This NYTimes story got kicked around some in the comments earlier today, but I think (hope?) it’s significant:
Business Groups See Loss of Sway Over House G.O.P.
As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of the country’s most influential business executives have come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.Their frustration has grown so intense in recent days that several trade association officials warned in interviews on Wednesday that they were considering helping wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers who had worked to engineer the political standoff in Washington…
Some warned that a default could spur a shift in the relationship between the corporate world and the Republican Party. Long intertwined by mutual self-interest on deregulation and lower taxes, the business lobby and Republicans are diverging not only over the fiscal crisis, but on other major issues like immigration reform, which was favored by business groups and party leaders but stymied in the House by many of the same lawmakers now leading the debt fight.
Joe Echevarria, the chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, said, “I’m a Republican by definition and by registration, but the party seems to have split into two factions.”
While both parties have extreme elements, he suggested, only in the G.O.P. did the extreme element exercise real power. “The extreme right has 90 seats in the House,” Mr. Echevarria said. “Occupy Wall Street has no seats.”
Moreover, business leaders and trade groups said, the tools that have served them in the past — campaign contributions, large memberships across the country, a multibillion-dollar lobbying apparatus — do not seem to be working. …
Conventional wisdom over the last forty years has been that the Democrats “lost” the True American/ Low Information vote because the old bulls who’d run the party since the New Deal couldn’t negotiate a truce between the DFHs and the reliable urban working class base… especially after Nixon’s Southern Strategy peeled off the Dixiecrats. But the bonds between the “small businessman” and the GOP go back to at least Warren Harding; if Ted Cruz and Eric Cantor destroy that automatic allegiance, there aren’t enough Erick Ericksons in all the nation’s gated communities to save them.
srv
This proves our only salvation from Wall Street is through the tea party.
David Koch
————-> The Undefeated
fuckwit
Keep fucking that chicken.
Linnaeus
Um, no.
Villago Delenda Est
Pass the popcorn. Also, I need to get that long-term contract for my Schadenfreude meter maintenance, it’s pegging out routinely now, and that can’t be good for the mechanism.
beltane
@Linnaeus: He did say that there were no extremists on the Left sitting in Congress, so I guess we’ll have to take that as progress.
Has anyone heard a peep out of Jeb Bush lately? Just curious.
Smiling Mortician
@Linnaeus: Hey, the guy acknowledged that Occupy Wall Street doesn’t have representation in Congress. What more do you want?
ETA @beltane: Missed it by that much.
Flying Squirrel Girl
Wanna know what teh crazies are thinking?
From the brainy conservatives at ricochet. I get out of the boat so you don’t have to.
Linnaeus
@beltane: @Smiling Mortician:
Indeed. How charitable!
Ash Can
Is our business leaders learnin’?
Liberty60
It will be interesting- disconcerting- to see the effect the business lobby will have as they migrate to the Dems- I expect more Clintonesque figures to emerge.
Maybe even the long predicted split will occur between the Blue Dogs and the progressives as the GOP goes the way of the Whigs.
But where the populist right goes, is anybody’s guess. What I do know is a lot of the rhetoric I see on wingnut blogs is similar to the stuff I heard in Occupy. I could see a fusion of mainstream Dems and Wall Street, versus the remnants of the populist left and right.
beltane
@Flying Squirrel Girl: Did these people have nightmares with Big Bird as children? They must also have had mothers who made them eat all the food on their plates, and so they want to make sure that poor children don’t have any food on their plates at all.
Hunger will not make people conservative. It will make them desperate and dangerous.
fuckwit
@Linnaeus: Aw, come on. Dude’s a bankster, he can’t be seen LIKING lefties, now can he? Teloitte and Douche exec, eh? Still, even though his equivalence is wrong, the point is correct enough, if irrelevant: all the wild-eyed, bomb-throwing hippies on the left ended with the Vietnam War and the Weathermen. Nowadays, the “conservatives” are the wild-eyed, bomb-throwing radicals, and the vast majority of us “leftists” are conservative (in the proper definition of conservative: respectful of tradition, precedent, and process, and reluctant to change without careful thought and consideration).
Waspuppet
If this guy gets that, why can’t David Gregory or Chuck Todd?
Anoniminous
So they are going to fund primary challengers from the GOP Left?!?
(Excuse me, my brain just exploded.)
Linda
@Linnaeus: But by “extreme,” we mean people who think working folks should be able to eat regularly, have health insurance and live indoors. Silly billy.
Justice, she is a bitch. They worked overtime to own the crazy, because besides plutocrats, that’s all they had. Now the crazy owns them.
Bill E Pilgrim
Well-known anarchist and leading OWS figure David Graeber would be surprised to learn that he’s in the Democratic Party. The funny part is that this guy can acknowledge that virtually no one in that movement is an elected Democratic Party representative but not take it that next step to realize why, i.e. that most likely aren’t Democrats.
Mark S.
I’ve been wondering when the hell this would happen. Don’t some of these idiots realize that the economy generally runs better under Dems? That Republicans really just offer crony capitalism and turning the country into a banana republic? That you need a fucking middle class to buy your products? That maybe we’d be more competitive if we didn’t have the stupidest healthcare system in the world?
Liberty60
@Flying Squirrel Girl:
So, kind of like the Walking Dead?
Flying Squirrel Girl
@beltane: Right? And they think all the turmoil will lead to communities pulling together and taking care of each other, when that’s exactly the thing they hate now.
bluehill
One of the many ironies with the Republican’s position is that it creates uncertainty for the many businesses either directly or indirectly dependent on government spending. The same kind of uncertainty that they constantly harp about when speaking about the dangers of ACA. I know that that they don’t really care about this inconsistency, but it is maddening to watch the rubes who voted for them get snowed over and over. It makes me chuckle to watch the monster that they created begin to turn on them, but then I realize the whole country is going to get screwed too. Even worse, as soon as this crisis passes, Chamber of Commerce and their ilk will go back to funding the same people that are threatening them now.
