(Jeff Danziger’s website)
Links for a bunch of worthy stories that I didn’t get to use in the craziness of the last couple weeks…
Harold Meyerson, at the Washington Post last week, on the GOP’s “King Canute strategy“:
… Accommodation with diversity and modernity, however, is simply not part of the Republican DNA. Today’s Republican Party has largely cornered the market on religious fundamentalists, even as the number of GOP scientists has dwindled (a 2009 Pew poll of scientists found that just 6 percent self-identified as Republicans, while 55 percent said they were Democrats). Many of the largest Republican funders come from economic sectors hardly distinguished by significant productivity increases or their contributions to mass prosperity (casino gambling, Wall Street), while Silicon Valley remains more Democratic turf. (By the way, all those messages Republican CEOs have been sending their employees , predicting layoffs should Obama be reelected? Have any of them promised raises if Romney wins? Just askin’.)
Two Americas are facing off in next week’s election. By their makeup, the Democrats are bound to move, if haltingly, into the future, while the Republicans parade proudly into the pre-New Deal past — some of it mythic, lots of it ugly. The differences could not be clearer.
The WaPo‘s Melinda Hennenberger — usually a reliable apologist for all things conservative — on “Why Romney Lost Women“:
… Both presidential candidates were branded as inveterate fibbers by their adversaries, of course… Yet only Romney’s supporters inferred that they trusted him to govern because they didn’t believe everything he’d been selling them as a candidate. Just as he asked conservatives to believe that the guy Bill Clinton called “Moderate Mitt,” was the poser, so, too, did he ask moderates to rest assured that he wasn’t as “severely conservative” as he was pretending to be long after securing the nomination….
If this election had really been all about women, we’d have surely talked a lot more about child and elder care, and education. But though the pandering wasn’t what it might have been from either side, you can’t win by hoping your own folks know you were winking when you made some of those promises.
Mooted, but still interesting, scholarly piece by Jack Balkin at the Atlantic on “Why the GOP should fear a Romney Presidency“:
… The predicament of a Romney presidency is that he may make George W. Bush look good by comparison. During most of Bush’s eight years in office, the Republican Party was united and willing to follow his lead. Romney will not be so lucky. The party he heads has become so rigid, radical, and unrealistic that, despite his best efforts, he may end up as the last of the Reagan-era Republican leaders — a disjunctive president like John Quincy Adams, James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, or Jimmy Carter…
The next Jimmy Carter will be a Republican president — a Republican who, due to circumstances beyond his control, unwittingly presides over the dissolution of the Reagan coalition. If Obama is reelected, we might decide in hindsight that George W. Bush best fits that description. But if Obama loses, the president who finally unravels Reaganism could turn out to be Mitt Romney.
Alex McGillis at TNR has already gone five-for-five on his predictions for how the GOP would explain a Romney loss, in “the Right’s Coming Freak-Out“.
And the “Six Most Paranoid Fears for Obama’s Second Term“, cataloged by SPLC‘s Booth Gunter, are a lot less quantifiable… but also more entertaining (“One thousand years of darkness!… hunted down like dogs!”), as long as you’re not sharing a neighborhood with these loons.
Arclite
Just watched Rachel on the election. DAMN IS SHE GOOD. Wow.
NotMax
Shorter version: appeasement.
AA+ Bonds
I think that even liberals who understand that conservatives are out of touch with reality often do not grasp the details of how and why this has happened even when they are confronting conservative “theories” head on.
Understand that a top conservative “theory” on Benghazi in the week leading up to the election was this: a specific, named Navy officer (Gaouette) was removed from command of a specific, named carrier strike force (Stennis) because, with his ship sitting right off the coast of Libya when the attack began, he tried to send choppers to save the embassy against Obama’s express orders to let Americans die, and because he wouldn’t go along with Obama’s plan, Obama had him removed rather than save the ambassador – because Obama would do anything to capitulate to radical Islam.
