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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: CPAC — Fewer, But Meaner ‘Conservatives’!

Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: CPAC — Fewer, But Meaner ‘Conservatives’!

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There’s a couple of competing events this weekend, but the main reason CPAC attendance is down just might be Matt Schlapp’s legal problems (no good ‘conservative’ wants that stink on them!). Per the Daily Beast:

… On Wednesday, the opening day for CPAC 2024, the Alexandria City Courthouse posted a batch of eye-popping new filings in the sexual battery and defamation lawsuit against Schlapp—including a subpoena to a CPAC official alleged to have overseen document destruction days after the accusations were first publicly reported. Schlapp was on notice at the time about potential legal action.

The court records show subpoenas to other key witnesses, as well, including CPAC officials and other alleged victims. Two young men who previously reported unwanted physical advances from Schlapp have been deposed, including in connection with an alleged incident where the conservative icon, drunk and stripped to his underwear, rubbed his crotch on a young man at a fundraising event months before the alleged assault at the center of the lawsuit…

The event has in years past been a magnet for conservative stalwarts and rising stars alike, a staple for Beltway Republicans looking to make inroads with the party’s most well-wired players. However, with the arrival of Trump and the MAGA movement, CPAC’s star began to dim. Recent years have seen notable shifts in attendance, as CPAC scrapped its mainstream conservative bona fides and instead embraced fringe and frivolous figures on the far right—celebrating the likes of Jan. 6 insurrectionists and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, while platforming authoritarian leaders across the globe.

It’s unclear how much of that branding pivot was pre-planned and how much was simply an inability to forestall Trump, leading Schlapp and his crew to adopt a “sour grapes” attitude that recast MAGA critics within the GOP as scurrilous political enemies. Regardless, the shifts have led to declines in attendance, revenue, and influence, a trend the Schlapp allegations exacerbated last year…

Still a hardcore bunch of chaos agents, wannabe kapos, and genuine foreign heads of state (Nayib Bukele, Liz Truss) ready to rile up the rubes:


They’re playing the biggest hits!…

Reader Interactions

132Comments

  1. 1.

    Tony Jay

    And apparently Prime Minature Sunak is under increasing political pressure over here to ‘do something’ about Dizzy Lizzie Truss and her triple-double reverse pike deep dive into Far Right conspiracy theorying and borderline slanderous attacks on all the ‘unelected Deep State plants’ who sabotaged her wildly (un)popular plans for the UK.

    I get that the out-of-her-depth airhead is just desperate for attention and eager for a gig on the Wingnut Whirrlygig, but it’s (blackly) funny to see the Tories snapped like a cracker over their electoral need to claw back middle-of-the-road votes clashing with the radicalised madness of most of their base.

    Sounds familiar, I know. Unfortunately in the UK this moment of conservative crisis is being met by an Opposition firmly in the grip of the UK’s versions of Joes Lieberman and Manchin.

  2. 2.

    Tony Jay

    Also too, that very last picture has strong ‘Neo-Nazi tribute act The Volkswagen Beatles attend court to answer plagiarism and copyright charges’ vibes.

  3. 3.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Tony Jay: Tony, you’re a virtuoso!  Have you ever crafted one of those takedown speeches that drill sergeants are reputed to use on wet-beind-the-ears recruits who aren’t measuring up, insulting every bit of their ancestry, all without ever using a curse word or slur ?  I bet yours would be an auditory extravaganza!

  4. 4.

    m.j.

    I made a guy run over a dead skunk.

    I was driving out of town on a county road . This guy behind me didn’t want to pass or back off. I was getting a little angry.

    I just want to get home safely after work. I set the cruise to 56 and I’m golden, until some jackass-in-a-hurry expects me to speed in order to accommodate his need to get there.

    I see some roadkill in the distance. A skunk, and it’s directly on line with my left front tire. I keep the line. I’m pretty sure he can’t see it because he’s on my tail. I juke at the last instant and I look in the rearview.

    Sure enough, Thump, Thump, he runs over the carcass.

    So satisfying.

  5. 5.

    satby

    Either the conned are starting to catch on that they’re the mark, or the disengagement we sane people are hoping for is beginning. Must be hard to keep those torches lit when the leaders you send $$ to keep pissing it away on lawyers to stay out of jail and the manly man heros protecting the sanctity of women and children turn out to be traffickers and gay sexual assaulters themselves.

  6. 6.

    Tony Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I’d class both An Officer And A Gentleman and Platoon as foundational influences, yes. Nothing like a good deconstructive rant to get the blood pumping and the tears rolling. Got to be aimed in the right direction, though.

    Frex, Cole’s eye-watering sartorial masterclass of yesterday might look like something you’d see fleetingly in the background of a mid-70s Afro-German art/porn videopiece smuggled into the country by Derek Jarman and shown only to select audiences in a cellar under a Hammersmith fetish shop, but I’d never tell him that.

  9. 9.

