Every time I see one of these pieces on the GOP losing the youth vote, I just laugh, because seriously, does it really take that much thought why the GOP is losing the youth vote?
I mean, they spent their convention primetime having a 90 year old man lecture a chair, and they thought it was FUCKING AWESOME. That was their message to America and the youth of America- “Your crazy great-uncle who still keeps the plastic on his couches speaks for us!”
And let’s not even get into the fact that most women age 18-40 don’t want Louis Gohmert and Tom Coburn telling them what and where and how to use their vagina. Or the gay bashing. Or the racism. Or the fact that 90% of the GOP caucus is searching, on a daily basis, for reasons to send more kids off to die in some pointless war.
Look, Republicans, the kids just aren’t as stupid and hateful as you are, and they aren’t going to vote for you until that changes.
Villago Delenda Est
Testify, brother! Testify!
NickT
I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that the GOP just don’t like young people or understand them. They hack at education every chance they get, they try and stop students from voting, and they have this ludicrous model of authoritarian ignorance that no young person with a functional brain finds remotely attractive. Added to which, the kids have the internet and can see that the GOP isn’t offering them anything in terms of a functioning economy or jobs, because they are just obsessed with cutting taxes and doing everything cheaply and badly to enrich their corporate fatcat bosses.
belieber
…but they sure had you fooled for awhile didn’t they Cole. Now you think Greewald is awesome so how much has changed with you Cole? Seriously. A lot of the same players such as McCain are still there from when you thought the GOP was awesome. You still occasionally blow spunk on the ceiling at the mere mention of Fat Bastard Christies name. Or that Virginia asshole senator or governor whatever the fuck his name is.
Capri
What I don’t get is that the sane folks on the right know how horrid they sound and that their policies are reviled by the majority of country, but feel that have to stick to them as not to alienate their base. Why not try to educate your base – or at least nudge them slightly towards sanity.
They know that their base isn’t big enough to win any more all by itself.
Amir Khalid
It takes a lot of thought to figure out an answer to a question, I guess, when ideological constraints mean that the right answer is out of bounds.
Gin & Tonic
They might not vote for Coburn or Gohmert, but they’ll vote for Rand Paul, because he’s anti-war and pro-weed, and will cut their taxes.
Jesse
Yeah, I think it’s pretty damn obvious, too.
But there are mystifying counterexamples here and there. My brother grew up politically in the utterly toxic Bush era, which ought to have killed any possible flirtation with Republicans for quite a while. Yet somehow he still is all-in on the crazy train because…at least they know how to punch them some hippies. I think he’s beyond belief mortified by the party in the last several years (to the extent that he even knows in detail what they’re up to). But somehow it appears that admitting that and taking action (leaving the GOP and denouncing its madness) is even more mortifying.
dollared
I hate this kind of stupid fucking post. You know those Republican idiots, they make no sense but they control 30 fucking states, the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives.
So their decline is inevitable. So we should all feel better while they establish minority rule, which they have done. Oh, and they have established insane levels of inequality in our country, and with the complicity of the Democrats have eliminated the regulatory effectiveness of every part of our government, except of course the TSA.
But hey – fersure the Republicans will likely lose at least 2/3 of all presidential elections between now and 2032. Awesome. So we’ll have a lot of fun during election periods. And we can work together to feed those millions of unemployed college graduates in the Post Food Stamp Era.
A Ghost To Most
You know what I can’t figure out? How not to lose my temper over the fact that 1/4 of our country is bug-fuck crazy, and 1/2 of America doesn’t necessarily agree with them, but are unwilling to call them on it. Which leaves the 1/4 crazy folk free to dump on the rest of us without the 1/2 stopping them. Not sure this is apropos of anything, just dealing with one of those situations today.
Carry on.
lamh35
sorry OT so soon, but I can’t believe none of the FP have posted yet on David Plouffe twitter blast of Issa after Issa called Jay Carney a “paid liar” for the administration. Don’t know how, but Plouffe has perfected the art of the take down in 140 characters or less (actually, seems the whole Obama campaign apparatus are just more tech savvy than the rest).
