I wish more people told this like it is (and Barro’s still a registered Republican):
How Many Decades Do Republicans Get To Jerk Us Around On Health Care?
Ross Douthat thinks I’m too pessimistic when I say Republicans will never support constructive proposals on health policy.
Given plenty of time and patience, he says they might enact a positive health care agenda.
Of course, that’s also what they say about monkeys and typewriters and Shakespeare.
Tom Edsall asks how the conservatives got so radical. His answers range from fairly insightful socio-psychology to liberals drive a car like this beep beep, conservatives drive a car like this BEEP BEEP, but the real answer is simple: they got this radical because they could. Conservative “intellectuals” like Douthat and Irving Kristol will go along with whatever crazy shit they think might help conservatives get elected, ostensibly nonpartisan pundits like Ron Fournier will say “both sides do it” no matter what either side has done.
There just hasn’t been much incentive for conservatives to be non-crazy or non-radical, not for many years.
Villago Delenda Est
Strnen? What’s that? Were you shooting for “Strained”? Or perhaps “Strange”?
On the topic at hand, the reason the Rethugs won’t support constructive health care policies is that they are egalitarian in nature, and they want to return to a feudal order in things. The 99% need to be made to suffer just because.
They are the people that Orwell warned us about.
Cervantes
Cf. Overton.
Liquid
Down with GDI!
Alexandra
I bet Sarah Palin gave a few ‘moderates’ some considerable pause for thought in 2008.
Pooh
broke first link
Doug Milhous J
@Pooh:
Thanks, I fixed it.
Snarki, child of Loki
“Of course, that’s also what they say about monkeys and typewriters and Shakespeare.”
Change that to “monkeys and typewriters and Liberal Fascism“, and it seems FAR more likely that the GOP will squeeze out a healthcare proposal, that “has never been made in such detail or with such care”
Villago Delenda Est
@Alexandra:
Peggy Noonan’s reaction to the announcement of Palin’s nomination was caught by an open mike, and it was in essence “McCain just lost the election”.
Ahasuerus
Hi Doug. Fix your first link please.
And I can’t think of anything that’s more a waste of time than paying attention to Ross Douthat.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think he meant
strnlen.Villago Delenda Est
OT, but amusing: “Why would Conservatives want this video banned?”
Hint: there are no actual babes in another Obamafreakout Reactionary Fantasy video.
Also, this video “went viral”, which explains why they have to advertise it here…
Jose Arcadio Buendía
No disincentive other than losing the last 3 out of 4 elections, right?
schrodinger's cat
They haven’t paid enough of a price for their shenanigans so far, so they continue to get worse. In addition to the Republicans themselves, their enablers in the media share the blame as well and so do the “independent voters” who don’t pay enough attention.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
What the fsk? That’s seriously geeky.
schrodinger's cat
What the hell is strnen? Is that German. We only speak Merikun here.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Villago Delenda Est: No, he typed ‘strnen’ and he meant ‘strnen’.
Liquid
@Villago Delenda Est: I read “just lost his erection.” Well, If I didn’t need a borax shower before…
NonyNony
@schrodinger’s cat: @Villago Delenda Est:
You know, I guess if you have to explain the joke, it ceases to be funny.
I thought it was funny, DougJ, FWIW.
(Who knows though – perhaps DougJ has himself been replaced by a finite number of monkeys the way the Republican Party seems to have been replaced.)
scav
Eventually the monkeys clue will sink in . . .
(srsly, I thought the place was full of very early Apple adopters)
Alexandra
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, yeah. I’d also add as another refutation to MrJ’s hypothesis are utter fuck-ups like Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.
No price paid there.
schrodinger's cat
@NonyNony: To be fair to DougJ, I think we need infinite monkeys to replace him, while for the Republicans a finite number will do.
The Moar You Know
Well, as it turns out about 27% of the populace hates people to the point of sociopathy, but almost all of them lack the courage of their convictions. Say what you will about the guy, at least Hitler practiced what he preached. Rare to find that degree of honesty in this group of puissant cowards.
