The GOP power acquisition and propaganda machine is a fearsome opponent. It owns a worldwide media empire. It has enjoyed remarkable electoral success by pumping out race-baiting bilge and generating pseudo-science and artfully worded lies to convince low-info voters to vote against their own interests and preserve and expand already lavish advantages for plutocrats.
It’s underwritten by fat cats who are capable of pooping out billion-dollar bales of cash to support the cause without experiencing the tiniest impact on their unimaginably privileged, Sun King-like lifestyles. So it’s tempting to view that operation as infallible and to imagine that its strategy is crafted by evil geniuses against whom it may be impossible to prevail. And then you see something like this:
Hahaha! The Koch brothers flew the blogger formerly known as “Hindrocket” in to their confab to provide intellectual fodder! The blogger perhaps most famous for his tremulous reverence for the unappreciated genius of George W. Bush!
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
It’s like riding out onto the plain of Minas Tirith to face the Nazgûl and confronting a cranky, mange-ridden ferret instead. They got nothing. Well, they got the aforementioned bales of cash and global media empire. But aside from that, they got nothing.
DanielX
“…approaching to genius…” And he can’t write, either. Though I have to admit that was the most egregious written example of Bush worship that I saw in the eight year span of the Cheney Regency. The Kochs are actually spending money to fly The Asshole Formerly Known As Assrocket to their confab in Palm Springs? That’s like flying pigshit to a hog pen.
Ben Cisco
Those Koch boys love burning some cash, don’t they?
__
Because that is what they might as well be doing with it.
__
“Hindrocket” huh? Now all that is needed is a couple of wetsuits…
amk
Ummm, they got congressional majority, govnorships in most states, a significant presence in state leges in blue states despite all the ‘they got nothing’.
c u n d gulag
They’ve had “nothing” to offer for decades.
N-O-T-H-I-N-G!
And yet, the people with “nothing” between their ears keep voting for them.
The sad truth is that they HAVE been able to make something from nothing for over 40 years.
And are reducing this once great nation, which used to mean some things, and make some things, to nothing in the process.
And if they win in November, the Republicans will be able to bring in the wrecking balls to finish the job.
WyldPirate
That “nothing” has served them pretty well in the last 30 years as they have taken that “nothing” and have dismantled a lot of progress made after the New Deal. What has resulted from that “nothing” is growing economic inequality, dismantling of labor unions, the near death of social mobility in the US and stagnation of middle class wages as all the growth in GDP since Reagan has flowed to the top of the economic ladder.
But hey, gays can serve in the military and women can fly fighters. We have the Lily Ledbetter thingy and Dems believe in remaining entrenched in fruitless wars and sending our love bombs down from drones. We have ACA so you can be a little less broke and it takes longer to go bankrupt with a devastating health condition.
Hooray, our side! Dems are kicking ass and taking names.
Schlemizel
I had a friend in school who did some amateur boxing. He had a bout one time against a guy he was assured was not very good. He lost. He told me that between rounds his coach was trying to pump him up by telling him how bad the other guys was. As he stood to answer the bell in the third round he turned to his coach and said “If he is so Fing bad why is he kicking my ass”?
The assrocket is one of those guys. I had hoped that his relative disappearance from public view meant he was going away but those guys never do.
MattF
I actually prefer plain old political hacks who just take the money and do as they are told. LIke the song goes “Busted, broke and flat/ Had to sell that pussycat…”
Amir Khalid
George Walker Bush was the object of a great deal of fan worship in his pomp, and not just from the professed right-wingers. Remember the almost sexual drooling from the village punditocracy over his Mission Accomplished theatrics? Plus W had recently won re-election, even if only just, against John Kerry when the Hindrocket wrote those timeless words, and was proclaiming his Mandate to do more great right-wing things.
It is of course delicious to recall that in late July of 2005, W’s presidential reputation was just months away from turning completely to shit.
WereBear
It really was inevitable.
People did not know how good they had it; nor how long they’d had it good.
Dig a little into people’s heads, and you will get back the yawning echoes of your own footsteps. Child labor laws, OSHA, broken heads in strikes and the forty hour week; it all magically happened in the past and they don’t need to lift a finger to keep it.
Now that they have been disabused of this notion; now that the hamster-on-a-wheel dreams of the plutarchs have been revealed; it’s different.
The past was prologue. Rupert Murdoch is in ever-deepening circles of shit. The Koch Brothers’ had their curtain ripped away and can be the shadowy figures no longer. Hungary burned acres of their deadly GMO grain; the kind that’s been killing all the bees.
It’s a new world and the old illusions are wearing very thin.
Omnes Omnibus
It’s nice to see that a bunch of people have a case of the “Mondays.” Betty C is right that the GOP has nothing positive and no new ideas to offer. They are simply doubling down on their stale ideas of the past 40 or so years. What’s most important about this is it seems people are starting to notice. Even on the right. Numbers are down in GOP primaries. They can’t settle on a candidate because they can’t decide if they want a chance to win or if they want their collective id to be allowed to take a dump on the dining room table.
