Can’t hide from the turning of the tide
I’m not convinced that Huntsman is that great a politician anyway, but I found this interesting (via):
Huntsman wasn’t alone in his fantasy though. The White House, too, feared a Republican Party that reacted against Obama by moving to the middle, and saw Huntsman as the logical future of the GOP. That May, Obama named him Ambassador to Beijing, taking a threat out of the picture.
That didn’t actually take Huntsman out of the picture. And, in retrospect, it was absurd to think that Obama needed to worry about a man so wildly out of step with his party. Huntsman’s campaign has been, from the beginning, a fantasy driven by a fundamental misunderstanding of his own party. (“I still don’t understand why [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm [Emanuel] was so obsessed with him,” a top Democratic official marveled Sunday night.)
The party Huntsman imagined—modernizing, reforming, and youthful—could still be born. That might be the reaction to a second smashing defeat at Obama’s hands, or that might be where President Romney takes his re-election campaign. But it’s now hard to see Huntsman leading that change. He bet, too early, on a fantasy, and ran for the nomination of a party that doesn’t exist, at least not yet. His decision tonight to drop out just marks his recognition of that fact.
The Republican establishment seems to have succeeded in pushing through a candidate who doesn’t strike everyone as a right-wing lunatic, but it had to fight like hell to do it. There is absolutely no indication that the Republican base won’t move farther and farther right for the near future. Joe Scar and Mark Halperin can fluff the Huntsmans of the world all they want, it won’t make any difference.
There’s a temptation with politics to make things more complicated than their really are, to imagine that American politics isn’t (at a macro-scale) driven primarily by race, to imagine a Republican party that is soul-searching rather than merely going insane. People should resist this temptation.
January 16, 2012 11:48 am
Posted in: Burkean bells, David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute
175 Comments
175 Responses
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 11:52 am · Link
Huntsman has a wingnut charisma deficiency, that makes him often look like Mr. Rogers on soapers. He tried to step it up some recently, but nobody believed he would drink the required grail of puppy blood, when the faithful expected it.
jheartney - January 16, 2012 | 11:54 am · Link
Yay! Another reason to hate Rahm.
c u n d gulag - January 16, 2012 | 11:56 am · Link
He’s only seems moderate when you compare him to the lunatics.
But he’s as much of a knuckle-dragging caveman as the rest of them when it comes to women, and a whole slew of other issues. Including economic justice.
Sure, if you only kill a bakers dozen of boys and young men and bury them in and around your house, that means you’re not quite as bad as John Wayne Gacy, but it doesn’t mean you’re not a serial killer yourself.
Hunstman’s just Caveman Lite.
FlipYrWhig - January 16, 2012 | 11:58 am · Link
I still think that Huntsman’s idea was to out-Romney Romney, so that when the animatronic guy with a record of possible moderation failed to connect with the Republican rank and file, there would still be someone left standing outside the freak show. (IOW, he was playing for the Romney slot, not the not-Romney slot.) But ISTM that Republicans still haven’t embraced Romney; it’s just that they’re bored with the process and want to get it all over with already.
schrodinger's cat - January 16, 2012 | 11:58 am · Link
DougJ, the GOP you have described above, only exists in the imagination of the villagers. I wonder if it ever was a reality.
maya - January 16, 2012 | 11:59 am · Link
The republican party leans so far right it’s a wonder they don’t snap their neck bones watching NASCAR.
Linda Featheringill - January 16, 2012 | 11:59 am · Link
The loonies on the right don’t do much soul-searching. I suspect that even their prayers are merely a list of nonnegotiable demands. [But then I really don’t know, do I?]
WereBear - January 16, 2012 | 12:01 pm · Link
Until they have a place to park the nutters, they will continue to drive everyone insane. Won’t someone please marginalize them? Please?
kwAwk - January 16, 2012 | 12:02 pm · Link
This is it. I saw an Op-ed by Fred Hiatt yesterday lamenting about the current state of the Republican primary field. How bad it is.
It never seems to occur to him that the reason the primary field is so bad is that it truly represent where the Republican party is at in 2012.
It never seems to occur to him that the reason so many of the people like Christie, Bush and Daniels didn’t try to run is that they know that they would be hard pressed to win an election after having done the things necessary and pledged the crazy things they’d need to in order to secure the nomination.
He goes on to talk about how the real change that is needed would require bi-partisan compromise, but the right wing Republican base doesn’t want to compromise, even amongst themselves.
FlipYrWhig - January 16, 2012 | 12:02 pm · Link
@General Stuck: Huntsman may believe in all kinds of nasty shit—after all, he’s a born-rich Republican from Utah—but he comes across to me as a fairly pleasant human being. None of his rivals can accomplish that. But maybe you’re right and that’s distinctly to his detriment when it comes to rallying the flying monkey brigades.
sukabi - January 16, 2012 | 12:03 pm · Link
they’ll keep fluffing and deluding themselves to the bitter end, because to do otherwise is to admit they’ve been backing an insane clown posse for years… and there is NO WAY that will ever be admitted.
PeakVT - January 16, 2012 | 12:04 pm · Link
Jon who? Isn’t he the guy running Colbert’s PAC?
Phil Perspective - January 16, 2012 | 12:06 pm · Link
@kwAwk: Look at Christie’s continued statements. He’s happy the right is on the fringe. He won’t get into the race because polls showed he’d get boat-raced in his own state by President Obama. And heck, even Mondale won his home state.
EconWatcher - January 16, 2012 | 12:06 pm · Link
Is it only wingnuts who are living in a fantasy world? That’s what I keep asking myself these days.
What really shook me up are the recent polls showing that the country is equally divided—statistical dead heat—on whether it was worth it to invade Iraq. That’s just left me slack-jawed.
The best interpretation I can make is that, now that the policy question is resolved and the troops are out, people just want to honor the sacrifice of those who went, and particularly those who died. Maybe the question was interpreted as, do you think our guys died for nothing? It would be understandable if people wanted to answer that question no.
But I’m not sure that interpretation is justified. No one has a shorter memory than the American voter. Maybe all of it—the IEDs, Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, the thugs chanting “Muqtada” as they hanged Saddam—maybe it’s all already down the memory hole. Ancient history. And history is bunk.
Maybe the 27% is really almost 50%. If so, I don’t foresee much of a future for us.
evap - January 16, 2012 | 12:06 pm · Link
First mistermix uses a Kirsty MacColl song, now DougJ goes for Richard Thompson, and one of my favorites! Thanks for putting another great song in my head for the day.
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:07 pm · Link
no. because of the demographic timer.
if the GOP doesnt begin to attract minorities, its doomed.
Nylund - January 16, 2012 | 12:07 pm · Link
A world where Huntsman is too moderate (or even liberal) and Obama is at the left most wing just shows how far the Overton window has been moved.
A couple more years of this and they’ll be claiming that the reason David Duke didn’t succeed was because he was too much of a multicultural loving hippie.
Frankensteinbeck - January 16, 2012 | 12:07 pm · Link
@kwAwk:
‘Bi-partisan compromise’ means ‘do it my way’, because… oh my Celestia, because they’re speaking Abusive Spouse.
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 12:08 pm · Link
@kwAwk:
this depends. I think many thought the economy would be so bad and the hatred for Obama so great that even the craziest of the crazies can win. That happened in 2010 when GOP governors and legislators won, only to met with “WTF
?” from their constituents a few months later (Walker, LePage, Snyder, Scott, etc.) I think many believe the same would happen, and I think there are many Democrats who WANT it to happen, who think a President Romney would be so despised, people would go “WTF did we do?” and elect another (whiter) Democrat in 2016.
