As you may have heard, the National Review, the flagship publication of conservative intelligentsia, has devoted an entire issue to trashing GOP front-runner Donald Trump. Called simply “Against Trump,” the special edition features essays from more than 20 conservative luminaries, including Glenn Beck, L. Brent Bozell III, Mona Charen, Ben Domenech, Erick Erickson, William Kristol, et al. As our host noted on Twitter, the contributor list is a veritable “Douchebag Who’s Who.”
I read the lead editorial and a few of the essays. Here’s the closing sentence of the former, which is a fair representation of the entire issue’s content:
Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.
Donald Trump is a menace, but the National Review’s tone of outraged dignity beggars belief, given that publication’s complicity in creating the monster. They write as if Trump and Trump alone has taken something noble and pure and sullied it with his stubby, grubby vulgarian fingers. He has not.
It took “the work of generations” to utterly degrade the Party of Lincoln, and the National Review, including editor Rich “Starburst” Lowry and his crew — who championed the empty-headed idiot Sarah Palin, published racist screeds and engaged in xenophobic demagoguery in pursuit of power — were avid participants in that enterprise.
It’s actually quite galling for that bunch to play the dumb, innocent, injured party now. But in the spirit of comity and liberal generosity, I’ll provide a pictorial explanation of how this thing works:
When you plant this…
You end up with this…
Don’t take my word for it, “conservatives” — harken thee to the Lord:
For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
The end.
The Other Bob
Amen sister. The R’s cannot win without a boogeyman. The list is long: “saving marriage”, “welfare queens,” school busing, Willie Horton, “Islamofacists”, immigrants, on and on.
Mustang Bobby
There is a certain segment of the American psyche that secretly loves a dictator. Trump is just turning over that rock.
Germy
National Review disinvited
The Red Pen
Domenech’s entry was largely a word-for-word copy of a P.J. O’Rourke take-down of Trump.
SRW1
Conservatism getting its excuses in early – or maybe way too late.
MomSense
Brava, Betty.
forked tongue
Nothing says “we denounce crude populism” like publishing an article by Glenn Beck.
Ex Libris
Sorry to go Godwin (but they started it with “killing baby Hitler”), but its a little like saying “that Hitler, he is betraying our true values” when you spent a thousand years preparing the way for Hitler and putting in place, piece by piece, the pedestal on which he stands. But the real farce in all this is that they are saying these things about Trump when it applies equally to Cruz and just about whoever else they are going to cough up at this point.
MattF
But not just NR. The three segments of the former Republican party– anti-Trump, anti-Cruz, and ‘circling the battleground to feed on scraps after the election’ are all guilty.
Betty Cracker
@The Red Pen: He’s still ripping off O’Rourke? Plagiarize someone new, Ben!
Patricia Kayden
Many of us have said that Trump is the perfect Republican candidate simply because the Republican Party has been egging on racists and other bigots for decades. He’s their own Frankenstein monster — one they created and now fear. They deserve Trump and it will be fun to see what happens when he wins the nomination by cruising past the other candidates during the primaries.
The Republican establishment cannot destroy the monster they’ve created and now they’ll have to live with it. This should be fun.
Frank Wilhoit
@SRW1: This. They’re betting he loses & by that thinking it is none too soon to position conservatism as Having Been Failed, rather than Failing.
TS
@Germy:
Be so nice if someone asked Trump what Newspapers he read, his favorite Supreme Court decision, his health care plan and what role will the VP play in his administration.
Maybe he’ll just refuse debates and interviews if he wins the nomination.
BillinGlendaleCA
@The Red Pen: At least Ben’s stay true to form.
ETA: Heh, Betty got there first.
JenJen
They built that.
father pussbucket
@TS:
It just occurred to me: who besides Palin would play second banana to Trump? It’s hard to imagine.
amk
can we have rethugs in disarray at least now?
Oatler.
NRO laid down with dogs and woke up with fleas, who are eviscerating them from the anus outward. Ha ha said the clown, chomp chomp said the fleas.