But . . . not only had the Navy patiently explained to the press that the specifically named officer and carrier were in the Pacific during the attacks, oceans and continents away from Benghazi – there was also video on Facebook from their September 11th memorial service to prove it and it had been there the whole time.
Nevertheless, right up through election day, every right wing discussion site I visited was filled with military porn descriptions of the carrier strike force, and elaborate timelines for the events that never happened, that could not possibly have happened, aboard a ship that was never there, and repeated statements that the helicopters were exactly “sixteen air minutes” from Benghazi when the attacks occurred, and so on . . .
As you can surmise from what you may have encountered in the media, this “theory” remains extremely convincing to a great many Republicans.
This is in part because, I kid you not, right-wing talk radio folks like Michael Savage and Ben Ferguson have recently ramped up their occasional argument that good conservatives never use Google or other search engines because they are owned by liberals and designed by liberals to spread misinformation.
Many liberals may believe they understand how vast the delusion is, simply because of the evident gulf between their understanding of reality and that of conservatives; liberals may not understand the intense and elaborate alternate reality that has been constructed and continues to be constructed to maintain that difference.
Right-wingers very much believe that they have the facts to back up their arguments.
AA+ Bonds
^ reposted because I honestly think we can move on from the horse race now that the election is over?
TheMightyTrowel
about to leave Vietnam for Australia where Mr. Trowel will finally be joining me after 9 months on seperate continents, my 30th birthday is next week, obama got reelected and MA is now represented by its first woman senator, elizabeth warren. can this month get any better?!?
The prophet Nostradumbass
So, Anne, you were complaining about Cole stomping on one of your threads (posted 1 minute apart, when it’s unlikely he would have seen), and now you stomp on one of Soonergrunt’s, in the middle of the night. Okay.
Shalimar
I was listening to Mark Levin for awhile on the way home. Levin was railing against the head of the American Conservative Union (the group that puts on CPAC, Levin said), accusing him of making a racist statement in response to Romney’s loss and saying that Republicans don’t put up with racists because they’re honorable people and that sort of behavior is extremely unacceptable. Levin said the only solution to this issue was for the racist to be fired from the ACU immediately.
It turned out after the ranting that the head of the ACU had said the Republican party couldn’t survive by strictly appealing to old white guys. I couldn’t stop laughing. This is just about the only thing Mark Levin has probably ever considered racist.
JGabriel
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Booth Gunter, Six Most Paranoid Fears for Obama’s Second Term:
Ahem. If we’re gonna talk full monty, then shouldn’t that be … wait for it … dick-tatorial?
Seriously, though, what is it about wingnuts and gay fantasies? These guys are
seriouslycomically repressed..
BillinGlendaleCA
@JGabriel: Wasn’t Matt Foley a motivational speaker who “lived in a van down by the river”? Sorry, that’s the first thing that came to mind when I saw “motivational speaker”.
JGabriel
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BillinGlendaleCA:
It couldn’t be the same guy. After all, Ringer is (read the following in a deep radio announcer voice with lots of reverb): A Voice For Sanity.
.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@JGabriel: This is hog wash. Obama is a full dress dictator if there ever was one. Unless there are pastie versions of epaulets and medals.
piratedan
@The prophet Nostradumbass: so an hour and 15 minutes is too soon? Listen I love JC and I’m fond of AL too, can we just be happy that we have threads to comment in and content to enjoy?
Redshift
@AA+ Bonds: There was a guy today (on Maddowblog, I think) who was asking how we could be sure that we weren’t in our own liberal bubble. I pointed out that fundamentally it’s because we don’t have liberal outlets telling us that every non-liberal outlet is biased and can’t be trusted.
piratedan
something I hadn’t heard of but sounds nifty…..
http://news.msn.com/pop-culture/national-parks-and-forests-free-for-weekend
if you can, enjoy America….
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@Redshift: Well that and our bubbles tend to get crushed rather quickly. I still think, however, that that wasn’t anthony Weiners dick in that picture. Obviously his account was hacked!