Lojasmo
@WyldPirate:
God you’re a dick. Combat is DONE in Iraq, and we will be drawing down in Afghanistan in a year. ACA was landmark legislation which insured tens of millions of Americans, and gays can serve in the military.
DIAF.
Davis X. Machina
@WereBear:
I hope so, but the stupid is strong. The stupid doesn’t always win, but it always covers the spread.
ornery_curmudgeon
“Well, they got the aforementioned bales of cash and global media empire.”
Yes, they do … good to see the acknowledgement, Betty. The most precious asset of the Right is the public not realizing that.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you for getting it. Christ, I know the GOP still wields a great deal of power. Rick Fucking Scott is my governor! I’m just saying that we needn’t quail in fear before the Conservative Doomsday Machine if the Kochs are flying Assrocket in to give a slideshow. They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, which I choose to interpret as a hopeful sign.
amk
@WyldPirate: That kinda whiny, under-selling, knee-capping your own side is the reason that the they-got-nothing party has been able to hold on to the insidious power for so long.
debit
@WyldPirate: You are totally right. We should just give up.
Asshole.
Egg Berry
@Betty Cracker:
I’m sure one of the rumproast crew could reproduce that slideshow in blingees.
WereBear
I never realized that the wildest speculations of my childhood would come true.
That I would grow up to live in The Sheep Look Up. That the speculation of The Space Merchants wasn’t speculation at all. I didn’t know a James Bond set of supervillains did secretly plot world takeover (the Koch brothers.)
But truly, knowledge is power. Thanks to the screeching of Faux News, we have a couple of generations who will not take whatever the TV people say as a given. What Walter Kronkite wrought has been dismantled by Bill O’Reilly. Know all those people who say, “But they couldn’t put it on the teevee unless it were true!”
How old are they?
magurakurin
@WyldPirate: If I had to choose who to be in a foxhole with, you or Soonergrunt, guess what, I’m choosing Soonergrunt hands down, every time. Because I know he’s gonna keep shooting till he runs out of bullets and not cower down in the bottom of the hole and tell me there isn’t any point to go on since we suck anyway like I think you would.
But other than that you seem like a great guy.
WyldPirate
@Lojasmo:
Yet we still have troops and mercs out the wazoo there and OUR SIDE played along with the debacle to start with to give legs to the atrocity.
We’re still in Afghanistan for no goddamned good reason she n we should have began getting the fuck out the day OBL was offed.
I’m not knee-capping a motherfucking thing; I’m simply stating the truth. We are going backwards as a goddamned nation in many ways since the 70s and 80s since the Rethugs began the “liberal as pejorative” BS. Yeah, there has been progress on righting so e of the social justice wrongs of the past, but a lot has been lost as well. We now have a “center” that is to the right of Nixon because Dems have followed the slime trail left by the Rethugs as they drag the country further to the right with the lies and propaganda from all that “nothing” the money boys invested.
Don’t yell at me and tell me shit smells like roses now. I know better as I and a whole fuckload of folks I lived through the 70s and 80s are not better off now.
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/bottom-of-barrel-dangerously-overscraped-experts-w,767/
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
the next great political war will be a civil war.
its the gop on gop, the koch’s ilk vs the rank and file, with the jesus freaks who were recruited last as a third faction. they are already fighting like democrats for their party’s top prize.
if the koch’s reign they may end up reigning over nothing, if the rank and file win, they are still just a bunch of increasingly older whiter people who are inefficient at best at reproducing like minds at a high enough rate.
the jesus freaks will probably go with whichever side of those two wins, but the more they make it clear how big the cost of their devotion, the more they make it clear to the two hot factions, that victory will be pyrrhic at best.
yes, the long term outlook for the gop is bleak, but they only need one more supreme on the scrotus, to give themselves the time to split apart and reemerge as southern strategy version 2.0.
WyldPirate
@debit:
Did I say we should give up? Fuck no.
Go work on your reading comprehension and then eat a bag of salted dicks.
Schlemizel
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick:
I have been thinking that a new civil war would be the logical end point for some time now. There are so many parallels to the 1840-1860 period going on now it almost eerie.
Just like then it will be the stupid dupes that fight against their better interests and for the wealthy owners. But unlike then there is no easily identified regions of separation. Sure, the South is mostly insane, the Midwest pretty much and parts of the West. But, overall there is no neat divide so it will be a lot uglier and more brutal than the original.
WyldPirate
@amk:
No it isn’t. I was a dumbass mouth-breathing Rethug who wanted to go kill commies for Uncle Ronnie as a 21 year old laid-off UAW worker when I voted for that evil motherfucker in 1980.