I just help saying F*%$ yeah every time I read it.
Anyway back to regularly scheduled programming
Gotta love Plouffe.
Bill E Pilgrim
I see it sort of in the mold of The Wild and Crazy Guys! You know, a couple of wildly out of touch, out of synch, clueless losers whose every move is meant to be “with it” but is guaranteed to fail with everyone, to their puzzlement.
piratedan
TRMS has more good news for the GOP
maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/06/03/18725790-a-generation-of-voters-with-no-use-for-the-gop?lite
Patricia Kayden
Amen, John. Whatever happened to the minority outreach that the Repubs were going to embark on after the 2012 defeat? I thought Reince promised to go to a bunch of minority colleges to get the word out that they’re down with Black/Brown people.
Todd
Point of order – it was my grandmother that kept plastic on the couches. The crazy great uncle is the one who forwards the chain emails containing Schafly, Gaffney and Bolton quotes.
Thanks in advance.
Cacti
The millennials are the least white and most socially liberal generation in US history.
The GOP is in big ass trouble.
Just Some Fuckhead
Until the utes vote reliably, who fucking cares who they vote for?
Cacti
@Patricia Kayden:
Their director of Hispanic outreach in Florida resigned and registered Dem.
He cited the “culture of intolerance” in the GOP as the primary reason.
jl
@Todd:
” Your crazy great-uncle who still keeps the plastic on his couches speaks for us! ”
I first read that as ” Your crazy great-uncle who is the reason there is plastic on his couches speaks for us! “
lamh35
Ok, OT again, but damn this is sad news, but there is so hope.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) Announces She Has Lung Cancer
Mr Stagger Lee
It is incredible that they think by being dicks that they will attract those to replace their aging and dying base, that maybe it is time to quit be A-holes 24/7 but no they can’t quit, they are addicted to the Koch Brother Kool Aid, look at their plan in Wisconsin to go after the bank accounts of anyone unemployed. Party of the Pricks.
TaMara (BHF)
@lamh35: It made my day.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Except that they would bitterly oppose selling contraceptives at national parks.
MomSense
Ok let’s look at what the Republicans were offering young voters.
1. We do not want you to vote. In fact we are going to enact laws in multiple states to prevent or discourage you from voting.
2. We are going to spend all the money on unnecessary and endless wars that you will fight in.
3. We will not try to take care of your health, education or reentry into the job market when (if!) you ever come home from fighting our wars.
4. We will take away your pell grants and charge you higher interest rates on your student loans. Just borrow money from your parents!
5. We will not invest in infrastructure or education or new technologies so you will not have any job prospects when you graduate.
6. No stinking birth control for you, you sluts.
7. The plan that lets you stay on your parents health insurance, we want to get rid of that. Just go to an ER or get a real job you low wage moocher.
8. No social security or medicare for you when you get older.
9. Oh and we don’t like your “lifestyle choices”
10. We want all the immigrants to self-deport even if it splits up families or you came here as a child or served in the military. We will stop and frisk and check your papers whenever we want.
11. We don’t like those food stamp collecting, mooching blahs who only support the President because he gives them “free stuff”.
12. We only like handouts for oil companies and tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires who won’t hire people without incentives, incentives that encourage sloth and laziness for the rest of you (47% of you to be exact).
12. We are very angry and like to look and sound angry at our large attendance (photoshopped) rallies.
What did I leave out?
Cris (without an H)
If you’re 20 and you’re not a liberal, you haven’t got a heart. If you’re 40 and you’re not a conservative, good job.
MattF
Well, how do you explain that whole generation of Reaganites who came up during the 80’s? And what about all those youthful fogies who despised Bill and Hillary during the 90’s? And all those ‘compassionate conservatives’ of the ’00’s, who also, incidentally had fantasies of hanging Saddam? It’s pretty clear that the explanation is not about policy, it’s about something else, but I’m not sure what, exactly.
daverave
“I used to care but I take a pill for that now” – the T-shirt ad under this post.
