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You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / Friday Night Open Thread: Tailgunner Ted Cruz & the “Values” Voters

Friday Night Open Thread: Tailgunner Ted Cruz & the “Values” Voters

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My favorite Speaker-to-Republicans, Dave Weigel, is doing his usual fine work at this weekend’s Values Voter Summit:

“Don’t be the weird one!” said Gil Mertz, the avuncular regional director of the Family Research Council. “There’s always a weird one who wants to hold an impromptu press conference.”

Mertz, the emcee of the annual Values Voter Summit of social conservatives in D.C., was at that moment speaking behind barricades. Organizers had placed metal barricades in front of the stage, mimicking the fences placed by park rangers in front of the many national monuments closed during the government shutdown. In this room, there is no WSJ/NBC poll suggesting that the GOP is blamed for a shutdown. Putting up barricades to remind people that it’s Obama’s fault is not even weird.

“He has used those barricades to defend memorials from our veterans,” said FRC president Tony Perkins. “He has used barricades to try to keep our voices down in America.”

Utah Sen. Mike Lee, the Republican who might have done the most to commit the GOP to a “defund Obamacare” strategy, opened up the political speechmaking party of the day by agreeing with Perkins.

“The best argument for stopping Obamacare is the action of this president over the past 10 days,” said Lee, the day’s first political speaker. “The president is using the vast power of the American government to hurt the American people. Why? To win a political argument.”…

Much, much more — including Louie Gohmert calling John McCain “an al Qaeda supporter” — at the link. For home entertainment use only…

Reader Interactions

103Comments

  2. 2.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Louie will be lucky if McCain doesn’t have his liver served on a golden platter.

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    Jesus, Those People.

    Stanzfähigem Gesicht Cruz can keep the cameras aimed at himself as long as he wants. Every additional minute is another minute of winning.

  5. 5.

    Gex

    @Knight of Nothing: Typical right wing frame. They use the words values, freedom, patriot, etc. in ways that imply that they are the side that is/has those things.

    It’s kind of why I am not letting the “moderate” business community or Republicans off the hook and why I want to neck punch them as they continue to whine about the monster they created. They painted the other side as the enemy to all things American and good and now can’t figure out why the base won’t compromise.

    A lot of people were hurt by the monster they created, so I’ve no sympathy when their monster turns on them. I can’t even enjoy listening to them whining because the price we are all paying is too great.

  6. 6.

    beltane

    Sometimes we don’t get to see karma in action, but in the case of John McCain one could say he brought this upon himself by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. The Republican base has been infected with the crazy for a long time, but Palin’s the one who unlocked their cages and set them to run amok.

  9. 9.

    beltane

    Question: Who isn’t “the weird one” at the Values Voters Summit? I only see weird, weirder, and weirdest.

  10. 10.

    Michael Bersin

    Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r – the Chinese are spying on us through our toasters) didn’t get the memo that it’s not about Obamacare any more. Still, she’s catching grief from constituents via twitter and Facebook. Not that she’s held any open to the general public town halls of late.

  14. 14.

    jl

    The political doings have threatened my sanity enough lately. So I won’t bother to check why Gohmert said McCain supports terrorists.

    Was it because McCain got on one of his maverick kicks and did some half straight talk on Fox about how awful and stupid the House GOP is, or is it some foreign policy thing? Or is one an excuse for the other?

    One of those things I guess I don’t need to know.

  15. 15.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @amk:

    Yes, but by doing so, he’s exposing himself to the aura of these morans, which is a known carcinogen and a certifiable cause of drain bamage, at least 10 times more dangerous than playing line in the NFL.

    Be brave, Dave!

  16. 16.

    Lurking Canadian

    When will the People’s Front of Judea finally be rid of the splitters of the Judean People’s Front!

  19. 19.

    Roger Moore

    @beltane:

    The Republican base has been infected with the crazy for a long time, but Palin’s the one who unlocked their cages and set them to run amok.

    Nonsense. It’s the election of a non-white President that’s really turned the crazy up to 11, and his reelection that’s pushed it to eleventy. Palin is a symptom, nothing more.

  20. 20.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @muddy:

    Harry Reid really needs to indulge these people by posing in a high backed black chair with a white Persian in his lap, stroking it gently

  23. 23.

    Feudalism Now!

    Unfiltered crazy. Tyrant Obama is using the power of the government to keep veterans out? They have no ability to see cause and effect. The world is just series random calamity for Values Voters.