I did get an education and paid attention to the shit the Rethugs were doing. I haven’t voted for one since 1984, so don’t blame me for knee-capping a goddamned thing.
amk
@WyldPirate: Regardless of hey-I’m-a-fucking-convert defense, that post was as I described.
debit
@WyldPirate: Well, so much for hoping you’d started taking medication. Back to the pie filter for you.
WyldPirate
@amk:
Pointing out that Dems aren’t perfect and that many of the victories have been small in comparison to the losses is knee-capping. Whatever.
Reality is obviously to difficult for some to handle here. I’ll take relity over mindless cheerleading anyday, though. Moreover, few need convincing here of which side is less loathesome and damaging to the nation. That’s why I don’t view my criticism as knee-capping.
Emma
@WereBear: Isn’t it strange? I keep telling myself that I’ve never visited Cardiff. Otherwise it would be tempting to think I fell through the Rift into an alternative Universe where all the science fiction dystopias are actual history.
Howlin Wolfe
But that ferret’s got a mean streak a mile wide!!
WereBear
@Emma: It is strange. I feel fortunate that I did get a forewarning, so to speak; it actually helped me adjust.
A lot of people are still wandering around, stubbornly pretending.
handsmile
mdblanche
powerlineblog 7.28.05 reporting jh dayorder doubleplusungood refs unperson rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling.
handsmile
@handsmile:
FYWP won’t permit me to edit my #32 comment, but the final paragraph should read: “that opponent is not infallible or omnipotent….”
WereBear
In 2000 everyone wondered why I was so upset about the Bush win. That was because “Republicans” still had the Ronnie glow and the Eisenhower display stand. They had busily polished away a lot of the Nixon mud, and buffed up the Bush dullness. It looked pretty good! And ya know, it’s not like electing a Republican makes something terrible happen.
They may not admit it; but they don’t think that way any more.
mdblanche
@mdblanche: Also too, I just clicked over and read that fawning blog post from way back when and what was the unperson’s masterpiece? A brilliant new policy to fight climate change! Of course climate change doesn’t really exist, but if it did W would have the best policy to deal with it. I’m not joking, that’s pretty much what Hinderaker said. He may be good at doublethink, but his post really does need a rewrite fullwise.
chopper
@amk:
recently i had to explain to my 3 year old that i’m sorry, eeyore is always going to be that way.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@Schlemizel:
i agree with you, if the gop wins in 2012, and they have a supreme court that is politically activist, AND out of step. there is potential for some violence and devisiveness that makes what we have seen seem like prelude.
i think the war i was speaking about was mostly metaphoric though. i would bet that there will be isolated violence, and i will bet that somehow the left will have to be blamed for being beneficiary of it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This guy plagiarized The Onion, right?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@WyldPirate:
There problem is they have the key to power, but they have no clue how to use it. The Right is like some blind and deaf giant stumbling around.
Billy Beane
Yawn, look it’s not rocket science. Demographic changes will ultimately kill the Republican party as it exists today. No amount of money will change that. They are already well on their way. They just don’t know it.
All you are seeing today is the early part of that. A smaller party with more concentrated hate and stupidity within a narrower demographic of mostly old mostly white mostly male. They are all gonna die off soon enough from their unhealthy “freedom” lifestyles of super size me Sundays at sodium bar at Applebees. The only exercise those clowns ever get is going to the voting booth every chance they get.
PIGL
@WereBear: Space Merchants and Sheep Look Up! Yes. And Gladiator at Law, also too.
El Cid
In fairness, the right’s moneybags has never skipped the nitwit squad even when they have a better starting lineup.
Just because there was a William F. Buckley it doesn’t mean the Birchers and the
WhiteConservative Citizens Councils got no walking around money.Ruckus
@Billy Beane:
This really is a poison mime that needs to die.
There are lots of young conservatards to replace the old codgers that die off.
It’s not the people we need to replace it’s the lack of coherent ideas of government, it’s the greed of most of the top couple of percent of citizens, it’s the basic lack of understanding of history and what happens when the very rich minority take everything from the majority. It’s that we are all in this together and we can work for the health of the majority of people and help those that need it, or we can shrivel up in a little ball of selfishness and die.
RalfW
More and more I have this sense that the wizard is about to be revealed. [No, not the grand wizard sort from Mississippi, though they are revealing themselves too].
We’ve all been very afraid of the GOP Oz. Fox in particular. But between Rupert’s serious troubles over in jolly England, and the insanity of 19th century contraception crusading and other bizzare retrograde efforts, I think the utter lack of policy chops, connection to anyone not old, white and in a medicare hover-round is really about to come home to roost.
I think it’s why the drumbeat to Iran war is so loud. But it’s not catching on the way Iraq did. People have seen too many stories on their 10pm news about young dead soldiers to want to buy in this time.
They’re pushing every culture war button as well as the actual war button but I think it’s starting to really fail for them. It’s damn near too late, but we might squeak out the collapse of the current hard-reich move of the GOP.
I sure hope so. Pull back the curtain! They really don’t know what they’re doing!