Keith
Doesn’t help that the GOP all but worships a guy who was president before many of these young’uns were even born.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@MattF:
Maybe, just maybe, it’s dawning on folks that when the Republicans select one segment of society for a good fucking-over it doesn’t end there. Once that segment gets the treatment it’s time for the next, and the one after that and the one after that…
Suffern ACE
@dollared: Yep. and if we continue on this path of inequality, in 20 years, we’ll wonder why there hasn’t been a resounding rejection of it and an embrace of some kind of pragmatic change. A generation or so of “We never had such help when I was a kid so bite me now” fake bootstrapism from the millenials would not be surprising.
Mr Stagger Lee
Does it make me a bad guy who wishes the 2016 GOP convention turns into political equivalent of the Red Wedding?
NickT
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Knowing the GOP, that would involve Clint Eastwood maniacally stabbing an empty chair while screaming about betrayal.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Well except when they wanted to buy some.
But really, replace words like “foxes” with “voters”, and it’s uncanny how well it matches:
“You young voters seem to know that we’re talking to you in a very swinging way. What can you say to us that we would enjoy talking about with you now, here and now, in this swinging way with us? ”
“And here is a thing I will tell you: that swinging voters have the hots-on for us, and are coming to let us hold on to their big American votes!
“Come on, voters! Don’t miss out on the fun!”
dollared
@Suffern ACE: At this point, we simply don’t present an alternative framework for understanding the world and making it a better place for working people and their families. FDR had a platform – 1900’s Progressivism (which was government capitalism such as TVA) + safety net+ trade unionism – that promised a better set of outcomes. What do the Democrats present?
eric
There are three types of republicans: (1) the ones the really believe the cultural crazy and they are the base that used to fund the party, but who still reliably vote; (2) the elected GOP officials, who are becoming more like the base, but which, for the most part, are career politicians of the grifter variety (cf, ted Kennedy) and (3) the moneyed class (including the MSM) that simply wants more of the pie.
There are not enough of (3) to win elections, so (1) is necessary. However, the (1) has learned how to leverage their numbers into dictating the parameters of an acceptable candidate. So, there is no way out of this little cycle. So, the issues for us all long term are (a) can the base replenish its dying stock and/or (b) will the MSM start to call out the crazy (on things like climate change for example).
Alas, I think (a) AND (b) are unlikely, so that we all have to hope or pray that the crazy does not cause us or our planet irreparable harm while they die off.
The final gasp of this dying beast is disenfranchisement by which they can re-write the rules of voting to offset the inevitable decline. We will that battle as well, though it might prolong the death rattle.
eric
Just Some Fuckhead
@dollared:
Same shit as Republicans but with less guns, Jesus and vagina police.
Dolly Llama
OT, David Frum’s calling it quits.
Bubblegum Tate
The two responses I’ve gotten from wingnuts who saw the report:
“It actually makes sense giving the amount of lying propaganda the kids get day in and day out – but these things also have a habit of changing. As we trudge along towards Obama’s Depression and the kids get out in to the real world, we’ll have our opportunity to counter-act the lies.”
And:
“That couldn’t be in any way related to the lying, and mischaracterizations by the media, their professors, and the DNC could it?”
So yeah, it’s all the fault of “propaganda” and such. Close that information loop tighter, guys!
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Well observed. I know that I’m being optimistic, but I think that the GOP’s anachronistic tendencies are beginning to get the best of it. As Gertrude Stein so brilliantly wrote, “The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable.” Neither is salt.
Not Sure
Or they’ll just say, “aw, fuck it,” and pass more restrictive voting laws.
Dolly Llama
@Mr Stagger Lee: I hope it turns into the prom scene from Carrie, myself.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Dolly Llama:
Aw man, it’s a bummer, man.
Cacti
@Bubblegum Tate:
The GOP message cannot fail, it can only be failed.
seabe
Hey, Cole. 24 year old-voter here. What’s important to us:
1. Gays, gays, gays
2. Climate and environment
3. Anti-war
4. Anti-drug-war
To say nothing of dealing with student loan debt and jobs. Luckily for me, I have a job and I’ve paid off $45,000 of my student loans in a year and a half (lived at home for the first year). On schedule to pay them all off in two years. However, many of my brethren are not so lucky…especially those who can’t even attend college in the first place.
