EvenTheLiberal New Republic‘s Julia Ioffe examines “President Rand Paul“:
It was the first time in recent memory that the Iowa GOP Lincoln Day Dinner sold out nearly two weeks in advance, and it was on the strength of its headliner, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who, in turn, was invited on the strength of his 13-hour filibuster against the Obama administration’s use of drones. During the happy hour at a small Cedar Rapids hotel, local donors stood in line to have their pictures taken with Paul, almost completely ignoring their own congressmen, Representative Steve King and Senator Chuck Grassley. They had come to see Paul, and he got a standing ovation before he even started talking…
Agreed in advance: Rand “Thanksdad” Paul is a mean, half-bright legacy pol mostly interested in keeping the family grift machine chugging along for a new generation. And yet the last time the GOP found one of these smarmy Texan gated-community good ol’ boys to figurehead their presidential ticket, he garnered enough suckers’ votes to steal the Oval Office… twice. Don’t think Randy hasn’t learnt from Dubya’s “compassionate conservatism” schtick:
… And yet, in Iowa, Paul wasn’t completely content with easy applause. He didn’t even mention the IRS. What he really wanted to talk about, he told the crowd, “is immigration.” Earlier, King and Grassley had sounded defiant, nativist tones, condemning the moderate legislation suggested by the Senate’s Gang of Eight. Paul, however, voiced his disagreement and laid out his own proposals to reform work visas, secure the border, and legalize the migrants that are already here. The room grew noticeably quieter. “I also think that, as a party, we need to grow bigger,” he said to an audience that was entirely white, save for a lone Sudanese immigrant. “We’re an increasingly diverse nation, and I think we do need to reach out to other people that don’t look like us, don’t wear the same clothes, that aren’t exactly who we are.” The GOP, he said, needed to be more respectful. By this point, the crowd was silent.
Later, Paul told me that it was a good silence, the silence of people listening. “The Democrats have done a better job of being a party of people from all walks of life, and we need to do that,” he said. “We need to have working-class folks, we need to have people with earrings, nose rings, tattoos, ties, without ties, ponytails, no ponytails. One of the things where my dad was successful, was when you went to his rallies, you saw people from all walks of life.” And by the time Paul was done speaking that night in Cedar Rapids, by the time he showed that appealing to minorities was, also, a matter of utility, a strategy to once again become “the dominant national party,” the crowd was again up on its feet, hooting and applauding….
There’s a long dissection of how Paul slapped around Mitch McConnell, and McConnell’s formidable Kentucky political machine, not to mention many details of his current Senatorial behavior and the opinion of his Congressional peers. (Spoiler: They think he’s a spoilt show pony, not a team player, and seventeen kinds of a pain in the arse. And that’s the Republicans.) But Rand Paul isn’t interested in being a Senator for life, and it sounds to me like he’s aiming to replicate the success of a certain short-term Senator from Illinois:
… Because none of Paul’s measures ever pass, it is easy to dismiss him as a grandstander. “He’s essentially a non-entity as a legislator,” says the Democratic staffer. But Paul isn’t interested in an illustrious Senate career; he’s using the Senate as a platform to launch something far bigger. The kooky legislation? Perfect messaging to the base. Refusing to play by the Senate’s clubby rules? Exactly what the Tea Party sent him to Washington for. “His ideas are not brilliant, but he has an understanding of where the country is,” says the Republican staffer.
The biggest test of Paul’s larger ambitions is his relationship with the Republican establishment. If he wants to win the nomination, he needs the party’s power brokers; if he wants to keep his Tea Party credibility, he can’t appear too cozy with them. Many in the traditional conservative establishment—particularly the foreign policy hawks—have been wary of Paul, but they have come to recognize, and fear, his growing power. “I have to give him credit for political entrepreneurship,” says Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, describing Paul’s tactics as “demagogic.” “I think [the Republican establishment is] nervous about him; that’s the one thing about him I kind of like,” Kristol adds. “They think he’s got some real clout out there with the grassroots, which is why I’d say they’ve bent over backwards to be nice to him.”…
Remember, Bill Kristol is the man who brought Sarah Palin to national attention — she didn’t get McCain into the Oval Office, but she demonstrably made a difference (for the worst) in the politics of the last five years. I repeat myself: You can’t take your eyes off these people, not for a minute.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I’m surprised this post didn’t trigger those “STAND WITH RAND” ads about suing the NSA.