  24. 24.

    jl

    @Roger Moore: If the consequences weren’t so serious, I’d hope for a sequence of Native American, Asian, Hispanic, gay, women, Buddhist and Antarctican presidents, in no particular order. Maybe the GOP will retrograde itself so much that a Jewish or Polish or Italian President would freak them out after that.

    But, better try to reduce the number of crazies in the House in the next midterms first.

    Edit: since the base’s freakouts and consequent effects on nutcases in the House GOP could get people killed. and probably have already.

    Edit: forgot to mention possibiility of muslin president. Anyway, the freakouts would be awesome. But the political consequences might not be, until the House gets regulated somehow.

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @efgoldman:

    Yes, but he was the worst kind of race traitor. He treated the blahs like they were actual humans.

    There is no greater crime, in the eyes of the Confederates.

  29. 29.

    jl

    @trollhattan: Reid could dress up in 19th century Mormon garb (if there is such a thing) and ride around through DC on a white horse announcing he was saving the country. That would be fun.

  30. 30.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @jl:

    NOT the White Horse prophecy that Joseph Smith or his successors imagined, I would think. Certainly not the one that Mittens saw.

  31. 31.

    raven

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I love this gem from Pat Lang:

    . Some do not hesitate to call the dissenters neo-Confederates. I would say to them that if they want their opponents to think of themselves that way, all that is necessary is to keep calling them that.

  33. 33.

    beltane

    @Roger Moore: The GOP’s only hope of stopping Obama in 2008 was to abandon the dog whistle in favor of a bullhorn. Sarah Palin was the perfect vessel to connect with the proudly stupid, angry-at-the-world, white supremacists that make up the Republican base. Once the RW third-party groups realized they could use overt racism to control their base with little or no pushback from the media, they dialed it up to eleven and are now unable to dial it back even to ten. Had McCain picked someone like Kay Bailey Hutchison, we may still have reached the point where we’re at now, but it would have taken longer.

  34. 34.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @raven:

    I’m not sure Pat Lang really understands what is going on here. He seems to think that these clowns accept the name. He forgets that they started out as teabaggers until we on the left pointed and laughed at them. THEN they insisted they were “tea partyers”, and denied that they ever called themselves “tea baggers”.

    Me, I’m wishing more and more that the 19th Century Radical Republicans got their way. Sherman was waaay too easy on those sons of bitches.

  35. 35.

    raven

    In exchange, Republicans were seeking what they called a few “fig leafs” — minor adjustments to Obama’s new health-care initiative. The first would delay for two years a 2.3-percent tax on medical devices that is unpopular in both parties. The second would require internal auditors to ensure that people who get tax subsidies to buy health insurance are in fact eligible.

    Who de’s auditors the fucking IRS!!!!!!!

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    @efgoldman:

    OTOH, the Clenis is both white and southern, and they did all they could to deligitimize him.

    Yeah, but they didn’t try to default on the debt or question his birth certificate. The craziest stuff they talked about with the Clintons was focused on Hillary rather than Bill, which shows just how deranged they get when the wrong kind of person gets too close to the levers of power.

  38. 38.

    VOR

    @efgoldman: “It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” – Mark Twain.

    “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” – also Mark Twain.

  39. 39.

    lamh36

    posted this on a previous thread, but since it had to do with the VVS I’ll re-post it here.

    Man. I’ve always wanted to be in the medical field. for the longest time the dream was to become a doctor, for many reasons that didn’t happen. but back in my pre-med days I was in such awe of Dr Ben Carson. He was the biggest named African American surgeon in th country. I was in awe of his talent and work. well what a difference maturity makes along with finally becoming politically more aware, I am so disappointed in Dr Carson…SMDH. I still respect his accomplishments, but I am no longer and will probably never again be in awe of him. he may still be a great and smart surgeon, but he’s no longer such a “great icon” as he once was to me.

    Ben Carson compares Obamacare to slavery

    Having said all that, what makes it sad is that no surprise, them folk can’t tell one nigra from another:

    A couple Value Voters Summit attendees walk in as Tim Scott speaks. “Oh good, this is Ben Carson,” one whispers to the other.

  40. 40.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @raven:

    The second would require internal auditors to ensure that people who get tax subsidies to buy health insurance are in fact eligible.

    As if they’re not already doing that? WTF?

    The stupid, it BURNS!

  41. 41.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    using the vast power of the American government to hurt the American people. Why? To win a political argument.

