I’m tempted to label this “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”… but the Heritage Foundation has always been weird, just in a very Beltway-friendly “scholarly” mode. Now it looks like the most evolved specimens of this parasitic tribe have decided to strip every shred of flesh off the bones of the dying beast before the poisoned ecosystem collapses completely. From the Washington Post:
FRANKLIN, Tenn. — It was a sleepy night in this historic town south of Nashville, but inside the ballroom of the local Marriott hotel, Michael Needham had more than 800 conservative activists on their feet.
“Can we defund Obamacare?” he called out.
“Yes, we can!” the crowd shouted back.
The rally was not the work of a tea party group or the local Republican congressman. Instead, it was produced by Heritage Action for America, the new advocacy arm of the venerable Heritage Foundation that is emerging as one of the most pugilistic forces on the right.
Such red-meat, campaign-style events have boosted Heritage’s standing with tea party activists, but they have also alienated many of the group’s longtime Republican allies on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, Heritage Action came out against President Obama’s proposal to launch military action against Syria, putting the group at odds with House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) and other GOP leaders who back the strikes.
The Republican Study Committee, a group of the most conservative House members, recently barred Heritage analysts from its weekly strategy meetings, where they had played a central role for years, according to multiple people familiar with the episode. The move came after noisy disputes over a farm bill and other legislation, which left many lawmakers feeling blindsided by Heritage’s positions.
“I pay no attention to Heritage Action,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who has accused the group of “destroying the Republican Party” with its push to strip funding for Obamacare. “They’ve become a purely partisan group that never asks anybody’s opinion.”
Since its founding in the 1970s, Heritage made its mark primarily as a purveyor of conservative ideas, exercising influence through dense policy papers and expert testimony. But through its new Heritage Action arm, the group is transforming itself into an overtly political force — scoring legislators on key votes, training “sentinels” to track lawmakers’ activities and marshaling loud rallies aimed at forcing Republicans to act….
GOP strategist Brian J. Walsh, a former communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the Heritage approach is encouraging “fratricide” within the party. “There are a number of people who are frustrated, because what may be good for Heritage Action’s fundraising or growing its mailing list is not necessarily good for the Republican Party heading into 2014,” he said….
MattF
And this:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/republican-lawmakers-retaliate-against-heritage-foundation-20130828
Heritage is poisoning the well, and… it turns out that the other well-poisoners don’t like it.
I don’t quite get De MInt, though– is he crazy, or is he crazy-like-a-fox?
Baud
@efgoldman:
No shit.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
I suspect he’s laughing all the way to the bank, and that’s the most important thing. The Republican Party has been completely taken over by grifters, and they’re all complaining because somebody else is cutting in on their share.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Who the hell is running this outfit, William Stryker?
the Conster
Parasites killing the host? Popcorn!!
geg6
@Roger Moore:
This exactly. Happily nothing good for the GOP can come from this.
gene108
@MattF:
Interesting article.
I didn’t know the Republican Study Committee and the Heritage Foundati9on were started at the same time by the same person. I knew Heritage was set up to put an academic veneer on right-wing ideology, but I didn’t realized they worked so closely with Congressional Republicans.
fuckwit
It’s the Grifter’s Opportunity Party.
Yeah, sure, the Heritage Foundation is fired upto defund Obamacare, a program BASED ON A PROPOSAL BY THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION.
Their reality has lapped our satire.
Keep fucking that chicken.
Also, what’s with the name? Did they deliberately rip off the name of Organizing for Action (the Obama campaign’s post-campaign grassroots org)?
Groucho48
Be interesting to know if it was a free event or not.
Eric U.
where do I send money?
Yatsuno
Anyone else calling bullpuckey here?
Xecky Gilchrist
“I pay no attention to Heritage Action,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) […] “They’ve become a purely partisan group that never asks anybody’s opinion.”
That utterance must have been hard to force through his neck.
ETA: @Yatsuno: Absolutely.
Belafon
The first Newsmax link cracks me up: McCain: Obama Would Be Impeached for ‘Boots on Ground’ in Syria. From the article:
The same man who thinks we need to drive Assad out of power is throwing up the “impeach” signal?
Shakezula
Only if compared with the guy standing downtown with the poster board display outlining how the Elders of Zion are secretly putting mercury in our frosted flakes.