    Tony Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    It’s pretty much Top Gun meets Pretty Woman without the budget for crotch-strapped jet fights, but if you’ve ever wanted to see Lou Gossett Junior deliver a character building nut-punch while also meeting a lady-friend’s quota for “a bit of romance now and again” it’s well worth the watch.

  11. 11.

    prufrock

    @Tony Jay: An Officer and a Gentleman didn’t get DoD support because they were afraid that the scenes of Lou Gossett yelling at Richard Gere would turn off potential recruits. Of course, this just demonstrated that the people in charge did not understand their own personnel. Passing through that kind of trial is a point of pride for many young people, and the harder the better.

     

    Probably for the best anyway. The movie would have suffered from US Navy editing.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    Liz Truss starts her speech at CPAC by proclaiming “the reality is that the west is being run by the left for too long” as the Tories approach their 14th straight year in office in the UK

    That’s insane.

  17. 17.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Baud: I have a friend, who’s a good guy.  But somehow, a combination of working in very-well-paid tech, and living in London, has started to rot his conscience.  He said to me today that the left, the progressives, have already won.  When I pressed him on this, he explained that they’d won the culture war, that basically the mass culture and the youth all believed in the progressive agenda in full: LGBTQ rights, Palestinian rights, unions, etc.

    Needless to say, I pointed out that culture didn’t do jack-shit to stop the boot from stomping on your face, etc.  Ditto Dobbs, ditto what happened to that poor girl in Oklahoma.

    I think that’s what Truss is talking about: that our values have won the youth of the West, and to a great extent most of the population.  She’s salty about that, just like any bitter clinger would be.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Yes, if you focus just on young people, we’re doing better than the right culturally.  But as you say, that has hardly made us dominant politically. We’re underperforming when it comes to the culture-to-politics metric.

  21. 21.

    Tony Jay

    @prufrock:

    True true. Gere’s self-centred prick would have had the slimy edges shaved off him and the friend suicide subplot would have been Meg Ryaned into a happy flappy redemption arc.

    And, as has been mentioned, LGJ would have had his melanin leeched.

  22. 22.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Baud: It’s what is most sad about my young (41yo) friend: he’s bought into the RW framing that the left has won, when in fact everywhere around him in London, he can see the effects of the boot stamping on the faces of the people.  It’s really sad.  I can see, someday 5-10yr from now, he’ll have turned into a Tory voter.  Really sad.

  23. 23.

    Honus

    Why isn’t Steve “three shirts” Bannon in jail yet?

    and all kudos to Tony Jay for the description of Cole in those overalls. The straw hat really makes the look and the cherry on top is Cole’s comment on the other thread that his mother doesn’t understand or approve of his sartorial ambassadorship for West Virginia.

  24. 24.

    Baud

    Speaking of culture war, via reddit

    On life support’: Hospital officials warn dozens of rural Alabama hospitals are at risk of closing their doors

    Local media, so the whole article manages to talk about the issue without mentioning Obamacare, Affordable Care Act, or Medicaid Expansion. Propaganda at its finest.

  28. 28.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Baud: *sigh* yes.  He thinks that trans rights has gone too far.  He thinks that affirmative action has gone too far.  Talks about quotas for keeping down Asian-Americans in colleges.  Stuff like that.  He rattles off a long list at high speed, evidence that he’s absorbed the RW Gish Gallop rhetorical technique.  So I took those two and took them apart for him to show that they were bullshit.  And then pointed out Dobbs (and the follow-on destruction of rights) as well as what’s happening to trans and LGBTQ people all over in the US.

    The problem is, like I said, he starting to see this from the economic POV, and that’s driving him to accept the social frame.  He thinks of himself as making not enough money, when in fact he’s making wild amounts of money.  He sees people around him (at his company, his sector) making so much more than him, and …. well, you know, Thorstein Veblen diagnosed this a century ago.  Ah, well.

    He’s a good guy, and in a better environment he’d do better

    P.S. He talks about how he’s starting to disbelieve that people can be good.  To see most people as bad, in short.  Like I said: it’s really sad

    P.P.S. He feels economically anxious, looking around at his peers, and ….. well, I’m betting he’s in the top 1% of earners in Britain

    PPPS. He’s actually bought the RWNJ framing that immigration is out of control, that it’s not a problem to build a wall, all that *shit*.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I don’t much believe in the goodness of people.  But that makes me value the disciplining effect of diversity.

    But I can see how he’s transferring his resentment about his relatively low salary compared to his peers onto others. So common.

    Liberals policies have made today’s seniors some of the most well off in history, and look what a majority of them are spending their time and money on. Right wing resentment.  They’re what has made CPAC a thing.

  32. 32.

    Juju

    I’m good with those men smoking. Keep doing that, I hope they make it to a multiple packs a day habit.

