This post election write-up from Larison made me laugh:
It might be deplorable and maddening to watch, but what incentive do Republicans have to reflect on the errors of their former ways? None. What incentive have their supporters given Republicans to do this? None. What incentive do they have to abandon their tired refrains and formulate policies that address existing problems? None. Yesterday was a clear sign from Republicans’ core supporters that casting some symbolic nay votes and using the right kind of rhetoric are more than enough to keep them loyally voting for the very same people who just a couple years ago were seen (correctly!) as subverting and tainting the party and the conservative movement with their corruption and folly. There was a brief timeout followed by empty promises of doing better, and now one could assume that all or almost all is forgiven. Not only is there no reason why the Republican leadership would act differently this time, but they would be acting irrationally if they sacrificed the benefits of promoting corporate interests for the sake of principles in which they do not really believe.
The midterm results didn’t represent a dramatic shift in the overall public’s views, but they did confirm that rank-and-file Republicans and movement conservatives are quite happy to enable a party that badly disappoints them every time it is given an opportunity to govern. Four years ago, movement conservatives were looking for the exits and claiming that they as conservatives had nothing to do with those unpopular Republicans. Today, Republican triumph is taken as conservative vindication, and the deeply dysfunctional, unhealthy identification of conservatism with the cause of the GOP has become stronger than ever. In a little while, maybe a few months or a year or two years, the people who made John Boehner the next Speaker of the House will be groaning and complaining that Boehner and his colleagues are reverting to their old ways. That is inevitably what Boehner and his colleagues will do, and why wouldn’t they? They have every reason to return to their old habits, and they have just been shown that change or reform is entirely unnecessary to advance their careers. For a while, the disillusioned movement conservatives may be receptive to critiques of Republican leadership, but as soon as the 2012 campaign gets going they will begin rushing back to empower another batch of Republicans so that their interests can be neglected some more.
So true.
DougJ
On the money.
Roger Moore
Shorter Larison: Republican leaders can do whatever they want because Republican voters will vote for anyone with a (R) after their name.
General Stuck
so true
Unless you can buy the premise republicans, that came out to vote in larger numbers than usual for a midterm, was because their memories have a two year shelf life, the only possible conclusion is that they like looking at republicans more.
Because nothing changed about them.
Rick Massimo
I believe it was Digby who said of the Republicans, “Yeah, those three weeks in the political wilderness really transformed them.”
Joe Beese
FTFY
Seebach
Tee hee
http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/
me
@Seebach: Other then that, what has Obama done for us?
joe from Lowell
@Joe Beese: Are you aware your comment doesn’t make any sense?
arguingwithsignposts
@Joe Beese:
So fucking predictable.
Rick Massimo
P.S.:
I’ll believe that when I hear it. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time Larison could be credibly accused of naivete.
Funkhauser
Is he talking about those honest, principled movement conservatives who loudly refused to march lockstep behind Republican leaders in supporting torture, unfunded mandates, underfunded wars and corporate give-aways?
Because I think I saw some over in Magical Unicorn Land.
Chat Noir
@Roger Moore: This is my dad exactly. Doesn’t matter that the Republicans wanted to let his General Motors die (my dad worked there for 33 years). He votes for and supports Republicans blindly. He’s one of those bitter old white males who hates the fact that there’s an African American in the White House.
Got to admit, I can barely tolerate my own father any more.
funluvn
Not only neglected, but completely ignored. Watch the pork that comes from all right angles increasing the debt and completely undermining the “message” the Repug’s were supposedly sending. Watch the teapublican’s become Republicans again.
Glow boy Boner is going to have to come up with some fuckin’ magic, because EACH of us progressive folk is going to be writing our local papers and TeeVee hairdressers and asking them, starting right now, were are the fucking jobz? Why hasn’t the Republican Revisionist Renaissance already got people back to work? Why are they denying people that they have NOT gotten back to work unemployment benefits? Do they realize that they were given a MANDATE to take care of the American people and not obstruct good legislation that might bring jobs back to America that THEY, the Republicans were all too happy to send overseas when they were last in power?
Obviously, the list goes on. Just remember. Be a pain in the ass, every day. Ask the questions every day. Be sure to be a little louder than normal. Seemed to work for those asswipes. However, be cordial. ahHAHAHAHAHAH!
freelancer
@Joe Beese:
God, do you and WyldPirate wanna go makeout somewhere? Somewhere far away from here? Hint.
Hunter Gathers
I doesn’t matter whether or not these fuckers govern effectively. As long as they push the ‘Obama’s a secret MuslimSociamalistMarxistRacistRadicalBigot’ ,they win.
debit
@funluvn:
You bet your ass.
gbear
Except that any and all memory of how Boehner and his colleagues performed during the Bush years vaporized the moment that Obama entered the white house. The only thing that teabaggers remember is that white men held leadership positions.