It doesn’t look like the economy will be too bad this year, and even if unemployment is high, it’ll be dropping, and Romney isn’t a Reagan or Clinton, so it’ll be difficult to beat Obama.
Of course if Obama was a former white Southern governor ex-Navy SEAL, he’d be 15 points up on Romney regardless of the economy and if he passed HCR. I think a lot of us miss how much of American politics is personality based.
gene108 - January 16, 2012 | 12:08 pm · Link
After every loss the Republicans tack harder to the Right.
1976 led to Reagan. 1992 led to the 1994 Republican take over of the House. 2008 led to the 2010 right-wing Republican wave.
If Republicans lose in 2012, they will tack much harder to the right.
Tacking to the center is admitting there’s errors in your conservative philosophy and since right-wing political philosophy has become dogma to the faithful – tax cuts lower the deficit and create jobs, regulations destroy jobs, progressive tax rates punish success, etc. – there’s no where else to go but further right.
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:09 pm · Link
@EconWatcher: the 27% are all republicans. white evangelical christians (WECs) make up 28% of the electorate, and 50% of the GOP base.
Benjamin Franklin - January 16, 2012 | 12:10 pm · Link
In hindsight, Obama might not have a need to worry about Huntsman, but who could have predicted that Obama was going to have ‘cooties’, and anyone remotely brushing up against his gabardine, would be infected.
kwAwk - January 16, 2012 | 12:11 pm · Link
@Phil Perspective:
Christie has been the only politician on the right to call out the right for being crazy. You’ve got to give him that.
The Ancient Randonneur - January 16, 2012 | 12:11 pm · Link
Huntsman has no fire in his gut. He didn’t know why he wanted to be President other than the fact he thought he would do a pretty good job. I saw him speak about six weeks ago in West Lebanon, NH and the guy is bright, articulate, and obviously informed on the issues. That isn’t enough to get you to the Oval Office. Ever person at that event, with possibly the exception of me, looked like they might be from Huntsman’s neighborhood—people who vote GOP but wouldn’t be caught dead at a Tea Party Rally for fear of brushing up against the unwashed frothing cesspool known as the GOP base.
Remember the old GOP in New England? You know, the guys who smoked pipes, wore tweed jackets with patches on the elbows, and black rimmed glasses? It’s been a long time since that GOP existed. It was back when the Episcopal Church was euphemistically known as the Republican Party at prayer. It’s been that long.
Huntsman is that kind of Republican and he was running for THAT party’s nomination.
Benjamin Franklin - January 16, 2012 | 12:12 pm · Link
@maya:
Lol. They would snap off that C4 as soon as they heard cars crash on the left.
ant - January 16, 2012 | 12:16 pm · Link
Peak Wingnut was a lie.
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:16 pm · Link
All our side has to do is get out the vote.
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 12:18 pm · Link
@FlipYrWhig:
The GOP is hopelessly split right now to coalesce around a purely pragmatic choice that can beat Obama. And it doesn’t help that an electable choice isn’t running. I think their passions over time out of power will give way some, to put winning as main only goal. That is how they usually roll.
But I also think we are entering some kind of weird pol era, that cannot be predicted with the usual equations. They have been in a state of near total revolt, especially in congress, and who knows what they will do if Obama is reelected.
Maybe Their biggest advantage with voters at this point in time, at least with swing voters, is an underlying tone of what insanity they will reek, if the voting doesn’t hand the GOP back the WH. It has become a a ready plank in their platform. Partly be design, but mostly by madness.
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:18 pm · Link
@ant: there is no Peak Wingnut. there is no order of transinfity great enough to describe it.
There is only the Wingularity.
And we are at the knee of the curve right now.
dogwood - January 16, 2012 | 12:19 pm · Link
@EconWatcher:
The short memory of the American voter is the one universal characteristic among all ideologies. Tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets to protest the war in Iraq. When the war ended, those people had moved on and didn’t much give a damn anymore.
harlana - January 16, 2012 | 12:20 pm · Link
he said he believed in science, once, and then he backed off – that’s what constitutes a “moderate” republican these days
John Weiss - January 16, 2012 | 12:20 pm · Link
@maya: Perhaps many of them have ‘snapped their neckbones. It would explain much.
harlana - January 16, 2012 | 12:22 pm · Link
@c u n d gulag: agreed, hunnert %
schrodinger's cat - January 16, 2012 | 12:22 pm · Link
@The Ancient Randonneur: I knew those kinds of Republicans in Maine. What I wonder is why they continue being in the GOP. Are tax-cuts that important to them, that they are willing to let the country go to hell in the GOP hand basket?
gene108 - January 16, 2012 | 12:23 pm · Link
@Nylund:
On economic policy we are probably more to the right, than we have been after the New Deal / post WW-2 era.
On social issues, we are much more open/liberal than we were in the past.
lamh35 - January 16, 2012 | 12:24 pm · Link
So Huntsman gets out therby freeing whatever moderate votes he had to go to Romney.
And Rick Perry stays in to siphon off as many Anti-Mittens votes as possible to keep Santorum/Gingrich’s numbers low enough for Romney to win in the conserv states when he might not have otherwise.
I hate to say it, but the only person who can give whats to to Romney is Paul and as we have seen in all the debates Paul has NOT been bringing it to Romney. Instead he focuses on Newt and the other anti-Mittens instead.
Damn, this is looking like the type of coronation that some imagined for Hilary Clinton before that little known Senator from Illinois came along.
ETA: I read somewhere today, that Romney can still count on what 42% of the country to vote form him, but funny enough, the internals on the polls show that really Romney core support are from people who just wants to get rid of Obama and his actual “just for Romney” is lower than the anti-Obama vote.
Flip that with Obama’s internal which show that I think 70…% of Obama voters are voting “for Obama” not just against GOP. So I guess we will see with GOTV which side is more motivated.
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 12:24 pm · Link
I nominate this as BJ QOTD
gene108 - January 16, 2012 | 12:26 pm · Link
@kwAwk:
He only called the right-wingers crazy, because they attacked one of his judicial nominees. He was basically defending himself and his actions against knuckle-dragging bigots.
He didn’t go out of his way to condemn the Right beyond how it effected one of his decisions.
harlana - January 16, 2012 | 12:26 pm · Link
@EconWatcher: that is so tragic, i could cry
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:28 pm · Link
@General Stuck: this is also their last chance. They are facing down the hammergun of the demographic timer.
The GOP has been unable to attract blacks and browns.
in 2008 whites made up 74% of the electorate.
in 2012 whites will be between 70 and 72%.
in 2016 whites will be between 66% and 68%.
Notice a trend?
kwAwk - January 16, 2012 | 12:28 pm · Link
@OzoneR:
That whole white southern governor with a strong military background didn’t work so well for Jimmy Carter.
Why can’t people just admit that some of the concerns about Obama have to do with a bad economy and a little bit of concern about Obama himself?
ericblair - January 16, 2012 | 12:29 pm · Link
@General Stuck:
I think it’s time for us to crack the books on the Whig Party and aftermath. There’s no physical law that the goopers have to moderate themselves and return to the center: it sure looks like they’re going into a purity death spiral at this point. Their big money isn’t really a surefire moderating influence, as billionaires like the Kochs are just as nuts as the knuckledraggers.
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 12:30 pm · Link
@Samara Morgan:
Yes, Samara. I do notice the trend. And agree.
schrodinger's cat - January 16, 2012 | 12:33 pm · Link
@Samara Morgan: Many immigrants skew culturally conservative, so if the GOP can keep its race-baiting in check they could potentially attract them. I don’t see it happening any time soon, though.
schrodinger's cat - January 16, 2012 | 12:34 pm · Link
@kwAwk:
Does that concern have anything to do with the color of his skin?
