Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

So many bastards, so little time.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Republicans in disarray!

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Monday Morning Open Thread: Clown Car Redux

Monday Morning Open Thread: Clown Car Redux

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gop clown car toles
(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)

Happy Monday! From Professor Krugman, “Republicans Against Reality“:

… How did the G.O.P. get to this point? On budget issues, the proximate source of the party’s troubles lies in the decision to turn the formulation of fiscal policy over to a con man. Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has always been a magic-asterisk kind of guy — someone who makes big claims about having a plan to slash deficits but refuses to spell out any of the all-important details… What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away.

When it comes to fiscal policy, then, Republicans have fallen victim to their own con game. And I would argue that something similar explains how the party lost its way, not just on fiscal policy, but on everything.

Think of it this way: For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told — for example, that the government is spending vast sums on things that are a complete waste or at any rate don’t do anything for people like them. (Don’t let the government get its hands on Medicare!) And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to…

What makes this frightening is that Republicans do, in fact, have a majority in the House, so America can’t be governed at all unless a sufficient number of those House Republicans are willing to face reality. And that quorum of reasonable Republicans may not exist.

***********
Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, what’s on the agenda for the start of another week?

Reader Interactions

37Comments

  2. 2.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    McConnell he has a kidney stone, he’d refuse to pass it

    Well, that explains his pained expression.

  3. 3.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Oh, great Morning Ho is going to talk about a cheater in a city I don’t care about in a sport I don’t give a fuck about. When does college football start?

  6. 6.

    Hal

    Hey GOP! I have a great idea for creating a lasting political party. Try gerrymandering district so that you have to be an incredibly conservative Republican to get elected. It’s a surefire way to have a congress that is capable and works incredibly well together.

  10. 10.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @raven: I was thinking content as well. “Check to Weiner”? Even Scar didn’t get it. Is Yurtle running against the daughter or her dad, he seems confused.

  15. 15.

    WereBear

    Small, but significant event:

    I live in one of those New England Republican districts; the Democratic website is usually a pathetic mess. And there’s an election where the former Mayor is running unopposed.

    As an Independent. Not a Republican.

    The Republicans truly have lost the North.

  16. 16.

    NickT

    @WereBear:

    This is what is so frustrating – that the Democrats can’t even get their act together enough to run a credible challenger, not to mention fixing their crappy website. What’s wrong with the people in that district?

  20. 20.

    Elizabelle

    Raven (and all): Good morning.

    Raven: did you succeed in making contact with Dennis/Higg’s Bosun Mate? Are there any updates?

    It’s cool September weather this morning in Northern Virginia. Crisp. Eerie, really.

  21. 21.

    Botsplainer

    I’d like to make a request to AL, Mistermix, John or anybody else from the moderating team to delete that thread from yesterday in order to safeguard some aspect of the man’s privacy in what was for him, a very unguarded, raw moment.

    Also, it may not be helpful to him to be able to revisit that comment as he recovers, because it may cause a rush of those feelings he had.

  25. 25.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:

    I live a few hours from Kentucky and am HIGHLY motivated to go do some canvassing and volunteer work against McConnell.

    Campaigns can generally find (often very nice) supporter housing for you, and you get a lot of meals at HQ. Quite an inexpensive trip, save for gas and incidentals.

    I’m thinking Turtle Senator No has personalized this campaign for a lot of us. And he’s vulnerable.

  26. 26.

    aimai

    I don’t understand the impliction that this kind of smoke and mirrors accounting and governance are at all new things for Republicans. Doesn’t anyone remember David Stockman, FFS? And after him we had Bush’s “fuzzy math” and his assertion that Social Security was nothing but “paper IOUs” in file cabinets. And of course we had Dick “we proved deficits don’t matter” Cheney. Ryan is just one in a long line of mathematical and accounting frauds.

  27. 27.

    daveNYC

    Well, technically the trust fund is just paper IOUs in a filing cabinet (or the digital equivalent), but there is the minor point that those paper IOUs are US treasuries. I loved the fact that Bush was so gung-ho to privatize Social Security that he was willing to call US sovereign debt ‘worthless’.

    And this from a guy with a Harvard MBA, speaking of worthless paper.

  28. 28.

    low-tech cyclist

    It’s much worse than Krugman says: it isn’t just that the base believes the stories they’ve been told for the past eon or two, it’s that a hefty proportion of the GOP contingent in Congress grew up on those stories and believe them. So they’re retelling these stories because they believe them, and it’s become a self-perpetuating con.

    It’s like a very perverse mathematical induction proof.

  29. 29.

    Ahh says fywp

    Worse than Krugster thinks: GOP base won’t react in rage that they have been lied to when the truth is told. Instead, they will burn the heretic.

  35. 35.

    handsmile

    I was away for an offline weekend and only this morning I am learning about what transpired here over the past few days.

    Far above all else, the immediate and compassionate response of this community to HBM’s crisis last night is one of the finest and most inspiring moments I’ve encountered since first participating here in 2010. Much of the best of human virtues has been sadly called upon and abundantly evidenced on this blog in recent weeks.

    On a rather different emotional note, now that the magnificent Peter Capaldi has been selected as the latest incarnation of Dr. Who, I guess I’ll finally have to watch that show.

    Best wishes for a satisfying week to all fellow Juicers!

  36. 36.

    Trollhattan

    @NotMax:
    Gosh, I’d missed that. This makes my daymonthyear. Can’t describe what a helpless feeling that was, being witness to the orignal thread.

  37. 37.

    Ken J.

    @Villago Delenda Est: One of my favorite sayings for years is that Reagan’s legacy to America was destroying the ability to talk rationally about public finance.

    The House Republicans’ inability to stomach the appropriations cuts called for in the Ryan budget — well, we’re there.

    The downside is that we are now approaching the sort of failed-government conditions which put us on a path to a military coup.

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