I think the progression to red meat flinging is inevitable for any conservative group. What else can they do now that they’ve declared that any Democratic policy you care to name will cause the sky to fall in? Declare maybe things won’t be so bad after all? They can’t back down. And by putting on a big show they get a chance to dip into the rubes’ pockets.
Roger Moore
@fuckwit:
Sure, but that’s because the original Heritage Foundation proposal wasn’t a serious attempt at HCR. It was just a counter-proposal so Republicans would have something to point to as their market friendly alternative that justified voting against Clinton’s plan. Of course, that was back in the day when they were worried enough about people reading their stuff that they had to put together a plan that would actually work, rather than just making a PowerPoint presentation with made up numbers and miracle math.
Suzanne
@Shakezula: And they can’t really try to credibly re-establish any intellectual subculture in the party after siding with the God-botherers and abandoning academia and scientific research to liberals.
They really have done their best to separate Us from Them. That was a great strategy, until they realized there were more of Us.
Yatsuno
@Suzanne:
No, no, no. See, that’s just the librul media feeding you lines of bullshit. There are ALWAYS more conservatives than libruls in Merika cuz we are always and forever a center-right nation FUCK YEAH!!!
Davis X. Machina
@Belafon: I think we can hammer out a compromise where McCain doesn’t impeach, and Obama sends in the ground troops… to Kosovo.
Woodrowfan
“A l’exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants”
MattF
@Woodrowfan: I can’t imbed Art like what’s-his-name, but:
ETA: Linkee didn’t work. Saturn Devouring his Children, by Goya
Suzanne
@Yatsuno: you’re absolutely right that they try to convince themselves of that.
I hear so much rah-rah from them about how they will win elections because they are (supposedly) larger in number, but very little about how what they believe is better for EVERYONE. It’s very telling. They seem to think that they already have the tribe in place, and that no one else needs to be convinced to join in. I think that’s why they were able to delude themselves that the polls were wrong and Romney would win.
The thing is….the Dems don’t have the kind of locked-in unified tribe the Rethugs do, and if the R’s weren’t so focused on hating the black man in the White House, they could probably peel some of the Dems off. But they haven’t yet realized that.
Yatsuno
@Davis X. Machina: Grandpa Walnuts must have his blond replacement for Cindy ready to go (she is getting a bit long in the tooth after all) and needs to get his war on so he can get it up. Better than any little blue pill for the old warmonger it is!
@Suzanne: The fault is always with the traitors, never with their policies. Conservatism cannot ever fail, it can only be failed, and those that refuse to vote in the right fashion only contribute to that failure. When approached with that attitude, why should they change. Our policy is perfect, the problem is YOU! And then they wonder why they lose.
Keith P
The GOP fed the beast, and now it’s outgrown its cage. Schadenfreude.
scav
innnttterrresting. Group of individuals banding together to agitate for their own strictly enforced self-interest driving the larger organization into the ground? Sounds like what they think them there dreaded unions † did to the big three and Detroit.
† I really do want a squiggly italic font suitable for indicating scary flashlight-under-the-chin voice here. Add that to the longstanding ironic and snark font request.
Woodrowfan
@MattF: Yeah, I thought of Goya too. Imagine Ted Cruz as Saturn and Carl Rove as the child being eaten
feebog
The have to know they are pissing up a rope with their defund Obamacare BS. I wonder how much money those 800 rubes gave to the cause.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore: and @fuckwit:
Pretty sure their version was heavy on the mandate and light on the insurance regulations and cost controls that are most of the ACA. Those are why the traditional corporatist GOP hated it before hatred of the Kenyan Usurper spread insanity to all levels of the party.
MattF
@scav: However, there is ‘rumble’ and ‘shudder’:
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2013/08/a-light-has-gone-out-on-the-web/
rk
the Heritage approach is encouraging “fratricide” within the party.
I heartily approve of fratricide in the republican party and hope it’s followed by suicide.
Chris
@Suzanne:
Sure they have, there’s just nothing they can do about it. Karl Rove realized as far back as the 1990s that he had to work on making inroads into Democratic constituencies, specifically Hispanics, and he did it with some success. The Tea Party Movement erased all these inroads and then some, and is vigilantly watching to ensure that no one else tries that again.