They join the Tea Party instead, pack concealed weapons, and pray they get to be the next George Zimmerman while electing people who promise to raze America to the ground and salt the remains.
Really, it was inevitable.
Culture of Truth
They got that because a party of a dimishing base going to at least Joe McCarthy /Goldwater / Nixon / Reagan threw in its lost with resentful whites, and hitched his wagon to a star of voters who knew they awere angry of about something a lost American of pure values, which was unleashed to a torrent. with the election of a true boomer with political skills and unleashed id and educated wife, and exploded with white rage with teh success of a guy with the middle name Hussein. They not merely took advantage of this fury, they encouraged it. Now they just can’t put this insanity toothpaste back in the tube.
Jose Padilla
Older whites have become radicalized as a consequence of the prospect that whites will son be a minority in this country.
chopper
@Roger Moore:
bqhatevwr. it’s a perfectly cromulent word.
NotMax
Is there some esoteric joke or reference I’m not getting from the post title?
strnen?
Ee Pleb Niista.
schrodinger's cat
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: That is a seriously cute monkey!
schrodinger's cat
@Jose Padilla: But then so will every other group. They will still be the largest group in the country.
Pete
@Villago Delenda Est: This is the name of the Mekons first album, which features a monkey on the cover sitting at a typewriter. See, he *nearly* got the Shakespeare right, but not quite. A+, Doug J.
Pete
Shorter comment 29: comment 16.
RaflW
Which is why they struggle to gain the presidency, and rely on a mix of non-presidential election cycles and voter suppression to win or keep their seats.
Progressives need to focus on state races for the next decade or more. 30 years ago that’s how the GOP started building this longterm wave. But the wave is breaking, and opportunities are opening up, if Dems (and even moderates) are ready to act.
NotMax
@Pete
Bob Newhart did it first (and funnier) ages ago:
“To be or not to be, that is the gazornenplatz.”
mdblanche
It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?!
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Just checked my favourite online German dictionary for “strnen”, and it came up empty.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@NotMax: When Doug is involved, always look for a music reference.
KG
@Alexandra: I’d split my vote quite a few times, but was a registered Republican. I’d been slipping away through the aughts, during the disaster that was the Bush Administration. But Palin was definitely the last straw for me.
PeakVT
but the real answer is simple: they got this radical because they could.
I think this reason is one of those necessary but not sufficient kind of things. Sure, with better a better media or a better populace, they wouldn’t have become so crazy, but there’s still the issue of why the “thought leaders” made the choices they did, and why so much of the public responded.
ThalarctosMaritimus
@NonyNony: I also thought it was funny.
Now, I’ll kill the joke by explaining it: the monkeys got it right, up until they blew it on the very last word, so they have to start all over.
Well, *I* LOLed.
ranchandsyrup
I’ve been asking myself, “Self, why do you get so giddy when a pundit or politician feints leftward or toward telling it like it is?” I know they’ll just pull the football away when it comes to something that matters.
scav
@NotMax: 1979 for Apple Here (if linkage works as designed). They went with Hamlet.
Trollhattan
Thanks to the Wonkette, I’m newly aware of Motivational Biden. Now U kan B 2.
https://www.facebook.com/MotivationalBiden?directed_target_id=0
NotMax
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Frankly, between you and me and the lamppost, I rarely understand the rationale behind any Doug post unless he’s getting a kickback from blood pressure medication manufacturers.
Villago Delenda Est
@Liquid: @Pete:
Thanks, folks. Now it all makes sense.
To me, at least, a very obscure reference.
Liquid
@NotMax: It’s not that he’s drunk. It’s that he’s tired from being up all night drinking.
glocksman
@Alexandra:
Living as I do in Evansville, Indiana (home of Mourdock) I’ll throw in my $0.02 about him.
When he ran for 8th District Congressman he espoused the standard conservative positions, but wasn’t full on teabagger at the time.
He lost. Thrice.
Then he went on to run for and win a seat on the Vanderburgh County Commissioners.
I actually voted for him the first time because his opponent was a total tool and IIRC, corrupt to boot.
He started to fly his freak flag after he won by injecting anti abortion politics into local issues (zoning IIRC).
