In reverse chronological order:
Deranged:
Delusional:
Dyspeptic:
OPTICS? WTF ARE THEY? Is John Waters in charge of the Republican party messaging machine?
by John Cole| 66 Comments
This post is in: I Can't Believe We're Losing to These People
In reverse chronological order:
Deranged:
Delusional:
Dyspeptic:
OPTICS? WTF ARE THEY? Is John Waters in charge of the Republican party messaging machine?
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amk
Twitterdom
Hunter Gathers
Eric Fehrnstrom is in the process of making Mark Penn look like a fucking genius.
GregB
Outlaw Josey Fail.
SatanicPanic
Should this really be labeled, I can’t believe we’re losing to these people? I mean, I don’t want to jinx us, but are we losing to them?
YellowJournalism
“Is John Waters in charge of the Republican party messaging machine?”
If he is, it’s only so he can eventually make them eat shit.
? Martin
@SatanicPanic: No, we’re winning. I think the polling is skewed too much toward the GOP. I’d put Obama 4-5 points higher than he is, and ahead in every swing state. He’s going to rack up 2008 electoral votes as things stand now.
jl
Dammit, Cole read my mind. After this fun GOP skit night, I was thinking, great time for a little fun with volcano monitoring. That never gets old.
Edit: That is the volcano monitoring clip from he Louisiana feller, ain’t it? I have to go sleep, so no time to check. Whatever, I will pretend it is.
Who cares, anyway? The rising ocean will put out the volcanoes! Stupid libs just don’t get it, do they?
hhex65
Rmoney is heading down to Philadelphia, Mississippi as we speak to reboot his campaign.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hunter Gathers:
And they said that could not be done, no way, no how.
There will never be a peak wingnut. Einstein figured this out long ago, to paraphrase, the universe and human stupidity are infinite, and he wasn’t really sure about the universe.
Increase Mather
@? Martin:
There’s no way Obama will hit 2,008 electoral votes. It’s not even possible.
patrick II
I visited Fox for just a moment to see how they were rationalizing all of this convention fail. Hannity asked Palin what she thought of the speech — Palin: “Could you repeat the question, please?”
I couldn’t leave fast enough.
CT
Can’t finish the Clint-he just looks too befuddled up there.
OTH, that Jindal speech is always good for a laugh-that is, by far, the worst political speech I’ve ever seen.
Villago Delenda Est
@patrick II:
OK, the only possible answer to that question is “all of them.”
SatanicPanic
@? Martin: I bet on Obama almost a year ago and nothing I’ve seen so far makes me think I’m going to lose. Romney is running a pathetic campaign.
Chris
@? Martin:
Let’s not forget that the new voter ID laws will fuck enough Democrats that this election will likely skew a bit more Gooper than it otherwise would have. Vote suppression was enough to put Bush over the top in Florida back in 2000.
Jewish Steel
YAFB @ Rumproast:
Villago Delenda Est
@Jewish Steel:
Let’s see now. Jefferson (author of the Declaration of Independence), Madison (primary framer of the Constitution), Lincoln (founder of the “Party of Lincoln”), Nixon (OK, so perhaps Clint does have a point here…).
Jewish Steel
@Villago Delenda Est: And one Willard Romney.
Anoniminous
Shorter RNC
cbear
I’d lean more toward a Frederico Fellinin/Leni Riefenstahl production: Triumph of the Will meets The Clowns
Mark S.
I like how Eastwood completely upstaged Romney. Does anyone even remember that Mitt gave a speech tonight?
I was looking at TPM’s Electoral Scorecard. I found it pretty amazing that Romney only leads Georgia and Tennessee by 3 points.
Villago Delenda Est
@cbear:
Don’t forget Salvador Dali, to whom the White House is referring all questions about Eastwood’s speech.
Yutsano
@YellowJournalism: John Waters can make chicken salad out of chicken shit, and he often does. This whole mishegas doesn’t even qualify under that.
Mark S.
@patrick II:
Classic!
patrick II
@Jewish Steel:
Guess who the last businessman president was. Oh yeah, I forgot 2000 — 2008 has been erased from republican memory.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est:
Buñuel?
Celine?
Burroughs?
Thompson?
Lot’s of talented sickos with a sense of humor could have done it.
YellowJournalism
@Yutsano: Oh, but Yutsy, I meant that literally:
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0069089/
(Check the trivia.)
Jewish Steel
@patrick II: Herbert Hoover, right? That turned out pretty good too.
