Nobody’s written about this but it seems pretty remarkable:
Amid raucous debate, Nevada Republican Party conventioneers on Saturday stripped opposition to gay marriage and abortion from the party platform and endorsed Gov. Brian Sandoval for governor in the June 10 primary despite misgivings by conservatives, his criticism of the process and his absence from the meeting.
They also endorsed Rand Paul for President, so apparently the Paulists packed the convention, though there’s no news of a platform plank endorsing the gold standard or warning against the Amero. Maybe they didn’t have a veto-proof majority.
You’d think a slow news cycle and a national media who enjoy political conflict and strife would generate some stories about this event, but I find little evidence that the portentous emanations from that august gathering have reached the ears of the beltway glitterati. Still, what an incoherent mess. First, let’s not forget that Rand and his daddy think that freedom from government ends where sex begins, since both of them oppose abortion and gay marriage. So how do the libertarians in the audience square their newfound views on those two subjects with their Paulian tendencies? Second, I hope those are scare quotes:
Republicans who sat on the platform committee said they decided not to deal with social issues this year because the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts have weighed in and it doesn’t make sense for the party of “personal freedom” to have the government or the political party get involved in people’s personal lives.
Finally, I’m sure most of the candidates this convention endorsed, especially those running for federal office, want no part of this convention’s foolishness. For example, Senator Dean Heller switched his position to oppose abortion once he made it to Congress.
If any state Democratic convention showed the utter incoherence that the Nevada GOP showed this weekend, we wouldn’t be done hearing about it until Memorial Day, but apparently this one is going to be filed under IOKIYAR. Maybe we’ll hear a little more if the Wisconsin GOP votes to secede from the union, but my guess is that they’ll have to start sacrificing virgins before the national media points out the combination of crazy and clueless that’s running amok at state GOP conventions.
dmsilev
Also,
Chickencare lives!
c u n d gulag
“…but my guess is that they’ll have to start sacrificing virgins before the national media points out the combination of crazy and clueless …”
Now, THERE’S something that will make every College Republicans shudder, while the pee their in their pants!!!
Ash Can
It sounds from the article like this disarray resulted from the poor planning of the convention staff and the resulting chaos of the platform vote. Passed after very little debate, with less than half of the delegates present? Lol. I’m sure that the moderates behind these events are vastly outnumbered among the rank and file, but I do agree that it’s novel to see them have their day.
MomSense
@dmsilev:
Well to be fair to Ms. Lowden, it was the only Republican health care reform proposal put forward as an alternative to Ocare for a long time.
Punchy
How does an interior state plan to secede? They’d be the North American version of Andorra. That’s a lot of border area to guard. Not sure the cheese revenue and Dells taxes will support so many border patrol guards.
Belafon
@Punchy: We’ll leave their great lakes borders open and tell the Canadians that Wisconsin is planning an invasion.
Schlemizel
My guess is Daddy and little Ayn will be in favor of abortion on demand and gay marriage as soon as they see it as the ticket to increased power for themselves. Sadly this could be a winner for them. It may tip just enough of the brain damaged Tech-libs to think these guys will be good for them to swing elections to more of these crackpots. That could put a lot of Kochsuckers in Congress.
The hope would be that it would split off the Christianist crackpots and allow sane candidates to win 3-way races but my guess is Koch money will marginalize a large portion of the religious right and find a way to build bridges with the Paulistas once they do get elected.
Schlemizel
@Punchy:
As a Minnesotan I have felt for years we would be far better off as Canada’s Southern most Province. Probably the whackos who said Obamacare would make them move to Canada think the same thing. Except of course that they would find themselves ‘worse off’ in their tiny minds.
Linda Featheringill
@Belafon:
LOL! You are SO bad!
Belafon
@Schlemizel: Even Koch money is having trouble marginalizing the religious wingers. Otherwise they would have gotten control of the Senate years ago.
Wag
@Punchy:
What are you talking about. All Wisconsin will need is a long fence and a navy. Much of the border with Minnesota is a river, so canoes with machine guns mounted fore and aft should suffice there. Michele Bachman’s district is along the border, and her constituents might want to join up like the Russian Ukrainians.
Scotius
@MomSense: She was the only one to get specific and look where that got her.