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@AA+ Bonds:
That’s so frightening.
Villago Delenda Est
You know, I like the idea of wingtard vermin like Joseph Farah of WorldNutDaily being “hunted down like dogs.”
It’s another obvious FAIL of the Obama Administration that they’re not sending out the SEAL teams to do this right now. Losers.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@Villago Delenda Est: I would rather it be at the hands of other republicans.
JGabriel
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Suffern Ace:
Think about that for a moment. I feel sure that there are.
Rule 34: If it exists there IS pr0n of it
.
GxB
@AA+ Bonds: Never is going to be easy isn’t it? Funny thing is the term “confabulation” popped into my head reading this. I’m out of school *cough* years and haven’t heard that word in over a decade. So I’m refreshing my long forgotten psych knowledge. If the wingers won’t learn and grow, I guess we’re going to have to take up the slack.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@AA+ Bonds: I said to someone before the election that I can generally respect the opinions of anyone who doesn’t believe they’re entitled to their own facts. The other politically engaged person in the group then mentioned her brother who is convinced Obama was born in Kenya, and I said “That’s what I mean about having their own facts” while the others stared at us with their mouths hanging open.
My husband keeps trying to use snopes to defang his crazier coworkers. That degree of disconnect from reality just doesn’t compute for him.
And for something completely different, this may be my favorite overseas front page about Obama’s win.
slightly_peeved
@Redshift:
I’d say a simple answer is that plenty of people around the world – plenty of nations – share the ‘bubble’ of left-wingers in the US. Very few people share the right-wing bubble.
Peter Murphy
@Redshift: my guess is that if US liberals are in a “bubble”, they’re a bloody great bubble that includes most (not all, but most) of the rest of the first world. Even UK Tories like Boris Johnson would be in the bubble. That doesn’t stop them being often delusional or maelevolent, but there is at least some connection to reality. US conservatives live in a special world of their own.
amk
End of story.
Michael2
A report this morning on WBZ CBS here in Boston said that Romney had bought a 10-minute fireworks display on a barge in Boston harbor (which is how they do our AWESOME 4th of July show) to celebrate his election.
Fit in perfectly with another fascinating CBS article about how the entire campaign was just GOB-SMACKED by the results.
NotMax
@AA+ Bonds
Ah, but there must be more. For example:
Since Obama used Ju-Ju Brand Wicked Weather Wizardry to cause and the Storm-Lok 666 to aim Sandy, it is self-evident he would also have used the Skynet Ultra-Transporter and Roswell Wormhole Manipulator to instantaneously whisk the ship to (or from) the Pacific.
Nobody in authority has explicitly denied the existence of these devices and methods. The conspiracy of silence continues…
Raven
@NotMax: Wassup?
NotMax
@Raven
Not much. You?
bjacques
Robert Ringer. Jesus. He’s right up there with Ayn Rand as someone not to read at an impressionable age. If I hadn’t read Winning Through Intimidation or Looking Out For #1, I think high school through twenties would have been a lot happier. On the other hand, as inoculation against the 1980s and late Republicanism, they can’t be beat.
Now that we’re well into the second decade of the 21st century, I’m thinking the helicopters are no longer laughing, but the domestic drones are trolling and tapping you on the shoulder and saying “BOO!” just to see how high you jump.
And, since we’ll be hearing more about FEMA in the next few years, here’s a golden oldie.
NotMax
@Raven
Just watched this very short video again. Made me copiously grin as much if not more than the first time when it aired live on Thursday.
Kirbster
Conservatives are going to call President Obama a Marxist-sokalist-fascist dictator no matter what he does, so fuck ’em. He doesn’t have to worry about re-election any more. Why not appoint Paul “End This Depression Now!” Krugman as Secretary of the Treasury as soon as Harry Reid does something about the Senate rules on the filibuster and secret holds?
Schlemizel
A horrible horrible thought hit me this morning as I sipped coffee & tried to gain consciousness.