  34. 34.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Baud: As you can imagine, when I brought that up, he insisted that the Dems should have just caved to TFG during his reign, and that that would have defused the problem.  [as if, as if]  I of course pointed out that that’s not how it ever works: the goalposts just get moved.  And of course, I pointed out that the G(r)OPers have it in their power to “fix” economic migrants anytime they want, by mandating e-verify.  If they want it.  He insisted that the Dem-run states (like CA) should do that, even though the US Govt does not.  I pointed out that the Dems don’t have a problem with more immigration, at which point he said “see, there’s the proof that the Dems are for open borders”.

    I mean, he can’t see that the center of the Dem party supports border restrictions, is definitely not going to be OK with open borders, but also recognizes the value of immigrants.

    Get this: his answer to “low-paid immigrants pick all the fruit&veg in this country, buddy” is “just move the farms to Mexico”.  It’s exactly what Brexiters in the UK say about exactly the same problem.

    It’s madness, and he’s infected.

  37. 37.

    raven

    @Chetan Murthy: I imagine the murder of the young lady by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant here in Athens is going to become a political football. His brother was also arrested for a fake green card and he’s be busted three times for DUI, no drivers license and shoplifting. Our DA is already under fire and this will just add to it.

  39. 39.

    Tony Jay

    @Subsole:

    I confess I saw that on the FTFGuardian comment site and stole it instantly.

    @Subsole:

    Well scrubbed young white men looking self-satisfied and eager in their grandfather’s best stepping-out clothes? What could be more American than that?

  43. 43.

    Tony Jay

    @Betty:

    Oh, it‘ll all work out in the end. The seas will rise and the fire will come down from heaven and though the TV reception will be shot we can entertain ourselves watching the heads of our conservative and centrist-moderate betters slide ghoulishly down their spikes.

    Oh, to be in England when the reckoning comes. /s

  44. 44.

    eclare

    @raven:

    Oh what a horrible situation.  I read about her death yesterday, just going for a run, which should be the focus.  And now it is going to spiral into so much more.

  45. 45.

    raven

    @eclare: Yea and here what they’ll focus on”:

    ATLANTA (AP) — Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill into law Friday creating a new commission empowered to discipline and remove wayward prosecutors, saying it will curb “far-left prosecutors” who are “making our communities less safe.”

  48. 48.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Baud: yeah Texas and Idah have had similar articles locally and nationally in recent years.  But we don t need a national health plan dontcha know. Something by the way Hillary way fighting for back in the 90s.  Dobbs made the flight of doctors and nurses worse but it’s been happening for years, people get burnt out.

  52. 52.

    Ken

    @satby: Either the conned are starting to catch on that they’re the mark, or the disengagement we sane people are hoping for is beginning.

    I’m thinking mostly the first.  As that one tweet notes, “It’s devolved into a MAGA Inc. grifter convention”. Which raises the question, what happens when there are no marks? Will the grifters start preying on one another? Some of them seem dumb enough to fall for the others’ spiels.

  53. 53.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: The Tories may run the government, but trans people and atheists walk around free and there are mixed-race couples in TV ads!

    That’s what gets them so mad, that they don’t control consensus culture. Not in the mass media; not in everyday life. We complain that the right seems to control the narrative in traditional news media aimed at the 70+ crowd, but it’s nothing on their frustration at how marginalized their worldview is in entertainment.

  55. 55.

    Salty Sam .

    @Baud: All people suck if they’re allowed to.
    @Betty: I don’t agree with that sentiment. It’s too cynical.

    You are both correct!

    Rutger Bregman, the young Dutch historian who went viral after admonishing the Davos crowd ( “Taxes, taxes, taxes! Just pay your taxes!”), wrote a wonderful little book in 2019, “Humankind”.  The main thesis, supported by lots of research, is that human beings are hard wired to cooperate with one another- it is how and why we are the dominant species on the planet (for good AND ill).

    The monkey wrench that destroys all that Kumbaya is wealth.  Again, supported by research, he shows that the accumulation of wealth erodes the cooperative trait- C.R.E.A.M. and FYIGM is a very real thing.

    Chetans friend is a classic example.  My own brother is one as well.  Sorry about your buddy Chetan- I feel your pain in my own family.

    ETA:  THIS Rutger Bregman:
    https://youtu.be/paaen3b44XY?si=l4dmqE-dMYn5otHz

  56. 56.

    Matt McIrvin

    @prufrock: R. Lee Ermey became a folk hero of sorts playing a far more extreme version of the character (basically based on himself) in Full Metal Jacket, and that was supposed to be a dark and horrifying satirical take.

  57. 57.

    Tony G

    Between Matt Schlapp grabbing young men’s cocks and “Moms for Liberty” with the bisexual rape-threesomes — this is the worst porn video yet.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    @Salty Sam .:

    The monkey wrench that destroys all that Kumbaya is wealth.  Again, supported by research, he shows that the accumulation of wealth erodes the cooperative trait- C.R.E.A.M. and FYIGM is a very real thing.

     
    I agree that’s one thing that can destroy cooperation, but I’d need a lot more convincing that it’s the only thing.