In another chat room, I watched some guy gloat how he loved Moody’s now since they claimed that government would not default if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised and that Obama was fear-mongering, but that he hated Moody’s in 2011 when they claimed that refusing to raise the debt ceiling then would have terrible financial consequences. Never occurred to him question Moody’s credibility since they must be wrong in one of these instances not to mention their lack of concern about the firms trafficing in mortgages prior to the housing collapse. It seems so obvious that his only position is one that opposes whatever the President is for. Yes, he’s a jacka$$.
catclub
@Anoniminous: From the left of the GOP. John Boehner types. Now you can see how this is progress? Neither can I.
kc
@Anoniminous:
300baud
My god, could we really and truly be seeing peak wingnut?
kc
@Anoniminous:
So they are going to fund primary challengers from the GOP Left?!?
That must be the 3 or 4 GOPers who don’t think shoplifters should have their hands cut off.
Linnaeus
@fuckwit:
True, that.
amk
@Liberty60: teabaggers & firebaggers unite. Win!
catclub
@Mark S.: All great points. All swamped by the tribalism of the business class.
GM should have been first in line pushing a national healthcare solution that solves all their healthcare/pension problems.
They weren’t. Ever.
bluehill
When Norm Ornstein of AEI starts to sound reasonable, you begin to realize how radical the Tea Party is.
Redshift
@Mark S.:
Nope. My mantra about the business community (at least in my lifetime) is “Republicans give business what they want, Democrats give business what they need.” Democrats do what’s better for the business community overall, but they’re less likely to give individual businesses goodies, so business guys are sure they’re getting a bad deal.
Do they teach game theory in business school?
jl
Problem with this situation, for me personally, if it’s not TMI, I fear I am going insane. I listen to the news, read things and wonder whether I am hallucinating.
Just heard on national news that there is a GOP House faction that said it would only vote to open government and raise debt ceiling if Obama resigned.
They think Biden is more conservative than Obama?
They really meant a package deal, O and Joe?
Or they just decided to out and admit they are racists?
Or, I am going nuts?
catclub
@Waspuppet: Something about understanding things and paychecks, not mixing.
On another note: someone pointed out that it was great progress that over 60% of people believe that a US default would be a bad thing, while over 95% of economists all say it would be a bad thing.
Now consider global warming. The trend (in the knowledge in the overall population)is in the wrong direction, plus it is more like 99% of climate scientists
who think the coming climate change will be a bad thing.
And because of the stupid crisis to crisis government, climate changed is not even being discussed.
Or immigration. Or infrastructure. Or unemployment.
Even if the GOP is losing this argument, they are causing further damage.
trollhattan
@300baud:
Doubt it. A new shipment of shovels is due, anytime.
fuckwit
@Mark S.: Rationality slow. Tribal identification deep. I think this is what MLK meant when he said “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.
It takes GENERATIONS for rationality and fucking looking around at the real goddamned world and fucking data, to overcome tribal identity. We are, after all, just apes with very dextrous thumbs. ME GOOD TRIBE, THEM BAD TRIBE, ME FIGHT FOR GOOD TRIBE, AND CRUSH BAD TRIBE!!! Is how our limbic systems still work. Sports, politics, war, all part of that same limbic mammalian territorial need for one tribe to crush the “other” tribe.
How long did it take for women to get the vote? How long did it take for slavery end? How long did it take for black people to get civil rights? How long did it take for gay people to be allowed to marry? How long has it taken for fucking marijuana to begin to be legal?
And how long did it take many of us, who started out life as Republicans, to finally realize that we agree more with Democrats and Democratic Party policies, and that Democrats are better for all of us?
Don’t worry. The sooner people pay attention, the more they will realize what’s going on, and eventually, SLOWLY, will come to their senses.
Redshift
@bluehill: Ornstein’s been sounding reasonable for a few years. The thing that’s hard to believe is that AEI hasn’t Frummed him out yet.
AxelFoley
@300baud:
I asked this in a previous thread. Got no answer.
trollhattan
@catclub:
Today’s big climate story is absolutely lurid and getting exactly this much attention:
[large, empty space]
We have even less time to right the ship than we’d thought, and this pack of asshats is going to lead us out of the mess?
Uncle Ebeneezer
Slow Golf Clap
mainmati
The U.S.Government provides a regulatory apparatus – starting with the money supply- that enables the existence of the US financial system, literally. So, as all the normal denizens of BJ already know the tea party wingnuts are living in a dream world. More importantly, these business people who think that they can continue ratchet down basic benefits will find that their best people will quickly flee to innovative firms that can make the business model work that is not no benefits.
Redshift
@jl: You’re listening to crazy people and they’re not making any sense. That doesn’t reflect on your sanity.
diana
@Villago Delenda Est: Get a bigger, better schadenfreude meter. They’re making them in larger sizes, now, I believe.
Linda
@Mark S.: I may be a lot older than you, but I remember when the elite had a sort of sense of enlightened self interest: they understood, even if they did not like it, that people needed to make some money if we were to have a consumer-driven economy. They grudgingly accepted some pay raises for workers as a fact of life.
Now, I really think the economic elite of this country don’t even care as much about growing the economy as they do about making sure that nobody else ever gets any money, under any circumstances, even if that effort stunts the economy, because it’s all about hoarding money. So yeah, they are seeing the banana republic not as a problem, but a goal.
Emma
@Villago Delenda Est: I put mine on an annual maintenance contract.
Everyone, line up. Take out the violins. Let’s play the Fuck You Etude in D-minor for our billionaire Dr. Frankensteins.
bluehill
@jl: They’ll never admit it even if their actions confirm it. I have a couple of friends who are Republicans. They are great people, but the lenses through which view the President are so inconsistent with everything else that I know about them. Of course, they are faithful Fox watchers and I think the way Fox positions it’s arguments against the President enables believers to feel the way they do without having to acknowledge that they are being racist. Sure some people are unabashedly racist and don’t need cleverly crafted arguments to hate the President, but I think that some number don’t see the underlying bias in the way Fox talks about the President.
fuckwit
@catclub: The tendency towards anti-intellectualism in American politics runs deep, and I’d predict it’s starting to end, but it’ll be slow. There’s a tendency here to think everyone’s opinion is equal. The media and their idiotic talking heads and our press with their idiotic columnists reinforce this.