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 12:34 pm · Link
@kwAwk: I don’t have to give that tubby sociopath credit for anything. As far as a call to “moderation” that was simple posturing. I wasn’t born yesterday.
cracka, please! heh.
Belafon (formerly anonevent) - January 16, 2012 | 12:35 pm · Link
It didn’t hurt having him as ambassador. So some people are now complaining that Obama made a calculated political move to ensure his chances for reelection? And while we look back over the past couple of years and say that Huntsman would not be the nominee, I think he would have had a much greater shot at being a not-Romney if he had not been Obama’s ambassador to China.
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:36 pm · Link
@General Stuck: that is why the A team wont run this year.
because it is mathematically impossible for them to beat Obama as long as minorities vote 82% dem.
Romney is a pharmakos,....a sin-eater. He is just there to prep the field for rubio+ in 2016…. to eat Wallstreets sins and be slaughtered.
The elites favor him because he will do the least damage to the party brand of the rep candidate field.
But they know he cant beat Obama because of the electoral demographics.
Romney needs 65% of the white vote to beat Obama.
mathematically impossible.
Lev - January 16, 2012 | 12:37 pm · Link
As I said on my blog, Huntsman is the most overcovered candidate to only manage a single third place finish since Joe Lieberman.
Simple fact is that Huntsman is actually much like Romney. On paper, both are great candidates. The idea of both of them is pretty good. But as individuals, they have glaring if not fatal weaknesses. Huntsman has zero charisma, no killer instinct, and is just as detached and ironic as some accuse Obama of being. And Romney—well, it’s pretty amazing that a guy who’s lost twice as many elections as he’s won is considered the best candidate in the field. Really, he’s only one win better than Alan Keyes so far as I can tell. Wouldn’t be too surprised if Huntsman has more of a shot in 2016—Republicans will be desperate to win then, if Romney (as I expect) loses this year. The combination of being effectively rightwing and beloved by the press is a definite sweet spot.
Also, please point your browsers to my new parody site, http://www.gingrich-cain-2012.com/. I’d appreciate it.
WyldPirate - January 16, 2012 | 12:37 pm · Link
The real tragedy of Huntsman bailing from the GOP KlownKar is that his smoking hot daughters will no longer be on my TeeVee occasionally. Otherwise, no great loss as no one is going to pull the GOP back from their mission of improverishing the vast majority of the nation while benefitting those that line their pockets.
Lev - January 16, 2012 | 12:37 pm · Link
Also, Richard Thompson is awesome.
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 12:38 pm · Link
@gene108:
as does every victory
Mike in NC - January 16, 2012 | 12:39 pm · Link
@EconWatcher:
There’s a new book out called “It Was A Long Time Ago & It Never Happened Anyway: Russia & The Communist Past”. Just change the subtitle and it would apply to this country.
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 12:39 pm · Link
@Lev: Well, I agreed with you up until you said Romney was a great candidate on paper.
Unless you mean toilet paper – as he is a shite candidate.
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:39 pm · Link
Rubio/Nikki Haley.
thats their 2016 dream team.
Yutsano - January 16, 2012 | 12:40 pm · Link
@WyldPirate:
Heh. How do you think they get half of their converts?
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 12:40 pm · Link
@kwAwk:
Jimmy Carter had a military background? Did anyone know about it?
about Obama himself? That’s exactly what I said. Personality politics
Joseph Nobles - January 16, 2012 | 12:40 pm · Link
I wish it had been Rick Perry that dropped out. I’ve got a running comparison of the way the GOP portrayed their presidential opponents in the recent past and the current crop of GOP candidates.
Mitt Romney = GOP version of John Kerry
Jon Huntsman = GOP version of Jimmy Carter
Newt Gingrich = GOP version of Bill Clinton
Rick Santorum = GOP version of Al Gore
Ron Paul = GOP version of Ross Perot
I guess George W. Bush is shunned enough by the modern GOP that you could say Rick Perry is the dumber redux of Dubya, but now that Huntsman dropped out, the analogy is going to hell.
handsmile - January 16, 2012 | 12:43 pm · Link
Angry DougJ:
As one of this thread’s categories is “Burkean bells,” let me sneak in here to ask whether Wednesday’s BJ Book Club will be devoted to chapters two and three of The Reactionary Mind or if you have a more ambitious reading assignment in mind? Also too, will the festivities begin at 8:00pm once again?
BTW, a tip of his black beret for the Richard Thompson thread title. Bob Mould does an absolutely blistering cover of the song on the RT cover compilation “Beat the Retreat.”
Belafon (formerly anonevent) - January 16, 2012 | 12:44 pm · Link
@OzoneR: He as an officer in the Navy in the nuclear power program.
@Joseph Nobles: I think Perry will drop out after SC.
schrodinger's cat - January 16, 2012 | 12:44 pm · Link
@Samara Morgan: Nikki Haley is Romney in a dress, with even less core convictions than Romney, since Romney is still a Mormon, while Haley is no longer Sikh.
Punchy - January 16, 2012 | 12:45 pm · Link
I smell a Betrayus/Tebow 2016 ticket.
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:45 pm · Link
@WyldPirate: there should be an experiment to mate the Romney sons and the Huntsman daughters to breed the Ultimate Mormon Politician….except they are all probably cousins of some stripe.
Best to go for the outcross to mask those deleterious recessives i guess.
;)
Linda Featheringill - January 16, 2012 | 12:45 pm · Link
@Samara Morgan:
Numbers! Sources! That should make some folks happy.
[Although I must say that I provided numbers and sources on this topic twice before and was roundly ignored. We’ll see if they want information or they just want to bitch.]
Lev - January 16, 2012 | 12:46 pm · Link
@gaz: Well, in terms of the bullet points at least. He has severe weaknesses that he exacerbates with worse instincts. But generic-y business dude with a non-wingnut reputation isn’t a bad profile for a general election, all things being equal.
Yutsano - January 16, 2012 | 12:46 pm · Link
@Punchy: Tim will still be too young. And Petraeus has little interest. And his wife even less.
Svensker - January 16, 2012 | 12:46 pm · Link
@evap:
I needed some RT to get me going.
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:47 pm · Link
@schrodinger’s cat: she a brown woman governor . that is all that counts.
@Punchy: Tebow wont be 35 then.
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 12:47 pm · Link
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
A navy officer and a high ranking general/Navy SEAL are two completely different things.
I’m talking about a Jesse Ventura/Colin Powell-type person
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:51 pm · Link
@Linda Featheringill: i linked sabatos graph.
i have linked medveds stats a hundred times.
RP - January 16, 2012 | 12:51 pm · Link
I agree that the notion of a more thoughtful and modern republican party was a fantasy. I disagree that Huntsman was never going to be a threat. After all, the party is about to nominate a wealthy, formerly moderate, mormon, former governor to take on Obama. If Huntsman hadn’t served in the Obama admin. he certainly would have had a better shot. It’s likely that Romney would have won no matter what, but Obama and Emanuel made the right call.
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:54 pm · Link
@Linda Featheringill: the horserace media wont mention it because no one pays to see a one horse race. the GOP wont mention it because it will destroy base enthusiasm.
the Balloon juice firebaggers and eeyores want Obama to lose so they can say tolejaso.
Hunter Gathers - January 16, 2012 | 12:54 pm · Link
@Samara Morgan:
According to her voter registration, she’s white.
ant - January 16, 2012 | 12:54 pm · Link
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I agree with this. Having him go work for the Obama administration gave Obama moxie for his ‘middleman/bipartisan’ bullshit.