  60. 60.

    Tony G

    @satby: Back when I was an IT systems support guy, we used to use the jargon phrase “hitting the knee of the curve”.  When the performance of a system is degrading, for a long time it degrades in a gradual, predictable manner.  But, eventually, the system reaches a point at which the compensating mechanisms are no longer working, and the performance rapidly collapses from gradually bad to catastrophically dysfunctional.  If you graph performance on the y axis and time on the x axis, it looks like a bended knee.  Maybe the MAGA movement has hit the knee of the curve.  I hope so.

  61. 61.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: Sounds like Kemp is cribbing from the DeSantis playbook by going after the prosecutor. The bad news is that it works. The only move illegally suspended prosecutors have is to sue, and the legal system takes forever to sort the cases.

    That means the citizens who elected the illegally removed prosecutors are effectively disenfranchised, and the wingnut drones who are appointed to replace the illegally removed prosecutors get an opportunity to burrow in and steal the advantages of incumbency.

    I’m not sure how to solve the problem, but it doesn’t surprise me that more red state goobers are going after prosecutors. There’s proof of concept.

  62. 62.

    Salty Sam .

    @Baud:  you are correct again.  I simplified my remarks to keep it short and simple.

    Its a good book, with much sociological research used to bolster his arguments.

  63. 63.

    hueyplong

    @Betty Cracker: Someone reading a story like that one in the context of other current events might form an impression that GA Republicans are a little worried about the strength of the case against Trump.

    It must be exhausting for his camp to be juggling so many various “best defense is a good offense” attacks to keep his festering ass out of prison and/or bankruptcy court.

  64. 64.

    catclub

    @Baud: yeah, they really have to thread that needle:

    Nearly 300,000 low-income Alabamians fall into this coverage gap because they make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to afford private health insurance.

  67. 67.

    catclub

    @Baud:

    and that was only 12 years, and we had a Dem Congress for much of it.

    The typical Dem rep at that time was a conservative southern democrat. Think much more conservative than Jimmy Carter, without the interest in solar power. All the Reagan tax and regulation cutting passed that congress.

  69. 69.

    Baud

    @catclub:

    We definitely had more of that, but I don’t know if I would say they were the typical Dem. We also had more moderate Republicans.

  70. 70.

    Chris

    The “just kidding…actually, not kidding” way he says this to let the audience know he is saying the quiet part out loud. They really want to end democracy, and too many people are letting it happen

    “We’re a republic not a democracy” is a wingnut rallying cry they’ve been bleating for over ten years at this point.  That’s not because the average Republican has suddenly developed a deep interest in political science terminology and really wants us to know that there’s a difference between voting on every single issue and electing representatives who’ll vote for you.  They’ve been very loudly screaming, since long before Trump, that consent of the governed and government of, by, and for the people need to be abolished.

  71. 71.

    EarthWindFire

    @Chetan Murthy: Get this: his answer to “low-paid immigrants pick all the fruit&veg in this country, buddy” is “just move the farms to Mexico”.  It’s exactly what Brexiters in the UK say about exactly the same problem.

     They’re obviously not gardeners lol. I’m with the others. Your friend has become a Tory. He’s just not admitting it yet.

  72. 72.

    Baud

    @Chris:

    “We’re a republic not a democracy” is a wingnut rallying cry they’ve been bleating for over ten years at this point.

    I think it goes back to the New Deal.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth urged her Republican colleagues to reconsider their support for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, citing the judge’s past support of a group opposed to in vitro fertilization and her own experience with the treatment in conceiving her daughters.
    Duckworth, D-Ill., in an exclusive interview with Fox News, warned that a confirmation of Barrett to the high court puts IVF procedures “very much at risk,” after a report last week revealed that the conservative judge and her husband signed onto an advertisement in 2006 with hundreds of other supporters of the group St. Joseph County Right to Life, which believes life begins at fertilization and that the IVF process should be criminalized.

    2020. Everything we warned about has come to pass.

    The GOP House has an abortion ban bill right now – declares that life begins at conception – no carve out for IVF.

    So Life Begins at Conception except IVF? They’ll carve out an exception for IVF but not for raped 10 year olds? The new ‘bedrock principal” they’ll settle on in the next 20 minutes?

    Anti choice theory is a mess. None of them thought this through.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth urged her Republican colleagues to reconsider their support for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, citing the judge’s past support of a group opposed to in vitro fertilization and her own experience with the treatment in conceiving her daughters.
    Duckworth, D-Ill., in an exclusive interview with Fox News, warned that a confirmation of Barrett to the high court puts IVF procedures “very much at risk,” after a report last week revealed that the conservative judge and her husband signed onto an advertisement in 2006 with hundreds of other supporters of the group St. Joseph County Right to Life, which believes life begins at fertilization and that the IVF process should be criminalized.

    2020. Everything we warned about has come to pass.

    The GOP House has an abortion ban bill right now – declares that life begins at conception – no carve out for IVF.