After that I didn’t vote in the Commissioner’s race the 2nd time around because I couldn’t stand both candidates.
His attempts as treasurer to cover his ass (those bonds were called Junk Bonds for a reason) and derail the Chrysler bailout may have won him the nomination as a tea party darling, but IMHO it helped cost him the general election, as the auto industry and associated suppliers are major employers in this state.
Personally I preferred John Hostettler to Mourdock as far as conservative Repubs go because at least you always knew where Hostettler was on the issues and he surprised me by being one of the very few Republican Congressmen to vote against the Iraq war.
Turgidson
@mdblanche:
Beat me to it.
NotMax
@scav
1979?
Bob Newhart, 1960.
scav
@NotMax: Dates! Brilliant, I love the hard little factoids. So pre-show, which is the only place I saw him. Thanks.
Villago Delenda Est
@Culture of Truth:
This. Also, there was an active effort in the 70’s and 80’s to convert the GOP into the “conservative” party by purging those nasty Rockefeller Republican types who were not ideologically pure, who had this obscene sense of noblesse oblige that was repellent to true “conservative” sensibilities.
They mostly succeeded, now they’ve got people who quote Jeebus, son of Mammon, instead of Jesus, son of Jehovah, and well known liberal Democrat.
Roger Moore
I think this is incorrect. They got this radical because it’s effective in the short term. Each election, they get the base excited by lying about what the Democrats are doing and promising to stop them, and by lying about what they’re going to do. It works well for each election, but the lies have to get more outrageous in order to have the same effect. Over time, that results in them drifting further and further from reality. What’s even worse, when they started the project, the people doing the lying were cynical manipulators who knew they were lying to whip up the base. Now the party is run by people who became Republicans because they believed the lies, so they aren’t even aware of how far from the truth they are.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Not much incentive for conservative pundits, talk show hosts and other infotament types. The problem is the Republican party has been captured by a bunch of entertainers who have no interest in actually governing.
hoodie
@PeakVT: They got this radical because there really is no genuine interest group left for them to represent except people who indulge in various forms of paranoia. Their original farmer/small town burgher base has dwindled. Clinton helped the dems take a bite out of their base in the business world. What’s left are people who live in the twilight land between normal and commitment to a mental institution. You can cobble together a coalition out that, but it is a disorganized rabble with high emotional demands. You have to create increasingly bizarre narratives to keep them together, hence you have to become as radical as your base to keep their attention. In addition, the inmates eventually take over the ayslum because you gave them enough credibility to take up leadership positions and run for office themselves, instead of keeping them chained in the basement.
piratedan
@PeakVT: well when you control the message and the messenger, it’s easy to make your positions appear to be more plausible. Besides, outside of the Presidency (and control of both houses of Congress) what penalty has the GOP suffered? They’ve been allowed to roll back bits and pieces of the New Deal, weakened unions to a shadow of their former selves, let health care and finance run amok for decades and people keep voting for them. Hell, they’ve even gone after women and minority and now old folks and their medicare entitlements, they’re in the process of fucking over the environmentalists as well, meanwhile, ALL of the people that they’ve fucked over still can’t form a damn coalition to rid us of these asshats once and for all because the GOP is so adept at culture wars and sowing apathy with their ability to spread blame and muddle the issues. The media is fully compliant in this as it makes them money.
the healthcare change gives freedom and control back to the individual and if it goes through and people start to understand what it truly means for them, then the house of cards comes down for the GOP.
joel hanes
Strnen? What’s that?
pace the Mekongs, it’s fairly obviously a length-limited string compare routine that returns 0 if the strings are the same (“equal”), and non-zero otherwise.
Don’t people study languages any more ?
Are Kernighan and Ritchie no longer holy ?
IowaOldLady
It’s probably overdetermined. No one cause. FOX certainly played its part by creating and maintaining a bubble.
joel hanes
@Roger Moore:
Yes.