? Martin
@Chris: I don’t think so. Yeah, there will be voters which are disenfranchised, no question, but I’m not convinced that there won’t be other Democrats that won’t have the ID problems that will turn out because of the voter ID laws, that otherwise wouldn’t have.
I know there’s not a ton of evidence for that, but when the GOP went down this road in California in 1996, the voters responded and we’ve trended ever more blue ever since.
Obama hasn’t cranked up the engine yet. My guess is those cross tabs are going to shift more to the Dems between now and the election – and more to young voters and more to minorities than they are now.
Yutsano
@YellowJournalism: Oh yes I’m aware of this. :) I was commenting more on what a waste of his talents it would be, since Willard would just as soon we all did so and thank him for the privilege.
cbear
@Villago Delenda Est: Lulz.
I guess Robert Mapplethorpe wasn’t available.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The worst part for the Republicans is that they are going to be all RAH! RAH! RAH! WE’RE GOING TO KICK DEMOCRAP ASS! until election day. Then when they lose they are going to blame Mitt for not being the REAL DEAL conservative and then double down on the crazy in ’14 & ’16. We are not dealing with rational people here, they will never admit failure.
Hell, they thought putting a doddering old man up on stage right before their presidential candidate was a great idea and from reading winger sites, most think the old fart hit a home run!
Yutsano
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Conservatism cannot ever fail. It can only be failed by the relentless stream of RINOs and ersatz conservatives.
jl
I think we’ve found our culprit. How this atheist who did not believe in life after death did it from beyond the grave is beyond me.
Groucho Marx, Duck Soup, Wait ’till I get through with it.
http://youtu.be/rBRLJ_kVjeQ
Who else could come up with promising two jobs at 9 bucks an hour for one at 22? No one, I say, no one.
hhex65
There ain’t no Santa Claus on the evenin’ stage.
magurakurin
@? Martin: Not 2008, but well over 270. Indiana is lost and will turn red and North Carolina probably will as well. Although, NC has been weakening for Rmoney over the last week.
Yutsano
@magurakurin: I’m ruling nothing out right now. Willard did absolutely no sucking up to the hardcore fundigelical base at the convention, and Paulie Boy is being plastered as a liar all over the press. Willard cannot expect TV ads and Obama hatred to get him over the line. He has to actually convince voters he’s a better alternative. He hasn’t even come close to doing that yet. And I don’t think he honestly can.
jl
Salvador Dali on “What’s My Line?”
http://youtu.be/iXT2E9Ccc8A
Jon H
@? Martin: “No, we’re winning. I think the polling is skewed too much toward the GOP”
IMHO, it depends how badly they fuck with voter registration in key states like Ohio, PA, FL, etc.
An amazing Obama Get Out The Vote effort won’t really matter if too many of the voters get rejected at the polls and have to fill out provisional ballots. If there are a lot of provisional ballots, and Romney wins on election night, you can bet your ass that they will do everything they can to make sure the win is taken as a fait accompli, and those provisional ballots aren’t examined.
calm68
Like most viewers I thought Clint’s presentation was odd, sad,
laughable, incongruous. Somehow this was a moment that just didn’t
work out. But it was President Obama’s response tweet that got me
thinking at a much deeper level. Obama responds with a picture of
himself sitting in his chair in the Oval Office, back turned to the
viewer, saying, “This chair is taken.” Directly to Romney, terse and
defiant. Why did Obama respond to that moment, Clint’s strange
rambling off-topic schtick? Isn’t Obama too smart to respond? But
Obama’s response was so pointed, so potent. Clearly something needed
to be addressed.
So I went back to the whole Clint Eastwood stunt and re-watched it a
few times with a critical eye. Here’s what I come up with: that was
an intentional act of imagined violence against President Obama at a
deep semiotic, level of American mythos. Take the optics, Clint comes
out under a huge backdrop of the Western gunslinger. He starts a
monologue vs. ‘the punk.’ (Do you feel lucky, punk? Well do you?)
The punk, the empty chair, the empty suit, responds by telling Romney,
‘Go fuck yourself.’ Clint scolds Obama and leads the crowd in a
chant, “Go ahead. Make my day.” At which point, as we all know,
offstage, Clint would then shoot the punk and kill him.
This was a very public, very deeply mythical/semiotic imaginative
enactment of violence against the sitting President of the US. It was
a post-modern lynching, black-faced dehumanization. I think Obama got
exactly what was going on and that’s why he responded with such force.
Personally, I am disgusted by it. There is an evil afoot in America
today. It is essential that we stand firm against it.