It undermined the “Obama is the lerberalist faciast comunist marxas athieast moslum african anticolonal keynyan who dresses like ahmahdinajad presedent evah” argument that Republicans want to push forward.
The Wingnut base hates him for this.
Judas Escargot - January 16, 2012 | 12:57 pm · Link
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yep, this. Again. Liberals seriously need to stop assuming that the demographic shift guarantees a Democratic future. It doesn’t.
The percentage of Hispanic Catholics, i.e. the ones who do indeed tend to swing left, is dwindling as they convert to more right-wing evangelical sects. And the right is aware of this in a way the left isn’t.
Playing the anti-immigrant card may work against them for a decade or so, but most people have short memories. The GOP’s anti-Catholic rhetoric of the late 1950s/early 1960s certainly didn’t keep Catholics from going over to Reagan (he got 51% in 1980; at least 54% in 1984).
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 12:59 pm · Link
@gene108:
fixt.
;)
Samara Morgan - January 16, 2012 | 1:02 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot: the statistical trends do not support this.
besides, the GOP is empirically unable to suppress racial and anti-immigrant sentiment.
they have had zero success with minority outreach in this last cycle.
gene108 - January 16, 2012 | 1:05 pm · Link
@OzoneR:
Not after victories.
Bush I signed the ADA and FMLA into law.
I can’t picture modern Republicans agreeing to that sort of compromise with Democrats.
The Republican House, in the 1990’s, passed sChip. I’m not giving them credit for it, I’m just pointing out that it got done, with Republicans in control of one of the branches of government.
Bush, Jr. expanded Medicare benefits.
After the 2008 shellacking, I can’t picture the GOP agreeing to any of the sorts of things as stated above.
WyldPirate - January 16, 2012 | 1:06 pm · Link
Yutsano @56:
” Heh. How do you think they get half of their converts?”
Yuts, the Mormons are missing out not by not sending their women on “missions”. If they were to show up on my porch and tell me a tale about the importance of magic underwear, I might listen and gawk for 30 seconds instead of telling male God-bothers to get the hell off my property before the get more than three words out.
Belafon (formerly anonevent) - January 16, 2012 | 1:06 pm · Link
@OzoneR: Sorry, didn’t read your original post. Yes, it’s a tougher campaign because Obama is a black man in America. But I am going to try to make sure he wins so I can watch heads pop all over the country.
Comrade Dread - January 16, 2012 | 1:07 pm · Link
Well, the reason why the Republican establishment was able to do it, even when everyone can perfectly see that Mitt Romney 12.5 is a cynical fraud is because the base is demanding greater and greater ideological purity from candidates which results in dithering and divided votes as ‘conservative’ candidate after candidate comes on the stage, proposes something simplistically outlandish and out of touch with reality before some visible flaw comes to light which has other conservatives thinking “The Democrats will kill this guy” so they run off and find the New 2nd coming of Reagan, repeat until you have 1 cynical fraud vs. 12 2nd coming of Reagans.
Mark S. - January 16, 2012 | 1:07 pm · Link
Just when you thought it was finally over:
Chris - January 16, 2012 | 1:09 pm · Link
@EconWatcher:
Yep, I think it’s that simple.
It was hard for mushy moderates to deny that the war was a complete and utter clusterfuck when it was actually happening and we were hearing about it every day on the news. But now we’re out, it’s all in the past, which means the mythmaking and revisionism can begin.
Punchy - January 16, 2012 | 1:12 pm · Link
@Samara Morgan: I’m a little ig’nant of the fine print of the US Consty. Does it say the Vice has to be 35 too? I thought only the Pres had to be. After all, the third in command is someone from the House, and they only need to be 25 (I think). So the whole chain of command doesn’t require the 35 age limit, does it?
/too lazy to google this
Yutsano - January 16, 2012 | 1:14 pm · Link
@WyldPirate: You need better missionaries:
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 1:15 pm · Link
It’s not really assumption of anything. It is basic math matched to the current state of our party politics. There is an antidote for the GOP to not get smothered by the trends, and that is to at least soften its message to people of color, and genuinely offer up solutions to their problems. They don’t have to offer what dems offer as solutions, but they have to offer substance, and not just rhetoric. And above all, make minorities feel welcome in their own country they are citizens in. And harsh treatment of illegal immigrants already in the country, tops that list of moderation, if the wingers want to stay in the electoral game. There is no other choice for them. Demographics in a free voting democracy demands attention from both parties. Dems just have to keep that in mind and pay heed. Not only for good politics, but also because it is the right and democratic thing to do. Minorities are acutely tuned in to these things, and get who cares about them. and who doesn’t
gene108 - January 16, 2012 | 1:17 pm · Link
@Comrade Dread:
Sums up the state of the GOP Presidential field.
No one can run on their record. They have to run on, who is the purist ideologue of them all.
Causes a problem for office holders, who actually had to pass laws and govern.
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 1:21 pm · Link
@Yutsano: I’m all about “real” missionary work. What the mormon “missionaries” do primarily, is proselytize. When they want to get their hands dirty in the 3rd world, and actually do some good, I’ll afford them some modicum of respect.
And yes – they are in the 3rd world – proselytizing
Even the southern baptist missionaries are at least trying to do good stuff like teach people how to farm without GMO seeds, and toxic commercial fertilizer. With maybe some proselytizing thrown in. The mormons don’t give a shit about that though. For them, religion is a used car, and they must make a hefty commission on that old clunker.
When I see a majority of brown faces at least 1/4 of the weddings in the temple – I’ll reconsider my assessment of them, that (as a religious body) they don’t give a shit about anything other then themselves, their immediate family, Joseph Smith, Magic Underwear and White Jesus. Fuck them.
Cat Lady - January 16, 2012 | 1:22 pm · Link
Some South Carolinian cracker/evangelical/pastor/political operative was on MSNBC this morning fluffing Rick Perry still and making the case that he was the best candidate to beat Obama, and the absolute bestest candidate evah to represent old white male godbotherers exactly like him, which you could tell he thought was exactly the same set. That’s the problem with the current state of the Republican party – they just don’t get out enough.
Redshift - January 16, 2012 | 1:25 pm · Link
I don’t think it was worth obsessing about him, but I think it was worth eliminating the (small) risk that this would be when the GOP starts recovering its sanity and nominates someone who’s a threat because he doesn’t embrace the crazy. (Which Huntsman didn’t until he was losing, and since people I’ve heard from in Utah were shocked at his wingnuttery, there’s a much better argument than for Romney that the wingnuttery was pandering.)
It was also worth neutralizing Petraeus as a potential nominee by getting him out of uniform and into a job that counts as serving in the administration rather than serving in the glorious military. It’s easy to dismiss these potential challengers, but while the derangement of the GOP over race makes it less likely they could get nominated, if nominated, it makes it more likely they could get elected.
(N.B. I’m not disputing that the non-pandering parts of Huntsman’s conservatism make him someone I wouldn’t want as president, just that if he were running in 2016 it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s no mention of anything like the Ryan plan.)
Trakker - January 16, 2012 | 1:26 pm · Link
The Bircher/Tea Partiers have always been with us but our political leaders have always marginalized them…until Rupert Murdoch realized their anger could be useful in the class war – and Fox News was born
Now there can be no marginalizing them, they have a cable TV network of their own and they are actually the majority in many parts of the country. They believe in a fairy tale America (fundamentalist Founding Fathers, small government, low taxes) and Fox News reinforces their delusions every night.
This genie can never be put back in the bottle as long as Fox News exists. Fox News is what must be marginalized and I have no idea how that can be done.