    To repeat, it’s always projection with these assholes. Always. I grow weary of the bullshit.

  43. 43.

    schrodinger's cat

    @lamh36: Carson is probably just jealous. I had no idea who he was till the right wing media started promoted him.

    OT: BTW I am in the process of watching Parade’s End on DVD and both Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall rock. So different from his Sherlock role. Have you watched it?

  44. 44.

    Roger Moore

    @jl:

    If the consequences weren’t so serious, I’d hope for a sequence of Native American, Asian, Hispanic, gay, women, Buddhist and Antarctican presidents, in no particular order.

    I’ll be thrilled if our next two Presidents were a gay athiest and a Hispanic Jewish woman, if only because:

    A) those people are overwhelmingly likely to come from the sane party rather than the crazy party, and
    B) it would mean that we continue to have regular Presidential elections

  46. 46.

    raven

    @Suffern ACE: From WAPO:

    In addition, the proposal would also raise the debt limit through Jan. 31, 2014. Lawmakers were considering whether to include a provision that would direct the House and Senate Budget committees to immediately enter negotiations over broader budget issues and to issue a report by Jan. 15, 2014. If an agreement could be reached, it would clear a path for another increase in the debt limit later that month, without additional drama.

  47. 47.

    trollhattan

    @lamh36:

    I’m thinking:

    a. Dropped on head
    b. Past his expiration date
    c. Shrooms, lots of shrooms

    Some combination of the above. Can we at least agree to never point a camera at him again?

  49. 49.

    RobertDSC-PowerMac G4 Dual 1.25

    Yeah, but they didn’t try to default on the debt or question his birth certificate.

    The GOP terrorists made their first foray into the default sweepstakes but Clinton and his people snuffed that out right quick. They didn’t mince words in telling Newt and his gang of thugs not to try it.

  50. 50.

    lamh36

    @schrodinger’s cat: well his accomplishment were/are BIG deals in African American households. especially back in the day. I contend every one of us knew his name or could recognize his name (heck there was even a movie about him where he was played by Cuba Gooding Jr).

    So he WAS/IS a big deal. That’s what makes his whole RWNJ spin so disappointing

  51. 51.

    gbear

    @jl: If a Native American ran for president, they’d say s/he wasn’t an American because s/he was born on a reservation.

  54. 54.

    LeftCoastTom

    @Roger Moore: Well, there were the GOP claims that the Klinons [sic] had murdered the entire population of Mena, Arkansas. A claim that even a mildly curious person could have investigated by merely driving through the place.

  55. 55.

    MikeJ

    @raven:

    The second would require internal auditors to ensure that people who get tax subsidies to buy health insurance are in fact eligible.

    And then, when it takes an extra week to get approved, they get to complain about government red tape and bureaucrats slowing everything down.

  56. 56.

    Mike in NC

    Louie Gohmert calling John McCain “an al Qaeda supporter”

    The very definition of Peak Wingnut, right there my friends.

  57. 57.

    muddy

    @gbear: Yeah, they know it’s foreign because they illegally order cigs from there on the internet.

    Actually that may not be current. The last libertarian “intelligence” I gathered was that they get them from Israel now instead. Would not have been my first guess.

  58. 58.

    lamh36

    @schrodinger’s cat: have not watched that Cumberbatch pic. I’ll add it to my long list of queued movies…I have alot…lol.

    Speaking of Cumberbatch, he was a guest on the Graham Norton Show’s new season along with Harrison Ford and another guy. Here’s a clip of a bit of the show:

    @TheGNShow 4h
    Here’s one of the best bits with #BenedictCumberbatch from @TheGNShow tonight http://bit.ly/15u3mit #TheGNShow

  61. 61.

    Honus

    @Feudalism Now!: Not random calamity: calamity imposed by the government. The Park Service is allowing some national parks to temporarily reopen with state funds. This is the reaction of one Utah store owner:

    “It’s going to be awesome,” said Jenna Milligan of Zion Outfitters, an outdoor gear rental shop. “A lot of businesses have suffered severely because of the government. I just hope it does stay open through autumn.”

    See, its the government that’s hurting these people by not being there to do what it’s been doing to facilitate them making a living. It’s the government’s fault it’s shut down.

  63. 63.

    lamh36

    Anybody watching the Alec Baldwin show on MSNBC?

    What do we think?

    BTW, I like this DeBlasio dude. He seems like a good dude.