    So Life Begins at Conception except IVF? They’ll carve out an exception for IVF but not for raped 10 year olds? The new ‘bedrock principal” they’ll settle on in the next 20 minutes?

    Anti choice theory is a mess. None of them thought this through.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    I would be excited about CPAC attendance being down but I think the Right has already moved on to new outlets, like Glenn Greenwald on Rumble or Joe Rogan on Spotify or Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk on Twitter or…A LOT of TikTok, which is shockingly anti Biden (specifically) but also Right wing (more generally). I actually think they’ve passed us on the internet – it’s probably more Right than Left now.

    I was hoping younger Lefties would come up with some new platforms. We’ve fallen behind.

  78. 78.

    Baud

    @Kay: They’re always welcome here

    ETA: Reddit still seems to have a leftish presence, although i’s always been more diverse.

    Hate to say it, but lefties and many liberals have a tendency to cocoon themselves in their own echo chamber. I include myself, because I hang out here and haven’t done any social media, but I’m anti-social in real life too.

  79. 79.

    EarthWindFire

    @Kay: Anti-choice theory isn’t a theory at all. Theories are thought out. They had nearly half a century to refine it and they didn’t. This is a slogan made real. With all the predicted consequences.

    With that in mind, I have a feeling the “new and improved” GOP policy on IVF will be a “compromise” nationwide policy of one-shot at IVF. You can try once. If it doesn’t take, oh, well. Can’t destroy the rest of the babies. Sorry you don’t get a kid. God’s will. Thoughts and prayers. But only if the court decides you weren’t culpable in the your one shot going badly. Then it’s God’s will that you go to prison.

    And they’ll be proud of this garbage.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    They need to put a carve out for IVF in their anti choice bills, or one should assume they support criminalizing it. It’ll be tough to do logically since all the bills start with definitions that declare life begins at conception. The Alabama court said life begins at conception = all fertilzed eggs are persons – what else would they be – so this would be an exception where they’ll kill  “a person” (the fertlized eggs) for political expediency.

  82. 82.

    Chris

    There is something beautifully poetic about an anti-globalist leader of a country thousands of miles away from Maryland coming to a convention of people who have not the faintest idea of what El Salvador is or means to give a speech on the basis of shared values and principles

    It does seem pretty definite that not only has anti-globalism become a global value, but that all over the world it’s settled on the same theme: globalization is bad because it promotes diversity, equal rights, civil liberties, and, well, (((you know))), and the answer is to embrace some form of fascism.

    I mean, people like this could freak out about globalization for the sweat shops and economic crises.  They choose to freak out about the gays and loose women instead.

  84. 84.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    It’s a common phrase that I’ve heard from both sides of the aisle and has been used multiple times, but it really became fully embraced by the right in the wake of Obama’s election.

  85. 85.

    Baud

    @Kay: The Alabama court was logically consistent. It’s everyone else on their side that’s playing politics.

     

    @Chris: Culture > economics.

    It’s what the Marxists have never understood.

  86. 86.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Reddit is diverse, so has some Leftish, but all of the shows and platforms I listed are Right wing- Tik Toc has tons of far Right content.

    I mean, eventually they catch on. We can’t keep depicting them as they were in 2006.

  87. 87.

    EarthWindFire

    @Kay: My husband and I were just discussing how the AL Supreme Court decision is perfectly logical if you accept the life begins at conception premise. Sloganeering made real leads to wacky results.

  90. 90.

    Rusty

    @Kay: if an unimplanted fertilized egg isn’t a person, then there isn’t anything wrong with the morning after pill.  The anti-abortion crowd is deeply opposed to the morning after pill, it circumvents abortion bans in red states and encourages sex other than for procreation, which is their real obsession.  There isn’t any way to really square that circle, it’s either IVF and the morning after pill are ok or both are banned.  The hard care anti-sex, anti-abortion crowd get this.

  91. 91.

    EarthWindFire

    @catclub: My dad was a 2000 Dem convention delegate. The biggest party that year was thrown by Senator John Breaux of Louisiana. 24 years later and no one can imagine a democrat being senator from Louisiana. The conservative dems are either stuck in backwaters or are from the north.

  92. 92.

    Geminid

    @hueyplong: The law Kemp just signed is a rewrite of the law passed last May. Last November the Georgia Supreme Court objected to a portion of the first one. The objection was more technical than substantive, an I think this statute tracks the first.

    I’m not sure what the backstory is for the original statute. It could have been part of the general reactionary movement to rein in “progressive” prosecutors, and may have predated Willis’s prosecution of Trump.

    I guess Willis could be the first prosecutor to be investigated by this apparatus. Assuming the structure laid out by the previous statute is the same in the new one, there is a 5-person investigation panel which gathers evidence and recommends whether to proceed, in which csse a 3-person hearing panel reviews and decides the matter.