Angry DougJ - January 16, 2012 | 1:28 pm · Link
@handsmile:
I may try a different day for book club this week. Does Sunday night work work for you?
kwAwk - January 16, 2012 | 1:29 pm · Link
@gaz:
Sometimes I wonder what type of cracker I am. Am I a saltine? Maybe I’m an oyster cracker? Graham would be nice. Ritz would be even better some day!
But then I wake up at night in a cold sweat saying to my wife, “Please tell me I’m not a Triscuit! Anything but a Triscuit!”
EconWatcher - January 16, 2012 | 1:30 pm · Link
@gaz:
I get that your point is about “the religious body” rather than individuals, but:
The Mormons I have known personally have been uniformly decent, and I would count several of them among the most impressive people I’ve ever met. From what I know of their religion, it sounds even wackier than the average, and it has an ugly past. But I think there must be something different and worthwhile in the culture they’ve created, because it seems to shape so many wonderful people.
Maybe it’s just things like Family Home Evening—traditions that help keeps parents focused on their kids.
Punchy - January 16, 2012 | 1:30 pm · Link
@Angry DougJ: Sully says that nite doesn’t work for him.
WereBear - January 16, 2012 | 1:31 pm · Link
@Angry DougJ: Works GREAT for me!
Origuy - January 16, 2012 | 1:31 pm · Link
@Punchy: The Vice needs to meet the same qualifications as the President; 35, natural-born citizen, and resident for 14 years in the US. Anyone ineligible further down in the succession would be skipped if everyone above is killed or something. There have been plenty of Cabinet members who would not have been eligible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.....succession
RalfW - January 16, 2012 | 1:32 pm · Link
@schrodinger’s cat:
I don’t think it’s the tax cuts. Once one’s identity is set, it is very difficult to dislodge.
I was explaining to a long-time Midwestern friend of mine that Ann Richards was the last election of the old Yellow Dog Democrats in Texas, the ones who remember (not literally, as they weren’t alive, but who were in the ethos) that the GOP was the party of Lincoln: the slave-emancipating, Union guy.
When that ended with Dubya, the die was cast for a turning of generations. But for many years up thru Ann Richards, many Texans who were much more conservative than her voted “D” because it was who they’d been for 50, 60 years.
Similar case now for Yankee Republicans who fondly remember the wingback/pipe era, and can’t compute the modern wingnut era. So they stay deluded and stay “true” to their history by voting R.
Judas Escargot - January 16, 2012 | 1:32 pm · Link
@Samara Morgan:
A ‘statistical trend’ and five bucks will get you a latte at Starbucks.
I provided links to some of those ‘trends’: Hispanics are moving over to more right-wing evangelical sects. Right-wing evangelical sects trend rightward, regardless of race. Where are your links?
Passively waiting for demographics to save your cause is a losing strategy.
Frankensteinbeck - January 16, 2012 | 1:32 pm · Link
@Linda Featheringill:
You misunderstand. That demographics don’t look good for the GOP is so well known that it’s gotten to the point where it’s not often discussed. It is less often discussed because it gets M-C started, and her racism is tiresome.
M-C is basically right about this, but like the only things she’s ever right about, it’s something everyone already knows – and she’s oversimplifying the issue. The two counterarguments are that in the long term minorities could trend more Republican (as bizarre as that seems now) and in the short term we’re still close enough to the balance point that voter turnout can swing this and even the next few elections Republican. Voter turnout is tremendously powerful, and the GOP is working hard to suppress Democratic voting. Voter turnout swung the 2010 midterms, so right there you can see we’re not out of the woods.
Personally, I think Obama’s got a landslide coming, and there’ll be so much tea party jackassery we’ll do well in the House and Senate. I base that on this being a Presidential election year, where the same voting patterns that said we’d lose 2010 say we’ll win 2012.
Chris - January 16, 2012 | 1:34 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
This
@Samara Morgan:
And this.
I agree that Democrats shouldn’t take Latino voters for granted (hell, no one should ever take any group of voters for granted – beyond bad politics, it’s just tempting fate).
The fact is, though, that you’re not going to see large numbers of Latino voters going over to the GOP until its Angry White Conservative base has calmed the fuck down with the immigrant-bashing, and that’s just not going to happen right now. A lot of things had to happen before those Catholic voters Judas mentioned were ready to vote Republican: you certainly wouldn’t have seen it happen in the 1920s, and anti-immigrant sentiment is as high now as it was back then.
Until the Angry White Conservative base stops hating on Latinos, the GOP’s imminent demographic problem remains. Is it going to last forever? No, nothing in politics does, but it might last long enough to allow liberals a shot at running the country again, for long enough to make meaningful changes like we did in the mid-20th century.
Origuy - January 16, 2012 | 1:35 pm · Link
@gaz: My best friend growing up was a Mormon. Since his family spoke Norwegian at home, they sent him north of the Arctic Circle. I think he was preaching to the reindeer. His brother, at least, was sent to Ecuador, but I don’t know if he did anything beside proselytize.
dogwood - January 16, 2012 | 1:37 pm · Link
@WyldPirate:
Young Mormon women do go on missions. It’s a relatively new thing. Serving as a missionary is required for young men if they want to be respected in the Church; it is optional for woman and has no effect on their status. Since Mormons encourage women to marry at a very young age, few young women choose the missionary experience.
schrodinger's cat - January 16, 2012 | 1:42 pm · Link
Also naming a token Latino like Rubio or a person of immigrant origins, (Indian in this case), like Haley will not help the GOP with immigrants or Latinos in general. Just as Sarah Palin did not help with attracting women, enthused by Hillary.
ETA: Its not just the immigrants that the GOP is pissing off with the incessant immigrant bashing but also citizens of Latino origin like Puerto Ricans and those in the southwest, who are of Spanish/Mexican extraction.
ChrisNYC - January 16, 2012 | 1:42 pm · Link
I don’t know who wrote that analysis but it’s just dumb to say, “Well, guy sucks—in retrospect, it was crazy to think he was a threat.” No political sin in worrying too much about a competitor. Big problem in dismissing people too easily, as HRC’s campaign did in 2008.
I thought Huntsman was a threat too. I thought his video during the stimulus (?) was good. He seemed authentic a la Obama. But the reason the guy did SO SO badly is because he is not a good candidate. He’s like Lieberman or Sestak. Blah blah sanctimony blah I AM AWESOME blah did I tell you I speak Mandarin blah vague reference to “our core” and “trust” said with much meaning.
Yeah the GOP is crazy but just like with the dislike for Romney, that doesn’t mean that the candidates they reject are fantastic and would have killed were it not for the TPers.
handsmile - January 16, 2012 | 1:42 pm · Link
@Angry DougJ: (#91)
Not if it conflicts with Downton Abbey! (9:00-10:00pm EST Sunday) My newfound love of the British aristocracy shall not be interrupted by some chinwag about conservatism.
Only somewhat kidding, sad to admit. Of course, whatever date/time works best for the assembled masses here must be acceptable. Damnable democracy!
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 1:43 pm · Link
@EconWatcher: Oh, me too. And strangely a disproportion number of my close friends have been mormon.
But that’s why I stressed the religious body.
I’m not friends with people that are dismissive of folks less white than they are ;)
But none of these folks are out helping any brown people in the 3rd world =(
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 1:43 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
And yet we see no rise in actual voting for republicans, except when a wingnut, like say GWB, is not so hostile to them. and I would argue that those Hispanic Catholics that have converted to devote protestant wingnuts, were likely already voting republican as devote Catholics.
current support of Obama over a republican challenger
RalfW - January 16, 2012 | 1:43 pm · Link
@Samara Morgan:
It isn’t news to day this, but it will be up to women. I think Romney can (will?) get 65% of the white male vote. So it’s up to women voters. Will they – white and black and brown – hold for Obama, or stay home?