  64. 64.

    dogwood

    @lamh36:
    You know, I’m a middle class/middle-aged white woman. I don’t pretend to know what it is like to be poor and white let alone poor and black/Hispanic/native American etc. But I do have the requisite imagination and empathy needed to understand it’s a pretty crappy lot in life. Since my ethos is pretty middle- class, I often think how tedious and insulting all this shit must be to African Americans who are middle class like me. I mean they can’t really stop middle class and upper class blacks from voting with these draconian voter I’d laws, so they just keep insulting you for the perverted fun of it.

  66. 66.

    Mike in NC

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I am in the process of watching Parade’s End on DVD and both Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall rock. So different from his Sherlock role. Have you watched it?

    Coma-inducingly bad, IMHO…

  67. 67.

    fleeting expletive

    I’m watching Alec Baldwin. I think it’s good, maybe gonna be great. I love the set and the long-form interview. He’s blowing Bill Maher out of the water for sure. Maher’s got a real freak show going on tonight. It’s intolerable to my mind.

  69. 69.

    amk

    @Honus:

    “A lot of businesses have suffered severely because of the government. I just hope it does stay open through autumn.”

    woof, their logic will kill even einstein.

  72. 72.

    amk

    sam wang asks

    Why are the gerrymandered districts swinging so hard? Are they full of persuadable independents?

    Has anger over the shutdown momentarily erased the gerrymander advantage?

  74. 74.

    the Conster

    @lamh36:

    I’m watching it. I like it a lot – watching Alec without a shtick is refreshing, because he’s asking things I would ask. BTW, the ad they just showed for Captain Phillips – that movie is going to actually make nutjob heads explode like that cracker in The Black White Supremacist. It was the first thing Obama did to kill America’s enemy, and it’s about hostage taking and negotiation, and how Obama called the shots. I’m not sure how we’re going to know they’ve gone full metal wingnut horizon crazy.

  75. 75.

    lamh36

    @The prophet Nostradumbass: @fleeting expletive:

    I caught a bit of the interview with DeBlasio.

    I think it has great potential. Alec’s demeanor and delivery and interview style is good one-on-one style.

    DeBlasio was a kinda easy first choice for guest (especially since Baldwin is an NYC resident and a Dem).

    The restaurant setting is different and had a nice ambiance to it.

    It def has potential. At the very least, it does have a built-in draw for big named guest to come on show solely on Baldwn’s big celeb appeal. At least enough for MSNBC to let it marinate and mature…hopefully. And I know people here like Chris Hayes, but if MSNBC is willing to let Hayes continue on with so-so ratings, then Baldwin’s show def has good chances.

    I can’t wait for Tina Fey, cause you know Alec will have to have Tina on the show!

  76. 76.

    TheMightyTrowel

    OT: I am not very impressed with LAX AA/Qantas lounge. The booze costs money (tho qantas club get drink vouchers!), the TVs are locked on CNBC and NFL and the only savoury food available for free is a big tray of carrots and a pile of ham sandwiches. it struck me that this is the first airline lounge I’ve ever been in where no alternative to pork was on offer. Nobody expects the Spanish Angelino Inquisition!

  78. 78.

    lamh36

    @the Conster: naw they’ll just see it as the “white man giving it to them dark summ-a-ma-bitches”…

    I do love Tom Hanks though, but I’m not one for big dramas at the movies. I tend to use theatres as escape from dramas, real-life and otherwise :-)

  81. 81.

    mdblanche

    @Villago Delenda Est: “Me, I’m wishing more and more that the 19th Century Radical Republicans got their way. Sherman was waaay too easy on those sons of bitches.”

    I doubt that ever could have happened. Ulysses Grant almost singlehandedly kept Reconstruction from ending even earlier, but when he died half his pallbearers were former Union generals and half were former Confederate generals. This wasn’t some symbolic gesture of reconciliation, they really were Grant’s closest friends in life. One of the ex-Confederates had been Grant’s best man back before the recent unpleasantness. There were always enough social connections between the two sides that reconciling on the backs of a despised minority was probably the most likely endgame for Reconstruction all along. It has always been thus, and the two sides are still conjoined today. I live in one of the bluest areas in the country, but you’d never know it at one of my family reunions.

  82. 82.

    TAPX486

    I was watching Anderson Cooper till I threw the tire iron thru the TV. He had two talking parrots on. Ralph Reed and a blond GOP mouthpiece. He pretty much let them run thru the talking points. Oh how evil of Obama not to negotiate and how we keep borrowing all the money from the poor starving Chinese children. Absolutely nothing that they were so upset about bothered them when shrub was president.