    Kemp got to appoint one member of each panel; I guess the others are appointed by legislators. The one he apointed to the investigation panel last December was a retired, long-time judge, but I don’t know about the rest.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @EarthWindFire:

    More than perfectly logical. It’s the only result one can reach.

    I’ll be interested to see how they justify a carve out for IVF but stand firm on no carve outs for women bleeding to death or 10 year old rape victims.

    When I was in law school it was fashionable to say Roe was “poorly reasoned” – even dopey ass kissing liberals (no shortage of them in law schools) who wanted conservatives to like them said it. I guess no one ever examined this contradicatory mess of a theory anti choicers have cobbled together.

  94. 94.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    Culture > economics.

    It’s what the Marxists have never understood.

    That’s why we Cultural Marxists are in the vanguard of a Hermetically Satisfactory Future.

    Would you like some locally sourced community tea with your Prog-Folk musical entitlement?

  95. 95.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I was hoping there would be a new thing – for example, Gen Z says Millennials are addicted to their phones in a way that Gen Z are not. This is true in my observation – Gen Z are more “in real life” focused. It’s like they came up with phones so they don’t have the same addictive appeal. My youngest and his GF make this big show of “not taking” their phones places in a way that makes me think it’s partly performative ” we’re not phone addicts like the olds”

    So I thought “good! maybe they’ll organize in real life spaces, leaving online to Righties” but that hasn’t happened.

  96. 96.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Kay:

    When I was in law school it was fashionable to say Roe was “poorly reasoned” – even dopey ass kissing liberals (no shortage of them in law schools) who wanted conservatives to like them said it.

    Do you remember what their arguments were for this?  I’m curious, b/c from what people have told me about the rationale, it seems like it had an eminently reasoned basis.  The way I heard it, the second trimester cutoff for “you can get an abortion for any reason” was decided b/c before the cutoff, aborting is safer for the gestating female than proceeding to delivery.  Of course, since then abortion has only gotten safer, and …. in some places perhaps pregnancy has gotten less safe.  But whatevs on that: the idea was that the cutoff was chosen for the point where, before it, abortion is *safer* for the health of the gestating female.  If that isn’t completely rational, I don’t know what is.

    Uh, of course, unless one views the embryo/fetus as an equal person.  I guess, then, sure, it seems irrational.  But then, I don’t hold that view, so  …..

  97. 97.

    Baud

    @Kay: Yeah, I try not to be negative about young people, but for me the jury is still out on them when it comes to politics.  I hope November proves me wrong.  I am a fan of people like Victor Shi.  He has such a positive attitude.

  98. 98.

    jimmiraybob

    @Chris: ​ “‘We’re a republic not a democracy’ is a wingnut rallying cry they’ve been bleating for over ten years at this point.”It never dawns on them that a republic without a system to be responsible to the voice (all) of the people looks a lot like the People’s Republic of China that they continually rail against.The authors of the US Constitution were skeptical of Athenian “direct” democracy which is why we ended up with a representative democracy to channel the voice of the people.
    I will also point out that the result of the American Revolution was a very liberal overthrow of the European conservative order (a successful rebellion against monarchy and colonialism), which was one reason for the switch from the traditional church-state alliance.​​

  99. 99.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I heard a lot about how lousy Roe was too; clever arguments based on abstract legal priniciples. But when I see how Roe dealt with critical real-life questions, I think it was one of the most brilliant Supreme Court decisions ever.

  100. 100.

    Kay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    They thought it shouldn’t be grounded in a right to privacy and the “trimester” organization was jammed in there after the fact for political reasons. I never heard that the trimester organization had anything to do with the life or health of the mother. Instead it was about balancing sets of rights – the woman’s rights, the rights of the fetus and the rights of the state. As the pregnancy progressed the woman’s rights recede and the fetus and state come to the fore.

    If conservatives want to be consistent they need to ban abortion and IVF – either the conception is a person or it’s not. Liberals say “not yet” – we’re much more logically consistent, which is why the Roe framework worked so well for 50 years and why the conservative framework doesn’t work at all. It really matters if your theory makes sense when you’re writing a law- they start with garbage reasoning so they end up with garbage. They won’t be able to fix it. That’s why countries like Mexico and Ireland lberalized abortion laws- Right wing abortion theory kills women and it can’t be fixed.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    There was that whole period in the 1990s, too, where feminists were criticized for not “compromising” on abortion. It was our job to placate Right wingers so we had Casey and a set of new abortion restrictions – we had made them mad and now would be punished. Don’t make Daddy GOP mad! Don’t make him hit you!

    None of it mattered. They banned it anyway.

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Did you see this? I was thrilled!

    He’s come a long way, Our Will.

    Will Stancil, a man who’s made a name for himself online as a feisty defender of President Joe Biden and Democratic policies, announced Wednesday that he’s running for a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives. But Stancil says social media platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, aren’t going to be a very important part of his upstart campaign.

     

  103. 103.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    “The disciplining effect of diversity” is a good term for a phenomenon I also like.