Remember when Babs Bush talked about her “little brown ones”? Grandchildren from the latina D-I-L?
Isn’t Geo ‘Pee’ Bush one of the little brown ones? Could they skip over Jeb ‘Goober’ Bush and go right for Pee? That would (in their tiny . . . well lets call them brains since it the closest name for the organ in question) solve the Hispanic problem while keeping the Bush Family Evil Empire in the game
arguingwithsignposts
FSM help me. I’m traveling and fell asleep with CSPAN on and I swear they’re in the middle of a Charlie Cook both-sides-do-it-athon. If I hear the phrase “Wal-Mart Moms” again I’m going to owe the hotel a TV.
presquevu
I’m puzzled, how is anonymous cash deployed to influence elections “speech”?
What would a constitutional amendment to limit the obscene levels of advertising in effect today look like? Being constantly bombarded by ads, especially political ones, every waking moment, is not my idea of pursuit of happiness.
A 70% tax rate on political advertising used to fund campaigns would shrink the total and limit dark money to no more than either party’s ad budget.
Swing states shouldn’t be subjected to any higher level of political ads than the rest of us.
Misleading political ads should be held to a higher standard for truth in advertising than floor wax, with stiff penalties for trying to defraud the public.
True conservatives should be demanding a return to the 13% share of primetime broadcast airtime of the 1950’s from today’s 30+%.
The ruling allowing pharma ads on the airwaves should be reversed, with prejudice.
arguingwithsignposts
Also, Charlie Cook says Congress has a sad because Obama hasn’t called them all in the last year. Also, LBJ!
NotMax
@Schlemizel
Mentioned this in passing early yesterday.
Luckily he is saddled with the first name George. Another George Bush is automatically repellant to vast swaths of the populace outside of certain states.
However, it was also mentioned yesterday that he either had filed or made public his intention to file papers in Texas required to run for public office (note: any public office, not just higher echelon positions).
Interesting too, isn’t it, that he is most always referred to as George P. Bush, leaving out his Hispanic second middle name?
Baud
@arguingwithsignposts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj10EzNKA2M
chopper
first rule of politics: don’t get high on your own supply.
pk
What does it say about Romney, that a supposedly brilliant businessman, supported by brilliant job creator billionaires pissed away millions of dollars and has nothing to show for it. Plus this genius is shocked at his loss, because his team looked at the data, altered (sorry “unskewed”) it, and convinced themselves that they were going to win. Unskewing facts is a republican feature. Maybe George Bush looked at the data that Iraq had no WMD, unskewed it and and decided to start a war. Morons like this deserve to be out on the streets begging.
danielx
@Or something like that.Suffern Ace:
It probably will be at the hands of other Republicans, except that the ones being hunted down will be those who would “compromise” – that is, those with something approaching a grasp on reality. The party’s base – perhaps those who make a living from infuriating the base would be a better way to put it – would rather go down in ideologically pure flames than win electoral victories by recognizing the legitimate concerns of Those People.
After all, if Limbaugh, Coulter, Steyn, Levin, Hannity, et al, suddenly start saying well, maybe those demographers and scientists have a point (I know, like that’s gonna happen), then they won’t be feeding the habit of those addicted to self-righteous outrage and fury. A lot of the base’s self-identity is bound up in a sense of grievance, and people like Limbaugh make a hell of a lot of money by feeding that sense of grievance.
Those People, by the way, including those who make less than six figures a year and/or with a net worth of less than seven figures.
Most succinctly, and and straight from one who crawled out of the belly of the beast…linky linky, but it’s significant that the writer makes it point one of his observations about the three principal tenets of the modern Republican Party.
The Tea Party faithful were co-opted at the outset by those with this kept foremost in their aims, and they will go on being co-opted because it takes money to make an impact in American politics. Granted that even billionaires may have sincere beliefs about various issues, the bottom line for the Republican Party is…the bottom line. Period, end of story, -30-.
kay
@arguingwithsignposts: l
They should give him this win. The truth is, the cold, hard numbers are, Obama won a very solid majority. They’re misleading people, again.
