Republican rule
By DougJ, Head of Infidelity March 3rd, 2010
Something Josh Marshall wrote yesterday is making the rounds:
But somehow the Democrats need to capture for people that the true horror of Republican rule would be every couple weeks having some cranky, seventy-something guy from the South pulling a freak out, screaming at the country to get off his lawn and shutting down the government until the veins in his forehead de-bulge.
How would that be any different than the Democratic majority we have now?
No, the true horror of Republican rule would be endless Congressional investigations into ACORN, into Obama’s birth certificate, into Van Jones, into Salahigate, into whether or not Obama still smokes, into the gender make-up of Obama’s basketball teams, into Joe Biden’s hair plugs, into the iPod Michelle Obama gave the Queen, and so on.
Truth be told, it would be very entertaining.
Doug, you’re an upstater, right? What do you make of this?
I know, Utica isn’t Rochester, but still…
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:28 am
In the pull out your hair sort of way.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:31 am
@TR:
I think that’s typical for around here. I think he’ll end up voting for it if Pelosi really wants him to.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:32 am
Can we at least get Dan Burton back to shoot some random unoffensive piece of fruit to prove some point? A mango, perhaps?
-dms
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:33 am
@DougJ:
Thanks. Sounds about right.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:35 am
It would be very entertaining until our entire infrastructure and economy collapsed due to neglect, tax cuts, and refusal to do anything for
non-Southern non-whitespeople unlikely to vote GOP, and until the GOP leadership picked a fight with someone who could actually fight back. THAT’S the true horror of Republican rule.March 3rd, 2010 at 10:35 am
Nothing would be fucking entertaining about having a GOP controlled Senate. They confirm Supreme Court Justices. It would be a nightmare to get any decent nominee through.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:37 am
@The Grand Panjandrum:
If the Senate is dysfunctional now just imagine Majority Leader McConnell.
I may not be thrilled with the Dems all (most) of the time but I’ll be darned if I won’t work my butt off to keep the Republicans from taking the Senate or the House.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:42 am
Doomsday has been done and done and done again in fiction. Apparently many people do find it entertaining.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:43 am
@TR: He needs to be extremely careful. Saying “no” and then “yes” can burn you…
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:45 am
The sad thing is that, as hapless as the Democrats are, at least some of them actually care about doing a good job. The GOP, in it’s current incarnation, not so much.
The phrase “House Speaker Boehner” really should drive that point home. There’d be an impeachment resolution on the floor of the House within a month of the new Congress being sworn in.
-dms
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:46 am
No, it would not be entertaining. If we had a halfway decent media it might be entertaining for a week or two, but with the media we have now, every Republican tantrum and obsession with triviality would be met with breathless swooning and adulation. The only way I could find this entertaining would be if I lived in another country. Then I would have the luxury of being able to laugh my ass off.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:46 am
“Very entertaining?” We just got through eight years of Republican rule. I would like to not be terrified of the future, thank you very much. I don’t want those fuckers anywhere near the levers of power, ever again.
Does that make me a “lesser of two evils” type? Damn straight it does.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:46 am
@Citizen_X: I’d rather be a lesser of two evils type of person than someone who willingly embraces the greater evil. And the Republicans are certainly the greater evil.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:50 am
Every day would be a +12.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:50 am
Don’t forget the POTUS’ “drinking problem.” We’ll have to watch that one very closely.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:53 am
Very entertaining?! I lived through the permanent state of investigation back in the 90s and I don’t want to revisit those days, thankyouverymuch!
Remember back then, adult legislators thought it worth their time to investigate the president’s daughter’s cat’s fan club. And these days they’re even crazier.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:54 am
@kansi: You mean it isn’t already? What the Obama election did for gun sales, the installation of Speaker Boehner would do for alcohol sales.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:55 am
Masochist. And…well…sadist too.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:56 am
@The Grand Panjandrum:
It just can’t be said enough.
The republicans leadership wins the ‘get of his lawn and shutting down the government’ race by 100 miles.
Where the republicans scream at people to get off the lawn, the democrats plant a lilac hedge to keep people off the lawn.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:57 am
@MikeJ: Don’t know about entertaining, exactly, but dammit, Rhona Mitra was HOT in the movie.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:58 am
No it wouldn’t. We’ve barely survived the last time they were in power.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:00 am
@ DougJ:
No, that would be the most visible horror of Republican rule.