Glidwrith
Might I suggest that these folks might be even dumber than we give them credit for? We’re always talking about the dog-whistles they use to pretend they really aren’t racist. Just like Pavlov’s dog, they respond to the whistle mindlessly, without ever questioning why they react or from whence the whistle comes. Then you finally get Trump, willing to speak without any whistling whatsoever and the dog suddenly understands the language and says “Is THAT what you meant?”
JPL
Betty, Terrific post.
BC in Illinois
Somewhere, there has to be a musician, a conductor, an orchestra and a mass choir, ready to give us a performance of Beethoven’s “Ode to Schadenfreude.”
Schadenfreude! Götterfunken! Tochter aus Elysium!
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Schadenfreude! Divine spark! Daughter of Elysium!
Drunk with fire, we enter, O Heavenly One, your Holy Place.
Germy
@TS:
Be so nice if someone asked Trump what Newspapers he read NY POST?
his favorite Supreme Court decision Dred Scott?
his health care plan See your doctor, write a check?
and what role will the VP play in his administration. Nod and smile?
MattF
@Glidwrith: It’s possible that certain op-ed columnists are unaware of their own racism– there’s a capacity for delusion there that’s beyond quantification. But I don’t think that’s true for Republican voters by and large. I won’t bother to expound on the ‘racist uncle’ phenomenon, but it’s real and it’s common.
Germy
RawStory, I know, but interesting article about Woody Guthrie, who actually wrote a protest song about Trump’s father, he was THAT terrible.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
OzarkHillbilly
The Circular Firing Squad has opened fire: Anyone But Him!: Top GOPers Openly Support Donald Trump Over Ted Cruz
Germy
@Oatler.:
GOP got fleas. Licked some of the larvae off its fur, swallowed them, and the tapeworm they pooped out is tRump.
Gimlet
War porn
By The Associated Press
RENTON, WA (AP) –
Police say they have arrested a man who shot a woman in a movie theater in Renton, left the scene and called 911 to turn himself in.
Police responded to a shooting call shortly after 8 p.m. Thursday at Regal Cinemas at The Landing.
Investigators say a man appearing to be intoxicated fumbled with a gun and shot the woman during a showing of the movie “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.”
Investigators believe the man and woman do not know each other.
Police say the man left the theater after the shooting, returned to his home and called 911, saying he had dropped his gun and the shooting was accidental.
Harborview Medical Center spokeswoman Susan Gregg said Thursday night the woman’s condition was upgraded from critical to stable.
satby
I have enjoyed, in a sick way, the silence of the wingers I know on FB. One tried a feeble response about the Flint disaster being the city’s own fault for “going cheapo” but shut up again when I shared exactly who it was that “went cheapo”, with links. Otherwise, it’s been pretty quiet.. there’s confusion in haterville and they aren’t sure who will prevail. These are regular Republicans, not openly racist so uncomfortable with Trump’s open hate speech or crazy Cruz’s extreme theocracy tilt. They don’t know if they’ll have to fall in line behind one of those nuts and it’ll be interesting to see if they’ve hit the wall on the party for this election.
Elizabelle
This illustration goes on a BCracker greatest hits list.
Do you guys think Trump will do well with actual voters? That’s the part I cannot guess. Yes, the mediot corporate-owned networks are covering his every utterance, to soak up eyeballs and money, and he’s getting compliments for “saying what everyone is thinking”, but does that translate to votes?
Agreed, that Trump is no worse than the rest of the GOP field. Honestly, I think he’s better than most of them. He’s got some liberal impulses: believes his employees should have good health insurance (whether that translates to the undeserving, I cannot say); he’s both a potential demagogue and not as far down the poisoned well as the standard issue Republicans. Cruz and Fiorina are ugly, ugly people.
GOP = Cruelty. And ineptitude.
The mask is gone. Their ideas do not work, but they have a whole media world propping them up. It’s a tragedy.
Gimlet
@satby: They don’t know if they’ll have to fall in line behind one of those nuts and it’ll be interesting to see if they’ve hit the wall on the party for this election.
The only interesting part to me is who rises from the ashes and leads the GOP after the election.
rikyrah
Uh huh
uh huh
………………………
When Chicago spent its pension money on the mayor’s pet projects
A decade ago, city leaders acted like we didn’t have a care in the world.