The only Democrats they can peel off anymore without tripping the teabaggers’ alarms are middle to upper class white dudes. Unfortunately for them, these people are a less and less significant demographic, both among Dems and in the nation overall.
EriktheRed
As I’m sure a lot of you here are as well, I’m totally rooting for injuries.
Chris
@EriktheRed:
This. As is always the case in inter-Republican conflicts. There is no “reasonable” or “moderate” element left in the GOP worth rooting for. Just hope they do tons of damage to each other.
scav
@MattF: Oooh those would do nicely, would they were available here. I promise to use them with restraint and bring them back with their tanks full.
opiejeanne
@Yatsuno: I remember the first time I heard someone say that to me, and I laughed at him. It was back in 2007. Still makes me laugh when I remember all the BS attached to that statement, and which was proven wrong in the election.
Ben Franklin
@Chris:
The only Democrats they can peel off anymore without tripping the teabaggers’ alarms are middle to upper class white dudes. Unfortunately for them, these people are a less and less significant demographic, both among Dems and in the nation overall
Bullshite. There’s plenty of erosion from both parties on the issue of surveillance and Syria. Libertarian, both conservative and liberal, have begun to emerge as allies in the push against traditional party bullshit and outright lies..
TriassicSands
I love the smell of GOP fratricide in the morning. Here’s hoping that Heritage Action is successful in tearing the Republican Party apart and leaving its stinking corpse rotting in the sun for all to see.
These are such horrible people — willing to allow millions of Americans to die, suffer, and face financial ruin because they can’t afford health insurance (or at least not worthwhile insurance). In a civilized society, this kind of brutal extremism would be limited to a tiny sliver of the population, rather than being the mainstream in one of this country’s two major political parties. The amazing thing is that right wing zealots are so crazy they aren’t even willing to compromise with each other.
brettvk
@Woodrowfan: Somehow I think Karl would be very chewy – you’d hear lots of gnalr-gnahw noises. Much flourishing of toothpicks following.
Woodrowfan
so long as it’s not a murder-suicide with the US as the battered spouse.
srv
Obama is tearing the Republican Party apart with his devisiveness and warmongering! How many babies must die at the alter of partisanship?
opiejeanne
@scav: Snark and sarcasm and irony were represented by using red for the lettering on another site I used to frequent. It worked well, but we don’t have the option of color here.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT but an update on Flossie’s snake bite and Skeeter got fixted.
http://crittersbybritty.com/2013/09/08/puppy-update/
Ben Franklin
@efgoldman:
What? You think you’re ideas representative? Hang with Obama for another week and see.
Yatsuno
@opiejeanne: I believe it dates back to the halcyon days of Saint Ronaldus Magnus, when the Republicans looked like the majority in the White House until the end of time and conservative policy was the dictum of the land. Even with that there were cracks in the facade. Ronaldus never could get his genius to get him a Republican Congress, but by gawrsh he tried.
Chris
@Ben Franklin:
The NSA and Syria, eh? Those are the big defining issues that’re finally going to peel off thousands of Democratic voters?
Thank you for so eloquently making
my point.
srv
@efgoldman: You just wait until all those angry old white guys and young neck beards march to Galtia!
geg6
@Chris:
Heh. Exactly.
Ben Franklin
@efgoldman:
Nope. But I think a lot of political blogs (including this one) are representative
JC on rubber crutches! This is about the only blog treating NSA disclosures and Syria as ancillary issues with a priority on LGBT, rape and congressional opportunities. Did I forget recipes? Sorry, but your representation, as a blog contribution is as valid as my Rewards Card from Target.
Ben Franklin
@Chris:
You have no better idea what my demographic is than Obama does who gassed Syrian citizens; and with the same level of deluded conviction.
Morbo
Damn, man, when you’ve lost Tom Coburn…
Ash Can
::munches popcorn::
Yatsuno
@Ash Can: Don’t be bogarting all the fluffy corn goodness now!
@efgoldman: My dear sir, you’re being trolled.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Yatsuno:
On this here blog? I’ll alert the media.
eemom
OT: Has SG been around at all today? Hope his daughter is ok.
Snarki, child of Loki
@srv: I just can’t wait! Is there anything we can do to speed up the process?