Far more horrific would be all the final nails put into the U.S. economy in an absolute beserker rage of de- and anti-regulation and corporate immunity granting and the direct graft from the public treasury and maybe the next several PR campaigns for new wars.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:05 am
@gbear: Well, that’s the question. If the Republicans resurged, and we got another taste of the Bush Era, minus any fringe benefits of political sanity, would that really jack up the appeal of the GOP?
I’m more afraid of the “moderate” Dems that sway in the wind like so much wheat. What happens when Arlen Specter comes plodding home to the Republicans, the Feinstein DLC crowd decides to get its war on, and we lose a few more Tom Daschales trying to cater to the extreme right wing of a party that will never vote for them?
If the Republicans win, they’ll self-destruct a little more. If they lose, they’ll self-destruct a little more. But if the Democrats lose, they’ll self-destruct a whole lot really fast.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:06 am
@The Grand Panjandrum: In the last justice hearing, didn’t one of the wads tell the nominee to mind your manners missy?
Raygun cried at the deaths of the Beruit (sp? can’t spell today, or any day) Marines. I don’t know whay that sticks in my craw, but it does.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:08 am
Fixed for reality.
Entertainment WILL be the next SCJ opening, assuming the retiree/worm food is a conservative justice. A fight unlike anything ever seen before.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:10 am
I’m in the “A Democratic Senate on a bad day is still better than a Republican Senate at any time” camp. We have horror films – specifically the Saw franchise – to entertain you if you need to witness the kind of horror you are describing.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:18 am
Hell,after a couple of months of that crap,even all but the most wealthy and/or stupid of conservatives would hate their own dream of a nation free of whatever the hell it is they hate now.
They’re unpopular for a reason.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:24 am
@El Cid:
I’m sure Obama would be giving his veto pen a heavy workout if they tried to pull that shit.
Of course, that’s if he could be spared the time between the likely constant impeachment proceedings they’d thrust forth over the ‘questions’ about his ‘legitimacy’.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:26 am
Don’t forget the Yellow Peril. Everyone knows we are selling America off to those darn Chinese.
Followed by another round of Fear the Brown People where we invade Yemen and Tommy Friedman tells everyone yet again to “Suck on this!”
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:30 am
You can add to the parade of likely GOP horrors the intention of Sen. James Inhofe (former chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and if the GOP regains a majority in the Senate, potentially its future chair)...to hold hearings on Climate Change with the express purpose of subpoenaing scientists who are proponents of anthroprogenically caused climate change (man-caused global warming), and then using their testimony as the basis for instituting criminal perjury charges against them . So long as the democrats hold the White House, there may be some difficulty in getting the US Justice Department (or US Attorney in an appropriate district) to go along, but then you can expect the wingnut loudmouths to start yelling about obstruction of justice conspiracies for unwillinness to prosecute this supposed criminal perjury.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:30 am
Assuming it’s just the Congress they controlled. If, God and all that is holy forbid, they actually put the MittBot or Caribou Barbie in the White House, I’m fairly sure we can look forward to a few more wars and even further use of the Constitution as toilet paper than what occurs now, all to be paid for by getting rid of the estate tax and lowering business tax rates.
Assuming, of course, that the banks don’t decide to double down and reap billions more leaving the rest of us with the bill.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:34 am
@cmorenc:
Sadly, he won’t be alone. Way too many states for my taste are not only actively pushing back against any attempt to address Climate Change, many are pushing to adopt resolution to call it a fucking conspiracy. I mean…at that point, it’s hardly a far reach to think anyone proposing anything green would be chased after with the long knives.
Science and sanity are losing in this country, and losing big.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:36 am
@Zifnab:
So you’re more afraid of the inconsistency of the moderate dems than the all-out flat-out bullshit of the right? And you think it would be a good idea for the republicans to re-take the senate to show the democtrats how misguided they are? So which republican platforms do you suggest they push through first to show the democrats just how to do things right? That’ll show us…
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:39 am
@A Mom Anon
Unfortunately, the dominant motivation among a great many unaffiliated voters is anti-incumbent sentiment, and right now there’s more democratic incumbents than republican incumbents. Even many very intelligent unaffiliated voters have come to the view that an essential goal has to be to force wholesale turnover of the current corrupt, ineffective Congress in Washington, and have also concluded that Obama and the Democrats have proved disappointing, even while acknowledging how terrible the Republicans were when they controlled Congress and the White House. So, they’re following a perverse amplification of the “vote Nader” logic in 2000…things won’t change until either we elect third-party candidates, or else things get bad enough to force genuine change and flush the current establishment out of Washington altogether. The problem is, there’s no straightforward way to implement that strategy in most states or congressional districts with the available choices – and the net result can in many cases be to elect…quite conservative republicans to the next Congress, even though they were (and will again prove to be) “unpopular for a reason”.