By Ben Joravsky
As we all prepare for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed property tax hike to pay off billions of dollars in pension obligations, I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane to a not-so-distant era when our leaders acted like we didn’t have a care in the world.
The year was 2004—and what a glorious time it was!
We were in the midst of a fabulous real estate bubble that sent property taxes flowing into the city’s coffers like champagne at an Emanuel fund-raiser.
Amid the good times, a few wealthy friends of then mayor Richard Daley threw a lavish party in the Pritzker Pavilion at the recently completed Millennium Park.
……………………………………………………
As we’ve since learned, the lavishness was heaped atop an unstable foundation. Essentially, Mayor Daley was taking property taxes intended for really boring stuff—like pension payments—and spending it on flashier things that we couldn’t afford.
Germy
@satby:
Is it possible that it’s not Trump’s views they’re uncomfortable with, but with the possibility he can’t win in the general? That he’ll deliver the dreaded Hilbeast to finish the damage Obama started? If they could know with absolute certainty (perhaps with a crystal ball) that Trump would win the White House, they’d have no objection to him?
raven
@satby: they don’t know whether to shit or go blind
redshirt
Tis a bountiful Trump crop this season, ayuh.
rikyrah
But, we can’t get financing for affordable safe housing or rehabbing of abandoned buildings on the South and West Sides.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
…………………………….
Mayor Rahm wants to spend $16 million on high-end apartments
Emanuel’s handpicked Community Development Commission rubber-stamps a TIF deal in Uptown.
By Ben Joravsky
On January 12 I headed over to City Hall to see firsthand if the spirit of reform that’s supposedly transformed the Emanuel administration since the release of the Laquan McDonald video had reached the Community Development Commission.
The CDC is a 15-person advisory body appointed by the mayor to oversee tax increment financing deals. As such, the chief challenge for commissioners is to pretend they’re dedicated watchdogs of the public purse while making sure they actually do what the mayor wants.
I’m sure it’s not as easy as it looks.
On the agenda for this meeting is the Montrose/Clarendon plan. Emanuel’s proposing to give about $16 million to developers so they can make a fortune building approximately 630 upscale apartment units in Uptown, just west of Lake Shore Drive.
Not that there’s anything wrong with developers making a fortune. I’m hoping to make a fortune one of these days myself. It’s just that we have other things we could do with the money, what with the schools being broke and everything.
Hillary Rettig
A report (from a couple years back) on a National Review cruise. Only read if you’ve got time for an extended bout of schadenfreude.
The even more relevant bit I was looking for was one on how, in his later years, Buckley would attend the cruises getting more and more depressed at the caliber of
peopleracists attending. Apparently he and others tried for decades to shed the Daddy Koch and Birchers, etc. but couldn’t. They were there at the beginning and will hang on like an old dog turd till the end.Yeah, so sow/reap.
Germy
@Hillary Rettig: link doesn’t work for me
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: We’ll see how he does with GOP primary voters soon; I hesitate to guess. But I remain optimistic that Trump would be roundly rejected by general election voters if it comes to that, barring a major economic downturn or terrorist attack between now and November. If that happens, all bets are off.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle:
Where “everyone” is defined as 35% of a political party that is incapable of getting more than *47%* of American votes. But hey, they’re the only ones who matter, right?
*don’t recall exactly what percentage of votes they got in 2014 but it was less than 50% in an off year election and Mitt only garnered 47% so, close enuf.
rikyrah
I’m not against bike lanes…per se….
But, if I look around the neighborhood, I could find a dozen projects that need funding before some phucking bike lanes.
……………………………………………
South-siders spar over proposed Stony Island bike lanes
Opponents—including Fifth Ward alderman Leslie Hairston—argue the lanes would cause traffic jams, while supporters say they’re a needed safety improvement.
By John Greenfield @greenfieldjohn
For much of its length, Stony Island Avenue is basically an expressway with stoplights. Located on the southeast side between 56th and 130th, it generally has eight travel lanes, the same number as Lake Shore Drive, although it carries half as many vehicles per day—35,000 versus 70,000. Due to this excess lane capacity, speeding is rampant.