The GOP fails on all fronts. Not that I’d be supporting them if they moderated anyway, given that I’m a socialist and see Bernie Sanders as a centrist. Still, I don’t see them coming close to my generation; it’s going to be like when Reagan won the youth and ushered in a wave of conservatism (including from Democrats). Hopefully my generation will reverse this clusterfuck. For the first time, voters my age see socialism as favorable to capitalism. Everyone sees their own generation as “the one that will change everything,” but we’ve had such a rightward swing that it can only reverse, right? Hope springs eternal…
Sly
The nightmare scenario for the GOP is that they lose a majority of 18-30s on economic issues. And that nightmare is coming true.
The House GOP dicking with student loan rates certainly isn’t helping.
Of course, the report (by College Republicans, arguably the douchiest group of douches in the Republican Party) says that this is all just a “messaging issue,” and that if only the economic ideology of the GOP were presented the right way a majority of young voters would embrace their inner Gordon Gekko and begin worshiping private equity gurus and hedge fund managers like good little serfs.
lojasmo
@Gin & Tonic:
No they won’t. Rand Paul is a transparently phony asswipe.
MikeJ
@Bubblegum Tate:
I watched Ghost World last night and was looking up something about it on IMDB. The review was going on about how it was nice that the movie wasn’t full of lefty propaganda. There was a time when I would have thought that was out of left field Edroso documents the Soviet take on culture today’s Republicans have.
aimai
@Keith: Yes, I love the way the Politico report says, basically “we won the youth vote with Ronald Reagan and we can do it again” like the youth vote for Reagan isn’t now practically the doddering old people vote. You have to keep winning the youth vote and its always new youths. Do these guys not know how that works?
Todd
@Mr Stagger Lee:
I’ve not seen GoT, but I did catch a number of references in the past day.
Is it something like the theater scene from Inglourious Basterds, or the plantation shootup from Django? ‘Coz I could enjoy watching that….
muddy
@Jesse:
All you have to do is look the words up in the dictionary, changing your mind is a liberal quality, not wating to change is conservative. Res ipsa loquitur.
jl
@Bubblegum Tate:
Lord. I guess those comments are the GOP ‘outreach program’ from the base’s point of view. Good luck current vicious loon GOP. You made your bed, and you shat it, now you get to lie in it.
I don’t see how they can thread the needle. Rand Paul? He’s already trimmed himself out of serious libertarian pretensions just to keep his name as a possible primary candidate in 2016. It will be interesting to see what a hypocritical douche bag he will look like to stay a contendenda. Like he has a chance in hell of being the nominee anyway.
LarryB
@NickT: Hatred of education totally makes sense from their point of view. Education –> Empirical reasoning –> LIBRUL –> bad.
Cacti
@Sly:
Ding ding ding ding ding
The GOP’s economic policies are “comfort the comfortable, and afflict the afflicted” because poverty can only be caused by the moral failures of the poor.
Kay
@Not Sure:
They’ll have a restrictive law in place and operative in PA by 2014.
On the bright side, I think they’re done with voter suppression machinations in Ohio. They tried every possible tactic beginning in 2002, so we’re ahead of PA.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@lojasmo:
LOL! If this was the Seventies Rand Paul would be wearing white shoes and a white belt and working in some forlorn SoCal used car lot.
Suffern ACE
@aimai: No. it’s like the “I’m tired of throwing money at the problem” when “the problem” = schools. I mean we just educated a bunch of folks and now there are more. Every year more. It’s fruitless to spend money on first graders only to have to spend money on fist graders again next year.
Yes, the thought process runs this way.
muddy
@NickT: That’s a great mental picture, eek. They seem to be turning on each other in little ways though, which is new and delicious. I look forward to each new episode.
Trollhattan
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Dollars to donuts he’d try to sell used cars to his eye patients.
NickT
@Cacti:
“For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.”
pokeyblow
President Obama thinks Tom Coburn is awesome. He writes paeans to him for Time Magazine.
Give ’em Head, Barry!