It’s gonna be a GOTV year, and Obama certainly had the turnout machine 4 years ago. Can he repeat that? I hope so.
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 1:46 pm · Link
@Origuy: They proselytize. If it’s not everything they do, it’s certainly Job #1.
I don’t care for the attitude, and since many of my friends are missionaries of various sorts, I’m a bit peeved that the mormon church labels what they do missionary work, when it’s not really anything other than militant, coordinated evangelism.
Snayke - January 16, 2012 | 1:48 pm · Link
Whoa, Rahm was obsessed with Huntsman? It seems so unlike him to be completely wrong.
RalfW - January 16, 2012 | 1:49 pm · Link
@OzoneR:
Hilarious. As a Minnesotan, may I say that I’ve never, ever seen those two matched as a single “type.”
Very good. Delightful, even, in its absurdity.
dogwood - January 16, 2012 | 1:55 pm · Link
Comparisons between Catholic voters of the past with minority voters today, and how that will eventually play out misses one important point. Catholicism is not a race. People carry the wounds of being dismissed and reviled because of their race much longer than the wounds of being hated because of their religion.
Judas Escargot - January 16, 2012 | 2:00 pm · Link
@dogwood:
Clearly. But it is an identity. Which implies identity politics.
You never met my late grandmother.
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 2:00 pm · Link
@Lev: Basically, as I understand you, the marketing scheme is something like this:
HOPE - Romney 2012!
Cuz bland and generic is teh awesome =)
Judas Escargot - January 16, 2012 | 2:02 pm · Link
@General Stuck:
No argument that Obama will handily win the Hispanic vote in 2012. Nor even that the Dems will hold that demographic in 2014 and 2016.
My horizon’s a bit further out.
scav - January 16, 2012 | 2:05 pm · Link
@dogwood: oh? I’m sure Ireland, Israel, the former Yugoslavia dot dot dot will be frightfully reassured by this. You may or may not have a general point about the comparison, but I don’t think the religious / race logic holds.
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 2:08 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
My prediction for the future, is that wingnuts will be bigger wingnuts as time marches on. Unless they split their party and get rid of the xenophobe tea tards, it is good news for democrats.
Until the ratio reaches 50 50 minority voting for each party, more minorities voters makes for more dem votes overall toward a majority. Math
wrb - January 16, 2012 | 2:17 pm · Link
It is about grabbing the wealth & attitude toward regulation with race secondary, a tool useful for manipulating wealth envy more than anything else, imo.
The belief that recent and future immigrants somehow belong to the Democrats seems terribly naieve to me: there are too many bases supporting the opposite.
People are no longer choosing America because of an enlightened longing for freedom of conscience and Periclean democracy.- the are coming to cash in, to get rich. They aren’t coming to listen to From the Hearts of Space, discuss Emerson and Aristotle, and join drum circles- they are coming to someday own a car dealership and drive an Escalade.
They to a large degree have conservative social values and come from countries that repeatedly and in extradinary proportion have chosen authoritarian governments. Where are the democratic traditions? They, in many ways, appear to be natural Republicans.
Maybe they will somehow become and stay Democrats, but that seems a dubious bet.
Shawn in ShowMe - January 16, 2012 | 2:18 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
By the time the Tea Partiers and Jeebus botherers die off and the GOP stop scapegoating Hispanic immigrants, they’ll be down to their core of 27%. They’re going to need a whole lot more than the majority of the Hispanic vote to win presidential elections at that point.
Hoodie - January 16, 2012 | 2:21 pm · Link
Nonsense. That article is full of non sequiturs like that. In terms of policy, Huntsman is largely in step with a big chunk of his party; Obama appointing him ambassador to China – and him accepting – made him seem less in step. Huntsman could have easily been packaged to have greater appeal to the Republican base; look how the PTB are making the wingnuts swallow a loser like Romney. But, for Huntsman, the Obama connection was a bridge too far, because that is sleeping with the enemy, not just mere wandering off the reservation. Why do some keep wanting to find reasons why Obama does not make good tactical moves, when he obviously does?
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 2:22 pm · Link
@wrb: The only reason Democrats hold immigrants is the anti-immigrant, white nationalism rhetoric of the Republicans.
If they stop that, yeah, I think a Republican could win the Hispanic vote. Susanna Martinez did.
Shawn in ShowMe - January 16, 2012 | 2:24 pm · Link
@wrb:
People who are moving here to escape the mess U.S. policies have made of their countries far outnumber those who are coming here to get rich.
dogwood - January 16, 2012 | 2:24 pm · Link
@scav:
Well, I’m not talking about those countries. Last time I checked Ireland doesn’t have a significant black, asian, or hispanic population, so religion is what they have to divide them. And in the US one of the reasons Catholics were accepted into the mainstream of the Republican party was their willingness to go along with the racial claptrap the GOP was peddling in the 1970;s etc. In America, given her history and demography, racial animus is more powerful politically than religious animus.
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 2:25 pm · Link
@wrb:
Yet virtually all of them vote for democrats more than republicans, and have for generations. Go figure
And I think a lot of immigrants have come from authoritarian states, so one has to wonder why they fled and ended up here. Maybe to get the hell out of dodge, and it is a big leap and frankly nonsense to assign those immigrants individually with having “chosen” such repressive governance. No one knows and deplores oppression more, than those oppressed.
Judas Escargot - January 16, 2012 | 2:30 pm · Link
@General Stuck:
Short-term, I agree. Long term, the GOP’s teatard problem is self-correcting: They’re dying off.
I could easily see an election in, say, the early 2030s: A largely Evangelical and young Hispanic population is only a decade away from the 50/50 tipping point. Some right-wing political party (which may or may not be called “the GOP”) realizes that racial politics works both ways, and starts spinning the social safety net as “those selfish old white people are draining the Treasury—vote for us to Save America!”.
Wonder who wins the next few election cycles if that meme gets traction in a political environment like that?
Look, I prefer your future. It’s just not as certain as you seem to think it is. If Democrats (or liberals) want to keep the up-and-coming demographic, they’ll have to continue to give them reasons to vote for them. It won’t “just happen”.
liberal - January 16, 2012 | 2:32 pm · Link
@ant:
Is there any evidence at all that anyone outside the beltway gives a shit about the bipartisan stance BS?
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 2:32 pm · Link
@General Stuck:
Italians and Irish did too, until they didn’t anymore.
FlipYrWhig - January 16, 2012 | 2:33 pm · Link
@RalfW: The phenomenon also holds true for churches and sports teams. People like to stick with the group affiliations they’re accustomed to, and don’t like the idea of bailing just because the n00bs are fucking it up.
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 2:33 pm · Link
@liberal:
Every poll that says they want everyone to “work together”
I think a lot of voters want bipartisanship. Whether or not they recognize it when it happens is another story.
FlipYrWhig - January 16, 2012 | 2:36 pm · Link
@liberal: Yes, independents and Democrats both say they want leaders to compromise and work together. I don’t think many people care about bipartisanship as a first -order issue, but plenty of them say they want the political parties to knock off the bullshit and just get something done, and “bipartisanship” is a convenient nickname for that approach.
Mnemosyne - January 16, 2012 | 2:36 pm · Link
@wrb:
You do realize that you’re parroting the exact same arguments that were used against Asian and Eastern European immigrants around the turn of the century, right? As history has proven, you can’t decide how an immigrant’s grandkids will turn out based solely on your projections of how that immigrant might act once they’re in the US.