The city has proposed converting a lane or two of Stony between 67th and 79th into protected bike lanes. Some residents, and Fifth Ward alderman Leslie Hairston, fear the “road diet” would cause traffic jams, and argue the street is too dangerous for bike lanes. Other neighbors say Stony is too dangerous not to have them.
Chris
OT (sorta) but Charlie Stross has a posting up called “the paranoid style in 2016” and it AND its comments are a must read…There’s a commenter there Mister_DK (some kind of political organizer he says) who has some great insights about whats been going on here politically…Ties together the GOP’s Mississippi, Indiana..Michigan antics quite handily…
Chris
rikyrah
For those in the eye of the storm, please stay safe. Respect the elements. Pace yourself if you are shoveling. Don’t wait until it’s over to begin shoveling.
TG Chicago
Nice pictorial, Betty! I think you missed a step, though: The Fox News/Limbaugh/Malkin crowd providing “fertilizer”.
rikyrah
You can’t be a ‘natural born citizen’ of two different countries.
You can be a citizen of two different countries.
But, not a ‘natural born’ citizen.
Rafael is a ‘natural born’ citizen of Canada, which is how he got citizenship without either of his parents being Canadian.
He is an American Citizen.
He is NOT a ‘ natural born’ American Citizen.
…………………………………
WEDNESDAY, JAN 20, 2016 04:37 PM CST
Ted Cruz is not eligible to run for president: A Harvard Law professor close-reads the Constitution
The closer you study the Constitution, the weaker Ted Cruz’s case squares with the actual meaning of “natural-born”
EINER ELHAUGE
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: Seconded — stay safe, storm-zone peeps! The tail-end of that same storm is going to thwack my area later today, but it’ll just be a rain event. So I’ll have a bunch of mad, wet hens on my hands…better that than snow!
raven
@Betty Cracker: YES! ALL 180,00,000,000 PEOPLE IN THE PATH OF THIS GOLIATH!!
gene108
Poor, poor NRO flunkies.
Panicking because they feel they’ll no longer be invited onto the cock-tail and free buffet circuit to give talks about “serious conservative” points of view, because The Donald has distilled conservatism down to its roots of racism and greed.
I think they are over reacting. The Very Serious People, who have the best all you can eat free buffets, really don’t care that conservatism is all about racism and greed. As a matter of fact many are probably happy that it is about racism and greed.
Even if The Donald is the GOP nominee, the VSP will still need ciphers to spin out to the masses that what The Donald says is not racist or about naked greed. This may not be exactly the sort of gig you wanted, when you signed up with Movement Conservatism, dear NRO flunkies, as you may have a desire for more of your spin on things rather than being a cipher for The Donald, but food is still free and the drinks are on the house and the pay still beats doing an honest day’s work, so quit your yapping and get on board The Donald Express.
Germy
Elizabelle
Incidentally, forecast is snow in DC could start as early as noon. I’m told it’s already snowing in Fredericksburg, which is about 45 minutes south.
Noon is when the March for Life loons are assembling. Couldn’t call off or postpone their march, no they could not. Jerks.
WaPost. Note the list of rightwing evangelical concerns.
Why the March for Life is becoming a destination for more evangelicals
Those were all heavily Jesus’s concerns, as you know. People of the book, my ass.
Robin G.
It’s almost — almost — enough to make you root for Trump.
amk
can’t wait for donald dreck going after each one of these corrupt lying freeloading mofos.
Betty Cracker
@TG Chicago: Wish I’d thought of that!
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Yup. Like it’s never snowed before.
rikyrah
Latest polls in Iowa point to striking scenario
01/22/16 08:00 AM—UPDATED 01/22/16 08:14 AM
By Steve Benen
With just 10 days remaining until the Iowa caucuses, four statewide polls have been released over the last 24 hours, which help cast the Republican race in a striking new light. Let’s take a look at the surveys’ findings, focusing only on the three most competitive candidates.