Chris
“I’m not a firm believer in democracy. It gave us Jim Crow.”
Funny, I thought the definition of Jim Crow was abolishing democracy in favor of a system in which only the right people were allowed to control policy. And that abolishing Jim Crow involved allowing everybody to vote, or as some of us like to call it, “democracy.”
David Koch
Can’t you imagine Baby Doc as the nominee. hahahahahhahahha, Cuomo would win 50 states.
rda909
Rand Paul getting the Republican nomination would be the end of the modern Republican Party for generations. Please proceed, Ayn Rand Paul.
David Koch
I wonder how all the greenwald’s apologists are gonna spin his endorsement of the racist, sexist, homophobic Baby Doc?
handy
Isn’t there a strain of Paulianism that advocates for the repeal of the 17th Amendment? Figures this guy would out himself as a
champion of the notion of the benevolent philosopher kingfascist.handy
@David Koch:
Yeah, that’s how it would go down.
srv
I am sure Rand will be the only candidate with a slate of abortion jokes.
You people have no idea of his genius.
SiubhanDuinne
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve got a “HEAR RON PAUL LIVE!” ad over at screen left.
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
If he can keep the conversation on his strengths, he’ll do fine. Drone strikes are not popular. Foreign wars are not popular. The idea that the young people will come back quite popular. Letting those banks fail next time – also a winning issue. Replacing the currency with gold? Ummm…,about that.
MattR
@Chris: There is that. And then there is the fact that his argument seems to be that a constitutional republic is better than a direct democracy. But the states that passed Jim Crow laws did so as republics, not democracies.
David Koch
Bitcoins!
David Koch
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound:
Last week’s NBC poll found Drone strikes have 66-16 approval.
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
@David Koch: I meant domestic drone strikes. Except on liquor store customers with too much change in their pockets.
David Koch
@srv: don’t forget the fag-bashing
kuvasz
Its just a big family business grift.
piratedan
a preening ignorant would be President Stillson, that’s who this fucker is.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@David Koch:
#STANDWITHRAND
piratedan
and because thinking of that sanctimonious cuntweasel causes my blood pressure to rise…. here’s something a bit more uplifting, open thread be damned…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to2KasivROc
Chris
@David Koch:
Must be that conservative humor I’m always hearing about.
I can now say with some degree of certainty that my entire generation is about to see the light, instantly do an about-face on all these issues, and join the in crowd of these stylish, hip, cool, trendy, in-vogue, new-wave conservatives.
(Pssst – don’t forget to say “groovy.” With the kids these days, that word’s the rage).
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Chris: Bitchin’
Short Bus Bully
@David Koch: Please proceed Senator Ayn Rand Paul.
Get that man a microphone!
Nothing better for the Dems than GOP jokes…
Villago Delenda Est
By all means, let this vile sack of neo-feudalist shit take center stage at the Republican National Convention in 2016 or 2020, and lead the Bircher vermin the way of the Whigs.
mdblanche
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound: Charlie Pierce’s five minute rule is hereditary.
aimai
@SiubhanDuinne: “Hear Ron Paul Live” sounds like a palindrome in search of a meaning. Ir what happens when you play a Beatles album backwards.
amk
This nut will get as many votes as his nuttier dad did in all his ‘runs’. The end.
Narcissus
@aimai: I think you mean an anagram. Like “Piranha Love Lure”.
MeDrewNotYou
@Narcissus: I like “Palaver Unholier” myself.
aimai
I think its important to remember that when these people say “Democracy” they mean “the massess”–the demos and the populus, the mob. Someties they are thinking of a white mob but they think of it from an aristocratic point of view, sometimes they think of it as a non white mob and then they think of it from a ruling white people’s point of view. But no one should ever think a right wing libertarian has anything but the utmost contempt for democracy, small d or big D, because democracy implies rights for everyone else besides himself. And it is that which is anathema for the libertarian.
JPL
Rand Paul is dangerous to our way of live but watching Cruz and Paul on the primary circuit would be entertaining.
Just One More Canuck
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Far out, man
Triassic Sands
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Bingo! The ad appears prominently in my browser.
Baud
The essence of Republican politics: Convince the marks that you’re lying to everyone else.
amk
@Baud: It’s not very difficult to get the teabaggers’ votes once you get over the rethug primary. Witness mittbot, who got all the racist votes in GE. (and thankfully still not enough)
But paul sperm won’t get over the rethug primary. Just like his sperm donor dad.