I think they are so compromised, so burdened by this insane effort to appease and coddle they are incapable of making simple factual statements.
I’m not even asking them to analyze or add context. Just say what happened. Start there. Recite the facts, the order of events. If they don’t start there ( and they don’t) they are never going to end up with anything approaching “the truth”. It can’t be done.
aimai
@AA+ Bonds:
no we can’t. But I did enjoy your detailed exploration of the Benghazi issue. I have had that conversation with RW and understood that they were all speaking from the same playbook but didn’t have the details.
aimai
Elizabelle
David Frum is trying to school Morning Joe and his Fools on why Romney lost.
That’s some heavy lifting.
Frum: “everyone around this table has health insurance.”
Panel: [silence]
Frum then explains what a disconnect between 80% of the country doesn’t have health insurance/are economically insecure, and the GOP and its MSM media serious types right off the bat are screaming about deficit.
[Joe, as always, “as a Republican”, refuses to get that the GOP did not lose because they badly communicated their message. He and others won’t see that their policies are toxic.]
Louise
David Frum has about 5 minutes after each election in which he makes sense. He just told the white guys on Joe’s show, “Republicans, like rich White Guys, which all of us are, have no understanding of the needs of regular people; we have health insurance, we have jobs, we don’t have to worry about the things regular folks do — and the regular people have figured it out.”
And the rest of the panel? Moved on to other things. Didn’t hear a bit of it. Now David can go back to being irrelevant/stupid again.
Louise
David decided to hang in there and make a little more sense. “The conservative leaders are cowards”. And “The conservative followers have been fleeced and lied to by the conservative entertainment complex.”
Joe heard that one, of course, because it’s dissing his competition.
Elizabelle
Now Frum has mentioned the “lupine smile” of some big donor.
He tells the table that the base and big donors are nuts, and the conservative followership has been “fleeced and lied to” by the “conservative entertainment complex.”
Joe brays “name names.”
Frum talks about how badly informed the GOP base is. (News to some, not us, of course.)
Frum: “Romney was twisted into pretzels and the ones who put the cement shoes on him are now screaming at him.”
Frum has an ebook out this Friday “Why Romney Lost.” Sounds worth a read.
Keith G
I know eventually it will seem like I am blasting away at this
one note, but it doesn’t matter what the dead enders of the GOP alledge if the folks who voted for Obama three days ago stay active. Their words will wither and die against the force of our resolve.
After the 08 vote, most of us went home to pet our pony, and the vacuum was filled by zombies from the other side. There is no time. important decisions as to how to frame the debate are being made now, so now is the time for the progressive public to assert itself and not replay the mistakes of the past.
Elizabelle
@Louise:
Striking to me how the rest of the panel did not want to address Frum’s points. At all.
kay
@Elizabelle:
They could know it, if they wanted to. The PPACA has always polled well with AA, Latino and Asians. Always. Those groups are the biggest supporters of the law. It polls well in CA among more recent Asian immigrant groups for a very good and sensible reason. They’re self-employed or they work in small business (disproportionately).
This stuff is readily available. They CHOOSE not to look at it.
Luckily, it may not matter. This willful, ignorant blindness may not matter, because the facts are not GOING AWAY.
arguingwithsignposts
And in case you were worried that the Republicans would come to their senses, the clown are at the American Enterprise Institute with Norm Ornstein and others. Ornstein just recommended people read an analysis at National Review Online because it’s the “best analysis” of the reason for the breakup of the electorate for the GOP. (CSPAN2 – CSPAN Regular is doing their nutpicking “Let’s show highlighted snippets from printed material and take calls from the hoi-polloi” show).
Todd
Mitch McConnell is in some deep trouble. The teatards are mad at him, the establishment is mad at him, and as for his tripling down on obstructionism the day after, John Yarmuth (great progressive, by the way) invoked the upcoming Senate candidacy of Ashley Judd. Judd didn’t say no, BTW.