RSA
@Bubblegum Tate:
Not to mention “outrageous statements made by errant Republican voices that are repeated over and over [ed: and over and over] in the media.”
It’s almost funny, the refusal to consider that it’s Republican policy that’s the problem.
I suspect that there are secret plans. I don’t know, maybe medical treatments that will make old white people immortal.
Mandalay
@Gin & Tonic:
I was gullible enough to have considered voting for him at one time, solely for his rational position on Israel, but they got to him, and now he just toes the GOP’s Zionist line.
And Mossad have assured the unprincipled little stinkfuck that they will leak some career ending photos if he ever steps out of line again.
Xantar
@Todd:
Or maybe that scene in the bar with the multiple Mexican standoff. That would do, too.
Cacti
@RSA:
They say “statements made by errant Republican voices”.
I say, Republicans who say publicly what they think privately.
fuckwit
@MattF: Easy. I was one of those. It was youthful white privilege. That was the punk and alternative generation. I was young, and angry (and white, and suburban). Angry because of a loss of white male privilege: peak oil in the USA (gas crises), being humiliated by Iran, inflation, Nixon’s sleazery, shitty economy. We got tired of hearing all the hippie PC shit, and we thought the generation which had been so bad-ass with the Weathermen and acid rock and all had become weak and emasculated and listening to Seals and Crofts. So the idea of a bad-ass white cowboy as preznit to come in and kick some ass was appealing. It was punk! It was metal! It was Ayn Rand and Rush! Fuck yeah! Woo hoo! Wall Street, greed is good! Fuck dem Russkies! America #1 GO TEAM…. all that rah-rah bullshit. Van Halen used the Blue Angels in their videos. Alex Keaton was born. It was entitled, macho teenage bullshit posturing, all of it.
That’s gone. Reagonomics turned out to be a fucking joke, and the only trickle down was the rich pissing in our mouths. The warmongering turned out to be just as stupid and useless, and destructive, and Iraq put that in stark terms. The culture warriors have been a disaster, and have come dangerously close to turning quite a few states into theocracies (no Planned Parenthood for you!). And the list goes on.
Obama, who was a young adult in the Reagan years and uses Reagan quotes and references in his speeches every chance he gets, put it very well: “we tried that, and it didn’t work”. That’s the best way to sum it up. He says it over and over again, because it’s true.
The Rethugs are out of ideas. All their supposed ideas are retreads, reactionary shit, stuff we’ve tried, and which failed miserably. The few workable ideas they’ve come up in the last few decades, they now go out of their way to destroy and fight… as soon as a Democrat dares to agree with them or implement them (heh, Heritage-care -> Romneycare -> Obamacare and now they hate it).
So, fuck Rand Paul and those guys. We’ve heard their shit before, we tried it in the 80s under Reagan, in the 90s under Clinton (as Michael Moore put it, the best Republican president we’ve ever had), and went all-in under Shrub, we saw where it goes. So hey, they can take their tax cuts and their “states rights” and their privatization and their “shrink the government till we can drown New Orleans” and their warmongering and their “faith-based” bullshit and shove them up their ass.
Todd
@jl:
In a couple of ironies, I’ll point out that the biggest shitholes in Kentucky are those dominated locally by movement conservative GOPers. The cities (aside from Lexington, which is afflicted by a demographic of conservatives who want to work in a city but hate people who are not white) are pleasantly livable. Louisville is quite urbane and is repped in the House by John Yarmuth, John gets 100% ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and a 0% from National Right to Life. He gets a 0% from the American Conservative Union currently, and a 1% lifetime from those assholes. NRA gives him a 0% rating, and the Brady Campaign 100%. On labor, he swings from the 70s to 100%. I’m only sad because I live in the shitty district in the next county, the one dominated by teatards from the suburbs of Cincinnati, and can’t vote for John until I move back into the People’s Republic of Louisville.
Bubblegum Tate
@MikeJ:
Man, ain’t that the truth? As Homer Simpson said, the ironing is delicious.
