I welcome the recent spate of “Dude, where’s my GOP?” pieces from conservatives. Contemporary American politics is dominated by the insanity of one of the two major parties, and establishment media generally ignores this reality, so good on some righties for not ignoring it. Mark McKinnon writes:
It’s a very odd situation when the losing party is the party refusing to negotiate. It may be how you disrupt, but it is not how you govern, or how you ever hope to regain a majority.
He then predictably goes on to talk about all the compromises Ronaldus Magnus made. His list is accurate, but sometimes I wonder…contemporary conservatism prides itself in “standing athwart history, yelling `stop'” (in William F. Buckley’s words), why is it surprising that conservatives would be happy to disrupt when they no longer have the votes to govern?
Comrade Jake
This one’s for you DougJ: Crazy on a ship of fools.
freelancer (iPhone)
Sad news, Doug. No Moore award for you this year. I think he’s excluding certain people out of spite.
Comrade Jake
I’m really not sure what we should expect from the Republican-majority House. A good percentage of their caucus represents the wingnut right, and ostensibly, wants to get re-elected. Couple this with Boehner’s rule of the majority of the majority, lots of ins and outs and what have you’s, and we get the current fiscal logjam.
All those Wolverine kids died man, but they went down shooting.
I caught some of Norquist on MTP yesterday. You know what his message was? The POTUS should pass the Ryan budget. Seriously. These people are permanently cocooned.
Jay C
This really shouldn’t be considered an “odd situation” by anyone who has studied recent political history. Today’s Republicans don’t – and probably never will – EVER consider themselves the “losing party”. Today’s Republicans are a Party of ideologues: even when (as in California, say), they are reduced to a “superminority”, the (self-)righteousness of their “convictions” – i.e. prejudice, greed and fear in the service of Big Money, but dressed up with tough-talking sloganeering – will ensure that they will not/cannot ever compromise, even (especially?) when pigheaded obstructionism is all they can manage.
Haydnseek
@Comrade Jake: I got about half way through the article in NY Mag and couldn’t go on. Jonah Fucking Goldberg trying to sell the idea that the wingnuts were the party of “reality” was the last straw. I was really wishing the Somali pirates had a branch office in the Caribbean right about then……..
srv
It wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, and it is in dark times that the greatest leaders come forth to set us back on the righteous path to freedom and justice for the truly oppressed.
arguingwithsignposts
Sullivan won’t give DougJ a Moore Award because DougJ showed what a fucking ass Sullivan is with that master trollery a while back. Seriously, the man is a stupid twit.
Comrade Jake
@Haydnseek: Oh come on, the whole piece is hilarious. Look at this gem:
LOL. White privilege, for the win!
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Comrade Jake: OMG that was full of win.
A page later:
And they go right on telling themselves that their party’s unbearable-whiteness-of-being is just a messaging problem.
WereBear
I am convinced.
I was clinging to the thought that wingnuts were “always with us.” I was thinking this was just the usual squealing because they lost. I was sure that they would get over it and come to their senses.
I was wrong.
These white folks have done lost their shit. They are so freakin’ dangerous right now. My heart goes out to everyone in this nation; because obviously we are all at risk until this is recognized as the danger it so obviously is.
Gun control is small beans. We have to stop thinking too small. We need Wingnut Control, and we need it now.
Haydnseek
@Comrade Jake: You’re right. Some of it was pretty funny in that Thurston Howell III sort of way. These people aren’t just parodies of the plutocracy, they’re so over the top that it truly boggles the mind. Just not in the mood today. My give-a-shitter needs recalibrating, I guess. Maybe after Xmas.
Comrade Jake
@Haydnseek: Oh there’s absolutely no reason to give a shit about these people. This is a mock-as-needed piece if I’ve ever seen one. Cole has a post up on it just above this one.
Baud
I’m reading Caro’s recent LBJ book, and he notes that this is how Southern Democrats (now all in the GOP) kept civil rights down for decades.