This could work. McConnell really is disconnected from us, and is really a DC resident. Few people can name some actual accomplishments he’s brought about for Kentucky.
Judd has been living close for years, was Phi Beta Kappa at UK and has a Masters in government from Harvard. Woman has some sizzle, and could really flip this state around.
Watch Bob Corker and Lindsay Graham denut Mitch in a very public way.
Hillary Rettig
apparently the Chronicle of Higher Ed has an article about how scientists used to vote along the same party lines as the rest of the country, but now (as post points out) almost none vote Republican. it’s behind a firewall; maybe one of the academics here can give us some quotes.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Me? I’m wondering whether Rove will end up like Stanley Motss.
Losing his sugar daddies’ $300+ million? Seems like they might be a little pissed (as we’ve read about already).
“So, Karl – OK if I call you TurdBlossom? How about just Turd? So you burned through $XX millions, and WTF do you have to show for it?”
“Look, I’m really sorry, Mr. Kxxx, I don’t know what happened. The Obama syndicate must have screwed with the voting machines.”
“Try that shit on rubes like Romney or that moron Ryan, but not me, OK? Do I look that fucking stupid? Right. Now, how you gonna get me my money back, asshole?”
“I just need a little time, Mr. Kxxx! I don’t keep that kind of money around!”
“You got 2 weeks, asshole. 15 days will not cut it. Am I making myself clear? In case you’re not quite getting it: I’d really hate to have to send Vito, Guido, and Igor here to ‘help’ you one last time.”
“OK, OK, Mr. Kxxx, I get it!” (As he prepares to leave, so that he can change his underwear.)
etc.
etc.
Louise
@Elizabelle: The silence and immediate “move along, move along” feeling after Frum’s initial presentation was palpable.
This is why I can only manage to watch these fools right after winning, while the schadenfreude is still fresh.
SiubhanDuinne
@presquevu:
Fixted.
Schlemizel
@NotMax:
sorry I didn’t see your comment yesterday (well not really since that was one less day I wasted a minute wondering what horror show those Bush people might spring on us.
I assume Pee would transform to G. Garnica Bush. Thats a pretty weird name but the GOP has spent the last 5 years making America comfortable with weird names (not intentionally of course but barking up the wrong tree will make people pretty much ignore that tree from then on).
Ted Nugent death watch: 363 DAYS to go
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Wait! It’s both!
Schlemizel
@Elizabelle:
The Nice Polite Republican radio had a pretty good piece on why Mitt ate it this morning.
They actually pinned a good part of the blame on the Newt & Perry for the great work they did labeling Mitt as a raider and Vulture, noting that the Obama team only picked those up they didn’t invent them.
They went a bridge too far & trying to say the Marquis du Mittens (damn I don’t want to give that up!) was too reserved and didn’t show his true self until very late then everybody loved him. They also mentioned but discounted how horrible Mitt was when not on script.
But I hope they keep focusing on what a horrible candidate they had so they don’t worry about fixing their real problems. I’d like to see a generation of Dem control, maybe we could actually get shit fixed then
SFAW
@Schlemizel:
Two thoughts (so to speak):
1) He’s too much of a wimp to off himself. He only gets off on killing four-legged animals that can’t shoot back.
3) If, by some quirk, I’m wrong about #1, why are you making us wait for a year? You’re not being very nice to us.
JPL
@Michael2: Why let good fireworks go to waste. I’m sure the residents would have appreciated a good show.
SFAW
@Schlemizel:
Except his real self was not the one that showed up at the debates. His real self was the 47-percent-trasher. Actually, the 47-percent-Mitt was a toned down version of his real self.
Schlemizel
@Keith G:
’10 will haunt us for a decade yet!
Heard Barney Frank say the Dems would have taken control of the house had the ’08 districts been in place. But so many GOP state legislatures, elected in that ’10 debacle, had redistricted so well we only gained 7 seats.