Loras College: (1) Donald Trump: 26%; (2) Ted Cruz: 25%; (3) Marco Rubio: 13%
Monmouth College/KBUR: (1) Ted Cruz: 27%; (2) Donald Trump: 25%; (3) Marco Rubio: 9%
CNN: (1) Donald Trump: 37%; (2) Ted Cruz: 26%; (3) Marco Rubio: 14%
Emerson College: (1) Donald Trump: 33%; (2) Ted Cruz: 23%; (3) Marco Rubio: 14%
By mid-December, it appeared that Ted Cruz had not only caught up to Trump in the Hawkeye State, but was actually in the driver’s seat. There were multiple reports that that the first presidential nominating contest was “Cruz’s to lose.”
And while that may yet prove to be true, the Texas senator’s position has slipped as Feb. 1 has grown closer. Of the four polls released yesterday, Cruz narrowly leads in one and trails by double digits in two others.
hueyplong
It’s almost worth seeing Trump get the nomination to see just how severely the NR people will debase themselves for the general. It’s either that or come out for Hitlery. Pretty sure I’d fail to survive the Schadenfreudegasm, but there are worse ways to go.
Ben Cisco
I liked this comment from the Gawker write up on this:
srv
There can be no doubt. Now that establishment cucks and liberals all agree, we can rest assured that both have a common agenda to keep the masses enslaved to partisanship.
People say they want change, but they are really terrified of it. Trump will shatter the status quo and forge a new reality. People need to wake up to their fears and do what is right for America.
Steeplejack
@Germy:
Extra
http
shmutz at the end removed: Republican “Blues Cruise.”geg6
What’s even more fun about this is that it shows that not only is there a huge rift in the party between the Teahadis and the “Establishment,” but there is now a rift breaking open among the “Establishment.” One side seems to be trying to reconcile themselves to Trump in order to get their revenge on Ted Cruz for being a bigger asshole than any them could ever hope to be and the others are doing everything they can to damage Trump, even if the party must go down in flames under Cruz or anyone else in November.
I’m glad I just bought a couple of boxes of popcorn last weekend. I probably need more, though.
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
They want it to be DENIABLY about racism and greed. The dog whistles evolved for a reason – most racists were uncomfortable admitting it, even to themselves.
Calouste
Funny that the NR is talking about populism as a bad thing. Wasn’t it the GOP who presented G.W. Bush as “the president you could have a beer with” to contrast with that egghead Al Gore?
Frankensteinbeck
@Steeplejack:
Damn, if you ever need proof of my point, that article is it.
C.V. Danes
@Ex Libris: I don’t think a thousand years was spent preparing for Hitler. I think that the Weimar Republic was seen as a failure in the eyes of the public, and Hitler utilized that to come into power. That may have been the culmination of a thousand years of whatever, but there was no thousand year plan behind it. Just Hitler at the right place and right time. As is Trump.
The lesson of Hitler is that when democracy fails the people, then the people don’t automatically replace it with another democracy. They often take a tour through autocracy first.
Chris
@Hillary Rettig:
William F. Buckley’s attempts to purge the John Birchers is fascinating in that it’s basically become the whole of the Republican Party: a die hard snob trying to keep out of the club people who basically agree with him on everything, but that he fears aren’t presentable enough to be seen in public with.
clone12
The farm team is pretty thin if Glenn Beck is promoted as “conservative intelligentsia”. Just saying.
C.V. Danes
@geg6: One side is merely getting ready to dance with the Devil, because in business it’s better to dance with the Devil than to wind up on his pitchfork.
ksmiami
@C.V. Danes: The Lesson of Hitler to me is that it is very easy for so called civilized people to blame the other/ scapegoat people based on superficial differences and commit immense horrors against such out-groups. That is why we could all sit back and laugh at the GOP if they weren’t playing with fire on top of dry haystacks.
Joel
@Germy: Looks like the RNC has resigned itself to Trump.
Chris
@C.V. Danes:
I think there’s an analogy to be made. Nazism was not “planned.” But it had the ground well prepared for it by centuries of antisemitism and, more recently and specifically, conspiracy theories of the Protocols of Zion variety that were promoted by conservative elites and went on to be the fascist movements’ bread-and-butter.