Everyone’s vote should be equal, everyone’s opportunity should be equal, but everyone’s opinions shouldn’t.
People who know what the fuck they are talking about should be respected and listened to, and yahoos talking out their ass should not.
fuckwit
@trollhattan: Holy shit, you mean this? http://www.nbcnews.com/science/uncomfortable-climates-devastate-cities-within-decade-study-says-8C11363468
Christ. This is what’s getting ignored while the Rethugs threaten to blow up the economy?
TriassicSands
Yeah, there’s faction one who are totally insane, unbelievably dishonest, and brutal thugs.
Then, there’s faction two whose members are complete lunatics, mindbogglingly dishonest, and brutal thugs.
The main difference seems to be that faction one wants to use extortion to get its unpopular policies enacted, and use the government shutdown as the gun to the head of Democrats.
Faction two’s members want to use the debt ceiling instead of the government shutdown, but it’s still all about the same reckless, unpopular policies it can’t get enacted any other way.
What a difference. Good luck to business leaders who think there is a rational faction in the GOP. No one who supports Boehner for Speaker, McConnell for minority leader, repealing the PPACA, or using either method to get their way is remotely sane, rational, responsible, etc. What needs to be defunded is the Republican Party.
Suffern ACE
Hahahahahahah. Bwahahahahaha. These business leaders have offshored and outsourced the campaign apparatus to the nutjobs and now they are going to “back more moderate elements”. They have put all of their money into PACs running ads and couldn’t figure out how to get the mininsters in the churches to give their talking points to the congregation if they tried.
It is not a coincidence that every one of these T-Party insurgents comes from nowhere and it turns out, like our friend Ted Cruz, to have long ties to established right wing elements. They have been selected by a superior organization. One that the business leaders aren’t going to be able to build very quickly.
Fair Economist
This is part of why the Republicans are so afraid of Obamacare. Small businesses are too small to provide their own group rating and will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the exchanges. Next year the Republicans will be forced by the Teabaggers to promise to cancel all these small businessmen’s now much-improved insurance. Their fight against Obamacare will cost them the allegiance of this critical group.
? Martin
The GOPs problem now is that the guy they keep demanding concessions from is the only lifeline they have out of their polling problem. If Obama was 1% the tyrant they make him out to be, he’d be really twisting the knife on them. I don’t think he’s going to do them any favors here, but he’ll let that opportunity slide in favor of getting the country going again.
But he should be going to Wall Street and reminding them that every year the GOP pushes the country a little further over the edge, and day will come before Jan 2017 that he won’t be able to pull us back in time. The only solution to the Tea Party is to just eviscerate the House GOP in 2014. Knock 60 seats out from under them, so they learn just where the Tea Party is taking them, and it’s in Wall Street’s best interests to see that happen. Default is not a preferable counterbalance to Elizabeth Warren and the CFPB.
fuckwit
Mindblown. That’s fucking NBC NEWS throwing apocalyptic shit out there. It’s not Mother Jones or AlterNet. http://www.nbcnews.com/science/uncomfortable-climates-devastate-cities-within-decade-study-says-8C11363468
bluehill
@Redshift: yeah, that’s a good point. I’m was wondering when that was going to happen.
Spaghetti Lee
@bluehill:
That’s one of the things that’s long confused me. I know quite a few Republicans who, when you talk to them, are quite obviously not mean-spirited, vindictive, or deeply cruel people…until the talk turns to politics. Then it’s suddenly the Rush Limbaugh show. I can see how decent people who only get their news from conservative sources get fooled into believing lies and don’t realize how wrong they are. I can’t see how decent people can look at the likes of Ted Cruz and Steve King and not see that they’re complete assholes. Or Limbaugh himself for that matter. Do conservatives really look at him and see a jolly, gregarious, outspoken-uncle type instead of a vile bag of hatred?
fuckwit
@AxelFoley: Not yet. Peak Wingnut happened in California once they were completely flushed out of all statewide offices and reduced to an ineffectual minority below the hostage-taking 1/3 level in the legislature. Once that happens nationally, I think we’ll be at Peak Wingnut. Maybe 2014 if we’re reallly lucky, but more likely 2016 at the earliest or 2020 or so.
fuckwit
@Spaghetti Lee: Tribal identity.
Spaghetti Lee
@fuckwit:
It’s very difficult for me to read stuff like that. It’s like watching The Road or Children of Men except, uh, it’s not fiction, it’s very smart people saying that it’s near inevitable.
I try to avoid getting convinced that we’re all doomed because, hey, how many people predicted that the world would be a dystopian hellscape by some date in their future that’s 40 years in our past? But how do we survive this one? And I’m lucky enough to live in a northern latitude. How does, say, India or Latin America or Africa survive a situation where crippling droughts and three-digit temps are the norm every single year?
Suffern ACE
Hmmm. So if I were running an accounting and consulting firm with a large federal services practice, I would definitely be on board with liberterian nihilism running through the republican party. I mean, why should anyone offering public shares be required to get an audit?
Joey Maloney
I totally want one of those “New York Jews” ballcaps from downstairs to wear around Tel Aviv.
Spaghetti Lee
Also, for the businesscreeps who thought they could use the Tea Party to get what they want, they can all go eat shit. Own it, motherfuckers. If I was Obama I’d keep things on the edge of disaster until the 17th just to fuck with you.