Iowa Old Lady
What’s most amazing is the level of crazy we’ve come to accept as normal. Wisconsin Rs talk about secession and it’s not a big mockable headline, just ho-hum yada yada, let’s talk about the missing plane.
Emily68
Did the Nevada GOP have anything to say about Bundy? If not, that they were able to ignore him seems noteworthy to me.
Face
WOW. This is the antithesis of the modern GOP. This is Bizzaro Republicanism. I betting the conventioneers got rickrolled by some confusing language and signed off by mistake. Gay marraige and abortion are the only 2 things that get their base to vote….dropping those together, months before midterms, must be a clerical error.
MattF
I remember, during the Serbian wars, when news stories all started out by explaining that there are three different kinds of Bosnians. Well, now we have three different kinds of Republican. They’re not shooting each other. Yet.
Omnes Omnibus
@MattF:
Crazy, crazier, and craziest?
aangus
@Schlemizel:
True dat!
However, The Fair Elections Act Is Republican-Style Cheating
eta We have our own Conservative problems up here in the G.W.N.
negative 1
@Belafon: Even with all of the money in the world, it is difficult to win an election without volunteers. They knock on doors, make phone calls, and more importantly tell their friends. It’s extremely important. The GOP has always relied on the social issues voters and their affiliate churches for those bodies, so it was never in their best interest to let the Kochs or other big businesses to push them aside.
Wag
@Face:
Gay marraige and abortion are the only 2 things that get their base to vote
I bet they thought they were voting in fovor of gay miscarriage, not gay marriage
Yatsuno
@Iowa Old Lady: Ratings. Page views. Eyeballs. Boring Republicans acting crazy doesn’t generate that. But ZOMG MISSING PLANE!!! somehow gets 24 hour non-stop speculation.
Citizen_X
Ah, Paultards: all the ruthlessness of the Bolsheviks, and none of the smarts.
flukebucket
@dmsilev: Hahahahahahahahaha! I am sure I won’t see a better response from anywhere today. Consider “Chickencare” stolen.
Mike in NC
@Emily68:
Has the Freedumb Summit in NH ended yet? If so, will we get to see Newt, Huckabuck, Trump, and the rest of the whackos hop on a plane to fly all the way to Nevada to defend the welfare cowboy?
Newt will show up an hour late after making a detour to the nearest whorehouse (purely as a fact-finding mission to see how the job creators in that industry are faring).
Bob
Time to create a Google news alert on this topic so we can keep up to date.
Glidwrith
@Omnes Omnibus: Neocons, theocons and corprocons. Please note the “con” in all of them.
Cassidy
Does this story have more than two unnamed, unconfirmed sources?
Amir Khalid
If Wisconsin secedes from the USA, what will the Wisconsinese call their new country? Will they call it the Grand Duchy of Wisconsin, and make Scott Walker a Grand Duke?
More important, will the Green Bay Packers still be allowed to play in the NFL?
Amir Khalid
@Yatsuno:
It’s been a month and more of BREAKING NEWS: Missing plane still missing!
rikyrah
@Schlemizel:
for all the talk about ‘ freedom’, they still all want up in my uterus.
rikyrah
@negative 1:
it is the SOCIAL ISSUES that get the working class Whites to justify voting for the GOP, against their own economic self-interests.
I’m just sayin’.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t think Breaking News means what CNN thinks it means but this sorry spectacle is a perfect example of Broken News.
Schlemizel
No but a fella can dream can’t he?
MattF
@Amir Khalid: Also, the Wisconsin license-plate motto will be “Eat Cheese or Die.”
Roger Moore
@Schlemizel:
Except that the southernmost tip of Ontario would still be further south than any part of Minnesota. Heck, Toronto is about even with the southern border of Minnesota, so their population is mostly further south than yours.
Cassidy
@MattF: or “Drink shitty beer and wish you could die”.
Schlemizel
@rikyrah:
Only as long as their are votes hiding up in it. If they thought they could take the White House by allowing you to control it yourself they would find a way to be OK with that. As it is though the glibitarians will be in favor of you, my guess is the Pauls themselves will be as mute as they can be until the windsock O freedumb tells them what they need to say. As mentioned above, the Kochwhore money will not sway the real christianist crackpots but there will be two factors there: how big is that faction/how deep is their real belief as opposed to an apron to hide their real love of tax cuts? and a belief that their candidates will say things to get elected because they know it is required but once in office they will uphold “famlee valu’s” (which may be true – that would not surprise me). A lot of them voted for St. Reagan because of that belief.