Put capsicum in their Maalox, for example?
Chris
@Yatsuno:
Don’t always assume the worst. Some people really and sincerely are that thick.
shelly
” It was a sleepy night in this historic town south of Nashville, but inside the ballroom of the local Marriott hotel, Michael Needham had more than 800 conservative activists on their feet.”
******
Enter that sentence in the next Bulwer-Lytton contest.
Yatsuno
@eemom: Been watching for any word on Book of Faces, my guess is he’s at the hospital right now focusing on that.
@Chris: Past history from the commentor also was included in that evaluation. Ol’ Benny is pretty notorious for insincere argument and facile commenting, especially when he starts losing.
Ben Franklin
@efgoldman:
Demographics was Chris…ethnocentrism is your problem.
Reading is also your problem.
Yatsuno
@efgoldman:
I r quite disturbed now…
Ben Franklin
@Yatsuno:
I r quite disturbed
Better now…
kc
@MattF:
He’s crazy.
kc
GOP strategist Brian J. Walsh, a former communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the Heritage approach is encouraging “fratricide” within the party
Gee, that’s just too bad.
Mike in NC
Please proceed, wingnuts.
Ruckus
…the Heritage approach is encouraging “fratricide” within the party.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of assholes. And it can’t happen soon enough.
Ben Franklin
Incremental change….those extra pennies in our pocket add up over the long haul…huzzahh !
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/320909-jarrett-pledges-administration-support-to-finish-silica-rule
Chris
@Yatsuno:
Sustained.
Belafon
@Ben Franklin: And all of the people that visit all of the political blogs, both left and right, combined would be lucky if they reached the audience level of MSNBC. I step outside of my house and I hear squat about these issues.
Another Holocene Human
No comment. None needed.
Another Holocene Human
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Hey Ben Cisco (you must be Sisko’s computer hacking genius non-evil twin from an alternate universe?) I just found out that AVERY BROOKS played Solomon Northrup (as in, 12 Years A Slave) in a 1984 PBS production (back when PBS was AWESOME and showed boobies after 11pm!) directed by the director of SHAFT. Apparently it ended up being kind of weak sauce although some said it was more realistic than ROOTS. So there’s that!
Does anybody know if it’s been uploaded to Youtube or available anywhere else, legally or … erm..?
Ben Franklin
@Belafon:
They aren’t interested in the nuance, but they do understand there are unnecessary secrets and they have been lied into one war. It’s always been a stipulation in USG that the Public has a short memory, but they underestimated this time.
Gravenstone
@Chris: Nah, Benji is pretty consistently disingenuous.
Ben Franklin
@Gravenstone:
Oh stop sucking on the local kneecaps. It’s beneath you. And it’s why you are stuck here with nowhere to go.
Another Holocene Human
Btw, they should make movies of all the slave narratives. A) because people need to know this shit … a lot of stuff that was TRUE in Django, for example, got dismissed by the audience because it was presented amidst so much fantasy, and B) because the drama and adventure level is high and it would just make a good movie, and C) because I think nothing humanizes slaves than hearing their experiences in their own words, but especially D) because people need to KNOW this shit, and they don’t, it’s our legacy as Americans but most have only passing knowledge of Douglass, if at all, and Douglass was, well, a Django-level badass of saga-proportions who was also more political than Malcolm X, iow, not exactly Mr Representative here. and E) why the frack isn’t Douglass a major motion picture already, like maybe 20 times?!?!? You could have different biopics for different portions of his fucking life. Malcolm X gets a movie and that dude should like be the subject of weird postmodernist stage plays, but Douglass? Dude found out as a child it was illegal for him to be taught how to read and he sorted that shit out. We joke about Chuck Norris but Douglass actually was all of that.
He doesn’t sleep. He waits. :)
debbie
@efgoldman:
It’s the same kind of delusional thinking they had when they thought Sarah Palin was a good idea.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: Poor conservatives, always accidently creating good government programs because those dumb liberals forced them into it, like Paul Weyrich and the Virginia Railway Express.
No snark, VRE is much better run than the commuter rail programs in MD and NY, much bluer states. VA has done a lot of stuff wrong in my lifetime but there were a couple decades of pretty wonky and almost evenly matched tension between parties and philosophies that resulted in a less corrupt and better crafted intergovernmental model than what happens in a one-party-rule/patronage environment.
