nalette
@Rabble Arouser: The party needs to be called out. It’s out of control. When a party is so far to the right that Ronald Reagan would be defeated in a primary election, there’s a problem. The party has allowed the radical tea baggers to determine policy and block all function of government and grind it to a halt to the harm of middle class and poor Americans. Nationally, the republican party is at it’s absolute lowest in history. Why wouldn’t someone who was once proud to be a Republican call out the current party for it’s foolishness?