    The freedom of religion principle in America is the ur-example to me; it didn’t endure because most people were Jeffersonian deists, it endured because there were too many churches and none of them had enough adherents to become the Church of America, so everyone accepted a religiously neutral government as a fallback.

  104. 104.

    Jinchi

    @Baud: ​but for me the jury is still out on them when it comes to politics.

    Of course the jury is out. Most of them haven’t had a chance to vote yet.

    But the ones who have are a big reason Biden is president and Democrats have been exceeding expectations over the last few elections. It’s the older generations we need to worry about.​

  105. 105.

    Chris

    @jimmiraybob:

    The extent to which the American Revolution was a radical/liberal achievement gets massively underplayed in the modern day, ironically because of both the right (which wants to claim it as an origin story and therefore hates any radical associations it may have) and the left (for being a “bourgeois” revolution).

  106. 106.

    SixStringFanatic

    @m.j.: HA!  I did the same thing to a guy pulling the same shit, only I led him to an encounter with a particularly vicious pothole.

    It really was incredibly satisfying.

  108. 108.

    Baud

    @Jinchi:

    It’s not a competition. Of course old people are worse. The question is whether old people are politically stronger. One election (2020) does not establish a pattern.

  110. 110.

    Glidwrith

    @Chetan Murthy: There were a couple of points in my life where I could have been living in Missouri or Texas. A friend moved to Texas some years ago – it was frightening watching him change into the local redstate mindset. I’ve wondered sometimes how solid a liberal I would be if I hadn’t settled in California.

  112. 112.

    Geminid

    @Kay: A politics-maven named Chaz Nuttycomb reported Stancil’s candidacy, and his report got around Twitter where I saw it.

    Some unkind remarks were made about Stancil modifying his posture towards Democratic leadership. People said “Aha! So that’s why Will changed his tune last year, he wanted to run for office.”

    I dunno. I always figured Stancil came around because he took my advice to follow Rachel Bitecofer. Regardless, I hope Will has a positive experience, because he’s basically a well-intentioned guy. Maybe Mangy Jay will put on a good word for him; she lives in Minneapolis now.

  113. 113.

    Jinchi

    @Glidwrith: ​
      Having lived in Texas for a number of years actually made me more liberal. It was the first time I really saw what the conservative vision of the country was.

  114. 114.

    Fake Irishman

    @Baud:

    GOP also held senate from 1981-1986. The conservative southern Boll Weevil Democrats  in the House really only held sway in 1981-1982 when the Democratic House majority was small.

    (liberal GOPers from the NE and parts of the Midwest were called “gypsy moths”)

  115. 115.

    Glidwrith

    @Kay: “Anti choice theory is a mess, none of them thought this through.”

    Ma’am, with the deepest admiration for your commentary, I think they did think it through. Just like with getting rid of food stamps and Social Security, the leaders want women enslaved, children forced to work and old folks to just fuck off and die, already.

    They follow an Anti-Christ and want that world.

  116. 116.

    jimmiraybob

    @Chris: ​ It absolutely pisses me off that the “left” has ceded the authority of the radical Enlightenment ideals contained in Constitution – that has underwritten all progress in the US of human and civil rights.
    Sure, many of the founders owned slaves but many of the slave owning founders authored and fought for the weapon to end chattel slavery.
    Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists convinced Lincoln and his Republican Party in the 1860s to end the institution of chattel slavery using those ideals.
    MLK Jr., and the civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s used it to convince the Kennedy’s and Johnson (Democrats) to lead the way for key civil rights legislation. Women’s emancipation – the same. The list is endless.
    The abandonment of the founding document of the nation that has has been the foundation of the progressive movement toward liberation is to give the radical regressive reactionaries an unearned victory.​

  117. 117.

    Fake Irishman

    @Chris:

    This is a good point. When I was doing some research on the organization of the Catholic church, I came across an incident where the papal nuncio came to the the Secretary of State Jefferson in the Washington Administration and said “hey we’d like to negotiate with you to appoint some bishops” like they did in other states/empires. He was shocked when Jefferson got back to him and said “we kicked this around in cabinet, and agreed that we shouldn’t get involved with that because we don’t have an established church here. Appoint whomever you want, just stay out of governmental affairs” That was the first time the Catholic Church realized that religious freedom could be a pretty attractive proposition.

  118. 118.

    Glidwrith

    @Jinchi: At that age, I didn’t know anything about political policy and was basically raised in ignorance as a Republican voter. It wasn’t until Bush, Jr ran for office that I decided to learn what those policies were and became a raging liberal.

    The friend that went to Texas kept in touch with my husband. He took it upon himself to subvert the friend out of the wilderness. Pointing out that even if his daughters were “good girls” and therefore didn’t need birth control, getting pregnant if raped is really not a good outcome.

    In the end, he and his family left Texas and moved to Arkansas.

  119. 119.