I think racial injustice is more important than getting suburban commuters a nice commuter rail, okay let’s just make that clear, but there are some real downsides to partisan tribal screaming match politics, even if they DID start it.
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
I’ve read that Danny Glover had been trying for ages to get a film made about the life of Toussaint Louverture (not the U.S, but many similarities) and hasn’t been able to get anyone interested. I wouldn’t mind seeing that one.
Another Holocene Human
@Suzanne:
Like an abusive spouse or guardian, they believe that the object of their hate, contempt and violence has condemned themselves by being offered their philosophy of freedumb and rejecting it.
Note how stridently the Rombots cawed about the African-American vote following the election. Proof that they are bad people and deserve everything they get from here on out.
Martin Luther had the same history with the Jews. Look it up.
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: what is this notion that (serious) race movies won’t sell
tired of weak shit being served up (white guy has to star or whites won’t see it? when you use black stars all the time to make mega blockbusters?)
Red Tails was a freaky trainwreck (planewreck) of a movie thanks to George Lucas being nutso and it still made money. I saw elderly white folks in the theater I went to.
A good story is a good story… many feel Denzel stole the show in GLORY which won critical and popular acclaim. If holocaust movies are okay why are movies about slavery times off limits?
Suzanne
@eemom: I have been thinking of him, too…..if you hear anything, please let us know.
Nothing is worse than sick/injured kids. Nothing.
opiejeanne
@Another Holocene Human: I was disgusted with Martin Luther when I read about what he thought a woman’s role was, and I’m not talking about Kinder, Kuchen etc.
A wife’s duty was to die in childbirth, and her husband’s duty was to make sure she did.
Anne Laurie
@Another Holocene Human:
Hell, I’d love to see at least one good movie about Frederick Douglass, and let’s not forget Sojourner Truth (and her revolver) or Harriet Tubman.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that the good non-PoC directors/scriptwriters/actors who could get the bankrolling started are afraid of threading the narrow passage between “too preachy” and “stealing other peoples’ stories”. Spielberg, IIRC, wrongfooted this with Amistad and the takeaway for less-powerful Hollywood wasn’t “be more careful”, it was “stay away from African-American history”. So all the important, powerful stories are left to open exploitationists like Tarantino.
And when anyone asks why Denzel Washington or Forrest Whittaker or Angela Bassett or Halle Berry can’t front a historical movie, the guys with the checkbooks hasten to point out that the “global marketplace” in India/China/Russia ‘won’t pay’ to see American history on screen, especially history that needs translation more subtle than Hero Hits Bad Guy, Look! Titties! And Then Stuff Blows Up…
Chris
@Anne Laurie:
… and they’ll use this excuse even though Lincoln and too many other movies to list did just fine.
IowaOldLady
@Another Holocene Human: I saw Red Tails in a theater in Nowhereville, Iowa and it was full, mostly of old white folks interested in WWII.
Anne Laurie
@Chris:
Of course Lincoln (despite what his enemies said back in the day) happened to be a White Guy, just like Daniel Day-Lewis.
Maybe if Spielburg can convince Oprah Winfrey to take on Sojourner Truth? Especially if the scriptwriters can find a ‘sympathetic politician’ character role for Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, an/or Benedict Cumberbatch?
I got it — Idris Elba/Taye Diggs as Sojourner’s forgotten-by-history love interest! (Yes, I’m that desperate. Tell me you wouldn’t pay to see that, ladies… )
schrodinger's cat
@Anne Laurie: They did make Gandhi in the 80s which went on to win 7 or 8 Oscars. Gandhi was not American but neither was he white.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie:
I would suggest Cry Freedom, but Kevin Kline was the lead not Denzel Washington.
Anne Laurie
@schrodinger’s cat:
… and even at the time, some people complained that Ben Kingsley was only half Indian, and guilty of “passing” to boot, so he was taking an Oscar-bait role away from a real Bollywood star. I don’t think this was any more realistic than the more recent idiocy about whether President Obama is “really” African-American, but if people with money are looking for an excuse not to take chances, they’ll weigh every bitchfest against the outside chance of winning awards, I’m afraid.