Harry Ellis is upset:
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) will soon issue a statement contending that Obama’s promise to “put an end to petty politics” is “threatened” as the White House and their allies “are making political threats rather than crafting a bipartisan economic stimulus plan.”
He’ll call on Obama to “immediately disavow” plans by liberal interest groups who have announced their intention to run attack ads against the Republicans. These groups, organized under the Americans United for Change umbrella, coordinate regularly with Congressional Democrats and are in touch with White House officials.
Earlier, an Obama aide said that the White House was not directly involved in these most recent efforts and had not encouraged its allies. The plans were reported in the Politico by its chief political reporter, Mike Allen.
“Let us be clear: attack ads will not create jobs or help struggling families but will only serve to undermine our nation’s desire for bipartisanship. Instead of thinking about winning at any cost, we should all be thinking about creating the jobs Americans need,” Cantor intends to say.
What bipartisanship? You just voted, to a person, against the bill designed ostensibly to help Americans. You were too stupid to even send a few votes over to the bill that was going to pass anyway, because you wanted to show “party unity” and preferred to act tough and deliver a slap to the face to Obama. Suck it up and deal with your own actions, because you got what you wanted- none of you voted for it. A clear message was sent. Was that not your plan?
And here is a song for you:
At what point did the entire GOP turn into a bunch of whiny emo twerps? How did I miss that happening? How are they going to keep us safe from terrorists when all they do is talk about not “bending over and taking it” and Democrats being unfair? This is just getting pathetic.
*** Update ***
By the way, commenter Cleek, who runs a fine blog of his own, nailed this the other day in the comments:
Obama’s going to the Hill to give the GOP a very public opportunity to say “no” to his first big attempt at bipartisanship. and he’s bringing along a bunch of cameras and reporters to document it.
now, when McConnell says it’s all the Dems’ fault and that the talk of bipartisanship was a sham, there will be a lot of HD evidence to prove that he was lying.
Sure is looking like that is how things are playing out.
Comrade Stuck
Priceless!
gex
Attack speeches and refusal to participate in passing legislation don’t create jobs either, bub.
jibeaux
A wise man once said:
Clearly, action is called for here, and nothing short of mailing something en masse to somebody will do. My Little Ponies, maybe?
Gus
Actually attack ads will create jobs. Someone has to write, narrate, act in, film, animate, title and edit them. Sounds like lots of jobs to me.
SpotWeld
Ever watch a bully change when a parent shows up?
GOP (and a good number of Dems) needs to learn that a grownup is in charge now and act accordingly.
RedState may never learn
TheFountainHead
Shorter Cantor: "You’re not letting us win!! God you’re mean!"
demkat620
Did you miss the nineties when every republican in the country claimed the world was gonna end because of a blowjob?
They have always been this way.
Comrade Dread
Around 2001, when they puffed up their chests, promptly abandoned all principles and the Constitution they claimed to hold dear, and ran off begging Daddy to do anything and everything he could to save them from the terrorists in the closet.
1.20.09 merely changed the form cowardice took.
Michael D.
I don’t believe in bi-partisanship.
Bi-partisanship just makes things more expensive than they already are.
Bubblegum Tate
Cantor was the one who also said, "We were gonna support this bailout, but then Nancy Pelosi said some mean things, so instead of supporting this legislation, we’re gonna go cry in the corner," about the first bailout package, wasn’t he?
Nicole
Darn it- I only made it through 48 seconds of that one. The emo, it weakens you!
Comrade Dread
@10
Yeah, he was.
You seriously can’t mock these people anymore. They’ve ventured into absurdity so far that any jokes made about their comments are less funny than the comments themselves.
Douche Baggins
This band blows. The drummer’s fill at 0:44? Pathetic. The bass player’s lines are mundane I-V-I octave nonsense. The bridge (yeah I made it that far) — boring. Curse you, Balloon Juice, for showing me the sheer awfulness of emo.
sgwhiteinfla
Isn’t Rush basically an interest group and didn’t he have the ditto heads call the Rethugs telling them to obstruct the bill? Whats good for the goose…
Litlebritdifrnt
Oh so saying that they will publish state by state job loss numbers so that those out of job folks can see what their brave representatives are doing and then saying they will have someone run against them in the next election is "threatening?" Damn! I pity these poor sods when Obama and Rhambo take the gloves off, its going to be priceless seeing them turn into blubbering heaps of snot.
