In case anybody still wonders what I meant by that cute little phrase, the answer is Brent Bozell. People like Bozell won’t rest until the Republican party adopts his personal vision of total, unwavering ideological rigidity. For whatever reason they don’t understand that the Republican party cannot possibly answer their demands, for two reasons.
First, the GOP has too many factions for rigidity to work. The GOP of the DeLay/Frist golden years wasn’t rigid at all – order was maintained through a heady mix of brown people fearmongering, rank corruption and keeping coalition-threatening agenda items off the table. Should they please the Chamber of Commerce or the Minutemen? Panty-sniffing vagina inspectors or libertarians? Small government types or surveillance state neocons? Unless you count Schiavo (and maybe you should), pushing that immigration bill was the beginning of the end.
Bozell also forgets that the GOP agenda isn’t very popular. Even setting aside this year’s blowout numbers, national polls routinely consistently favor Democratic agenda items over Republican. Most of George Bush’s pre-9/11 agenda involved repackaging his doctrinaire Republicanism in ways that disguised its real purpose. One of the few times that the GOP laid their agenda on the table without the doubletalk, over privatizing Social Security, the initiative failed so miserably that it became the yardstick against which future policy failures will be measured.
Fringe nuts like Bozell aren’t on the fringe any longer; folks as extreme as Bozell and worse have become the heart of the base that wags the party. If the base wants the GOP to commit suicide by purity then I say bully for them.
The Moar You Know
Too late now for McCain to curry favor with Bozell, after his rather shocking repudiation of waterboarding on 60 Minutes the other night.
I get the feeling that McCain holds self-appointed coprophiliac Gestapo like Bozell in something less than high regard. Not that it matters; the far right will get in line and vote as they’re told, just like they always do.
Wish us Dems had the same party-line discipline; we’d have spent the last eight years under sane leadership, instead of the Fourth Reich.
Zifnab
You forgot the biggest reason of all. When you run a party on the premise that everything the party officials do correct, and everything the party officials do isn’t actually correct, you end up with a great deal of shit that doesn’t work: See, Iraq, FEMA, the economy, immigration “reform” and border protection, environmental policy, mine safety, the NRCC stealing from itself!, etc etc.
It’s an untenable situation. You can’t function as a party if you don’t function at all. The wheels will eventually come flying off the bus, one way or another.
TenguPhule
I’d settle for them all just commiting suicide. But knowing them, they’d botch that too.
Dennis - SGMM
From the linked article:
You mean that Clinton has been president for sixteen years? Damn! The main obstacle to the Republicans ever becoming a viable party again is the coterie of in-denial neocon idiots so ably represented by Bozell.
Tim F.
…followed by his un-repudiation when he voted against an Intelligence Authorization bill that banned waterboarding. It’s embarrassing to watch McCain try and fail to send the simplest coherent message.
Sojourner
The worse thing that could happen to Bozell is the GOP implementing his vision. Then there would be no need for him.
There’s money to be made by being on the fringe.
Zifnab
Tell that to Captain McSurge-o-thon!
I have no doubt that McCain received a substantial intra-party boost by implementing what was supposed to be an election-year ploy into a real-life clusterfuck. Being on the fringe makes you a few bucks. Standing at the media center in the batshit crazy mainstream gets you more money, more power, more fame, and a blowjob from Chris Matthews.
w vincentz
Oh well…since Bozell is so free to share views, here are some of mine:
1) Gay married men should NOT have abortions! Period!!!
umm, unless they pastor a mega church or have a wide stance in a bathroom stall, or have the hots for an intern or two…
2) People in a vegatative state should not be kept on life support indefinitely. This would include most of the GOP.
3) Only people that veto legislation restricting waterboarding should be waterboarded.
4) Embryonic stem cells have rights! At stage eight mitosis, they are deserving of all entitlements the federal government can provide! Prior, of course, to their disposal as medical waste.
5) Gun control…uh, why bother? Everyone should carry concealed like I do.
6) Illegal aliens…if they find the space ship they landed, then for sure, they should be put back on board and told to return to their home planet. For any others that are tagged with that label, either the land stolen from them by Andrew Jackson should be returned to them or they need to submit to genetic testing to determine which Native American tribe they trace to.
7) Hillary’s hair dresser should be arrested and the crackhead that designs her pantsuits should be banished to Paris.
more later.
Kirk Spencer
“… devastated by Clinton.”