Martin
@joe from Lowell: I think he’s saying that Democrats still hate fags.
pablo
First up….Boehner is gonna fix that nasty ole deficit in 2 years!
Jody
John: This is because good governance has never been their objective. Their entire motivation is “fuck the left”. That’s it. And when viewed thru that filter the sudden resurgence of support makes perfect sense.
funluvn
@pablo: Well, sure.
No, kitteh! That’s my pot pie!
cckids
@Chat Noir:
Yeah, I hear you. It breaks my heart at times. Mostly the best I can do, for all our sakes, when he starts on any kind of politics is shift the conversation to the media. I know he’s bitching about the “liberal media” and I’m complaining about . . . oh, everyone, but most especially Faux News, but still, it takes some of the ugly out, at least in front of the kids. I can’t/won’t defend anyone in the media from his vitriol, they all deserve it. (he wouldn’t watch MSNBC on a bet, so Rachel is safe).
Corner Stone
@Rick Massimo:
I fondly remember the fun we had, on this very blog, right before the HCR imbroglio went into full effect. We had thread after thread musing about how the R party may not exist in two or so weeks. How they were done, imploding, gonzo.
I can’t find the right letters to approximate the garbled sob noise I just made.
funluvn
@Jody: Sticking a finger in the eye of the left has been something they joyously go about on a daily basis. But it’s more than just that. They are like southern college football fans. As long as their team is winning, it doesn’t matter if they cheated, lied, used performance enhancing drugs or held devil worshiping bonfire get togethers. As long as their “team” wins, it’s all good.
Jeebus wept.
Mark S.
I don’t really agree with Larison’s analysis. The House GOP have the majorities to pass all sorts of crazy shit that’ll make teabaggers cream their pants, knowing none of it has a chance of getting through the Senate or Obama.
This would all be relatively harmless if the country wasn’t facing serious problems right now. I think there will be another round of bank failures and states cutting huge numbers of jobs. Non-teabaggers are going to get a little sick of the shenanigans of the House Repubs when unemployment starts hitting 15%.
Roger Moore
@Jody:
Governance has never been their objective. Quite the opposite. One of their major goals has been to destroy effective governance wherever they can find it. The Republican belief that government is incompetent is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Annie
Once again it proves that people will vote against their own interests — particularly now that we have a black, Muslim President and an enabling media. I can’t help but wonder how the political landscape would be different if our President was white. And, our media didn’t feed into all of this anti-Christian, Marxist, socialist crap. I had to laugh this morning when the Washington Post editorial page actually listed what Obama did right — most importantly saving us from another Great Depression. Ironic, since we didn’t see much of that on the front page during the past two years.
DonkeyKong
Wait until the George Wallace/Republican congress refuses to raise the debt level from 12 trillion to 14.
Start practicing your sand pounding in the surf Planet of the Apes freakout.
“You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
Annie
Jees, I am in moderation. Must be Obama’s fault. Or has the right already exerted its new found power?
Michael
Conservatism can never fail. It can only BE failed.
El Tiburon
Much Shorter Larson: Geez, Republicans are idoits.
Daddy-O
It really is too bad that Obama lost the mid-terms because so many people wrote criticisms of him and his accomplishments in so many blogs and comments.
Promise not to do it again. Really.
jwb
@DonkeyKong: Let’s hope that the interesting politics of the next two years at least yields some interesting popular culture. The films over the last year have been particularly lame.
Tom Q
@Rick Massimo: They’ll start “groaning and complaining” the moment the Democrats take back the House again.
Alan
@Mark S.:
FTW
Maybe this will propel queen wingnut into the Presidency. It’s her calling to pave the way for Jesus’s return by preparing the battlefield for Armageddon. Whoohoo!
Daddy-O
@Jody: “John: This is because good governance has never been their objective. Their entire motivation is
“fuck the left”grab pork and git paid. That’s it.”Fixed.
Daddy-O
@Roger Moore: If good governance paid as handsomely as graft, pork and corruption…if pigs had wings…
Michael
@Chat Noir:
In my little chunk of the South, my father and mother were Wallace voters in 1968. They were in their mid 20s, for the Goddess’ sake – so you can imagine what my conversations with them are like.
cmorenc
@John Cole (quoting Larison):
However, the exact same thing is half-true of the democrats as well; the only difference is that (as shown last night) too many rank-and-file democrats and especially movement progressives are NOT happy to enable a party that badly disappoints them every time it is given an opportunity to govern.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I say, first Congressional break of the Boehner congress, we organize mobs to go to Republican town halls across the nation and scream “show us the jobs!”.