? Martin
Except those compromises meant fuck-all – as did O’Neill’s. The only move that mattered in any modern discussion of lessons learned was when Tip O’Neill brought legislation to the floor that only a minority of his caucus supported, but a majority of the House did.
Every Speaker did this, though Newt was very, very reticent to. Boehner never has. He’s created an unoverridable veto by refusing to bring legislation to the floor that the GOP doesn’t want passed. No supermajority like the filibuster or the Presidential veto that at least can be overridden – Boehner’s veto is absolute.
Chris
@Comrade Jake:
The scary thing is that even those in blue states whose natural inclination would be to represent their more liberal constituencies, are finding themselves needing to tack hard right in order to avoid a primary challenge. As we saw in 2010, Republican primary voters would rather lose an election than compromise even one percent of their ideology.
That’s the problem. Explains the complete radicalization of the GOP, and the almost-total extinction of the liberal/moderate Republican faction (never a hell of a lot of them, but enough to make a difference in Congress).
Cacti
Bob Dole shepherded the Americans with Disabilities Act through the Senate. George H.W. Bush resigned his lifetime membership in the NRA following the Oklahoma City bombing, when Wayne LaPierre more or less said the federal employees were nazis and had it coming.
Could anyone see a current member of the GOP doing either of those things?
There was a time, not that long ago, when a serious person could vote Republican and not feel completely ashamed of it.
Paul
So why is Mark McKinnon still narrow-minded enough to stay Republican? By being Republican he still takes ownership of their crazy beliefs. The Republican party of today is not the GOP of 30 years ago. It has been hijacked by fake Christians, bigots and selfish people who could care less about our country (see fiscal cliff and debt limit for examples).
MikeBoyScout
why is it surprising that conservatives would be happy to disrupt when they no longer have the votes to govern?
It’s not.
And with the gerrymandering the Republicans accomplished in 2011 it means that we will need to work harder and GOTV better in 2014 than we did in 2012.
Whatever the Republican party is today, it is dangerously unfit to be near, let alone in possession, of the levers of political power.
Ruckus
@arguingwithsignposts:
The Monty Python twits probably could not have turned on a computer, let alone got a job as some sort of a what the hell ever sully is. I haven’t figured out if that is a step up for twits everywhere or not. Now more people can see what sort of twit he is.
kuvasz
The GOP are acting like Russian partisans falling back from Napoleon in a scorched earth retreat. By hook or crook they are slowing down every advancement from their adversary.
bleh
Let us remember, please, that things are going just fine for the Master Class. Interest rates are low enough that capital assets maintain their value, unemployment is high enough that the laborers don’t complain, and mostly what the political class is talking about is how deeply to cut social welfare programs. Why SHOULD they compromise, or even cooperate?
Davis X. Machina
@? Martin: We have a crisis of legitimacy that no one wants to acknowledge or talk about.
A Democratic government, even divided government with a Democratic component, is something you wait out until you can overthrow it, like any other occupation, or usurpation. Until then, its laws and acts are only as binding as you would like them to be, or need them to be, to the extent that they are helpful in bringing about a restoration of legitimate government.
On a good day, the GOP is pretty much the Irish independent party of the late 1890’s House of Commons. On a bad day, it’s the Petrograd Soviet, or the circle around Louis Phillipe in Surrey.
James E Powell
@bleh:
Agree completely. They lost the 2012 election, but they also lost the 2006 & 2006 elections. They came back from both of those losses and they believe they will come back from this one. Remember, conservatism cannot fail.
They still have the state houses, the house, the filibuster, and the Supreme Court (mostly). Until they really lose. Until they are crushed three straight election cycles, they will not change.
CW in LA
@Haydnseek:
Sure. But as attractive as the idea is, we all know what would happen next:
1) The prez, who’s never lost sight of the fact that he’s president of all Americans, even the really horrible, stupid, batshit insane ones, would send SEAL Team Six to rescue them.
2) They would immediately show their gratitude by b!tching about the way he did it, sliming the motives they impute to him for doing so, and demanding that he fully embrace all the most odious aspects of their agenda.