EriktheRed
@piratedan:
Kudos for the Stephen King reference.
Matt McIrvin
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I’m getting the one about how “Americans for Progressive Action” wants me to vote Republican in the Massachusetts special election.
The Tragically Flip
I am so tired of this straw man of “democracy” being used to justify plutocracy. There is no pure democracy anywhere. Every system requires representative govt to some degree. How those reps are chosen, and by which parts of the population is what decides whether a country is democratic in the useful, nonfantasy sense of the term. Republic means ” of the public” so if your idea of a republic is not democratic, then it is also not a republic.
cvstoner
Yes, but those “other people” are a lot smarter than you think they are, and they will never buy what you’re selling — eternal servitude to the white oligarchy.
As did a certain other gentleman who ended democracy in Germany for a while. Anne is right in that you can’t take your eyes off these people, not even for a minute.
The Tragically Flip
Shorter me, above: Contrasting democracy and republic is like contrasting “breakfast” against “fried eggs and bacon” – the latter is just an implementation of the former.
cvstoner
@The Tragically Flip: Indeed. If not democracy, then what?
Todd
Wonder if Glenn Greenwald will write an article decrying security tactics on this one:
http://gawker.com/-513947629
Somehow, I doubt it.
Omnes Omnibus
@cvstoner: I can think of a few (well, more than a few) who wouldn’t mind a nice theocratic plutocracy. Some might want more theocracy, others, more plutocracy, but I am sure they would be able to work with one another.
jeffreyw
@cvstoner: More like sausage and eggs.
polyorchnid octopunch
@aimai: Evil Ear Pron Haul?
Betty Cracker
I have a hard time believing Baby Doc could get elected to any office that required appealing to voters who are not hardcore wingnuts and Papa Doc fans. It’s not that the electorate is particularly discerning. It’s just that Baby Doc comes across as such an arrogant, smarmy prick.
I never bought GWB’s plain-spoken cowpoke schtick, but at least it made sense as packaging. Baby Doc presents himself as a Nietzschean superman from an Ayn Rand master race bodice-ripper wrapped in a Nietzschean superman from an Ayn Rand master race bodice-ripper package.
I can’t see that flying on a national level, but yeah, Baby Doc bears watching all the same.
Todd
@Omnes Omnibus:
And it is doable – we can leave couple of unenforceable trappings of freedom around while stripping any potential malcontent of the ability to enforce them (which has been the focus of Roe-despising right wing libertarians for the past few decades). The illusion would remain, and we could all tearfully sing some Lee Greenwood at government subsidized megachurch grand openings.
In practice, it would look like the banana republics in the 40s and 50s, but with a lot of shitty redneck praise music.
Davis X. Machina
@Betty Cracker: Doesn’t really matter.
An R after your name, and the floor is 45% of the popular vote, when the popular vote is what it usually is….
The trick is to make sure in any give year the right people stay home.
Ramalama
@The Tragically Flip: That’s a great analogy. I’ve wandered into forums with people espousing all kinds of nonsense (for fun) and got into it a couple of times over this very issue, democracy v republic. I’m going to use this!
Betty Cracker
@Davis X. Machina: What you say is certainly true, but I’m not sure it accounts for the wild card in this scenario, which is low-info voters who only vote in presidential elections and treat their sacred trust as if it were a ballot for a reality show.
For these people, likeability is everything, and sometimes it redounds to our favor (Obama vs. McCain and then Romney) and sometimes to our misfortune (GWB vs. Gore and then Kerry). Baby Doc’s arrogant, sourpuss demeanor wouldn’t do the GOP any favors in an election that these voters swing.
I often wonder how Christie would fare with this group. The Villagers love his “bipartisan” schtick. But would the Jersey bully boy act play in Dixie, which is the core of today’s Republican Party? I have my doubts.
MomSense
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound:
He’s totes fine with dronez now–even domestically.
jonas
@Chris: Pretty much. This is like the old canard that “you know, Hitler was elected,” etc. No he wasn’t. And Jim Crow was an attempt to *suppress* democracy by legally codifying white supremacy. Now, if he were trying to make the point that governing purely via popular referendum can have bad outcomes, that’s one thing — majorities sometimes hold terrible opinions and are ill-informed. But that’s why we have things like checks and balances, judicial review, republican representation, etc. As far as Rand Paul and his father are concerned, as long as anybody but the federal government is trampling on your rights — states, local police, corporations, etc. — they could not give a shit.