    Fake Irishman

    @jimmiraybob:

    THIS. The point isn’t that the founders were perfect; the point is that the ideas they espoused helped encourage other folks to say “hey, why shouldn’t the these ideas of liberty and equality apply to all these other groups too?”

    And a very large part of American history (and the history of industrialized democracies more broadly) is about those groups demanding those rights and finding enough allies who rethought their priors and realized “yeah, you got a point there”

    It’s this dynamic ability to enlarge the polity that has made us strong and makes the governing documents like the Constitution so powerful — and makes stricter forms of originalism so empty and dead.

  120. 120.

    jimmiraybob

    @Fake Irishman: ​
     
    The ideology of many American founders writing the Constitution was pretty cosmopolitan (thank you Cicero and the Stoics) which is a thing that has enraged hard right Christians of all stripes from the Calvinist Puritans and Pilgrims still roaming the colonies in the late 18th century to today’s Christian Nationalists (thank you Calvin).

    A good example of anti-cosmopolitan (and semi-Medieval) thought is exemplified in my illustrious Senator’s fight against the secular evil: too much freedom and choice and especially for too many of the people (wink). Look up Josh Hawley’s King’s College commencement address (2019).

  121. 121.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Tony G: ​Re the knee of the curve, two characters from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926):

    “How did you go bankrupt?”
    “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

  124. 124.

    Subsole

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Side note: I used to love that scene when I was a kid. He was so hardcore and badass.

    Many, many years later, it comes on the t.v. while my dad and I are sitting talking. My dad, an Army vet, went off about what a godawful fuckup Hartman was as a D.I.

    “The man’s job was to produce Marines. Instead, he got his fool-ass wasted in the Gunnery Sgt. Hartman Memorial Head because he couldn’t stop being an abusive loudmouth asshole for six damn seconds.”

    So as I sat mulling that over, it dawned on me that Cowboy was kind of a disaster as squad leader and Joker damn near got himself killed because he didn’t check his safety before he tried to rock and roll. So Hartman’s work product displayed a somewhat lackluster performance, all told.

    Weird how that swaggering bullshit worked out in the film…

  125. 125.

    Subsole

    @Chris:

    Also because Central Europe had been busily providing several rather harrowing examples of just how sour that whole Church-State partnership could go if people decided to try conclusions…

  126. 126.

    Tony Jay

    @Subsole:

    …waiting for the lacklustre applause of the sparse crowd to trickle off so they can finally take the oath of office and bring all kinds of milky-pale hell down on their enemies.

  127. 127.

    Tehanu

    @Tony Jay: ​

    Prime Minature Sunak

    Tony, your eloquence never fails!
    @Fake Irishman: ​
     

    The point isn’t that the founders were perfect; the point is that the ideas they espoused helped encourage other folks to say “hey, why shouldn’t the these ideas of liberty and equality apply to all these other groups too?”

    Exactly. We have great ideals; the problem is making them real and not just marks on paper.

  128. 128.

    Chris

    @jimmiraybob:

    TBF, I think this is more of an issue in the global left than the American one, and in America, more of an issue among the too-left-for-the-Democrats fringe than most left-leaning voters – the average Democrat’s feelings are still far better represented in liberal-patriotic things like The West Wing or Hamilton or the eruption of patriotism that went with things like Obama’s inauguration.  These things keep happening because there’s a market for them.

  129. 129.

    Chris

    @Fake Irishman:

    The comic book The Losers, by a British writer of all things, pretty much summed up my view of the founding fathers;

    “You believe all men are created equal?”
    “It’s right there in the Declaration of Independence.  It’s what we fight for.”
    “But that Declaration was written by slave-owners and Indian-killers.”
    “So they were hypocrites.  So what?  Doesn’t mean the sentiment isn’t noble, worth fighting for.  Worth dying for.”

  130. 130.

    Chris

    @Subsole:

    I think that’s why it left such a mark on the educated classes that people like the founding fathers could come up with the separation of church and state framework in the first place, but I think the structural factors in U.S. politics are why it stuck.

    If you look at places that remained dominated by one church, it was a lot less likely to take – the Edict of Nantes in France that granted quite a bit of religious freedom from Protestants was a hard-learned lesson from the wars of religion, for example but it didn’t even last a century before the monarchy revoked it.  Later on the history of France, and Italy, and Spain, and much of Latin America throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are to quite an extent a long-term civil war between the Catholic Church trying to cling to every scrap of power it had and the secularists trying to wrestle their monopoly on society away from them.

  131. 131.

    eversor

    @Chris:

    Part of the reason for the rise of Hitler was enthusiastic Church backing due to increasing secularism and flaunting of Christian commands around gender.

    The Rise of Putin in Russia was funded by American Christians and Putin’s American backing came straight from the churches.  Same for Orban in Hungary and Duterte in the Philipines.

    They are going to get what they want because ourside refuses to admit this problem.  Which means we are enabling it.  So not only should we lose completely on everything we deserve to lose and I for one will cheer it and hope it’s as bad as possible till we grow up and deal with it.

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