And Reagan set the pattern, this template of escalating falshoods that they’ve followed ever since.
scav
@joel hanes: The focus on the short term and immediate profit rather than long term success is also rife in so much MBA-business theory and implementation. They’re soaking in it.
schrodinger's cat
@scav: MBAs may be implementing but it is those good folks over at UChicago econ and business depts who came up with this shit in the first place.
scav
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m good with root to branch weeding, especially as there are a lot of dangerous wacko theories that do no harm as they stay nicely confined to the drawing board and back issues of journals.
NotMax
@scav
Can’t find the audio at the moment, but you might enjoy the classic Shelley Berman routine on hotel soaps, in text form.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@glocksman: If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that you’ll always vote Republican.
The really sad thing is that you won’t even spring for a decent gun.
schrodinger's cat
@scav: Not these dudes from UChicago, they have managed to change the postwar consensus about economics to the policies that favor the 1%, that we have now.
scav
@schrodinger’s cat: See above on root and branch. There’s one prof I’d like to be able to smuggle out first, but she’s a more recent hire — I’m also hoping you’ll limit the blast range as I live on the north side. Still. Do what you have to do.
schrodinger's cat
@scav: The damage is already done, they have already spawned elebenty clones in academia. I like Chicago, have only been there to visit, though. Too windy.
Turgidson
@schrodinger’s cat:
And somehow, like a bunch of indestructible cockroaches, they keep surviving what should have long ago (but especially from 2008 on) been a complete discrediting of their ideas and maintain an astonishing amount of influence over policy and the debate in general.
SiubhanDuinne
@Trollhattan: That is literally awesome. Literally.
Paul in KY
@The Moar You Know: I’m sorta glad most all of them are pussies & don’t try to act out the courage of their convictions, ala Mr. Hitler.
Although, I think he just had personal animosity towards Jews & used them as a convenient scapegoat. I don’t think he ever really believed the ‘Der Sturmer;’ level of race baiting his regime fostered/condoned. That was just to get em to condone ‘The Final Solution’ (and to have them unite against ‘the other’).
Paul in KY
@KG: I’m sorta amazed it took you to that time to finally ‘see the light’. Are you Mormon or Opus Dei or something like that?
JustRuss
@PeakVT: I think it comes down to magical thinking. It’s no coincidence that the conservative tent includes the ultra-religious and those who believe in the magical hand of the free market. Things would be perfect if only the unbelievers were purged and marginalized, and if some people suffer it’s because they’re evil, lazy, or–most likely-both.
schrodinger's cat
@Turgidson: These cockroaches served moneyed interests so they are even more resilient than the cockroaches of the winged variety,
zombie rotten mcdonald
I just want to say, nice mekons reference in the title.
Felonius Monk
Hey DougJ:
Unless you believe in the supernatural, I don’t think Irving Kristol is going along with any crazy shit these days. I presume you meant Bill Kristol ’cause old Irv has been dead since 2009. But then again maybe he and Broder are up to no good somewhere in the great beyond.
fuckwit
The real problem here is gerrymandering. It’s so obvious now with the insane House demand ransom note.
The problem is that there are nutcases safely ensconsed in districts in which they can’t lose… unless they start acting sane.
This system is fucked. I’m not sure what to do about it, other than some kind of redistricting reform in statehouses all across the country.
HOWARD DEAN WAS RIGHT: WE NEED A 50 STATE STRATEGY. And this gerrymandering is the Democrats fault for abandoning the 50 state strategy.
The Koch brothers had a 50-state strategy: they implented a long-term plan to take over statehouses across the country and created this insanity during the 2010 redistricting.
What are we doing to fix this? Democrats need to be grassroots in all 50 states. There’s no “swing states” all states are swing states. We need to take each state seriously, especially to make sure we have the statehouses to keep control of redistricting.
Next census is 2020. What’s our plan?
fuckwit
@RaflW: ZACTLY.
mds
@Villago Delenda Est:
Maybe what we need is a numerical measure of how far a reference deviates from the mainstream. We could call it the Mekon Delta.