    I’m not particularly religious but do try to treat my fellow man the way I learned in Sunday school. However after reading a story, with photos, of the soldiers who have died in these wars and of their families I’m not sure there is any disease that is painful enough and long and lingering enough for these people. We can start with Bush and work our way down to Steve King, Bachmann, Palin and the rest of the pond scum

  85. 85.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Yatsuno: So weird. Also disappointing. Most qantas lounges provide multiple sweet and savouries hot and cold and as much booze as you can swallow for free

  89. 89.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Yatsuno: How is life under the shut down btw? I’ve been totally off the web – at a wedding in LA then chilling (ha ha ha) with my mom in SF (my mom is constitutionally unable to ‘chill’).

    The only news I’ve seen in 10 days was a piece on the local SF news last night about how miffed the local (?CBS) affiliate was that Air Canada (I think) wouldn’t give them an interview about a dog which escaped while being shipped from SF to Calgary. They got an email from the AC press office that was accidentally sent to this affiliate instead of the spokesperson and which said something like ‘it’s just a local lost dog news story. don’t comment further. their whole government is shut down, you’d think they’d have better things to report.’ The affiliate, I fear you’ll be unsurprised to hear, was furious that any random PR person at an airline would tell them that the govt shutdown was more worthy of coverage than a LOST DOG.

    I laughed until I cried.

  91. 91.

    burnspbesq

    The rhetoric on display on the right is starting to sound disturbingly like the 1860 campaign.

  92. 92.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @TAPX486:

    I was watching Anderson Cooper

    You do realise that he is a Vanderbilt, of the Vanderbilts that owned America before the Rockefellers.

    If his blood was any bluer, they could use it to dye his mother’s jeans.

  94. 94.

    Wally Ballou

    NLCS watch: Dodgers and Cards tied 2-2 in the 10th.

    Condolences to Cole and his fellow Yinzers, but this looks like it’s going to be a great series .

  95. 95.

    billgerat

    @TheMightyTrowel: I can tell you how life is under the shutdown – IT SUCKS. The last federal pay checks went out, and they are for 10 days worth for exempted from furlough employees, and six days for furloughed employees. I was designated furloughed initially, but on that first day, I received an exemption and have been working through. But because of that initial furlough status, I only got 6 days. Thank God I kept hold of the $4 grand I had saved up for the sequester furloughs earlier this year that I got exempted from. Most of my coworkers are living from check to check, so they are the ones who will really be hurting if the shutdown lasts much longer.

  97. 97.

    Yatsuno

    @TheMightyTrowel: @billgerat: I just put in my unemployment application. I shouldn’t be getting a paycheck on Monday, so the money I have is what’s in the bank and my wallet right now. Car payment is getting deferred and my hair is going beautifully into Jewfro mode. Fun, this ain’t. The only thing really keeping my sanity is my folks told me to camp out at their place with the dogs so I’ve had my face licked off by two border collies and two Dachshunds.

  98. 98.

    fuckwit

    @efgoldman: They didn’t like him because he was an outsider. Of course, we elected him precisely because he was an outsider. But not only didn’t the R’s like him but the D establishment had a shiv in for him right from the get go as well.

  99. 99.

    Ahh says fywp

    @lamh36: ya thats what I got from the trailer so I’m giving it a miss. Actually, never thought I would feel sympathy for Somali pirates but now I’m wondering what happened in their lives to try something so futile and dangerous.

  101. 101.

    Jebediah, RBG

    @Ahh says fywp:

    Actually, never thought I would feel sympathy for Somali pirates but now I’m wondering what happened in their lives to try something so futile and dangerous.

    If I recall correctly, they got tired of their coastal waters being destroyed by international assholes illegally dumping toxic waste, ruining the fishing they used to be able to do. “International boats ruined our livelihood, international boats will provide our new livelihood” doesn’t seem too irrational if one is desperate.

  102. 102.

    g

    @lamh36: I found Carson’s comparison of Obamacare to slavery offensive but pretty much the norm among tea-baggers – Obamacare’s been compared to the Holoccaust and Pol Pot and everything else. The offensiveness resonates more when it’s said by a black man, but we’ve heard this kind of hyperbole before.

    What I found offensive in Carson’s speech was his notion that women need to be “re-educated” to become anti-abortion. There’s so much wrong there I can’t put it into words.

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