? Martin
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Well, this is why ‘class warfare’ rings so hollow when raised by the GOP. Class warfare requires some degree of segregation to be successful. It’s hard to back putting down minorities if some of your friends are minorities.
Not only are communities more diverse, and not only has the internet allowed people to stay connected outside of their geographic community, but things like twitter provide a much more unfiltered connection to people you know and don’t know, and allow more diverse relationships to form that would have been much more difficult previously. The segregation needed to support any kind of class warfare is increasingly difficult to maintain, particularly among young people.
Todd
@Xantar:
Desperado?
Kay
@lamh35:
The Toledo Blade had an editorial where they basically said the IRS scandal is bullshit.
Which it is.
They seized on the word “targeted” and were just off to the races, media. “Targeted” doesn’t mean “unfairly” all by itself.
It doesn’t even mean “disproportionately”.
We’re at the point where local media veers from national media in this narrative. It’s always disconcerting to me.
lojasmo
@pokeyblow:
You sure have an unusual concept of fellatio. Ted & Helen will be very disappointed.
pokeyblow
@lojasmo: That was quite a civil comment, coming from you.
Did you find a good outlet for your rage over the weekend? Perhaps tying two cats together and tossing them over a telephone line?
Todd
@fuckwit:
Yep. Everything was complete bullshit. Mostly American dick measuring, only we were too deluded to see it. Imagine the Soviets wanting to address problems in neighboring Afghanistan, which has regional clan ties to people in the Soviet stans. How dare they? And did anybody notice that morning in ‘Murka was only bright for gimmicky financial dudes who applied the air pump to S&Ls and real estate, while everything slid for everybody else? What about that so-called “black swan” stock dive?
Heresy! Reagan’s quavering, rickety, weak fucking voice saying “tear down this wall” was the steely resolve which kept us from being ruled by beetle browed commissars.
Mom occasionally asks me why I’ve come to despise conservatism so much. I always say that what success I’ve managed came despite them, not because of them, and that there’s never been some slick white businessman or conservative politician in a nice suit who has done anything to try and make my life (or hers) materially better.
Mandalay
OT, Geraldo couldn’t even wait for Lautenberg’s body to cool…..
In a world full of self-promoting con artists, this slimebag is the gold standard.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Todd: I could work with that, and have someone carve JFK or FDR on the forehead of Rand Paul.
Todd
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Actually, considering that it is a Paul, the imagery from the movie would do just fine, since that is the cause each of them serves.
NickT
@Mandalay:
“Do I look like Geraldo to you? Don’t lie to me like Geraldo, I’m not Geraldo!”
Omnes Omnibus
@pokeyblow: Have you become Corner Stone’s mini me? Perhaps you should consider getting your own schtick.
pokeyblow
@Omnes Omnibus: No. Lojasmo is clearly a sociopath, lacking self-control and burdened by an untethered, grandiose fantasy life.
I have my own schtick, which is basically to resist Obama idolatry (on the grounds that he is sickeningly open-handed toward republicans, who would happily see him swing at the end of a rope), and make jokes now and again.
If you want to give advice, perhaps lojasmo should learn that it’s not nice to tell people to fuck off and die in your first message to them. Why not have a chat with him?
Baud
@pokeyblow:
That’s not your own schtick. That’s a schtick shared by at least half of the people on so-called liberal blogs. It’s, like, years old.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@? Martin:
Good points. Although the manner in which people are connected to each other has undergone a sea change the fact remains that, no matter how trivial we may regard the connection, they are connected. I’m an Old Guy so I can’t feel this clearly. It is, I think, an ineradicable phenomenon and I don’t think that the GOP, like the government of Turkey, realizes how compelling it is. Most people enjoy feeling that they are a part of a greater whole to the extent that they can.
pokeyblow
@Baud: Fair enough. It’s a good schtick, that’s for sure.
muddy
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Ever read Mindkiller by Spider Robinson? It started out as 2 books and then he combined them in Mindkiller, I forget the original names.
NickT
@pokeyblow:
From your vast personal experience, doubtless you can explain just how someone can be
“burdened by an untethered, grandiose fantasy life”.
Give it your best shot.
