(Ben Sargent via GoComics.com)
So, let’s attack a target we can all agree deserves it. From Alex Pareene, at Salon:
Ted Cruz does not care about you, Republican “grown-ups”
… To all these critics, the only reasonable response is, hope you enjoy this bed you made for yourselves. Ted Cruz is the right man for the decadent decline stage of the conservative movement, which has always encouraged the advancement of fact-challenged populist extremists, but always with the understanding that they’d take a back seat to the sensible business interests when it came time to exercise power. The result has been a huge number of Republican activists who couldn’t figure out why the True Conservatives they kept voting for kept failing to achieve the creation of the perfect conservative state once in office. That led to an ongoing backlash against everyone in the party suspected of anything less than perfect ideological purity. Meanwhile all the crazies got rich simply for being crazy. There’s no longer any compelling reason, in other words, not to act like Ted Cruz, and the result is Ted Cruz…Ted Cruz just won the Colorado Christian University 2016 straw poll and he will be a featured guest at Erick Erickson’s “RedState Gathering.” It’s working. Your “logic” won’t interest him.
Corner Stone
There’s nothing wrong with Ted Cruz, per se. It’s really just his owners’ fault at how he misbehaves.
The prophet Nostradumbass
It’s a good thing one of the two of you checked first.
Yatsuno
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Seems only fitting. He stomps on AL all the time. It’s blog tradition at this point.
Honestly, I’m resigned to a long vacation at the start of October at this point. The crazies are driving this bus and they won’t stop it until they get exactly what they want in exactly the way they want to get it. We just get to sit back and watch them wreck stuff, because until 2014 ain’t jack and shit that can be done.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Yatsuno: Notice, I wasn’t blaming either of them :-). that said, I bet AL scheduled this one hours ago.
I assume you’re thinking of another government shutdown clown cavalcade, with the October bit?
Cassidy
Wow! Deleting comments again? WTF has happened to this place?
Anne Laurie
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Notice the “Green Balloons” tag…
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Anne Laurie: I must admit, I don’t usually look at the tags, but, touché.
Yatsuno
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Oh yeah. The Great Carrot can’t lead his caucus to the toilet at this point, and Cruz and company are just stupid enough to not even agree to a CR. Never mind the fact the Senate budget has been sitting waiting for reconciliation since April and it does have all the ACA funding included. It’s gonna be a mess, Grandma ain’t gonna get her SS check, and it will just blow up from there.
@Anne Laurie: Snerk. I luvvers u.
The prophet Nostradumbass
A half an hour ago, it became my birthday, woo-hoo. I am so excited.
Yatsuno
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Hippo Birdie Two Ewe! You share this birfday with the 44th President of the United States.
Joseph Nobles
Ted Cruz and the Tea Party are reminding me more and more of how the Klan rose to political prominence in the 1920s. Everything was fine by the conservative pols they and other America First/100% Americanism groups supported until the Klan started winning elections. Then they were a threat to the corporate/monied interests that had benefitted from their mania up to then.
I’m most familiar with the way this played out in Alabama, being from there, but there were quite a few states where this happened. Indiana had open (or open secret) Klan members in government before Alabama did! The Big Mule (Birmingham)/Little Mule (Mobile) coalition was able to take control of the delegates to 1928’s Democratic convention and help make New York Catholic Al Smith the 1928 nominee, but it caused open rebellion back home. They muscled down on the Klan and pretty much killed that particular brand of white populism (for a while), but none of those people stopped supporting what the Klan was selling. They just got their names off the Klan’s membership roles, joined other high-minded 100% Americanism groups, and toughed it out.
And now their descendants in blood and mind are Ted Cruz’ bread and butter. As of yet, I’ve seen no sign that Cruz will be able to change his spots like Bibb Graves did and thus maintain his political power. But then again, why should he? Palin has led the way out of Egypt into the Promised Land of chicken dinners and speaking fees. Nice cash if you can ignore the stains on your soul.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Yatsuno: I do indeed! And Roger Clemens (ick)
Anne Laurie
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Happy birthday, and many happy returns!
piratedan
well you have to admire how these guys have worked the system that has been busy pandering to them. Doesn’t mean I loathe them any less, but there is a certain beauty in how they’re not afraid to press their advantage since the know the game is rigged for them. Kinda like the Cobra Kai sensei telling his students to sweep the leg. The scary thing is, I’m sure these guys sleep well at night, assured in their righteousness.
Yes, It’s Obama’s fault that the sequester happened, crickets chirping amongst the media, yes, it’s the President who’s abusing the system here, silence begetting silence, phoney baloney scandals, the economy showing signs of life despite all of the best attempts to strangle it in its sleep and nary a single network schlub will say the truth.
All we can do is patiently await South Carolina to open fire on the IRS branch in Charleston……
BillinGlendaleCA
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Happy b-day nostradumbass.
Suzanne
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Happeh! You and BHO. That’s pretty cool.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Yatsuno:
Whatever you do, don’t transfer to Charleston.
BillinGlendaleCA
Nice light trace I took on Thursday:
Ventura Highway in the Summertime
MattF
It’s semi-amusing to look at what Serious People were saying about Cruz before he showed up in the flesh and in the Senate. “Oh, he’s so smart, he’s so popular, he’s the new generation”. Whatev. Look in the mirror folks– no there there, and no one votes for nothing.
Evap
Funny thing, I become a federal govt employee (temporarily) next Monday. Good timing, right?
SiubhanDuinne
@The prophet Nostradumbass: And Her Late Majesty the Queen Mum.
Happy birthday!
dance around in your bones
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Do the hippy-hippy shake!!
I mean, Happy Birthday to you – but do the hippy hippy shake anyway! Because today is your birthday and you’re gonna have a GOOD time!
(I know, excessive use of exclamation marks).
StringOnAStick
@Joseph Nobles: Interesting information on the similarities of the 1920’s Klan to today. I suppose some of the people who watched the HUAC hearings and the bleating of that particular McCarthy had similar thoughts as well. The paranoid style in American politics seems to have a 40 to 60 year periodicity as far as major outbreaks of wide-spread crazy go.