? Martin
@fuckwit: The real tipping point was when the voters told the GOP to knock the fuck off with the budget hostage taking by getting rid of the 2/3 requirement for the budget. Suddenly they had no voice. What does the CA GOP stand for? Who the fuck knows. They’ve got as big a platform as the Green party now. And with 2/3, we may get ballot initiative reform and some adjustments to Prop 13. We may not see the GOP for some time…
RaflW
Holy shit, Indiana GOP and “school corporations” are suing to deny ACA subsidies to Hooziers who shop the federal exchange
http://www.indystar.com/article/20131010/NEWS05/310100086
The moral cavities in the hearts of these people is beyond comprehension.
I’m f*king stunned.
GregB
I hope this continues to rend this party asunder for years to come. The tea-sac zombies are about to get kicked in the teeth by the most ruthless folks around, their own party.
Plus the primaries are going to be schadenfreuedelicious because the base thinks that they keep nominating RINO’s like Johnny McCain and Mittsky Poo. Now they are going to have to choose between establishment dillweeds like Jeb or Christie or rabble rousing shitheels like Ted Cruz.
Bring it on.
bluehill
@Spaghetti Lee: I think Fox, Rove et. al. have figured out how to play on their fears and demonize the other side, so when Limbaugh goes after the President they think he’s protecting the “American way of life.” For my friends, I think 9/11 was a turning point and fell for Republican bravado and lies as a way to suppress their fear.
trollhattan
@fuckwit:
That’s the one. Being published today is about the equivalent of being published at five on Friday before a three-day holiday weekend.
“Burial achieved, sir.”
I’m left hoping the Chinese are paying attention. That’s a good strategy, right?
Frankensteinbeck
@Joey Maloney:
Half the Jews I know would think that was the most hilarious team name and mascot ever. They’d be all in. The other half would be murderously offended. And I live in an ultra-orthodox village (for some reason I can’t quite grasp) so I know a lot of Jews and they lean towards the ‘no sense of humor’ end.
bluehill
@? Martin: I’m in CA and part of me believes that this could happen on a national basis, but another part doubts it because the way we got here in CA was because of the independent redistricting commission which eliminated some Republican-held state senate seats. I don’t see than happening in the red states.
Linnaeus
Tigers in the ALCS!
Spaghetti Lee
@bluehill:
It’s just weird. I don’t comprehend it. My Republican friends I met in school are so similar to me, same hometown, same school, a lot of them in the same income bracket, same race, sex, and orientation (I can’t recall any non-SWM Republican acquaintances). What do they see in the world that I don’t that makes them think this way? It’s not just “tribalism.” We’re from the same “tribe.” In the past I’ve heard that conservatives have brains that process things in different way, things like fear responses and fight-or-flight stuff. I usually don’t like claims that one’s worldview is biological (because that’s usually an argument used by racists) but…what else is there?
Spaghetti Lee
@Frankensteinbeck:
One joke I heard, presumably from the first group, is someone asked a Jewish guy “How would you like it if a team named themselves ‘The Jews?'” “I’d love it. Jews have been looking for fans for the last 3,000 years.”
trollhattan
@bluehill:
Cali is quirky. We elected fucking Arnie, twice, for no reason whatsoever and have a habit of splitting tickets like cedar shakes. Anybody who doubts this should feel free to count the Democratic governors since Jerry’s term the 2nd.
Am enjoying the Jerry hegemony era, Act the 3rd, but am expecting a swing back not to a Republican majority but a loss of the supermajority in at least one legislative house. All because we get bored.
fuckwit
@Spaghetti Lee: I have a theory. It’s that, over the last 25-30 years or so, every new President just after he’s elected gets sat down at a table in the Situation Room. The Pentagon top brass and CIA and NSA muckity-mucks sits down, with a couple climate scientists. They darken the room, plug in their laptop, and fire up the PowerPoint projector. And they give, basically, a highly classified version of An Inconvenient Truth. With additional information Gore was not authorized to share with the world: the military implications of this, and the Pentagon’s scenarios and plans to deal with it. Death. War. Famine. Disease. Billions of people dead. Human population reduced to pre-industrial size over a generation or two. The four horsemen parade across the screen, and several options for how the USA could cope with it and survive as a political entity. All of those options, of course, are apocalyptic and involve horrific outcomes: a complete no-win situation.
I think the military knows goddamned well that climate change is the biggest long-term threat to global stability, and they have compiled a presentation that lays that out explicitly. They’re not known for enjoying being taken by surprise by shit.
I took note that Shrub, after he took office, suddenly built a completely green “ranch” survivalist compound in Texas, underground, with passive heating and cooling, solar power, and all kinds of latest green off-the-grid technologies. I note that Clinton’s mood seemed to have changed after he took office too. And I noticed Obama looking tired, worried, stressed, maybe a little shell-shocked, immediately after coming into office. I could ascribe those to lots of things– Obama had a financial crisis to deal with and a long campaign to recover from, for example, and all three got the briefing on how to use the Nuclear Suitcase, which has been noted in various Presidential memoirs as a deeply sobering experience– but I think there’s more to it, and I think it’s this possible climate presentation. That’s my personal conspiracy theory. I think Shrub went up to Kennebunkport after he took office, and sputtered “DAD! Why the fuck didn’t you TELL me??”, and got the answer, “It was classified, son”.
I think Obama got the briefing and wasn’t at all surprised– he’s not ignorant of science at all– but I bet the human dimension and the hopelessness of it all affected him profoundly, and it took him a couple weeks at least to recover from the shock.
srv
@300baud: An excerpt from Wingularity Theory on the Peak Wingnut Event Horizon:
It’s always darkest just before it goes pitch black.
bluehill
@Spaghetti Lee: On the other hand, I’m sure they talk about me and wonder how I can be so blind to Obama’s obvious attempts to turn this country into an fascist, communist, socialist, caliphate. I remember the first I heard them they say that Obama was a socialist with no hint of humor in their voices. Just sat there dumbfounded.