Baud
@pokeyblow:
A lot of lefties seem to like it. Whatever amuses you.
pokeyblow
@NickT: Well, in lojasmo’s case, it’s simply a matter of imagined sufficiency.
pokeyblow
@Baud: Thanks for saying that. It’s a shockingly expansive gesture toward an unknown fellow human, by the standards of this blog anyway.
NickT
@pokeyblow:
So you don’t know either.
Well, there’s a shock.
pokeyblow
@NickT: Iambic pentameter. Scans nicely.
NickT
@pokeyblow:
And you can’t count to five either.
Yet again, no surprise there.
pokeyblow
@NickT: Don’t change!!
NickT
@pokeyblow:
And with that parting whimper, pokeyblow scurried off with its tail between its legs to seek consolation under the rickety-rackety bridge.
pokeyblow
@NickT: Do you know what iambic pentameter is?
NickT
@pokeyblow:
Child, you don’t know your iambic elbow from your trochaic ass. That’s why it’s so amusing to poke you and watch you blow your little stack all over yourself.
pokeyblow
@NickT: Sounds like no.
NickT
@pokeyblow:
Child, we’ve already seen that you possess vast depths of pretentious ignorance. Why do you even pretend to understand your own bombastic verbiage? Those words you like so much very clearly do not mean what you think they mean.
Patricia Kayden
@MomSense: I don’t think you left anything out. Point 4 needs to be amplified though since the Repubs are about to allow the interest rate on student loans to double.
pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june13/studentloans_05-31.html
RSA
@Cacti:
Exactly. And you can tell this from how these things tend to get walked back, if they even do. Reports appear in the press, accurate reports; people comment; only then do some Republicans say, “Oh, that was a mistake.” And others double down.
Ruckus
@aimai:
Do these guys not know how that works?
I’m not sure they actually do. Once you can dismiss. Three times starts to raise an alarm. Five thousand times and I think you have to conclude that they really don’t.
Ruckus
@Mandalay:
I was thinking of a lot lower type of standard. Something like the shit standard. I mean you are correct in that he does and always has exemplified the most transparent grifter. He is a most ridiculous caricature of a human being.
Scotius
@Ruckus:
Maybe they just need to improve their messaging and come up with a new slogan that will appeal to today’s youth. How about “Today’s GOP, come for the misogyny, stay for the homphobia.”?
StringOnAStick
Well, I hope the youthful voters are as progressive as we think they are.
Today I saw a rusty old SUV being driven by a 20 or 30 something with several bumper stickers, including “Ted Nugent for president”, “Does this ass (with photo of the Pres) make my truck look big?”, and “Going Commie” with both ‘O’s being the Obama campaign symbol. The saddest thing? The fact that there was a child’s car seat in the back, so apparently this crazy asshole is a breeder.
NickT
@StringOnAStick:
OTOH, consider the evolution of Jonathan Krohn. He didn’t turn out so badly.
Keith G
@dollared: I agree with you.
I will think that this post and others like it are genius when the youth vote leads the Democratic Party to victory in 2014. Until then, this is so much pissing into the wind.
The Democratic leadership needs more than charts and occasional, if pretty, oratory. The ‘kids’ may not support the GOP, but will they have an affirmative and heartfelt reason to vote Democratic?
Ruckus
@Scotius:
That certainly will resonate with a segment of the population. May only be the segment that it does now though.
cvstoner
Also, you know, actively disenfranchising them by making it harder and harder to vote.
superdestroyer
But no one on the left ever think about what politics will be like with only one relevant party, when federal spending goes above 40% of GDP, and where politics is about entitlements and how to pay for them.
Maybe progressives should be less snarky about the irrelevant Republicans and think more about the long term consequences of the one party state political stateand the growing entitlement state. What kind of people will want to go into politics with the only issue is being the tax collector for the welfare state.
Jebediah
@superdestroyer:
We’ve got a long, long motherfucking way to go before we become a generous welfare state. I’ll start worrying about that some time after I stop hearing about senior citizens taking their medication every other day because they can’t afford their pills AND enough food to stay alive. For such a wealthy country, we are disgustingly stingy.