Who’s going to volunteer to do the Youtube vid under the sheet "LEAVE THE REPUBLICANS ALONE!" SOB.
Broken
The next right-wing meme will be to DEFEND the $18 billion in Wall Street bonuses. This after nay-saying the financial bail-out. Who needs consistency when you can just mindlessly oppose anything the Dems want to do.
Deborah
At what point did the entire GOP turn into a bunch of whiny emo twerps?
Per a commenter at Larison, I’d suggest around the time Rush Limbaugh became the face of the Republican party.
There will be ads saying that your rep voted in exactly the manner he or she just voted; shouldn’t they be proudly underwriting those ads?
TheHatOnMyCat
Are you asking seriously? Because the serious answer is, about 1964, during the Goldwater convention.
Whinyassed motherf9ckers haven’t stopped the crocodile tear tsunami since. Nixon’s schtick in 1968 took that ball and ran with it, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Michael D.
Well, Blagojevich is no longer governor.
Teak111
GOP, meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss. GOP operating like it 2003 and TS is blinking before the cameras of CNN. Obama and his team, very media savvy, got mandate too.
BTW, is it me or is Rush ballooning up big time. Be careful, Rush, liable to get diabetes.
jnfr
I think demkat620 is right. They’ve been whiny as hell ever since they lost to the Clenis.
Catching up: TheHatOnMyCat makes a good case for the Nixon years, though.
Zifnab
@sgwhiteinfla:
He’s fat enough.
TheHatOnMyCat
Noooo, Limbaugh was very late to the party. The maudlin sentimental schmaltz started in the sixties, with Goldwater, and then Nixon who really figured out how to use it.
"Americans are vulnerable to demagogic appeal." Nixon said this in 1968 before the convention that nominated him.
We said, no shit Sherlock, we saw the Checkers speech.
dmsilev
I would suggest to the GOP that they take this lesson to heart: You can deal with Barack Obama, or you can deal with Rahm Emmanuel.
-dms
Ash Can
@Michael D.: Glory be!
Michael D.
@Zifnab:
He said RUSH – not Tunch.
Ash Can
@TheHatOnMyCat: I wouldn’t argue with that, but Newt Gingrich definitely took the shrillness of the whining up several levels in the 90s, and it hasn’t come back down since.
geg6
This is terrible news for Barack Obama. Gawd, I can’t even say that with a straight face any more. Whiny fracking titty babies every.single.one. Hilarious.
Tsulagi
Geez, you would think Cantor would welcome ads pointing out zero Republicans voted for the stimulus bill. And even if he thought they weren’t entirely kind, isn’t the proper response “Bring it on!” Maybe his shipment of RSSF balls hasn’t arrived yet.
scarshapedstar
Dear god, that song is awful.
Chuck Butcher
I’ve been wracking my brain for a demonstration of something other than cowardice when anything other than a virtually harmless event was posed. Somebody mentioned a bully when his parents show up, I’m more reminded of one who has just had his ass kicked.
ksmiami
I am getting to the point though that if I hear someone admit to being a Repub or a banker, punches will be thrown
NonWonderDog
How do you find these songs? I only made it 9 seconds in this one before I couldn’t take any more.
Rainy
Aren’t these guys running ads against Harry Reid now? I love how these guys act like every thing they do is right and everything the Dems do is wrong.
Tattoosydney
I think this hits the nail on the head. I can’t believe how much of the reporting focuses on the idea that Obama somehow comes out of this looking bad. In fact, he and the other Democrats are the ones who will have taken action, with the assistance of no (count them: none, nada, zero) Republicans (except presumably Olympia Snowe in the Senate).
Al Giordano said much the same thing very well, although posted after Cleek’s comment:
Broken
@Rainy:
It’s only partisan when Dems run attack ads. Just ask Politico.
Dave C
Alright people, the Sunny Day Real Estate bashing needs to stop right the fuck now!
[/angry]
MikeJ
Nixon’s enemies list should have been a tip-off. The Republicans have always acted like 13 year old girls. Today Mitch McConnell told Obama, "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!!" and slammed the door to his room.
gex
@MikeJ: That seems unfair to 13 year old girls. I gather if the stakes were high enough, the girls would pull it together and cooperate.