MomSense
@MomSense:
April 22nd on Fox Business Rand said this.
“I have never argued against any technology being used against having an imminent threat, [or] an act of crime going on,” Paul said, referring to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him.”
Shakezula
Even in his Big Tent messaging, this fucknugget’s idea of diversity sounds like a Creed concert + an ABA convention.
Face
Since we’re already halfway thru Obummer’s first year of his second term, isn’t it time to start bitching and moaning about Diebold voting machines and their hackability?
raven
@Shakezula: He couldn’t spell Mullet.
YellowJournalism
@MomSense:Ah, I see now! If someone comes near you with a gun on them, we must assume the worst and strike at them with as lethal force as possible. Unless, of course, you’re a black teenager with a hoodie on.
NickT
@MomSense:
Rand Paul, making moderately impoverished liquor-store visiting concealed carriers happy everywhere.
Punchy
@Todd: I have 2 Brazillian friends, so I realize that the plural of anecdotes is not blah blah blah, but both have told me in very strong terms that Brazil is not ready for the WC next year, and these kind of demonstrations are just a precursor to some really ugly shit that will go down before the games kick next summer….
raven
@Punchy: And that’s just a lead up to 2016.
MomSense
@YellowJournalism: @NickT:
And then of course the next day he said he wasn’t talking about armed drones–just surveillance with drones. I guess he thought the drone would kamikaze the liquor store bandit. In Rand’s world white guys with guns are not an imminent threat–problem solved.
Kay
@Shakezula:
It doesn’t though. The only interesting thing he said (to me) is “working class”.
It’s buried underneath all the bullshit about people with earrings and ponytails and “diversity” but Rand Paul is worried they’re driving away white working class voters.
That’s not “reaching out” or “growing the base” and it’s not “demographics”. That is a good chunk of their CURRENT voters.
He’s not the only one saying it, either. Santorum and Romney campaign said it too.
They’re worried about it.
Gex
Those “people of all walks of life” that go to see his dad probably only differ from the usual GOP crowd by being young white males instead of old white males. And they probably wear t-shirts and earrings. But to act as though those things are markers of people “different” than the GOP base… Well, I doubt that Ron was getting people like me. Every car with a Ron Paul sticker I’ve seen has been driven by a white man.
Betty Cracker
@Gex:
Same here. In the run-up to the election, my teen daughter and I played a modified version of the license plate game during road trips, trying to guess vehicle occupant demographics from political bumper stickers. Ron Paul stickers were assigned the lowest point value because they’re just too damn easy.
Citizen_X
@aimai:
I buried Ron Paul.
shortstop
Smarmy means obsequious, ingratiating, flattering, unctuous…I can think of a lot of negative adjectives with which to describe Paul, but this isn’t one.
I’m also not getting the “Texas good ol’ boy” thing. Paul doesn’t do that “I’m just an unpretentious lover of domestic beer, wheeled sports and ranchin'” act that Bush did. He doesn’t play up the rural thing, slap backs or bond warmly with other human beings. He basically gets in front of assembled crowds or cameras and unemotionally tells people how things need to be, talking at them rather than to or with them. This works because he hates and disdains the same people his audiences hate and disdain, not because of any good ol’ boy camaraderie he has with his followers.
“Gated community” you can have.
gocart mozart
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I can see a Stand With Rand Ad on my computer. You must be using one of those Lie-bral-Fascist Commie-puters.
donquijoterocket
@The Tragically Flip:
There really is no contrast.At the time those words came into use they were pretty much interchangeable and there was really no word for government of,by,and,for the people.Might not be yet since that’s not what we’ve got and RP and the Paulistas would take us further away.
MomSense
@Gex:
The Paulian liberty club is pretty exclusive. They don’t care about equal pay for equal work, reproductive rights, the Civil Rights Act, etc.
gocart mozart
Where does that quote come from?
Shakezula
@Kay: For a given value of worried. When I worry about something I take positive steps to alleviate that worry (first by determining if the worry is valid). When the GOP is worried about something, they talk about it a couple of times and expect that to solve the source of concern. All they’re doing is adding the working class (whatever that means to doucheclogs like rebRand) to the long list of people they think should vote for them, but for some reason, don’t.
Of course, we might see more of an effort to connect with the (white) working class, but that will no doubt entail lots of brown bashing.