As I never tire of noting, the drawdown began under GHWBush. I had more than a few friends come home from Desert Storm I to get a medal and a pink slip. Please recall that the BRAC law was passed in 1988 (under Reagan) with the first closures approved in 1989 (under GHWBush) as well.
The Moar You Know
Fixed.
p.a.
Don’t forget, Bush Republican rebranding of doctrinaire Republicanism was well on its way to failing before 9/11; Shrub wasn’t in the tank, but his numbers were dropping fast. Then the 50%+1 of the country got the night terrors/stupids for 6 years.
Kirk Spencer
Tim, I refer to the purity troll effect as the “Kansas Effect.”
The purity trolls demand, well, purity, and run out everyone they consider to be RINOs. They get THEIR candidate in place, and then lose because, well, because all the people they ran out vote for the other person. (Sebellius being the example in this case.) The next cycle, they decide they lost because they were still plagued by unworthy members, and expunge the next layer of not-quite-pure-enough. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Jake
Don’t be silly. The theo- and so-cons have shown again and again that they have no interest in vaginas.
Zifnab
Tell that to David Vitter.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Peace dividend, baby!
Martin
I thought he was mostly interested in diapers?
Punchy
Dead on. The “Democrats” in KS resemble R’s in Mass or Vermont. Really, DINOs. But it has caused a lot of peeps to take notice, that hey, the Rs are almost cult-like in their obsession to loyalty. Then, more of them defect because of this. It’s almost a domino effect.
w vincentz
continued…
OT: Hillary should see if she can cut a deal with Elliot Spitzer and get a job with the “ring”. seems she’s a whore already and if Elliot knows how to employ her talents, then she has a great, wide open future.
Dug Jay
BREAKING NEWS: Prominent governor of a large state has been involved in prostitution ring. Sex of prostitutes unknown at this time. Stay tuned.
w vincentz
Dug Jay,
Do you know if Billy C has any info on the sex of the hookers? I’ve been wondering what Monica is “up” to lately.
Perhaps Elliot knows.
Martin
Yep. And almost nobody caught this in its final form in the Youtube debate:
He wasn’t talking about the Bible in general. He wanted the candidates to denounce all versions of the Bible other than the King James Version (watch the video). He wanted to take out several layers and leave behind only the King James fundamentalist Protestant Christians.
Rick Taylor
Actually, Bush said Saddam didn’t let the inspectors in on four separate occasions.
Dug Jay
These must be some really HOT hookers. The reports coming out now say that they charged $5,500 an hour. The pictures shown on TV right now are of very goodlooking gals who could easily be Playboy centerfolds.
b. hussein canuckistani
There are purity trolls on the Deocrat side as well.. everyone who would rather vote for McCain because Clinton didn’t use the purest and noblest methods in her fight for the nomination.
They will get the president they deserve.
As for me, I’m stockpiling IED’s for when McCain invades Canada for our water.
Rick Taylor
Sorry, posted that to the wrong thread.
D4Z3DnC0NFU53D
So let me get this straight. We have a military that was broken from Clinton, and yet we’re involved in two wars and trying to start a third? Why are we trying to start another war with Iran if our military was broken so long ago and never fixed? That doesn’t sound like very good preparation, does it?
D. Pantload
Credible reports are coming in of Canadians stockpiling weapons, including IEDs. We cannot risk these weapons being used against Americans, so the only course of action available to us is to send Americans in after these weapons. Some would argue that by bringing Americans closer to the people who have the weapons, we’re cutting the travel expenses of the Canadians who want to act out their hostilities. I do not attempt to deny this, indeed it is central to my point. By providing those hostiles with targets near to their homes, we are diverting them from high-value targets who are patriotically serving the country by managing hedge-funds and writing opinion columns.
For those liberal conspiracy-theorists who think we’re invading Canada for their water, I have nothing but scorn. The Canadian water belongs to the Canadian people and shouldn’t be hoarded by government officials who only dole it out as they see fit. We will not take their water, we will restore it to its rightful owners.
Corporations from countries who do not join us in this enterprise will of course not be eligible to bid on post-invasion water-pumping contracts.
Egilsson
Just want to add that Tim F wrote a great diary. I totally agree with what he said.
Democrats need to learn to frame the Talk Radio Right as a bunch of extremists (which they certainly are), and throw the political republicans under the bus as supporters of the Talk Radio Right.
I think it has a lot of potential.
Chuck Butcher
One can only hope that Bozo is successful. McSame’s behavior would tend to indicate it is.