Add to that the fact that young evangelicals are turning away from right-wing obsessions and I think the problem is much smaller than you seem to think.
liberal - January 16, 2012 | 2:37 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
I also don’t get why so many people are comfortable with this asssumption.
liberal - January 16, 2012 | 2:39 pm · Link
@OzoneR:
I think that means they want politicians to get something done. Most of them pay too little attention to keep track of who’s been cooperating with who.
gwangung - January 16, 2012 | 2:43 pm · Link
If the Rs keep bashing immigrants for a decade, they lose those voters forever. And it’ll take TIME to undo that damage.
People have a LONG memory when it comes to stuff that affects them personally.
geg6 - January 16, 2012 | 2:46 pm · Link
@Mark S.:
Well, that will stop any temptation I might have had to watch the pre-game. Of course, I never watch that stupid shit anyway, but…
Shawn in ShowMe - January 16, 2012 | 2:47 pm · Link
@OzoneR:
The Hispanic experience with American imperialism has a lot more in common with Native Americans and blacks than Italians and the Irish. History and tradition matters. People know who the lesser of the two evils are.
Yutsano - January 16, 2012 | 2:48 pm · Link
@gwangung: The Viet Namese were a bit of an aberration, mostly because they were running from a Communist government and successive Republican politicians made their transition easier, so they initially voted Republican out of gratitude. Even that is changing however.
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 2:50 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
And you think the republicans will? The future is not set, for sure, but the evidence does not support your version, though anything can happen over that span of time. And I think you are way overblowing that more Catholics will convert to protestantism that would make any great difference into the future. And your article link did not attempt, that I saw, to quantify how many of those new born agains were not already voting republican. And there are other trends, like newer generations Cuban Americans that the GOP is losing steadily the lock they had for their votes/ Take that away, over time, and the Hispanic vote should grow to more resemble the AA vote in this country.
The tea party may well be fading, but not the bigotry of the individual members, who will still be xenophobes, and not likely to vote dem very soon.
jayboat - January 16, 2012 | 2:55 pm · Link
@handsmile:
Ditto the Bob Mould cover, although Thompson’s original is hard to beat. Back in the days of Napster I found a live version of it with RT and David Byrne- name of the album escapes me.
Thanks to ya Douggie, you brought back some memories with this title.
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 2:56 pm · Link
LOL, there are a lot of sharks to jump to get to this place, but it is blogging, and nothing much is too much.
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 2:57 pm · Link
@liberal:
Yes it does, except people get mad when they get things done what they perceive to be partisan (i.e. HCR)
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 2:58 pm · Link
@Shawn in ShowMe:
because of racism.
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 3:01 pm · Link
@Yutsano:
Is it? Last time i checked, Vietnamese in Orange County are still voting R.
Hoodie - January 16, 2012 | 3:01 pm · Link
@ant: While the bipartisanship tack has some tactical value, I don’t think that it is for that reason. One of the things Obama uses it for is to force his political opponents to be more extreme in order to create product differentiation. They don’t want to be identified with him because they know tribalism is powerful in politics, especially when the tribe feels endangered. Naming Huntsman as ambassador not only tainted Huntsman, it taints anyone resembling Huntsman, as Huntsman defines the stereotype republican closet Obama lover. Thus, even though Huntsman significantly differs from Obama on policy, anyone who comes across “reasonable” a la Huntman can be viewed as an Obama lover and, thus, a traitor to the tribe. That has all sorts of knock on effects in terms of depriving Republicans of support from certain groups that could sympathize with them, i.e., it makes it more difficult to build an electoral coalition on the Republican side.
Shawn in ShowMe - January 16, 2012 | 3:02 pm · Link
@OzoneR:
Absolutely. So are you’re predicting that racism will vanish as a defining characteristic of the GOP within 20 years? You have a lot more optimism about those knuckle draggers than I do. If anything, they’re regressing on race relations. Trotting out Uncle Toms as presidential candidates, demanding that Hispanics show their papers, rallying around a policy of shooting refugees from the South on sight ..
OzoneR - January 16, 2012 | 3:03 pm · Link
@Shawn in ShowMe:
If they keep losing elections and the white population keeps dropping, it eventually has to.
Shawn in ShowMe - January 16, 2012 | 3:16 pm · Link
@OzoneR:
Or we could end up with something like the 2 1/2 party system that the UK has.
divF - January 16, 2012 | 3:21 pm · Link
I don’t think that the new immigrants can be as easily converted to the current brand of GOP insanity as some people in this thread think. The cultural values that might make the GOP attractive for these groups also include family ties that span generations. So throwing Social Security and especially Medicare under the bus will not be a selling point to the younger cohort of voters – these groups actually care about what happens to their parents and grandparents. And without the dismantling of the social safety net, the money part of the GOP clown brigade is just not interested.
EconWatcher - January 16, 2012 | 3:30 pm · Link
@divF:
My wife and many of my closest friends are immigrants from the former Soviet Union. And they are a pretty conservative bunch, although they have no use for fundies.
They typically have stories of coming here with nothing (in many cases not even legal status), struggling in poverty for a number of years, and then eventually doing quite well for themselves. And they tell me they don’t understand why native born Americans can’t do the same thing. They see American citzenship as a winning lottery ticket, and have no sympathy for those who can’t cash it in.
I don’t agree with them, but it’s difficult to argue with them. Many went through long periods of actual hunger in the old country.
shortstop - January 16, 2012 | 3:33 pm · Link
Huh, I was just listening to Beat the Retreat last night. Bob Mould’s cover of this song far surpasses RT’s version. I think Thompson just performs most of his stuff too near dirge pace, although he’s a wonderful songwriter.
divF - January 16, 2012 | 3:37 pm · Link
@EconWatcher: I don’t know about the immigrants from the FSU. But if the next move by the GOP is an attempt at generational warfare, it will not go over well with the Asian and Hispanic communities, which are the demographics under discussion.
schrodinger's cat - January 16, 2012 | 3:40 pm · Link
@EconWatcher: Did the have the the benefit of being highly educated, when they came here or did they come here as students?
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 3:44 pm · Link
@OzoneR:
As I understand it, in OC if you don’t vote R, your housing association will issue you a citation. Also too, if you don’t keep your pool clean.
Tony J - January 16, 2012 | 3:44 pm · Link
@OzoneR:
Unless it fractures into a ‘True-Scotsman Party’ and a ‘We’d Like To Stand A Hope In Hell Of Winning National Elections Party’, and the latter decides that the GOP brand is so tainted they need to put their money into something shiny and new that can be spun as the ‘answer’ to ‘partisan politics’.
Southern Strategy 2 – Electoral Boogaloo.
EconWatcher - January 16, 2012 | 3:46 pm · Link
@schrodinger’s cat:
Some were educated at the university level there, some got degrees when they came here, and some did both. All of them benefited from the excellent universal primary and secondary education provided in the Soviet Union, which has unfortunately crumbled since then.
I don’t have much good to say about the old CCCP, but they did a good job of educating kids (outside of areas like history, where ideology intruded). My wife knows chemistry like nobody’s business, and all she had was high school courses. She also knows how to disassemble and clean a rifle, and field dress a wound. Summer school was a little different in the CCCP!
Judas Escargot - January 16, 2012 | 3:51 pm · Link
@General Stuck:
I won’t argue with you on that, either. But one must admit this country’s jumped a lot of sharks (since about the time that episode aired, oddly enough) that didn’t seem ‘jumpable’ beforehand
The past decade taught me to never assume that there’s some solid limit to the crazy.
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 4:00 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
hear hear. Part of me wanted to believe I was overreacting during the Bush years – now I pretty much think I am just witness to some extraordinary times. We’re in crazytown!
