GOP will eat itself:
The conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action raked in $1.5 million in January, fueling its efforts to hammer GOP candidates the group views as too moderate.
The bulk of the group’s January cash haul came from a $1 million check from Virginia James, a self-employed investor in Lambertville, N.J., according to documents filed Monday with the Federal Election Commission.
A modest proposal: while SuperPACs (other than Adelson and Bananas Foster) have largely supported the “sane” candidate in the presidential primary, they may be more inclined to support the openly crazy ones in Republican Congressional primaries. At the very least, they’re a wildcard that could help destroy otherwise safe Republican incumbents.
Part of me does feel bad for rooting for more Christine O’Donnells, because I know plenty of reasonable local Republicans, but mostly I want to see the national Republican party descend so deeply into madness that even Villagers feel a little bad supporting it.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
I have to really stretch in calling Romney sane. He hasn’t promised bombing raids on Iran when he gets elected. But he might tomorrow.
pragmatism
watching the gopers coalesce into a fully functioning obama hatred machine after the primaries is going to be interesting, to say the least. my prediction is a brokered convention followed by some kum ba yah-ing around candidate palin. not enough popcorn in the world for that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Trouble is, there are a lot more Bob McDonnells and Kelly Ayottes and Pat Toomeys than Christine O’Donnells, just as crazy and destructive politically but less obviously looney. Ana Marie Cox (yeah, yeah, I know) was on TV this morning saying her parents might vote for Romney, even though they “lean left” ’cause he doesn’t seem like one of those Republicans. There’s a not insignificant strain of upper middle class tote-bagger who would vote for Romney to get some odd self-congratulatory feeling of “Oh, I’m an independent” that I can’t quite understand.
KG
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: because many upper middle class folks are not convinced that the GOP has lost it’s mind. They think Romney is reasonable (even though he’s more or less a sociopath at this point), and believe that reasonable, sane Republicans still exist beyond their own neighbors.
Smiling Mortician
Purely for entertainment purposes, I enjoy the fail parade as much as anyone, but:
A. I’ve seen no evidence that the Villagers will feel bad about supporting the crazies no matter how insane they get.
B. I don’t care how the Villagers feel.
I’d be enjoying this a whole lot more if I had sufficient faith in the relative sanity of my fellow citizens come voting time. Alas, November 2010 is a recent memory.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@KG: Yup, and a lot of the UMCTBs work for NBC, Kaplan, the NYT, and of course, NPR.
Maude
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
Ask Charlie what he thinks about Romney.
Romney is crazier than an s house rat.
Jager
My winger brother in law (why did my sister marry him) has gone from Rick Perry to Newt to Santorum. He thinks Romney is a “leftist”. I don’t think he can rally around Mitch Daniels but he could back Jeb Bush in a heart beat. My good Bro in Law and I used to laugh at him, now we agree he is dangerous and nuts. (And my sister wonders why she feels isolated from the rest of her family and her kids?) He said to my baby sis during his Newt period, “what we need in the Whitehouse is a good family man”…she choked on her Diet Coke.
rageahol
You assume the Villagers have shame.
bad move.
Schlemizel
Please do not hold your breath waiting for the villagers to be offended/embarrassed by the GOP. They could demand the return of the Sudetenland and the deportation of all ‘undesirables’ (hell, they are half way there now!) And Brooks and company would be explaining why that is entirely reasonable and to disagree would be un-American.
Suffern ACE
@Schlemizel: Nah. Brooks would note that the Sudentenland was home of that protestant work ethic that we have been missing since we last occupied it. It would be seen as a good thing.
Pococurante
Republican voters generally are fine with candidates that lie their way through the GOP primaries.
Anoniminous
Drive by comment:
PPP has Michigan and Arizona Santorum/Romney, Romney/Santorum with both leads within the MOE.
At this point I would give Santorum the edge to win both, based on (IMHO) Santorum voters are much more likely to get out and vote than Romney’s supporters. Part of that is the fact Romney has slipped back to the mid-20% (26%, to be exact) in the Gallup five day average national support poll.
Something to keep in the back on one’s mind: in 2008 ~19 million votes were cast in the GOP primary. This year it’s looking more like a little over 17 million. Given the consistent support for the four remaining candidates (although Gingrich is bleeding support) it is highly likely the “winner” of the most delegates could receive around 7 million total votes and maybe less than that, possibly much less.