Narcissus
@fuckwit: In this context the destabilizing consequences of the Washington Consensus, Neoliberalism and globalization make perfect sense. Get the Third World to kill each other off.
priscianus jr
@Liberty60: It will be interesting- disconcerting- to see the effect the business lobby will have as they migrate to the Dems-
the last two paragraphs of the article do not lead one to that conclusion. The Democratic Party is way too left wing for most of these guys.
srv
@fuckwit:
W is an avid cyclist, health nut and was not clearing cedar on his land for nothing. If he knew global warming was inevitable, I don’t see how building a ranch in Caldwell (outta water already), Iraq and the ME computes into that. Gore, on the other hand lives in his big mansion and flies around in G-V’s…
I’m more akin to the conspiracy that they do put them in the situation room, darken the lights, and then show movies of JFK’s assassination. From three differ camera angles.
NotMax
Heading towards a bad repetition of the era when the Catholic church had multiple popes?
The real extremists and firebrands do seem to be heading at a breathtaking pace to a place where they pack up, then set up their own ‘Congress’ and ‘President’ and insist both are valid.
priscianus jr
@fuckwit: all the wild-eyed, bomb-throwing hippies on the left ended with the Vietnam War and the Weathermen.
Yeah, that’s true. And along with that, the definition of left shifted several notches to the right, as did everything else. So whatever you may think, the Dems are still wild-eyed leftists to these guys.
handy
@Linnaeus:
Congrats. Rooting for you guys!
@Spaghetti Lee:
HAH!
priscianus jr
@Mark S.: Don’t some of these idiots realize that the economy generally runs better under Dems?
That’s so FDR. But you may still find a few of them in the northeastern part of the country and around the Great Lakes.
Spaghetti Lee
@bluehill:
I’m way more fortunate than I should be there. I made it sound like I have a lot of Republican friends I grew up with, but really there’s like, 3, and two of them don’t even talk about it unless prompted. And I don’t even know how, with a family full of super-orthodox Catholics, I don’t even have a single person who parades pictures of aborted fetuses and studies that link birth control with suicide across my facebook feed. If any of my relatives are real right-wing nuts, they keep it to themselves. There is one uncle, the type who went to the University of Chicago and reads The Economist and Gladwell and thinks that makes him the smartest man alive. But really, I prefer that type to the crazy-eyed nutters who I don’t even share a common reality with.
It’s a small thing to be thankful for, but when I read about how people can hardly talk to their parents or their best friends from school now because Fox News has colonized their brains, I am indeed thankful.
Lizzy L
@catclub: They believe that if Obama resigns, Romney becomes President.
Spaghetti Lee
@fuckwit:
Hmm. Interesting. I think I’ll hide under the covers and drink a bottle of gin.
priscianus jr
@jl: Or, I am going nuts?
You’re not the one that’s going nuts. They are.
Older
@300baud: Lips. Ear. Please.
Suffern ACE
@priscianus jr: Yep. It’s like they look at Democrats and see “Central Planned Command Economy and 5 Year Plan” central. It doesn’t matter how many Clintons or Obamas we vote for in our primaries.
The most radical idea that we’ve come up with is that maybe if we stopped calling the minority groups names and we at least try to get along we’ll be better off under the free enterprise system.
Spaghetti Lee
@NotMax:
If that’s the case, I think a national divorce might be the best option. I’ve always hated that line of thinking. Political strife, even at this level, is one thing. But when a group is absolutely rejecting the legitimate government and has one of its own ready and waiting…what else can you do?
The reason I blanch a little when I hear all the “Yeah, cut the fuckers loose, should have done it after the Civil War” is…guys, there are a lot of poor people, black people, Hispanics, and women in the South. And if you think they’re having a rough time of it now… A situation in which inner-city Atlanta, Houston, Memphis, etc. become police states patrolled by suburban vigilante white conservatives, well, that’s a good starting point. Extrapolate from there.
Man, it’s a fucked up world out there when every other political event reminds you of 1984, Snow Crash, or The Handmaid’s Tale.
priscianus jr
@AxelFoley: My god, could we really and truly be seeing peak wingnut?
It depends on your definition of peak wingnut. If you mean intensity of wingnut beliefs and behavior, no I don’t believe we are. If you mean degree of wingnut power, that is just possible.
amk
Nancy Smash is naming names of 30 gop critters to join the dem caucus.
Chris
@Liberty60:
If the teabaggers do finally drive everyone else (now including the big business community) out of the GOP, I expect our politics will look basically like what they were in the mid-nineteenth century; one party anchored in the South and completely overrun with identity-obsessed bigots (Democrats back then, Republicans today), the other party a “big tent” with both a liberal wing (Radical Republicans back then, Progressive Caucus today) and a pro-business conservative wing (Liberal Republicans back then, Blue Dogs today).
Suffern ACE
@Spaghetti Lee: It won’t happen. Who is going to pay the debt on the federal government’s books? I wasn’t the one who voted to cut revenues so they wouldn’t meet expenses. They will likewise claim that it was all welfare and foreign aid.
Both sides will want to have that Naval base in the Gulf. And it won’t end well.
Spaghetti Lee
@amk:
The responses are kind of precious in their stupidity. Like “Mike”: “no!!!!!!! you are a socialist take your big hammer and swing it elsewhere.” Or “no you can’t communist lady.” Really, they deserve to be read aloud, with all the l’s and r’s replaced with w’s.
Don’t you just wanna tuck ’em in and give them some milk and cookies? It’s alright, tateleh. There aren’t any communists in your closet. I checked.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@amk: I love it, the very first reply to that tweet is some bozo calling her a Communist.
Villago Delenda Est
@Flying Squirrel Girl:
You mean, they’ll form governments?
Wow, what a radical solution to the problem of government!
Teatard stupid. IT BURNS!
Nora Carrington
What I have never been able to figure out is why the business elites ever trusted the crazies in the first place. I mean, they’re *snobs* fer crissakes. On average — quite apart from the obscene salaries — they grew up with much more money, they went to much better schools, they’ve always enjoyed better health because they had better health care, including treatment for substance abuse and alcoholism and mental health care….