WaterGirl
Something good must be going on with the economy… there have been a ton of email messages lately about several open IT positions at the University of Illinois, and I just returned from the grocery store where they had 2 or 3 open positions posted on the front door.
I really wonder about the impact Obamacare is having / will have on the economy.
Schlemizel
@Roger Moore:
Geography fail!!
I knew it went further south than where I live but thought our border was further South than theirs. Still the old MN with its belief that we are all in this together and our love of hockey makes us a natural fit for Canada. All Wisconsin would get out of the deal is poutine with cheddar and all Canada would get is a football team that couldn’t play in their league and a population that would replace Newfies as the butt of the joke.
mcjulie
@rikyrah:
There are other social issues, though, not just the ones that motivate the religious right. Racism, nativism, and general tribal resentment has traditionally been a powerful force for the right, and that shows no signs of going away any time soon.
Also guns. I’m pretty convinced that, at this point, there is no amount of time that a Democrat can be president without taking away all the guns, that will ever convince the NRA crowd that it’s not going to happen. They’re a bit like the religious right and people predicting the end of the world — there’s no amount of being wrong that will ever get them to have the thought, “hey, you know, maybe it’s not going to happen after all.”
Certified Mutant Enemy
@WaterGirl:
They must need all those new IT people to set up the software used to manage the death panels…
feebog
@WaterGirl:
The March jobs report was 192,000, plus January and February estimates were revised up. Considering the poor weather the numbers really are improving. If we can crack the 200K mark the next three months the snowball effect will really take hold.
Shakezula
They just need to figure out how to blame Obama.
negative 1
@mcjulie: It’s not a perfect crossover. Most right wing pastors still couldn’t pull off a sermon about white supremacy. Most fundamentalists don’t consider themselves racist even if they are so overt appeals to nationalism/tribablism are tougher to sell. Remember that the only tribe they consider themselves a part of is Chrisitianity, the identity begins and ends there. I just think that marginalizing the old ‘religious right’ will be tough on the GOP. Granted it’s easier in Nevada than in the southeast.
Elizabelle
We’re coming up on April 19.
21 years after the Waco siege’s end/fire at the Branch Davidian compound in 1993.
19 years after Timothy McVeigh’s bombing in OKC in 1995.
I wonder if that rancher-insurrectionist kept the dates in mind.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is STILL DEAD!
Fuzzy
@Schlemizel: KOCKSUCKERS. I love it.
mike with a mic
@rikyrah:
It’s not entirely social issues, it’s a lack of anything else.
Like it or not the Democratic party is the party of Wall Street, big tech outsourcing, free trade, and all the other shit we complain about. Not only are the cities and states that house the industries that destroy the middle class blue, they are some of the bluest ones out there and they make a ton of money fucking over the working class of this nation. Toss into this the fact that those very liberal industries and business leaders advocate anti middle class policies and well… it’s no secret business wants immigration reform to help drive down wages and that social liberals will jump into to bed with anyone and help them destroy the middle class if it means another cultural win.
The middle class is fucked either way. There is no party you can vote for with a chance of getting elected that does not want to savage the middle and working class. The white middle class can vote Republican because “hey, at least they don’t insult us 24/7 and we can slightly piss on the cultural parade of the same big city bankers that are fucking us over” or they can vote for the party that mocks them and allow Wall Street to do what it wants culturally or economically.
Honestly, any working class person that votes because they think something will be done for them is a fucking idiot of the highest order. The only reason to vote is hate and malice to get at someone else, or if you’re rich.
Origuy
@Elizabelle: I think the BLM has the date in mind–that’s why they pulled back for a cooling off period. Most of the militiamen will get back to their jobs at the gas station and then the FBI will walk in.
JPL
@WaterGirl: If Mitt had been elected president, there would be twice as many signs for employment.
@Elizabelle: Last Saturday a Klan member killed three people and maybe he got the date mixed up. Bundy needs to be arrested but unfortunately, that will cause the domestic terrorists to erupt in anger.
WaterGirl
@JPL: Because Mitt likes firing people?