Guster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s my father-in-law. He’s a middle-manager businessman type. Racist, but not overtly racist. Voted for Obama, but he’d love an excuse to vote for someone who, erm, was more ‘presidential,’ if you know what I mean. Bain Capital is a plus for him, because he worships those cutthroat greedheads. He doesn’t care about flip-flopping, because politics is all a game anyway; he mistrusts passion and earnest care more than flip-flopping, any day.
But I already know how to either turn him back to Obama, or keep him home. I’m just gonna hammer on the fact that Romney is creepy. Ignore all policy matters, and focus on that. He’s one creepy motherfucker. I’d be embarrassed to vote for him, and I’ll make my father-in-law embarrassed, too.
DanielX
Hey, I know some reasonable local Republicans too, with some of them being among my oldest and best friends. We don’t discuss politics all that much because reasonable though they may be, every one of them voted for George W. Bush…twice. They voted for Mitch Daniels…twice. They will vote for whichever of the current clown car occupants ends up climbing out of the wolverine pit because they can’t abide voting for a centrist Democrat. Fine, they’re reasonable. They’re also knowing accessories to some of the biggest clusterfucks in the history of this country or any other and they will go on aiding and abetting the looting of whatever assets this country has left.
It bears repeating that they voted for W in 2004 in the full knowledge that they were re-electing a consummate fuckup.
I really don’t want to hear any shit about “reasonable” Republicans at this point.
Schlemizel
@DanielX:
Exactly! I only disagree with one point, the ones I know still don’t think they had any part in the clusterfuck that was Boy Blunder. They fall into a very small but committed band of morans who don’t see that W ever did anything wrong and a larger group that now try to claim the dipshit was not a conservative. I of course ask them why they voted for him if he wasn’t a true conservative (they can answer that easily – he was better than Gore or Kerry) but then I hit them with “Why was there never a single conservative who voted against any of his proposals in the House or Senate? If his policies were known to be awful & not at all conservative why did all those Republican true conservatives always pass it?”
They try not to talk politics with me now.
Emerald
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): He’s also criticized Santorum for voting to increase the debt limit.
Presumably that means Romney would not increase the debt limit, thereby destroying the economy in one move.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@Maude:
Charlie would like a word with Mr. Romney, close enough to piss up his leg on the behalf of now departed Seamus. Dog power. It’s what’s for breakfast. woof!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just to prove my theory: Mark Halperin just scolded Tweety for suggesting that Rick Santorum means what he says.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@Emerald:
yup
dollared
No you don’t. They vote for any of those assholes, and they are not reasonable. and sure enough, give them a quick buff with the wire brush and underneath you find them hating in a gentle way – teachers, young bucks, hippies, terrorists.
Anybody who still calls themself a Republican owns Newt, Mitt, Ken Cuccinelli, and Rick the dick.
dollared
And of course, if you really, really were once a “reasonable Republican,” then the right Stones quote for you is “got to scrape that shit right off your shoes…”
quannlace
Sounds like a scene from the next Star Trek movie franchise.
chrismealy
I wonder if anybody ever said, “I think this Hitler nut is going to make it easy for the Social Democrats to win in the next election.”
I think Godwin just wanted to make the world safe for extremists.
Jebediah
@Jager:
Did anyone bother asking what’s wrong with the current President’s “family man” credentials? They seem to be such an ideal family. I’d be curious about wingers’ response.
a geek named Bob
In certain technical groups, there is a situation entitled the “Incident Pit.” (In Aviation, it also has more colorful names like “the death spiral.”)
The republicans seem to be egging each other on to go as deep as they can into the pit…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jebediah: Whenever I hear/read some Villager talk about how Obama doesn’t schmooze, socialize, polish Beltway knobs, I think, “have you noticed he’s got a demanding job and two school-age children?”
Jebediah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah… I guess if you already hate him, you can somehow make his actual “family values” (e.g. spending time with his family) a negative.
mclaren
Sorry, Doug. This can never happen.
If the Republican party comes out in favor of tearing infants’ heads off and eating their entrails, the beltway pundits will scramble to find Heritage foundation white papers proving that tearing infants’ heads off has been shown to improve child health and boost the economy.
shpx.ohfu
Jebediah: I can answer your question re BHO as “family man.” I get all the right wing garbage via my father in law forwarding his email slime trail. In short, the tack they take is that if you read his books, he apparently hates his mother:
Jimbo316
@Suffern ACE: Not unless Brooks was a German Nazi living in 1938. He’s actually Jewish so that’s real unlikely.
fuckwit
Heh, Pop Will Eat Itself. A seminal late-80’s band, along with Gaye Bikers On Acid.