So yeah, John Boehner is married to one of them and plays golf with them and it’s all just so clubby and cozy and “just us.”
None of those Wall Street guys would walk across the street to piss on Sarah Palin if she were on fire. She’s gouche, and ignorant and from literally nowhere.
So the old guard GOP is telling the Wall Street guys all along that “we need them;” I get that part. But why when “the base” started to actually run for seats in legislative bodies didn’t the Masters of the Universe treat it like the rebellion of the unworthy they so obviously must have seen it as? How did they let them actually get elected to city council in Houston, let alone the House of Representatives or even The Senate! I mean, Cruz has obviously played that “I’m Harvard” card a time or two, I get that, but .
So somebody ‘splain to me why the Snobs have let the Riff-Raff into the club. Mine their xianist hearts for $$ and votes all day and all night, that part I get. But like I said, let them actually run for office?
The mind boggles.
Spaghetti Lee
@Suffern ACE:
Yeah, I know. And the big Southern cities would want to secede and join Saneland, and a lot of the rural North would want to join Crazyland, and how do you connect the West and East coasts when ID, UT, and AZ all join Crazyland, and, etc.
I’m glad it could never logistically happen. Because the pain the fuckers would inflict on the remaining Ungoods in their new country would be incredibly awful.
Chris
@catclub:
Yep. This only occurred to me recently, but a ton of the business class’ behavior can be explained with nothing but tribalism. It applies to them just as much as to the stereotyped trailer dweller in Appalachia.
priscianus jr
@Spaghetti Lee: In the past I’ve heard that conservatives have brains that process things in different way, things like fear responses and fight-or-flight stuff. I usually don’t like claims that one’s worldview is biological (because that’s usually an argument used by racists) but…what else is there?
Their brains probably do work differently, but it’s not because of genetics. We now know that there is an intimate connection between environment and the way people’s brains wire themselves up as they grow within that environment. Biology is a much broader concept that just genetics. Culture and biology are intimately entwined.
So it’s not exactly tribal, but it is cultural. I grew up in New York City in the 1950s, I didn’t know one person that had such views. There were RW nut jobs but they were somewhere else, like the south or the west. A lot of you grew up in the Reagan times and later. I think that’s the difference.
Spaghetti Lee
@Nora Carrington:
The optimistic answer is that no, the super-rich don’t actually have the whole country on puppet strings.
The less optimistic answer is that those two groups aren’t as far apart as you might think. Or else that people who are supposed to be the titans of the economy and the government have zero ability to plan long term or think of the consequences of their actions.
I think you are seeing that, though, with the suburbs, which have gone from the Republicans’ bedrock to most big suburban counties splitting 50/50. Increased racial diversity and more connections to the cities have something to do with that, but the many people in the suburbs who fit your description are looking at the Palinization of the Republican Party and saying “Uh, no.” The handful of mega-rich who actually have their hands on the levels of power are probably convinced they’re untouchable, but America’s vast suburban educated professional class, once the group that got Republican presidents elected, is now getting Democratic presidents elected.
Spaghetti Lee
@Linnaeus:
Fuck the Tigers. Go Re…wait. Go Tigers!
trollhattan
@Nora Carrington:
All I’ve got, and it’s admittedly thin, is the smart ones–you know, the actuaries and whatnot–understood the country’s demographic shifts and realized they needed to play the holy hell out of the fear and populist cards to pull in the rubes and mouthbreathers in sufficient numbers to stay in power. Only now, finally, enough of those have leaked across the party firewalls that they’re raising holy hell by grabbing the controls, and can’t be stopped.
It’s fall, time to invade the low countries?
Suffern ACE
@Chris: I think the tell was when the CEOs kept being interviewed and would be dropping the “uncertainty” line. There was always so much “uncertainty” about Obama, even when he would clearly articulate what it was he was going to do. It was like they got their news, probably not from Fox, but from CNBC. But they were pretty dead set against all that “uncertainty.”
priscianus jr
@Nora Carrington: What I have never been able to figure out is why the business elites ever trusted the crazies in the first place.
They trusted them for one thing: to respond to the propaganda in just the way they did respond. As far as everything else, sure, you’re absolutely right. But have you never heard of the concept of “useful idiot”? It has really come into its own with the rise of mass media, and especially since the demise of the Fairness Doctrine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
LeftCoastTom
@? Martin:
Seems perfectly appropriate, given Ralph Nader’s decision to fund the Greens from GOP sources.
Chris
@srv:
I first heard that one from Hannibal Smith on an episode of the A-Team.
John Revolta
I also believe in the New Presidential Briefing Theory. I’m not entirely sure what they tell ’em in there, although I suspect it’s closer to the JFK film theory than the global apocalypse theory, but they always seem to come out kinda sobered. Having the launch codes probably helps. At the end of the day though, I think it’s the realization that Zappa was right: politics IS the entertainment branch of industry.
LeftCoastTom
@Nora Carrington: Considering that the “Tea[sic] Party[sic]” is basically a lobbyist creation, I think the GOP money folks are at war with each other. Buckley had prided himself on getting rid of the John Birchers (i.e.: Fred Koch), this time the John Birchers seem to have won their battle for the GOP. And promptly run it off the road.
priscianus jr
@amk: Nancy Smash is naming names of 30 gop critters to join the dem caucus.
I honestly don’t know why she did that. But she is a very smart lady, I’m sure she has a good reason.
Maybe she’s trying to get Boehner to move his butt, since he’s going to need these people and he knows who they are just as well as she does. Or rather, she’s letting the world know that SHE knows who they are just as well as he does. So he can’t try that same BS again, “I don’t have the votes.” Maybe some of them met with her and told her Boehner needs a kick in the ass.
Villago Delenda Est
“Uncertainty” is similar to “instability”. It used to be the mission in life of the conservative to work against instability, to keep society stable. It might drift, to the right or left, but to go too far would make things unstable.