Elizabelle
@Origuy:
Yeah, I was thinking BLM decided to de-escalate for just that reason.
Bobby Thomson
@MomSense: And more intellectually coherent than the Ryan budget.
WaterGirl
@Origuy: The BLM should have known better than to pick a fight so close to Waco anniversary or tax day. What were they thinking? Unforced error.
Bobby Thomson
@Belafon: Wisconsin, eh?
Belafon
@mike with a mic: Democrats have never been anti-business (what Roosevelt did during the Great Depression was designed to save capitalism). But Democratic policies have generally been in favor of things that maintain a solid middle class, like education, health care, retirement, help for those who lose their jobs.
Roger Moore
@Origuy:
I’ve also heard that while they were rounding up the cattle, the BLM workers took out a bunch of hardware to supply water to the cattle in more remote areas, so the value of the land for ranching has just taken a hit.
Citizen_X
@mike with a mic: Seriously, dudebro? Yes, the two parties are exactly the same. Never mind the old truth about “if you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.” Never mind that the DLC is dead, despite its noxious influence hanging around. There’s no difference at all, and things would be exactly the same if we had elected Mitt.
Fuck off and die, vote suppressor.
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen_X: Just ignore the dipshit.
Belafon
@WaterGirl: I suspect they were thinking of doing their jobs. If you turn a date into a day people can be martyrs, then you’ve just given them a day where they don’t have to follow any laws.
WaterGirl
@Belafon: I agree, in that I think you have to enforce stealing and murder, etc, every single day.
But this “rancher” has been at this for ages – I don’t see how doing it a month earlier or waiting until a month later so the timing is better would have made a bit of difference.
catclub
@MattF: It isn’t already?
Jado
It is ALWAYS OKIYAR, cause the owners of the medium circus are…wealthy white guys interested in getting tax breaks and shafting the poor and the working classes. Why would they emphasize disarray in their catspaws?
Gene108
@Citizen_X:
I do not understand the hatred of the DLC.
Democrats got killed in the Presidential elections of 1980, 1984 and 1988.
Something had to change, because what was being sold to the American public did not work.
catclub
@Gene108: The economy in 1980 was incredibly bad. Similarly, in 1984, it had improved a lot, and had rapidly come out of the Fed induced recession. So the GOP incumbent benefitted.
1988 – Not as clear. Iran-Contra in America.
Jebediah, RBG
@Glidwrith:
Conveniently, you can drop the first “r” from the last one and it remains just as accurate.
Frankensteinbeck
My guess: This will have no effect on anything at all. No candidate will follow it. The voters will only hear the guys yelling about legitimate rape. These libertarian assholes can pat themselves on the back that they won a victory against the foolish religious element whose bad press is preventing them from crushing liberals. Nobody else is listening.
@Schlemizel:
The Kochs do not want to marginalize the religious right. The Kochs are the founders of the Birchers. They ARE the crazy cultural right wing ‘I hate everybody and the world is about to end’ element. That includes gay communist secular islamist abortions. The Chamber of Commerce’s big problem is that the lunatics like the Kochs are willing to spend more than all the merely greedy asshole rich people combined. Oh, and yes, the Kochs are greedy, but greedy and crazy make a sweet, delicious sandwich.
another Holocene human
@Jebediah, RBG: iswydt
flukebucket
@mike with a mic:
Works for me…
Someguy
It’s Fake Tolerance.
Putting a BGLAD button on your Klan robes doesn’t make you Anthony Romero.
Someguy
@Frankensteinbeck: The Kochs do not want to marginalize the religious right. The Kochs are the founders of the Birchers. They ARE the crazy cultural right wing ‘I hate everybody and the world is about to end’ element
Actually they’re pro-gay marriage and pro-pot legalization. But hey, don’t let that get in the way of your primal scream. Carry on.
Paul in KY
That sounds suspiciously ‘sane’. Hoping that doesn’t catch on until 2017
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: How about ‘Cheesevanyia’? or maybe…’Packerstan’?
Paul in KY
@Citizen_X: Good one!
Paul in KY
@Gene108: I tell ya, Mike Dukakis was very close. If he hadn’t rodw around in that tank & had acted ’emotional’ when given that stupid rape question, he’d have been president.
Alex S.
Well, social liberalism is a huge part of the Nevada economy after all. Gambling and divorces for everyone!