Fascism isn’t conservatism, exactly. But fascism tends to involve a large mass of followers who swallowed that nonsense losing faith in the elites that propagated them, and going into politics for themselves. (What happens next is the tragic and totally predictable result of people going into politics when the only thing they know about it involves Judeo-Masonic conspiracies). Draw analogies to the teabaggers and Trump voters rising to the sound of memes that right wing elites have been feeding them for fifty years… In both cases, there’s some clear involvement of conservative elites paving the way.
catclub
@C.V. Danes:
Then I am not worried. Hitler took advantage of 47% unemployment – or rather, only when unemployment was 47% did the German people resort to trying Hitler. In spite of how bad the GOP candidates say things are, the US people know they are nowhere near that bad.
catclub
OT:
gbbalto
On storm prep – went to supermarket here in Baltimore this morning. Was told it was cleaned out yesterday but it was restocked this morning and not that busy. If snow hasn’t started where you are, there’s probably still time to buy stuff.
boatboy_srq
@BC in Illinois: The reference may be Beethoven, but reading those lyrics all I could hear was Orff. Still fitting, though…
PaulW
Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere. He’s been a known vector for years (he chatted up a run in 2012), and he did not spring up as a newborn overnight.
Trump exists, he THRIVES, because of the base element of the Republican party that has been filled by decades of ideological dogma and cultural resentments.
The only reason Trump went Full Nativist like this is because he has no real record to run on. In order to get voters, he went straight to the pure source of Far Right Wingnut Outrage before anyone else – Cruz, Huckabee, Santorum, Jeb – could. And he’s offering it up like an 90 percent cut of pure hate-drenalin.
If the National Review were honest about all this, they’d be issuing Mea Culpas across the board. But they’re not: they never were honest about the race-baiting and hatred and ignorance all these years, and they’re not about to confess now.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: Well they couldn’t say “have a glass of wine with”: that’d be too, y’know, French.
chopper
i guess in their attempt to sew together some sort of frankenstein’s monster from the corpses of famous republicans past, they must have cocked up one of the magic spells cause suddenly out of the smoky crypt walks donald trump.
ooooh shiiiiiiiiiiit
chopper
@Elizabelle:
dude, i’ve read the bible. jesus’s biggest concerns were abortion, gay marriage, brown people, and gubbermint taking our guns. it’s right there in red and white.
C.V. Danes
@catclub: Realistically, you’re right. But these are people who have been told otherwise for decades. For whatever reason, Trump resonates with a not insignificant percentage of the population. All we would need is for Trump (or Cruz) to get elected, have another 9/11 event that can be used to end civil liberties, and we would be well on the way to following in Germany’s footsteps.
feebog
This is way too early to be talking about Trump as the Republican nominee. If the polls Rikyrah posted are correct, Trump will get about a quarter of the available Iowa delegates. Actually, it will most likely be much less than that; Several other candidates have better organizations than he does in Iowa, and that that makes a difference in caucus states. We are not going to know much until after the SEC primary scrum. By then we should know if Trump has the big MO to go all the way to the convention.
redshirt
@gbbalto: Be sure to buy all the breads. ALL OF THEM. And D batteries, also too.
C.V. Danes
@chopper: Is that the authentic King James version you’ve been reading?
C.V. Danes
@Chris: @ksmiami: Agreed.
chopper
@C.V. Danes:
it’s the one with a picture of reagan on the cover. that’s the king james, right?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Well, conservatives these days only have two cards to play: the free markets are always better card and the innocent victim card. It’s no surprise they went with the latter as the former doesn’t work on a JORB KREATOR like The Donald “Trumpster Fire” Trump.
Brachiator
To whom is this National Review screed directed? Are conservative voters supposed to skulk away, having been educated by their betters, and now promise not to vote for Trump?
Also, I seem to recall that back in 2008, some conservatives (George Will among them, I believe) wrote passionate pieces about why Sarah Palin was just not the right kind of woman for the GOP. But those who loved Caribou Barbie would not be denied, you betcha. Also, too.
J R in WV
@Germy:
Here’s the link as Ms Rettig posted it, plus angle brackets:
Here’s the link as it should be via the linky button:
Republican Cruise
I’ll probably be in moderation for that bare broken link…
NorthLeft12
Note to National Review: Boo Fucking Hoo.
philpm
@Gimlet: It’s always an “accident” with these folks. Its never because they’re complete fuck-ups who shouldn’t even be trusted with a water pistol.