Nowadays “conservatives” are about steering the ship hard to starboard right into the lee shore. They are not very bright, at all. In the short term, sure, you have all sorts of adrenaline induced excitement, but then you hit the rocks, and suddenly all that excitement doesn’t seem to have been worth the cost. Meanwhile, those of us who understand that the needs of the crew require us to moderate some things are just facepalming like mad…because the entire scenario was totally predictable from the first.
Villago Delenda Est
@LeftCoastTom:
The John Birchers are naked fascists. Buckley didn’t like them being so overt, it spoiled the con.
NotMax
@amk
Dr. Maddow did just that, one by one, earlier in the week.
Nora Carrington
@priscianus jr: In this midst of the commie pinko rants, I tweeted her back and said I’d write to all 30 of them tomorrow (and I will). My Rep. is Van Hollan (D-MD 8th) and he’s spearheading the discharge petition, presumably at her behest and certainly with her permission/support, so other than the “you go guy” message I sent last week there’s not much else I can do locally.
John Revolta
@Nora Carrington: It’s the old,old story: they created this thing, and they thought they could control it.
Joey Maloney
@Frankensteinbeck: While googling to see if someone has actually put the hat in production, I found this.
And now I’m going to back away slowly.
amk
@priscianus jr: Someone said earlier that boner’s balls are in the vise and both teanuts and nancy were eyeing the handle. Guess she got there first. Hardball politics. pun and all that.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
Also for the reason that I would’ve blanched at letting them go in 1861 even if I didn’t care a bit about slavery; the prospect of creating a hostile, unstable, heavily armed nation right on our border doesn’t reassure me in the slightest (then or now). Letting them go would almost certainly not be the end of the story.
Chris
@Nora Carrington:
That’s exactly why they trusted the crazies! They think because they’re such stupid and easily manipulated sheep, it’ll be easy to just throw red meat in their direction during election season so they’ll vote for you, and then ignore them once you’re in office and they’ll forget all about it, because they’re dumb.
Alas, it’s not quite that simple.
VividBlueDotty
@jl: I can’t say whether you are going insane, but if this is your only cause for concern, you’re gonna be OK. And for what it’s worth, I think the prize is behind Door #3. But they don’t see it as admitting racism. The’re just admitting hating the blah President. Because he’s blah. Which is not racist. You see, if they don’t wear white robes and hoods or burn crosses in anyone’s yards, they’re not racist. It’s only the Muslim Kenyan Usurper Socialist Dear Leader they hate, and if you call THAT racist, then you are the real racist. (Also too, down is up.)
priscianus jr
This just in. “Poll: Republicans ‘Badly Damaged’ By Shutdown Battle ” ….
“WSJ/NBC pollsters said the survey showed some of the most dramatic shifts they had seen in decades in public attitudes toward the well-being of the country, the direction of the economy and wider political sentiment, according to the Journal.
“What is stunning about these results is just how hard and how quickly public attitudes have landed on the shutdown,” said Hart, a Democratic pollster, according to the Journal. He said the poll showed “a broad disgust for the political system.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/10/poll-republican-shutdown_n_4080942.html
In other news, “Heads Up GOP: Rasmussen Has President Obama’s Approval Ratings Rising to 51%” ….
“Obama currently has a 51% approval rating per Thursday’s Presidential tracking poll …. while 47% disapprove. This should help spike the GOP over to the bargaining table with a clean debt ceiling offer …. if the Koch defection wasn’t enough of a push.”
http://www.politicususa.com/2013/10/10/heads-gop-rasmussen-president-obamas-approval-ratings-rising-51.html
Chris
@LeftCoastTom:
Sad commentary on the Republican Party that it’s gone so far right that the William F. Buckley faction and the John Bircher faction are pretty much the only two left.
ETA: what VDE said. The Buckley/Bircher dispute was all about style, not substance.
Frankensteinbeck
@Nora Carrington:
Because the snobs are 1% of the country, maybe less. The lunatics are 27%. Guess who outvotes who in primaries? The snobs don’t have a party without the lunatics.
Suffern ACE
@Frankensteinbeck: Or perhaps, just perhaps, the snobs and the rabble rousers are the same people.
RaflW
The worm is turning.
I’d say pass the popcorn, but it’s bed time.
Spaghetti Lee
@RaflW:
Goat, consider yourself scaped.
Suffern ACE
@RaflW: How? Seriously. Under this scenario, Obama was ready to delay it a year (because why?), but Cruz pissed him off? I mean, except for Manchin’s brief statment, there hasn’t been any Senate Dems leaving the airport on this issue. I don’t think that happened just because Cruz pissed Dems off.
Also, if we ever find out the full list of who was funding the Meese Mess, I would not be surprised to find that some of grover’s groups were in there.
priscianus jr
“How? Seriously. Under this scenario, Obama was ready to delay it a year (because why?), but Cruz pissed him off?”
Relax, everybody knows Grover’s full of shit.
As for your second point, “if we ever find out the full list of who was funding the Meese Mess, I would not be surprised to find that some of grover’s groups were in there” i think we have a winner. I actually checked this out.
As you know, the clowns that organized this fiasco are the Heritage Action for America. They do not disclose their funding sources, so we by no means have the full list. However, by happenstance, the Center for Responsive Politics, which does this kind of research, accidentally discovered ONE of their donors in 2012 ($271,000) — something called Free Enterprise America, which is a Koch Front. But who funds Free Enterprise America? Well in 2011 they received donations from:
60 Plus Assn c4 $840,000
American Commitment c4 $103,000
Concerned Women for America c4 $30,000
Heritage Action for America c4 $271,000
National Fedn of Independent Business c6 $500,000
National Assn of Manufacturers c6 $2,500,000
Americans for Tax Reform c4 $813,000
All but the last two are Koch front groups, as is the parent organization Heritage Foundation. Americans for Tax Reform is of course Grover Norquist. So there you are.
Bob's Had Enough
@Suffern ACE: It doesn’t matter how.
It’s necessary for Republicans to find one of their own to blame in order for the rest of them to avoid the wrath of their backers.