So, even though the GOP as a whole (and its congressional leadership) remain unpopular “for a reason”...they could still pick up lots of seats in the House and Senate in the upcoming election, largely as a result of dissatisfaction of independents whose views are actually much more in tune with what they thought Obama and the dems seemingly promised to do than with the GOP.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:49 am
@gbear:
I think Zifnab’s point is that, regardless of what the Reps do, there’ll be some minor implosions. But if Dems lose, we’re gonna have a WHOLE lot of spineless ‘moderate’ Dems who will be tripping over themselves to enable the battiest of the Republicans and line up for some serious Hippie Punching. You know, the kinds who are just looking for an excuse to point and say ‘the party is too damn lefty, MOVE RIGHT, MOVE!’ all while the Republicans have continually shifted what ‘right’ is, prompting said Dems to see what they thought of as moving right as ‘the center’ and panicking.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:49 am
I think one could do a good commercial that would hilight Bunning whining about not getting able to see a UK game (while he’s denying money for poor people) & say here is ‘Republican Compassionate Conservatism™’ in all its glory.
I’m gonna hold my breath till the Democrats run it.
(thump, as he keels over)
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:29 pm
The Reps would bring back HUAC under the guise of “congressional oversight” on the GWOT. The stuff coming out now where they are targeting the Gitmo defense team lawyers is just the beginning.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:31 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
“Have you now or in the past conspired to give God-Given American Rights to a non-citizen?”
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:32 pm
not to toot my own horn, but i was on this awhile ago...
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:33 pm
not to toot my own horn, but i was on this awhile ago…
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Exactly.
I have a vision of CNN billboarding the coverage of the collapse of the American Experiment:
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:39 pm
If the Republicans won, it would be just like the end of the world, except without the satisfying, prompt finish.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:48 pm
@cmorenc:
they’re not coming up with that “Vote Nader strategy all on their own. I have heartily been disgusted by many lefty bloggers for the constant whine they’ve had from the inauguration til now. Obama gets more shit for what’s gone wrong and very little for what’s gone right. Instead of pushing positive stories with a strong focus on how to pull the admin to the left and push back on the lies, it’s just trash the president day. They’re out looking for the next MUP and it’s not gonna happen, but the division at such a critical time could leaves us open to republican gains in both houses. It’s crazy.
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:00 pm
[...] Republican rule – [...]
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:01 pm
@dmsilev:
Two flaws with this logic.
1) You presume Burton chose a watermelon to shoot because it was offensive.
2) You presume Burton has the shooting skills to hit fruit that is as small as a mango.
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:13 pm
“Truth be told, it would be very entertaining.”
Playing Fallout is very entertaining. Living Fallout would be somewhat less so.
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Among the true horrors of Republican rule would also be that even the minor things that were to be done to reform the Patriot Act would never see the light of day. And if the Senate was taken back, however unlikely, none of Obama’s judges would get confirmed.
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:03 pm
And Darrell Issa as the Oversight Committee chairman. Maybe I can say no more.
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:04 pm
@beltane:
And imagine the breast-beating and wailing if the Democrats occasionally blocked a GOP bill with a (gasp) unholy fillibuster.
We would suddenly be hearing a lot of screaming about the sanctity of “Up or Down Vote!!” and “Majority Rule”.
And a lot of media amnesia about what had transpired up on the Hill in 2009 & 2010.
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:10 pm
@cmorenc:
I would challenge the use of the “very intelligent” in this context. Anyone who thinks that the willy-nilly dumping of all incumbents will take us anywhere we really want or need to go just doesn’t have their thinking cap on very firmly.
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:23 pm
If they were in control again, who would they be wet-dreaming about attacking to outdo their last regime? Tibet?
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:24 pm