Objective Scrutator
Emos and RINOs deserve the same fate: the death penalty.
It looks like there will be no RINOs to slay today, but the Emos never rest.
Why would anyone want to protect an Emo’s constitutional rights, assuming that there is no monetary gain involved?
Ninerdave
Don’t know why this is surprising. The GOP has never showed any interest in actual governing.
jake 4 that 1
Gosh, I thought the nation’s desire was to be protected from mean nasty islahomofacsists by allowing Jack Bauer to waterboard some 13 year old from the suburbs of Kabul. Don’t know where I got that idea.
Anyway, we can all do our part to scotch this nonsense by telling the nearest GOPer bipartisan is code for bisexual.
Deborah
Theory: Much of their problem is that the analysis of what the Republican party needs to do to re-attract its disenchanted followers is by people who led the Republican party while it was driving all those people away. They’re looking around for more ideologically impure to toss out of the yurt, then wondering why no one wants to come into the new, roomier yurt.
Some good thoughts on conservatism from Dreher or Larison and other people who were branded ideologically impure for either rejecting Palin or accepting Obama. But for this heresy they were driven out, so it’s the same old management team wondering why sales have tanked and asserting that they’re going to just focus on what they do best and their core brand and everyone will flood back. They aren’t interviewing the former customers about why they left, because to leave means you aren’t worth listening to.
Hob
@demkat620:
Actually, the world did end. Everything since then has been an extended hallucination in the dying mind of the universe, as the last second of the blowjob stretches out for all eternity. Too bad for the rest of us, but a pretty good deal for Bill Clinton.
Cain
@MikeJ:
Did he cuddle a Boehner afterwards?
cain
trizzlor
This is just how the minority party acts. Read that statement as if it were said by Kerry in 2004 and it’s totally plausible. Just like the Repubs when they were in power, we’ve dropped the bi-partisanship meme and think what Obama s doing is a great show of political courage.
I’m just surprised that the Republicans haven’t learned that these weeping pressers don’t work anymore. Calling on your opponent to denounce some rogue group works well on the Hannity’s America, but not when the other guy gets to send his secretary to read a measured non-apology and you look like a stubborn wimp.
Mike in NC
Maybe if Daddy Obama promised every whiny GOP Congressperson a shiny new iPod or BlackBerry, they’d agree not to leave their dirty laundry on the floor and eat their vegetables.
[delurk]...[/delurk]
I would like to suggest a new unit of measurement: the goldwater==40% of the vote.
Use it in a sentence? Okey-Dokey:
2008 saw the last campaign based "Get off my lawn, you damn kids" that will break one goldwater in the popular vote.
The GOP bittereinders (to borrow a term from another war) are rapidly sinking to one hemigoldwater of the electorate.
(I’m willing to listen to arguments as to whether that should be "hemi-" or "semi-" or "demi-", but the prospect of someday talking about a "hemidemisemigoldwater" sounds like fun.)
Perry Como
GemOP?
eyeball
No interest in helping the republicans disinter themselves but they might want to start applying the Costanza rule — start doing the opposite of everything they think they should do. … especially since O is channeling that West WIng episode where Bartlett goes to see the GOP on the Hill, then leaves with all the TV cameras in tow while the GOPpers are jawboning about how best to fleece the guy.
cleek
garsh. i’m ‘umbled.
Samuel
Great–so because Obama makes sure that cameras are following him over to Capitol Hill, this proves he’s bipartisan?!? God–and I thought only Congressional Republicans were naive.
Whether you like it or not, the only reason Obama is making an attempt to "appear" bipartisan, is that he doesn’t want the Democrat party alone on the Titanic when it goes down. Who cares about bipartisanship anyway? All we heard from the Democrats during the campaign was that the GOP way was wrong and their policies all suck! If the Dems are so confident in what they’re doing and the public hates Republicans so much—then have at it! You got your stimulus–let it ride!
Please stop this Obama is healer and soothsayer nonsense–he’s a politician first and foremost–bred from the most seedy and corrupt political machines in the country. His "vision" stretches as far as the next election cycle. Shame on you if you believe otherwise
poopsybythebay
Samuel-
Go play with the other 13 year old children.
Mnemosyne
Psst. Dude. You see that icy water rushing around your ankles? What’s your plan to get off the sinking ship — move to France?