Dennis SGMM
Because both have yesterday’s electoral success to strengthen their spines.
uila
Larison’s having a hard time letting go of his myth of the noble
savageconservative. He’s spent the last 2 years admonishing republicans about their treacherous ways, and yesterday they crushed it in spite of him.That’s not to say he’s wrong here.
cmorenc
@Jody:
That’s only part of their objective. The even more important collateral objective they see as necessary to permanently cripple the left, is to prove as much as possible that governance does not work, except in very limited cases, by running any but those limited parts as incompetently and wastefully as possible so as to bankrupt it financially and politically. But while they’re about it, they figure they might as well grab as much swag and contract money as they possibly can before they successfully cause permanent collapse of the structure.
Dennis SGMM
@cmorenc:
The GOP’s capture of so many state legislatures will ensure that the left is crippled for years to come. That is the as yet unrealized scope of yesterday’s debacle.
Steve
@cmorenc: Actually, no. First of all, most Democrats are not “badly disappointed” in the performance of the Democrats over the last two years, and more to the point, Democratic turnout was just fine yesterday by historical midterm standards. Republicans did well because their turnout was exceptional for a midterm, not because Democrats decided en masse to “send a message” by staying home.
Comrade Luke
@Dennis SGMM:
Yup. Good luck getting a liberal elected after the next round of redistricting, folks.
We will be under Republican rule starting in ’12, and until something happens to fix campaign financing. Unfortunately, it’s very likely that Republicans will be in the White House for the next several Supreme Court nominations, so good luck with that.
Thanks to Citizens United, it’s pretty much over. Too bad we couldn’t get a sea change in that 49 days we had 60 votes in the Senate (eyeroll).
I will *never* forgive Democrats for rubber stamping Roberts and Alito. That’s the true debacle from which we may never recover.
Oscar Leroy
Wow! What suckers they are for doing that! Democrats should laugh at them for doing that!
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
McCain/Palin got 46-ish% of the vote. Think about that for a minute. The GOP had just finished destroying the country, and then nominated a guy even conservatives don’t like. And they still got almost 46%.
Michael
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
It reveals a fundamental cultural conditioning defect among Caucasio-Americans – a visceral need to have a doddering old white guy in the chief decisionmaking position, regardless of whether he is a demonstrated idiot or not. We feel a massive case of butthurt whenever a white guy isn’t running things.
There appears to be an unearned comfort that arises from it.
Kyle
The shorter version:
The Repig base are stupid, gullible rubes for the grifters of the GOP. Why would they bother cooking up the governance equivalent of a fine, nutritious meal when their easy marks will happily applaud just the same for a shit sandwich with a side order of God, guns and gays to grease the skids of their slide into economic mediocrity.
Dems primarily want to govern, while Repigs primarily just want power. Hate beat Hope.
Nick in PA
But shouting ‘where are the jobs’ at Boner, while somewhat satisfying, helps Democrats how, again? Specifically, the O-Man? You think the dipshit voters in the this country are gonna be pissed at pissant GOP House members, and not the President and his party, if things still blow in two years?
It’s Boner’s job to keep things sucking, and he will. The ‘baggers are all GOP rubes and dupes; they won’t care, as Larison said.
That leaves us in a world of hurt in 2012.
Wallace
It blows my mind that just two years later, Democrats weren’t able to run on a “we still remember/still cleaning up their mess” platform.
jwb
@Wallace: The Dems didn’t set that platform up to run. That’s been what Krugman has been complaining about almost from the day the stimulus package was propose. Since it was obvious to most smart economists at the time that the stimulus was too small to do what’s needed, I really don’t understand why they chose that risky strategy to sell it. My best guess is that Summers must have thought it would be adequate and didn’t believe the more dire unemployment figures were in the realm of possibility. Which, if true, makes me wonder more than a little about his credentials or for whom he was actually working.
burnspbesq
It took the Catholics and Protestants in Ulster 300 years to figure out who the real enemy was. Non-college educated whites have only been Republicans for 42 years, since Nixon figured out how to prey on their fear and resentment. We have a long time to wait before Joe Sixpack figures out that he’s been played by his natural enemies.
Gregory
@Roger Moore:
Of course they will. I’ve said it before, but Republican voters have shown they just don’t care about hypocrisy, corruption or rank incompetence, so long as the candidate is perceived to be one of their tribe. The phrase IOKIYAR isn’t just snark; it’s an operational reality.
debbie
Maybe not. I’m not convinced they’ve co-opted the Tea Partiers, who will certainly put up a stink if the Republicans don’t keep to their promises to them. What got them their power back may also be their undoing.
terraformer
@burnspbesq:
And look th’fuck out then, eh? I foresee miles of rusted, barely running pickups clogging the beltway and filled with gangly mulleteers, shaking their fists and spilling beer.
There is no greater wrath than a suddenly enlightened ignorant mind scorned.
Sasha
@uila:
The thing is, it isn’t a myth. Honest, reasonable Republicans once existed and their ongoing passage into extinction is tragic.
Reasonable conservatives exist, but you won’t find them in the modern Republican party. The sooner conservatives realize that Republican =/= conservative, the better.