Cruz is apparently disliked by everyone who has ever met him. No big loss to the TP if he gets bus-squashed.
KS in MA
@Linnaeus: Tigers! W00t!
Violet
This made me laugh. http://drunkdialcongress.org/. It’s a site for helping you drunk dial Congress. They’ll connect you with a random member of Congress. They’ve got drink recipes and talking points like, “I can’t see the panda!”
Ruckus
@Redshift:
Do they teach game theory in business school?
They teach that everything is a game and how to take advantage of that. Oh you meant do they teach how to think things through to see what the logical conclusions might be if one does stupid shit that has horrible long term repercussions.
Sorry, no.
Ruckus
@Spaghetti Lee:
There must be something that they see that I am not capable of. I don’t need all the liberal blogs to see that faux news, rushblob, and all the rest are full of shit, that’s just obvious if you listen to them for 10-20 seconds. Mr. Pearce’s 5 minute rule is about 280 seconds too long. They all sound like snake oil salesman talking out of the back of the covered wagon. Either that or my bullshit meter is way too sensitive/accurate.
Ruckus
@Spaghetti Lee:
I have several of those friends that I haven’t connected with much or at all in years and I find that they are about as close to birchers as I could imagine. I ignore them, they are lost and until they are willing to search for a way out there is no helping them. However I have just reconnected with one friend, who I suspected would have swallowed conservative crap wholesale. He’s a retired cop and probably to the left of me and that’s pretty far left. Wonders will never cease.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus:
That would crowd out mind share for the quarterly earnings report, which is the most important thing in the entire fucking world, except for the hookers and blow you can obtain with your bonus.
e.a.f.
Like they say, when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Business in its quest for low taxes, low wages, de-regulation, etc. forgot to check who they were getting into bed with. Well now they know. The teabaggers are simply the American version of the Taliban. Perhaps business might want to re-think their version of the perfect America. Moderation is usually the best way to go. Sometimes your perceived enemies really aren’t.
The 1%ers must be pissed, they aren’t getting what they want from the teabaggers. On one hand it looks good on the 1%ers, spent all that money and now are getting something they never bargained for. Dumb. Before you invest money you need to reallllly check into the “business”. These teabaggers don’t care. They have their ideology and they aren’t going to be persuaded to stray from their paths. The 1%ers may find that next time round, a moderate Republican or Democrat will not want to destroy the country. I
Ramalama
They should join me in my religious crusade, here at Church of Taco Bell, to get something done. Some nebulous action, something something stand it any longer.
Matt McIrvin
@priscianus jr: Am I reading that right- exactly the same dollar amount went from one organization to the other in 2011 and then back in 2012?
Patricia Kayden
@jl: Obama is not going to resign so don’t worry about a demented group of T’Baggers who are demanding that he do so before they’ll vote as they should. You really can’t take everything T’Baggers say/do get to you or you will go mad.
Patricia Kayden
@TriassicSands: Well said. The current GOP is bonkers. The fact that they think they can force President Obama and Democrats in Congress to repeal/defund/delay a law that was passed in Congress, upheld by the Supreme Court and voted on last year is enough to show that they aren’t smart people. The fact that they have shutdown the government and threatened to default on the debt limit for no rational reason shows that they are deranged.
C.V. Danes
That’s ok. There’s plenty of Dems who will still give them a shoulder to cry on.
Uh…and who, exactly, are they going to threaten them with? Someone even more to the right?
Either that, or they’re no long afraid to show their true colors.
This is the most relevant comment in this piece. Progressives have almost no effective representation. Perhaps they should learn something from the Tea Party and aggressively primary some Dems.
Oh, wait. Who’s going to pay for that. Sorry.
Jeez…I wonder why. It’s not like these business groups conspired to get these guys into safely gerrymandered seats where they have nothing to fear.
Regnad Kcin
@Spaghetti Lee: Probably doesn’t work as a binary split, but as a regrouping into 4-6 entities, it could make sense.
Likely a “federal” structure among the new entities would be required for some time, just to deal with military and monetary issues.
Over time the monetary can be solved (witness the SNP’s attempt to figure a way out of the pound sterling.
Military, not so sure how that could ever be divided effectively. But everything else could certainly be portioned out into some kind of administrative unit (please don’t say Oblast).
I can’t believe the governors of MA, NH, VT, ME, RI, CT, NY, NJ, MD, DE, PA aren’t already up in arms about the disparity of net transfer payments. Joined together in a trade entity, these would make the world’s 5th largest economy (between France and Germany).
MCA1
@Linda: This. Thank you, Baby Boomers (not you, of course, Linda, I mean to stereotype here but you’re obviously exempted!), with your self-centeredness and massively overinflated egos and sense of entitlement. When the world revolves around you and your generation and how fucking great you are, then you’re oblivious to the social contract and basic concepts like a rising tide lifting all boats, because you’re so obsessed with the size of your own yacht compared to others as a measure of self-worth.
To the main point of the original post, what surprises me is how long this took and how seriously bad it had to get before the Frankenstein in this drama actually recognized the monster it made and started trying to figure out how to kill it. And kill it it will, I think. The monster was made out of astroturf from the beginning, is enamored of its own tendency toward anarchy, and run by destructive anger and resentment rather than anything that would lead to organized, longterm defense. And money. Because, the existence of the Koch brothers notwithstanding, money in politics is interested in getting governed and legislated results, not destruction of the system and antipathy to actual governance, at least in the long run. The Tea Party will be gone in a decade, I think, despite my sincere wish for it to survive and kill the Republican Party as a whole. Something that at least resembles your grandfather’s GOP will return, with the country and its Overton Windows continuing to inch back toward the center as Democrats continue to sit in the White House.
McJulie
@fuckwit: Interesting. Not necessarily incompatible with my pet theory that we hit peak oil in 1976 and insiders like Dick Cheney all know it — what they want is to try to make sure that the literal last drop of oil extracted anywhere on the planet is in American hands.