EVERY election has consequences. The Dems need to attack off-years like they do Presidential ones.
SFAW
@JPL:
Actually, I heard it was cancelled because they couldn’t figure out how to get one of the rockets airborne after shoving it up Karl Rove’s ass – to give him a spectacular send-off.
Schlemizel
@SFAW:
HE PROMISED ! He said if O got re-elected he would be dead or in jail before the next November. If I were really clever I would build a widget that did a count-down clock.
Its no more than 363 though
JPL
@SFAW: That would be fun to watch.
Schlemizel
@SFAW:
Man, that would have to be a heavy lift vehicle!
yes, I’m doing fat jokes, its not nice etc etc etc
arguingwithsignposts
@Schlemizel:
http://countingdownto.com/
You’re welcome.
arguingwithsignposts
@Schlemizel:
I would bet the O team didn’t “pick those up” so much as Newt and Perry got there first. The Obots probably still have powder they never used.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Thanks, just downloaded it.
Raven
@Hillary Rettig: I can’t find the article
NonyNony
Wait – I’ve got to say something about this because this is crap.
Bush the Lesser cannot be compared in any way to Jimmy Carter. Carter did the best he could with a mess that was handed to him – politically the country was a mess post-Nixon. Economically the country was a mess. Internationally the world was continuing to go through some radical shifts in Europe and in the Middle East. All of this truly was outside of his control.
Bush the Lesser walked into office post-Clinton. He walked in with an economy that was set to take a small downturn after an explosive decade of growth, but not like Carter’s mess. Yeah he had to deal with the 9/11 attacks which were outside of his complete control (though he and his people should have been taking the ME seriously and not trying to figure out ways to prod the Russians back into the Soviet Menace that they wanted to fight) – but something like that shouldn’t be the kind of thing that destroys a coalition. An attack by an outside enemy on our soil? That’s a Pearl Harbor moment, not an Iranian Embassy Hostage Crisis moment.
George W Bush took the coalition that Reagan built and all that political capital that the Republicans had spent decades achieving and he spent it on what he thought the single most important things of the day were – tax cuts for the rich and two wars on a credit card.
If anything, George W Bush is the Republican’s LBJ – the guy who took the political capital that the party had spent decades to achieve and spent it on what he saw as important. In LBJ’s case it was Civil Rights, the War on Poverty and the Vietnam War (so at least he gets to bat 0.600), while in W’s case it was tax cuts for the rich and two wars (who bats 0.000? George W Bush that’s who).
There you go – the Republican FDR was Reagan, the Republican LBJ was Bush. That would mean that Obama is the Democratic Nixon and Republican Jimmy Carter is coming up next. Though honestly this analogy can only go so far – Carter was an anomaly. In retrospect the Democratic coalition hadn’t reformed enough to be able to have an effective presidency – as evidenced by the fact that Carter got primaried in 1980 because there wasn’t a “buy in” of what the Democratic Party was supposed to be about post 1968 yet. If Nixon hadn’t been such a ham-fisted crook who had to resign, I suspect that Carter would never had made it to the Oval Office in the first place and the country would have had at least one more Republican in office (and the Dems would have had sufficient time in the wilderness to figure out how to build a new coalition again from the rubble of their previous one – something that didn’t actually happen until the late 80s in the end).
Raven
@Hillary Rettig: It’s an op-ed
Raven
Elizabelle
@Schlemizel:
Don’t listen to NPR much in the morning. Although did hear Cokie Roberts, on Wednesday, opining that Barack Obama had polarized the country, and now it’s up to him to play nice and roll on the deficit. You can take the girl out of the bosom of the Confederacy (Louisiana), but you can’t take …
Which reminds me why I don’t listen much to NPR.
@Todd:
Would LOVE to see Mitch McConnell lose his Senate seat. I would totally work Kentucky for Ashley Judd or another credible Dem challenger.
@SiubhanDuinne:
Right. Today is Friday. Let us know what you think of Frum’s book.