Shakezula
@gocart mozart: rebRand the Man:
From another stop on his outreach to African-Americans by insulting the living shit out of us to our faces tour
cvstoner
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ll guess I’ll have to trust the Founders on this, since our government was initially set up to reject both theocracy and plutocracy.
Or so they said at the time :-)
Jay C
@Kay:
The GOP should be worried about that “[white] working-class” vote. 30+ years after they (fronted by Ronald Reagan) locked it up for themselves with their patented toxic stew of racism, hippie-punching and macho nationalism, they’ve (finally!) noticed that said demographic is “aging out” (i.e. dying off), and their classic shtick of resentment politics is becoming a case of preaching to an ever-shrinking choir, and getting staler as every year/election cycle goes by. Today’s “working class”, in most of the country, is likely to be much less-pale, much less enthralled to prejudice, and WAY better-informed than preceding generations of voters. Rand Paul is right to notice the erosion of Republican support with that group, but to get significant electoral support with the nation at large, the GOP is going have to offer them something more than Objectivist Superman posturing and glibertarian boilerplate.
Which, of course, they won’t……
Boots Day
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Rand Paul that if half the population is systematically excluding the other half from any political participation, then that ain’t democracy.
Lawrence
Could the DLC cough up some money to have Ru Paul crash all his appearances and try to worm into the entourage. There are plenty of credulous teabaggers who could be fooled into believing this was part of the “diversity” Rand/Ron was talking about.
burnspbesq
@kuvasz:
Bullshit. Show me one scintilla of evidence that Paul’s misguided beliefs aren’t genuine and sincere.
Mnemosyne
@jeffreyw:
Or spam, eggs, sausage and spam.
cmorenc
@Annie Laurie:
WADR you badly misunderstand and underestimate Paul here. First, the basis of his motivation is that he is a true believer in glibertarian conservatism, and has no personal need of any “grift machine” in the manner of e.g. Palin. True, he benefitted in gaining a foothold in libertarian-Republican politics by being the son of his well-known Texas father, but Rand established himself in a completely different, geographically distant state, Kentucky. SECOND: Paul is a highly intelligent man, but one with a narrow-minded cranky frame of understanding the world. You see this sort of mentality a lot in physicians, especially regarding their understanding of the larger world outside medicine. Third, Paul wouldn’t simply be some figurehead for the real power behind him like Dubya was, Paul is a movement leader, perhaps more cynical and cunning than his dad, and would frustrate efforts to control him.
DON’T GET ME WRONG: I am definitely NOT a fan-boy of Rand Paul, nor of his brand of glibertarian conservatism. He’s a true-believer ideologue and a bit of a crank like his dad, even though bits here and there of his libertarian philosophy are attractive (end the war on marijuana). He’d be outright dangerous to the country if the presidency fell into his hands. Nevertheless, DON’T underestimate him, especially in the manner you wrote above, which is a HUGE mistake.
rikyrah
who the fuck is stupid enough to believe that Rand Paul
is a firm believer in democracy?
1. He has no problem for my Black ancestors and me to still be drinking from Colored water fountains
2. He wants all up in my uterus
If you’re not a White Male, he doesn’t even acknowledge that democracy should exist for you.
Chris
@Jay C:
Yep.
I don’t know if the white working class overall votes Republican or Democrat, but I do remember that they tend to lean more heavily Democrat than their wealthier counterparts, especially outside of the South.
Another Halocene Human
@David Koch: He’ll spin himself as an anti-racist neocon who understands that Plato’s Republic tells us that only a storied elite can lead a murderous rabble like the American people. See above.
This is a steaming load of American Bison poop, but who’s counting?
Mike E
@Citizen_X: Paul is dead, miss him miss him miss him.
Chris
@cvstoner:
Theocracy yes, plutocracy… ehhhh… They did restrict voting by class as well as by age and race, and the Constitution itself contained a whole slew of passages that were basically there to make the life of plantation owners (the 1% of their day) easier.
It wasn’t the Soviet Politburo, but it did have some oligarchical traits to it.
Another Halocene Human
@Chris: single white women, when they vote, vote Democratic
Also, too, those who didn’t graduate college vote D in aggregate but I’m sure there are regional effects, if you know what I mean. I looked at Massachusetts’ exit polls and a healthy majority of white males voted Obama so clearly other states went even more heavily R to give Romney the advantage with white males.