Elie - January 16, 2012 | 4:30 pm · Link
@EconWatcher:
I’ve experienced some of the same sentiments from friends who are African or Caribbean black… sure, they know there is discrimination—but they scrap and feel they have a good shot here—better than what they had back “home”. They do not emphasize the same grievances that some minorities (just sos you know, I am black) and browns harp on here.
Here is my answer to that and to the Russians, etc. They did not go through years, YEARS of the directed punishment and marginalization that so many minorities had here. In Africa and the Caribbean, the mistreaters WERE black and in Russia, everyone who wasnt in the elite was persecuted. In none of their countries was there a constitution voicing values and explicit guarantees. They fully expected to be treated like shit and that there was no fairness. In our country, black people raised white rich babies, fought America’s wars and did the hard ugly labor—only to remain outside the system for many years. In their past lives, they offered nothing and were given nothing. There expectations and sense of the need for justice were just not as evolved..
Anyway, that is my take on it. The stone of justice in the United States has been worn smooth from the friction of so many of its own brown and black children’s hard work and blood. The newer immigrants, black and white, are just coming in at a good time, taking advantage of our efforts and blindly wondering what the fuss is about…things for them are just peachy here!
EconWatcher - January 16, 2012 | 4:39 pm · Link
@Elie:
Well said.
Catsy - January 16, 2012 | 4:49 pm · Link
As much as wingnuts have managed to muddy the waters in recent years, I think when talking about demographic trends and the future of certain parties it’s essential to distinguish between the party and the ideology driving it.
It is entirely possible that the GOP may succeed in driving out the bigoted crazies, and recalibrating the mainstream of GOP political thought away from brown-bashing.
Where, then, does the GOP base go? The Republican party is just a symptom of the real disease, which is racism intertwined with authoritarian right-wing conservatism. It is what it is because that’s what a nontrivial portion of its base wants. The 27% aren’t going to get a visit from the Empathy Fairy in the middle of the night and stop hating on darkie just because their party elders tell them it’ll lose elections. The true believers not only believe they’re right, they believe everyone else will come around if they can just get through the filter of the so-called liberal media.
So where will they go?
In the end, they have to go somewhere. “The Republican Party” is just a label; 150 years ago it stood for something almost diametrically opposite to what it did today, and the same is true of the Democratic Party. The racists and bigots felt at home in the Democratic Party for well over a century, and when they weren’t welcome here anymore they migrated over to the GOP.
Regardless of what you call the parties, American politics will always be divided along the battle lines of the Civil War—lines which really predate the War itself. There will always be a large portion of this country that hates The Other, a minority motivated by bigotry and fear. One of our parties will always be more hospitable to such people than the other, and those that don’t stay home or form their own party will gravitate to the least bad one.
If it’s not called the Republican Party, it’ll be called something else. But there will still be wingnuts.
gwangung - January 16, 2012 | 5:02 pm · Link
@Yutsano:
Kinda like Cuban Americans. LIke I said, folks have long memories when it comes to themselves.
Yeah, but more among the younger generation, I think, where it isn’t as personal.
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 5:03 pm · Link
@Catsy: Well said.
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 5:06 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
Well, that’s kind of a strawman. Of course, the party with the wingnuts is going to do crazy shit of some kind. But the future you painted that a lot of them will be people of color, and white people will become the victims, is the jumped sharks I was talking about. Possible? yea. But not likely, I don’t think. Unless I read you wrong, what you wrote.
Judas Escargot - January 16, 2012 | 5:49 pm · Link
@General Stuck:
.
The Karl Roves of the future will be more than happy to exploit anything available to them, as long as it gets their candidates elected.
Ugly, isn’t it?
I couldn’t even tell you who’ll win the Oscars this year, much less what the cultural landscape of 2030-2040 is going to look like. And neither can you. But when it comes to the future, Good People should take nothing (and nobody) for granted.
pluege - January 16, 2012 | 6:22 pm · Link
Its a fundamental progressive flaw that they project progressive values onto others including such extreme antithesis as todays’ republican. Projection (and conceit) is (are) key obama flaws. Not knowing his enemies is a great deal of why obama has been such a poor POTUS.
gaz - January 16, 2012 | 6:28 pm · Link
@pluege: Humbly nominated for most ironic comment of the day.
General Stuck - January 16, 2012 | 6:46 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
didn’t say anything should be taken for granted, just noting the demographic changes in the near to midlin future, that will put the onus on today’s GOP, or whatever party the white wingnuts end up in, to moderate their behavior, or pay the consequences at the ballot box. I don’t see changing long held beliefs of white supremacy for governing this nation, at least in any painless way. But here’s to hoping it happens for all concerned. Meantime, we should accept the fruits of their intransigence at the ballot box. And not take anything for granted. I like our standing and prospects in this regard. We could get bonkered with a giant asteroid that could be a game changer though. that I would put dibs on before the white wingnut changes his/her tune. anytime soon
Odie Hugh Manatee - January 16, 2012 | 7:28 pm · Link
I think that the Repubs have a solid core of people who hate anyone not white, the kind of people who will never accept anyone not white as an equal. Right now I think this core group is too large for the Repub party to push out. IMO, whatever happens to the Repubs in the future depends on the size of this core group:
– If it grows then I can see the Repub party eventually splintering into two parts with control of the R brand going to the racists. That would leave the rest of the R members the option of joining an existing party or making one of their own. Either way, the R brand is diminished and that is good news.
– If the core group shrinks then it still might splinter off, either into existing parties or starting their own, if the racists are unable to be whipped into line and vote for what they view as the lesser of two evils (IOW, never vote for a Democrat by not voting for the Republican!). IMO, any perceived loss of a voice in the R party will drive off some of the racists, thus still inflicting pain on the R’s.
IOW, win-win for the rest of us! :)
The R’s are in a shitty position right now that TPTB are scrambling to save what they can of the party with Romney. My reading of the right now is that many of them believe that TPTB on their side is screwing them royally. Conspiracies abound about this situation, rumors that are going to inflict real pain on the R’s this fall.
Which is more good news for us!!
Odie Hugh Manatee - January 16, 2012 | 7:38 pm · Link
Part of a sentence I heard Bret Baier on Faux Nooz say a minute ago: “... muddy and murky coming out of that but it was clear that Santorum was the choice.”
Ol’ Frothy is the clear choice over muddy and murky! Ok, not so clear with the fecal matter but still…
John - January 16, 2012 | 9:25 pm · Link
@Judas Escargot:
I think it is problematic to project current conversion rates in the Hispanic population indefinitely into the future. The idea that the majority of Hispanics will be Evangelical Protestants 25 years from now is hard for me to credit.
Samara Morgan - January 17, 2012 | 12:21 am · Link
@Frankensteinbeck:
again, im not a racist…..unless christian and stupid are races now.
white is not a race. its a demographic label, meaning non-hispanic caucs.
Samara Morgan - January 17, 2012 | 12:26 am · Link
@Frankensteinbeck: and im right about a lot of things.
for example, i sure predicted this.
Muslim Brotherhood member to lead Egyptian Parliament
Samara Morgan - January 17, 2012 | 12:29 am · Link
@John: yup. no idea what Escargots agenda is, but hispanics are generationally loyal to the democratic party.
Aet - January 17, 2012 | 3:09 pm · Link
“The idea that the majority of Hispanics will be Evangelical Protestants 25 years from now is hard for me to credit.”
It just can’t happen. The evangelicals may seek converts, but they’re an ethnic monoculture. A big tent might get them together, but there’s either going to be some compromise made, or some civil rights sea change that combines them into one black banner.