Raven
Scratch
On my drive into work this morning, I saw someone had put up a Bush-Cheney ’04 lawn sign. Not sure what that’s supposed to mean. This is a fairly heavily Republican area, but there are some of us Democrats.
Still, it’s possible it’s a Republican who is fondly remembering America’s golden age of 2004 to 2008 before the usurper took office.
Raven
@Scratch: No, Jeb and Liz vs Hillary.
jibeaux
@Scratch: Now, that’s just funny.
I still sometimes see cars with Bush Cheney ’04 bumper stickers, and think, if you voted your economic interests maybe you could afford a car built in the 21st century.
Schlemizel
@arguingwithsignposts:
THANK YOU!
http://countingdownto.com/countdown/176293
PsiFighter37
@Todd: Doubt it would happen, but damn, it’d be replacing (possibly) the ugliest senator with who would instantly be the hottest senator ever.
I guess we can keep dreaming, right? We’ve got to have someone better than that asshat Bruce Lunsford to run.
PsiFighter37
@Scratch: Ah yes, when the country’s economy nearly went down the shitter. Much better than having a black man in the White House…
Morans.
NotMax
Election bonus.
Maybe we’ve finally heard the last about that silly Redskin Rule.
the Conster
@Redshift:
I worry about that too sometimes, but the post first debate freak out about O’s performance v. the response to the job numbers with all the Jack Welch fail and the rapid response from the RW bubble supporting the vast left wing conspiracy theory, gives me solid evidence that we’re just not capable of that kind of delusional authoritarian thinking. We’re the cats in the cats v. cat herders, by nature.
Keith G
@Elizabelle: Why are you doing this? I just read the transcript, easily found on NPR, from where you characterized what Roberts said. She stated that they were divisions within the voting public that Obama will have to address quickly …not that he caused them. If that is why you are not listening to NPR, maybe you are not listening for the wrong reasons.
Wingnuts hear what they want to hear, we shouldn’t. We need to be better.
Elie
@AA+ Bonds:
And its that attachment to fantasy that is down right frightening about where the Republicans have landed… Like North Korea, they have constructed their own alternate universe and terrifyingly, act on conclusions made within that universe. It does not appear that math or science can penetrate their severe need to not be in a common reality with the rest of the world. (I have to think that psycho-sociologically this is linked to being teamed up for too long with the religious fundamentalists — those who believe that the literal bible is reality).
I have no idea if there are enough relatively “normal” Republicans left in the country to take back their party or start a conservative party based in reality. We shall see.
Elie
I also may be wrong on this — time will tell — but I believe that the Republicans are feeling pretty embarrassed about how they lost this election. Two dimensions seem to resonate and are shaping up in the synthesis: 1) the whole failure of running their campaign like a business but not being able to use all that money effectively and 2) their complete inability to use modern polling data and analysis along with the support tools to accomplish this successfully. They had no real situational awareness based on FACTS — therefore could not mount an effective strategy to win.
They are very very embarrassed. NOT humiliated. This was completely self inflicted and deep down, they know it.
NotMax
If (actually, when) the nutters huddle back into lockstep reality denial, perhaps they’ll be more upfront about it and change their name to the Lysenko party.
Aardvark Cheeselog
How about that Allen West? This from the local rag today:
Followed a few paragraphs later by
The image of biker dudes and teatard retirees “documenting irregularities” in this situation has me sniggering for some strange reason.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@Schlemizel: Listened to that myself, and almost turned it off when they put Viguerie on. I kept listening though, and when he said that Mitt’s problem was that he didn’t stand up during the convention speech and promise to honor the party platform, every jot and tittle, all I could think was “I wish a motherf***er would!”
Niques
@SiubhanDuinne: Link?
trollhattan
Moar election leftovers: Per the CA secretary of state website, as of 5:30 today Ami Bera holds an 1,800-vote lead over Lundgren in the CA 7th District House race. Fingers crossed, this would be a great pickup.