Chris
@Chris:
… I meant to say “by gender and race.”
@Another Halocene Human:
I buy that.
Another Halocene Human
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound: If he can keep the conversation on his strengths, he’ll do fine.
Disagree. He will be spinning like crazy to keep the conversation OFF of things he’s said for years.
Drone strikes are not popular.
But he only cares about drones in the US, which, guess what, Law Enforcement is buying various kinds of drones to a collective meh. As for drones in warfare, the people who care about that are the 1-3% who voted Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson anyway, so I guess the Democratic Party neglects them at their peril, hurr hurr.
Foreign wars are not popular.
Yeah, lotta Democrats currently in office really clamoring to start another foreign war right now. That’ll put a real red line between him and any D POTUS candidate.
The idea that the young people will come back quite popular.
Huh?
Letting those banks fail next time – also a winning issue.
Uh… no. The people that care the most are the same “fiscal conservatives” who threw tantrums at the end of Bush II’s reign and rejected Obama early when he kept Geitner on in Treasury. Note: NOT the Tea Party Express. They’re a bunch of racists who only seized on “Debtttttt!” when “that one” took office. Guess what, most of those fiscal conservatives are now, oh, D voters. I went to one of my old online haunts for shits and giggles and, remarkably, it was not given over to Ronulans. Instead, there was an acknowledgement that Ben Bernanke was right.
Here’s the thing: I was an Austrian-sympathizer. Reality smacked me hard in the face. It smacked a lot of other people in the face too. Keynesianism triumphed.
Wouldn’t it be great if we broke up too big to fail and actually regulated CDS effectively, etc? Sure. But crashing the economy is not the way to do it. We need to get the money out of politics, honestly. Obama has pushed for incrementally more progressive taxation and that is a necessary but not sufficient condition for this to happen.
Replacing the currency with gold?
The thing is, most people sense that this is wingery, but they don’t understand why. Gold will put the currency into a deflationary spiral and basically kick any recovery we have going on in the teeth. It probably would hurt banks because it would be cramdown time on creditors. Of course, the people agitating for this think cramdowns are unconstitutional or something and think debtors getting their debt reorganized in a bankruptcy is criminal somehow, not to mention immoral and a conspiracy.
Ted & Hellen
Hello? We don’t live in a democracy anyway, folks.
It’s a half ass Republic, remember?
Ted & Hellen
@kuvasz:
Would you agree that this is also true of the Clintons?
If so, could you link to the last time you called them out on it?
Thanks.
Another Halocene Human
@aimai: a dictatorship would be good if I were the dictator
Another Halocene Human
@Todd:
Love the weasel language. Is this like a “race riot” where one race attacked but the other one gets blamed for being “unruly”?
Another Halocene Human
@jonas: And Jim Crow was an attempt to *suppress* democracy by legally codifying white supremacy.
Jim Crow wasn’t ushered in democratically. It was a terrorism campaign and a serious of violent coups.
Rand Paul can go #$*(&)*&@[email protected]#@#^%$#
Another Halocene Human
the Party of Lincoln sold African American Republicans in the South down the river
think about that the next time some shithaid GOPers start preening about their civil rights record
Kay
@Jay C:
Well, that’s the “long game” demographic changes that Democrats love and always focus on, but that isn’t what they’re worried about.
White TURN OUT was down in Ohio in 2012. The voters they already have. Middle and working class white people. They need a huge chunk of that vote.
Another Halocene Human
@Punchy: You know, we keep hearing about these tech gajillionaires pumping money into Brazilian favelas blah blah. Well, I visited NOLA which has also had a bunch of celebrity real estate investment. The place is a morose shithole, with a couple of very rich enclaves. You go back in the neighborhoods and it’s online gambling dens and liquor stores, all the way down. (Also, signs advertising the best and biggest po’boys, heh.)
This tech-zillionaire fantasy that their vaunted jeenius can save people from themselves is utter crap. Louisiana needs progressive taxation and to kick the oil industry in the nuts. Period. I saw beautiful public schools from another era with charter school banners across the front. Ugh. And we know in LA that charter schools can consist of showing kids DVDs all day long. Double ugh.
It’s a way to preserve privilege while rationalizing a way to think of themselves as really great people. The TED approach to poverty.
I am more and more convinced that the GINI index is all that matters.