Jon H
@Odie Hugh Manatee: “Hell, they thought putting a doddering old man up on stage right before their presidential candidate was a great idea ”
A doddering old *respected celebrity*, which guarantees it’ll get lots of attention.
Yutsano
Yes it’s Hufflepuff but Fineman’s column is worth the click. Especially his number 10.
Calouste
So I watched a bit of Romney’s speech, and man, he’s not good at this is he? He fluffed about every second line on the teleprompter (stutters, muffled words) left applause gaps where they shouldn’t and the end was a crescendo because the teleprompter told him so, not because he fervently believed in what he was saying.
? Martin
@Calouste: No, he is not good at this. To his credit, he is better in debates, but he’s not faced Obama in a debate, and he was nervous tonight. I’m not so sure he’s going to hold up so well going toe-to-toe with Obama as he did against Herman Cain.
With every passing day, I get more convinced that Obama thinks Romney is simply shit. Dishonest. Not worthy of respect. I’m really looking forward to these debates. I think this is going to look like Bartlett/Ritchie on West Wing.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I thought the part where Rmoney talked about helping others and then paused for the applause that never came was pretty representative of where the Republican party is now. I thought I did hear a few crickets though. That caught Chris Matthews attention too. The MSNBC panel laughed when they played that segment. I don’t know what’s surprising being that Rmoney was talking to the cream of the IGMFY brigade. Help others?! Heaven forbid, let them dig for food at the dump!
Bootstraps and all that, ya kno…
Dennis SGMM
They really, really did that? I won’t watch the convention, or anything else on broadcast telebision so I rely on this blog for nooz and opinions. Looks to me as if they’re not-so-subtly pitching this election as The Last Stand of the White Man.
How sad is that?
Calouste
@? Martin:
If he was nervous tonight, in the most friendly environment he is ever going to get, it would be interesting to see how he would be going to back up his big words in person to black belt judoka and former KGB agent Vladimir Putin. He’d shit his magic underwear.
Dennis SGMM
@Calouste:
Wha? I thought that G.W. Bush had looked into Putin’s soul and found him to be a good person. I seem to recall that during the Nixon years ol’ Tricky Dick said something stupid and/or untruthful and when he was caught out he declared that his statement was “inoperative.” Seems like the years 2000-2008 have become inoperative as well.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Dennis SGMM:
If you are responding to what I said, yes, it did happen. Rmoney was waxing poetically about the generosity of Americans and he wound it up with the ‘helping hand to those who need it’ and was met with crickets in his dramatic pause. My wife was howling with laughter at the statement it made.
Just run that in an ad until election day.
Another Halocene Human
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Is it really I Got Mine, Fuck You or is it I Got Yours and Mine Too, Now Kiss My Ass.
Another Halocene Human
@Dennis SGMM: Why would you want to go down that way?
At least Ragin’ Walnuts McCain had a particle of shame enough NOT to run the “Nigger, nigger” campaign in 2008 even though I’m sure the temptation was there. As a white American, it allowed me to feel good about myself. I could even (jokingly, I mean, I had read Dreams of My Father years ago and was in the tank for Obama) pretend to consider voting for McCain, at least until Parah Salin showed up, at which point I finally flushed McCain mentally with extreme prejudice. (I had a certain animus against McCain for years as an Amtrak booster, but had been willing to let that go…) It’s nice at least in theory to think that both parties are putting up an acceptable candidate. (Btw, George W Bush = Not Acceptable. I can’t believe people fell for his shtick! And what a fucking bald-faced liar.) You also want to reward a party when they try to, you know, do better.
I never liked Romney in Mass but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, not that I wasn’t in the tank for Obama, but, hey, liberal Massachusetts Republican. But, damn, if he hasn’t turned out to be everything my gut feeling back in 2002 told me AND THEN SOME. And running the most incompetent campaign I can remember (worse than Kerry, for sure… and don’t forget, Kerry lost in part due to serious election shenanigans and voter suppression in OH). And then he had to just go down in flames with this Summer of White Supremacy Tour. HORRIBLE.
I tell everyone I’m Irish these days. It’s like the Canadian of white ethnicities. Hey, both Canadians and Irish-Americans have done bad shit. Sorry about that shitty race riot in San Francisco, Asian people. But we’re no English/USAians.
Applejinx
Eastwood: “I’m not really conservative. I’m conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don’t any more.”
About Eastwood- http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/02/05/the-liberal-heart-of-life-long-republican-clint-eastwood-video/
“Since 1988— with few exceptions— his films have centered around three particular themes: racism, feminism, and the futility of violence.”