Chris
@ksmiami:
The terrifying thing, for all the “God, how could the good people allow this to happen?” things said about Nazi Germany, is how very easily I can imagine good “conservative” and “centrist” non-Nazi Germans going along with everything and how familiar all the rationalizations would be today.
All the bad things the Nazis were doing? “Look, no one’s a huge fan of them, but both sides do it and communists are worse – you don’t want the communists [or anyone left of a Second Reich nostalgist, really] taking over, do you?”
Racial discrimination against Jews and other groups. “Look, not all Jews are bad, everyone knows that, but can’t we at least agree that a scary number of them are – look how many communists are Jews, for goodness’ sakes – and that some precautions should be taken? What would you do? We can’t just let them turn us into Russia.”
Street battles between the Nazis and their enemies. “Are you sure those left wingers and Jews and Gypsies and the rest of the riffraff didn’t start it? You know how often they’re up to no good.”
Etc, etc, etc.
NorthLeft12
Another example of that deep bench that US conservatives have been bragging about.
BTW Betty, luminaries; I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
NorthLeft12
@Chris: Re Nazis/Hitler; Funny, I watched “The Boys from Brazil” last night [I think I last saw it about thirty years ago] and was thinking about Gregory [Mengele] Peck’s little speech about how the world was ready for another Hitler….or two or three…or ninety-four.
I would never call that movie great cinema, but perhaps it was prescient about the state of mind of a lot of the white race. Sort of sad and hugely disturbing where we seem to be headed right now.
Brachiator
The Trumpire Strikes Back:
Love the infighting. Just love it.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@TS:
Trump has already signled that “Gotcha Questions”
Calouste
@feebog: Trump would likely get significantly more than 25% of the Iowa delegates. IIRC, Iowa has a cut-off of 10%, so anyone who doesn’t get 10% won’t get any delegates at all, and they go to the candidates who did get above 10%. 25% of the vote could result in 40% of the delegates. Some other states have a cut off of 20%, or allocate delegates per congressional district, and 30% of the vote there could easily result in a comfortable majority of the delegates.
Calouste
@NorthLeft12: I don’t think the RNC has problems with moderators being biased for or against certain candidates, just can’t be that openly. And of course Trump would refuse to attend if the NR was still there, and with good reason.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: And there’s plenty more where that came from!
Hahaha!
hilts
Glenn Beck is the biggest bedwetting crybaby in the conservative movement and, while I don’t root for Trump to win, I’m enjoying the pain that Beck is feeling.
The Golux
@chopper:
Unfortunately, Igor dropped Lincoln’s brain, and brought back Abby Normal’s.
Betty Cracker
@hilts: Beck is a hysterical crybaby, not just about politics, but about everything. Remember his whiny video about his butt surgery?
Original Lee
I just love how Sarah Palin is blaming Obama for her ticket losing the presidential election in 2008. Logic, how does that work again?
Edited for clarity, because I was laughing too hard when I first typed it.
Citizen_X
@srv:
Amerika Erwache!
Van Buren
Amidst the laughter keep in mind that one of these people could well be president in a year.
GOTV this November.
satby
@Gimlet: @Germy: I consider the majority of the Republicans I know to be habitual R voters, mostly concerned about taxes and anti-abortion because most are Catholic. They’re not really sophisticated politically, and aren’t really racists in the “open” sense, thought they are the children of white fighters to the suburbs. They’ve been able to pretend that the Rs weren’t batshit as long as a Romney or a Jeb was out in front. I fight with them all the time (I am related to some of them) but I suspect that if Trump or Cruz was the top of the ticket on the R side, they’d hold their noses and vote for Hillary or just stay home.
@raven: yup
David *Born in the USA* Koch
This are really good graphics, Betty.
Were you an art student by chance?
Honestly, an NYC art gallery would have no trouble selling this..
Well, done.
PIGL
@NorthLeft12: could mean “dim bulbs”.
Lurking Canadian
@chopper: To be fair, most of the people Jesus expressed concern for would have been kinda brown.