Kay
@Jay C:
If you put Santorum and Paul together -and Santorum is RIGHT when he says they have no populist economic message- they are worried about holding GOP voters, not just replacing older voters with younger ones.
It was Santorums whole argument in Ohio. We all focused on the religious part of his spiel, but what he ran on in the OH GOP primary was populism.
Huckabee says it too. It’s a problem for them. What’s interesting to me is Rand Paul saying it, because I don’t think there’s any way in the world to jam libertarian into populist. Paul can TRY but there’s just no way to get there from “libertarian”
Matt McIrvin
@Another Halocene Human: Not only that, the folks who are biggest into gold seem to also be opposed to fractional-reserve banking, which strikes me as a pretty huge exception to their love of freedom of contract. Right or wrong, it’s pretty dirigiste to insist that banks aren’t allowed to do the thing that has allowed banks to function since the 17th century.
Kay
@Another Halocene Human:
There’s a good piece in the NYTimes about tge “miraculous” school reforms in New Orleans.
Test scores are up, but reformers cook the books on scores and there’s been a terrible unintended consequence. They’ve decimated the black middle class in New Orleans, because they were the public employees, and reformers privatized all that work and replaced them.
It was so freaking arrogant to go into that city and upend it. NOW, ten years out, they realize public employees were the AA middle class? Whoops!
Chris
@Kay:
“That just proves they were all parasites and they need to learn to stand on their own two feet…”
rikyrah
@Kay:
I disagree with you Kay…that was the entire point…
Shakezula
@Another Halocene Human: You know that, I know that, even the GOP knows that. But when you’re a few knives short of a steak set, and you work from the assumption the average African-American is dumb as a stump and wouldn’t dare to contradict the white man, it is easy to repeat the message that we should ignore the GOP of the present, and vote based on their past.
A few months ago one of these knuckleheads tried the same thing with the Suffrage Movement. I expect we’ll hear more of that as the GOP searches for a fig leaf for its war on women.
Kay
@rikyrah:
It makes me furious. They won’t be able to sustain the test score gains because it’s based on drilling the kids on test prep, and having 25 year old teachers work 70 hour weeks for two years before they burn out and quit.
How nuts do you have to be to think clearing out the middle class in a city HELPS kids?
These kids go home at the end of the day. They LIVE there.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
One of my friends at work has been telling me mordant jokes (at least, I think they’re jokes) about kids who went to school under testing regimes who go to job interviews and answer every question by saying, “C! The answer is C.”
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
I get so tired of people who went to school in the 80’s and 90’s telling me “I didn’t mind standardized tests!”
I didn’t mind them either. They’re the only thing I did well on. But we’re not talking about 80’s or 90’s testing. We’re talking about ONE THIRD of their time in school spent testing or prepping for tests.
Debbie(aussie)
@David Koch: Well from this person that agrees with a lot of what GG writes, it would be to tell Glenn he had it wrong. Rand is wrongggg…….. About to many things to even think he might be sincere about ‘national security’ ( after the drones and the shop lifter) . Rp is libertarian racist nut bag
fuckwit
@rikyrah: The Bush Administration’s response to Katrina was basically ethnic cleansing.
fuckwit
@Another Halocene Human: Deflation is great if you’re rich. Deflation is death if you’re not. Guess why the wingnuts love gold so much? It’s deflationary. It’s the same reason why Bernacke tries to keep the dollar deflationary (well, techincally, they are trying to keep it neither deflationary nor inflationary, but it’s effectively deflationary).
This by the way is the fundamental flaw in Bitcoin too: it’s deflationary, so it’s a pyramid scheme, whomever buys coins now (or already has) is going to do great, whoever tries to buy in when it’s expensive is fucked, if they can even get any.
Old rich people have stored value and want it to retain, or grow, its value– deflation is perfect for that. People who are poor need inflation in order to get old rich people to INVEST their money– lending it out, putting it in stocks, donating it for the tax deduction, etc– instead of just hoarding it and having it sit there idly, doing nothing.
Deflation is death to economies. There’s a reason why there was such a thing as a “cross of gold” speech (look it up).
Another Halocene Human
@fuckwit: oh yeah, I know about “cross of gold”. It was mentioned in my schooling but I never understood the context until years later, so I feel if others got the same useless gloss it really lacks any persuasive power.
Also, WJB was kind of horrible.
dsale
@aimai: Not a palindrome, an anagram. “Hear Ron Paul live” = “Unreal Viral Hope.”