JGabriel
Cool. Nice Mekons allusion there, DougJ. I always thought that title was hilarious, even without the monkey picture, ’cause of the way it made the word “strained” look actually strained.
parenthetical
@mds: Mekon Delta 5 to keep it hip and insidery.
ellennelle
along with some others here, can’t agree with this part. fact is, they got this radical because they had to.
after ike gave way to jfk, the gop realized they would always be having a hard time winning elections given that most registered voters are democrats; have been since fdr, and likely always will be. they were already recognizing how much the citizenry loved them some social security and gi bills and such. (and this in no small way echoes the crazy cruz lament of obamacare in social security and then medicare.)
this simple fact meant that the gop would have to get, erm, creative.
hence the southern strategy; first strain of crazy right there. that built up thru nixon and reagan/bushI, but clinton kinda blew that oughta the water, so they had to start making shit up, like all those clinton era conspiracies.
it was also about this time that 3 key things happened to boost their cause: 1) talk radio; 2) fox news; and 3) the fairness doctrine died. this li’l triad combo aided and abetted the main strategy of “creative” election victories, i.e., stirring up the base.
the southern strategy worked because it played and preyed on the racism in the south, thinly veiled as “states’ rights.” the media issues worked because it shifted the role of the press from the 4th estate to profit-making entertainment, owned by mega-corporations and bereft of anything resembling community service or conscience, etc.
but the southern strategy only went so far; clinton proved that scam had milked all the rubes available, so they had to seek new shiny objects. enter karl rove and his anti-everything strategies: abortion, gays, muslims, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, ad nauseam. plus, purge lists, hanging chads, electronic voting machines, etc. more ad nauseam.
the problem is, they’re left with a party that has invested for so many decades in how to whoop up the frothing base, with no time spent in genuine investment in principle or policy. it is, like all true narcissists, just a shell of itself; there is no there there.
what has filled in the empty void is, of course, all the crazies they did not just allow in, these are the very folks they have cultivated as their base for fifty years. these folks have received every year for decades engraved invitations to proudly represent their party, their nation, their snake brains.
so i am making the case that they had to do it for their own survival. sure, but selling your soul leaves you without much of anything, which is all they got now. (sorta like soul-selling on the national level that inevitably leads to the demons destroying from within.)
yup, they got nothing now but the demons screeching in their ears, demons of their own making.
glocksman
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I’ll have you know that the last Republican I voted for in a national level race was John Hostettler back in 2004.
And that was only because of his anti Iraq war vote.
Though I did vote in the 2012 Republican primary (we’re an open primary state) so I could vote for Dick Lugar.
Fat lotta good that did, though.
Local races are much more about individual candidates and not party labels.
Frankly I’d sooner vote for Khan Noonien Singh than some of my city’s alleged ‘Democrats’.
A party label does nothing to wash the stink of corruption away, no matter which one it is.
Honestly, asking me to vote a straight ticket for either party is like asking if I’d rather be shot or hanged.
Neither is all that attractive.
Then there’s the old Indiana joke that has more than a bit of truth to it.
Welcome to Indiana, where the Hoosier Democrats act like Republicans and real Democrats are suspects.
As for guns, the only firearm I own currently is a .22 LR Remington Nylon 66.
Paul in KY
@ellennelle: Excellent analysis.
WayneL
“How did they get to be this crazy?” The question makes me nuts because it keeps being asked! It’s very, very simple. Over the past thirty years, ALL Republican ideas have been tested, every single one!, and every single one failed. Name it, and it’s failed. They are out of ideas. All they have left is to either repeat their mistakes, or scream, shout, and make a lot of noise and drama. That is all they have left to do. They can’t win the argument on the merits, so they try to win the argument with shouting louder. Duh. Why can’t anyone see this? This is why they are crazy, and this is why the question keeps being asked. Nobody gets it–not the Repubs, not the MSM, not the Democrats, I guess, who could make hay out of it if they weren’t so busy trying to make the stupid ideas work, too.
It’s all about increasing income inequality and making it permanent. We are back to the days of serfdom, without being physically covered in shit–which is what happens when Republicans have the power to make their bad ideas the national policy. Even when it goes bad, they still win.
Why is this so hard to understand?
ellennelle
@Paul in KY:
thanks. it never occurred to me anyone would actually read it, but felt good to vent.