“Eastwood has gone on to make three other films looking at the racial divide in this country.”
“These people who are making a big deal about gay marriage?” Eastwood tells GQ Magazine. “I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of … Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.”
I watched the clip up top without sound (too early in the morning for that). It looked like he was satisfied and maybe ornery starting off and then… sagged into a character, and weakened?
I’m not convinced he wasn’t fucking with them. If in fact his ‘history of making films that subtly address racism and sexism’, support of gun control etc mean that he’s intentionally fucked with the RNC, throwing out his script at the last moment, delivering a bravura performance of a deranged codger so convincing and perfect that it was taken as legit even when he had ‘Obama’ telling him to go fuck himself, and running overtime on purpose to literally screw with Mitt Romney’s nomination speech- then he may have struck an actual blow against the flagrant and intentional racism of the Republican party, something he apparently is on the other side of and considers that people should not be ‘making a deal of’.
We may never know if it’s true- but if it is, it is the greatest troll in history, executed masterfully.
If it’s just sincere throughout- it seems like a weird twist for the guy after the stuff he’s publically said and the movies he’s more recently made, particularly since every single thing happening recently from mass shootings to the racism to Romney’s and Ryan’s total fiscal arrogance and bluff, seem to be a slap in the face to everything Eastwood says he cares about.
Just saying. It may have been the most devastating troll in history.
greenergood
@calm68: Nailed it!
chopper
john waters, fuck, after watching eastwood i’m thinking david lynch.
i half expected to see a dwarf dancing with a horse under a stop light.
Elizabelle
@Applejinx:
i wonder. interesting theory.
Ohio Mom
Clint says Obama isn’t getting us out of Afghanistan fast enough and everyone cheers? Huh? I though they “supported our troops,” it’s only us rotten peaceniks who disrespect them so much we want them home.
Also, what’s up with the hairdo? He has a big lock of hair sticking up in the back. Didn’t he use a mirror when he combed his hair? Didn’t someone give him a once-over before he ambled out to the podium?
xian
@Chris: just check election.princeton.edu and chill
Just One More Canuck
@jl: The talking asshole from Naked Lunch would fit right in with that crowd
xian
@Jon H: likely voter models already account for, or even overstae, GOP voter suppression
xian
@calm68: on the other, clint also made everyone imagine Mitt fucking himself
Violet
@? Martin:
Romney is okay in debates until he gets thrown off by something, that’s when he goes with crazy stuff like the $10,000 bet comment. Obama’s team is going to be making sure Obama has plenty of ideas of how to get Mitt off his planned debate points.
As for last night, I think Clint really threw Mitt off his preparation game and it was evident in some of his speech delivery.
Elizabelle
@xian:
Don’t Think of An Elephant.
Pleasuring himself.
Too early in the day?
giltay
@Ohio Mom: I get the impression that, being a celebrity, they knew more than just the GOP faithful would get to see it, so they tried to tailor it to both left and right. Hence the attack on Obama for not getting the troops out quickly enough, or for not closing Gitmo (even those Eastwood says he wants to keep it open). It’s weak, but I suppose they were hoping to discourage some Democrats from voting by playing up disappointment with Obama.
That said, now that I’ve watched it, I am deeply underwhelmed. A good and famous actor like Eastwood screwing up a simple improv game. I can’t decide whether he comes off more as old and tired or as unconvinced of his arguments. The only parts he seemed to enjoy were where he imagined the President mouthing off to him.
Is there any better symbol of a strawman than this?
giltay
@Ohio Mom: I get the impression that, being a celebrity, they knew more than just the GOP faithful would get to see it, so they tried to tailor it to both left and right. Hence the attack on Obama for not getting the troops out quickly enough, or for not closing Gitmo (even those Eastwood says he wants to keep it open). It’s weak, but I suppose they were hoping to discourage some Democrats from voting by playing up disappointment with Obama.
That said, now that I’ve watched it, I am deeply underwhelmed. A good and famous actor like Eastwood screwing up a simple improv game. I can’t decide whether he comes off more as old and tired or as unconvinced of his arguments. The only parts he seemed to enjoy were where he imagined the President mouthing off to him.
Is there any better symbol of a strawman than this?
GxB
@GregB: I thought of them more as (from bottom to top) “The Brood, The Sad, and The Bumbly” – throw in Hannity and Lowry and you get “Two Tools for Sister Sarah”
LanceThruster
What was Willard’s campaign slogan again?
“Arbeit macht frei” or was it “Gott Mit[t] Uns”?