I know Republicans love to pretend they live in a completely different country than the rest of us, but if the United States goes down, Republicans are not going to magically be unaffected. Though I suppose you’ll be standing on the street corner in your new cardboard box home still boosting the Magical Tax Cut.
myiq2xu
Do you think that will stop them? They’re shameless.
randiego
Where do you think the whole thing came from? Tell me Aaron Sorkin doesn’t have an ear for this stuff…
Johnny Pez
@ksmiami:
fixed
Chuck Butcher
If you were the GOP what would you try? Some of us have been Democrats long enough to remember what looked like ultimate futility in trying to win elections. There was the problem of having been labeled and then turning around and having part of the Party live up to the label.
Does somebody suggest that the GOP become Democrats? No shit, now, what is the GOP going to stand for if they stop being what they are? The religious right and the fiscals are pulling apart now but neither wing has the weight to run as an effective party at anytime soon. I honestly can’t think what they can do.
Clawing out of the wilderness the past four years has been rewarding, but it also has not been easy and there is some real work left to do. It’s easy for some to scoff at OR02 as a rural "so what" district, but while it is right now reliably red and the other 4 all have (D) US House at least a couple are always narrow and some wouldn’t be without the Reps they’ve got – and this is Oregon. If the Democratic Party proposes to stay competitve in the long run, districts like OR02 need to be competitive.
It is important to remember that while metro Portland put Sen Jeff Merkley (D) over Gordon Smith our small gains allowed that to narrowly happen. And it was narrow with this CD well under 40% (D) in the vote. There are states where you cannot have that shit.
Rick DeMent
I never thought I would see the day that Republicans voted against a tax cut. Change is indeed in the air.
D-Chance.
We know three things from the past 36 hours.
1) The stimulus bill is bad (Cole said so, himself, in at least three different posts).
2) The Republicans voted against it.
3) The Republicans were wrong to vote against it.
Now, #2 is demonstrably factual. And with that being the case, either #1 or #3 is a lie. Since Cole claims #1 is true on multiple occasions, then he must be lying in his posts claiming #3.
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
Where did Mr. Cantor go after the GOP showed "unity" by voting against the stimulus- on the air to yuck it up with Rush Limbaugh. Rush is LOVING this. In a GOP power vacuum his stature in the party is growing by the day. This cannot bode well for the GOP.
I think the GOP are making whiny baby asses of themselves, however, I don’t see the dems pushing back on their framing of the stimulus bill "all pork."
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
Where did Mr. Cantor go after the GOP showed "unity" by voting against the stimulus- on the air to yuck it up with Rush Limbaugh. Rush is LOVING this. In a GOP power vacuum his stature in the party is growing by the day. This cannot bode well for the GOP.
I think the GOP are making whiny baby asses of themselves, however, I don’t see the dems pushing back on their framing of the stimulus bill "all pork."
cleek
you can’t really be this stupid. it’s just not possible.
ET
I am know this isn’t the first time I will say it and I am quite sure it won’t be the last:
Bi-partisanship is a two way street.
kay
@Deborah:
But for this heresy they were driven out, so it’s the same old management team wondering why sales have tanked and asserting that they’re going to just focus on what they do best and their core brand and everyone will flood back. They aren’t interviewing the former customers about why they left, because to leave means you aren’t worth listening to.
I love this.
...now I try to be amused
The real answer might be 1964, but they turned it up to 11 in 1993 after they lost the Presidency they felt entitled to in perpetuity. This was the opening of the Gingrich era.
big red snapper
McCain: Obama needs to consult on stimulus-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090130/pl_nm/us_usa_stimulus_mccain
lethargytartare
@Douche Baggins:
I disagree, on three counts –
1) Sunny Day Real Estate pre-date the entire notion of EMO, and fan’s and critic’s efforts alike to lump them in with that milquetoast pseudo-movement are silly.
2) Sunny Day + Shudder to Think = best concert I can remember
3) this
Jody Dobis
If you take the republican senators in the senate today and added up all the votes they received in their last election and did the same for the dem’s, what would that be? My hope is that the dem’s have a 60% or better margin of votes.
As to Cantor and the rest of the south politico, my only question to there wise and knowledgeable ways is the ranking of the states they respresent in middle class wages, schools and the poor. What a surprise it would be if they are in the lower half of the country. And they have the wisdom and knowledge to lead us out of the Bush desert? Sign me up.