So what did we learn tonight?
First, the PA-12 race was a must-win for the Republicans, it went for McCain in 2008, the GOP spent a ton of money to grab this seat…and they lost by a touchdown.
Second, all the fears that the Democrats would lag between the GOP in turnout and enthusiasm didn’t pan out. Democrats are energized and pissed off.
Third, the Republican tactics haven’t changed. Goon squads working for Rand Paul in Kentucky were caught repeatedly, buying and selling votes, bullying and intimidating voters, and illegally demanding to look at voting machines. The police had to make arrests and eject these thugs from the polling places; the FBI will probably become involved. And keep in mind, this is the Kentucky police – hardly the Socialist Internationale.
And for the fourth lesson, we must go back to the year 1170.
Eight hundred years ago, the most powerful man in Europe, the leader of the political order of the western world, had a problem. A young upstart was challenging the leader’s political power, by standing on the law. Finally, fed up, the leader, King Henry II, bellowed….
"What miserable cowards have I nourished and brought up in my household, that no one will rid me of this meddlesome priest!"
Four of his buddies took him literally, hopped on their horses, rode off to Canterbury, and killed the upstart, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Afterwards, Henry insisted “I didn’t really mean for those guys to actually, ya know, kill him!! Ya gotta believe me!” But no one believed him. Henry’s name was Mud, and Becket went on to become a beloved saint.
How narrowly has history repeated itself!
The defenders of the established power structure, the GOP apologists for BP and Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and Enron and Haliburton and Blackwater, have essentially put a price on the head of the upstart, Obama, and his evil minions.
There have already been many efforts by Republican leaders to suggest that it is okay to use violence against Democrats, if Democrats insist on, ya know, actually running the government as they were elected to do. Followed, unsurprisingly, by violent attacks. They particularly pushed that argument after the Democrats passed health reform – the national GOP addressing the terrorist attack on the wife and kids of a Congressman’s brother by implying that it’s all Congressman Perriello’s fault for voting for health care, Fox News arguing that the Democrats should expect the violence and threats because they had the nerve to pass health reform, Boehner implying that the violence was the Democrats’ fault for daring to pass the health bill, and saying a Democratic colleague is a “dead man”. And so forth. And then bricks are thrown at windows, guys how up at Obama events with guns, etc etc.
And today, the day Americans began to exercise their constitutional rights to make their choices for the 2010 midterm races, the Republican fatwas have returned.
Newt Gingrich, one of the viable GOP candidates for the 2012 presidential nomination, has a new book coming out, called “To Save America: Abolishing Obama's Socialist State and Restoring Our Unique American Way”. In the book he repeatedly advances the notion that Obama is one step away from..Hitler. He argues that the evil Obama regime threatens America as much as Nazi Germany or the Russians. “The degree to which the secular-socialist left represents a fundamental replacement of America, a very different world view, a very different outcome, I think is a very serious threat to our way of life…If you can get $757 billion out of the Congress and no elected official has even read the bill, that's the behavior of a Chicago-style machine.”
In other words, Obama not only equals Hitler, he also equals Public Enemy Number One, Al Capone. People we put on Wanted posters decades ago. Dead or alive!
A teacher in Alabama has been teaching his kids geometry with an example that involves assassinating the President: "He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,' " a student reported.
And a GOP House candidate in California wants to shoot, not just Obama, but all liberals: “If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to “thin” the herd.”
So let’s string together all these Republican talking points:
Obama = Hitler + Capone
Kill Obama!
Kill Liberals!
…Hardy har har….we were just kidding, folks! Hey, you four guys in the back with the tinfoil hats and the shotguns…where ya going? We didn’t really mean for you to kill anybody!
Dang. Wonder where they went.
Off to make Obama a martyred saint, if history is any judge.
Showing posts with label the GOP civil war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the GOP civil war. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Friday, 14 May 2010
reasons for Democrats to smile
The website ThinkProgress has had a great couple of days:
77 percent of Arizonans want Obama to pass immigration reform – they prefer a federal law over their own brand-new, idiotic state law. (elsewhere on the net, Republican operatives have admitted privately that they chose Tampa rather than Phoenix for their 2012 convention partly because the new Arizona immigration law would make the GOP look bad. Ouch!).
Maine Republican caucus-goers were forced to apologize for vandalizing a junior-high building. They tore down a poster, went through a teacher’s personal effects, and stole property. Even the kids were incensed. My favorite quote: “Republicans opened a closed cardboard box they found near Clifford’s desk and later objected to the fact that it contained copies of the U.S. Constitution donated to the school by the American Civil Liberties Union. “ After busting into the guy’s private effects, they complained that he had a copy of the Constitution!
More frat-house hijinx! The House GOP killed a jobs bill by attaching poison-pill language calling for any federal worker who even sees pornography to be fired. One giggling Republican brayed “We certainly should do more of this type of thing!” And actually they have played this kind of frat-house stunt to obstruct an energy efficiency bill, a health care bill, and a health and education bill. And if the Democrats don’t fold, the Republicans run ads like “Barbara Boxer Votes To Allow Convicted Sex Offenders To Receive Taxpayer-Funded Viagra!”
[ As we noted earlier, the Republicans are stomping all over Democratic ideas because, as they have admitted, they have no ideas of their own. They launched an abortive effort to set up a fancy cool-ideas council which really consisted of holding town halls so the party leaders could crib from the ideas that the voters themselves suggested. Then they set up a remake of “Contract With America” which, again, is just a suggestion box so that voters can do the party’s homework for them. And now House GOP leader Cantor has set up a website called “YOUCUT”, and again the idea is that you, the voter, come up with ideas for how to cut government spending. The problem with the plan is that the cuts proposed on the site are described dishonestly, and even if voters chose all of the cuts, it would only save a billion out of a trillion-dollar budget. So the Republicans are dishonest AND lazy AND futile. ]
The Oklahoma legislature has passed legislation mandating that abortion patients must: give up their personal details so they can be posted on a website, look at an ultrasound of their embryos, give up the right to sue a doctor if he lies about the state of the fetus, and give up any form of insurance coverage for abortion, unless you get a special policy.
http://thinkprogress.org/
And some other reasons to smile:
A new poll shows that a majority of voters would not support Sarah Palin for presidency. A majority of ALASKANS. One of the most conservative, Republican states in the union, and they don’t want her to run. Meanwhile, her opponent should she get the nomination, Obama, is hitting his highest approvals since October 2009, according to a new PPP poll.
The latest USA Today analysis shows that Americans are paying less tax than at any time in the last 60 years – going all the way back to Harry Truman. This is largely based on the middle class tax cut in the stimulus bill that the GOP opposed. So much for the teabaggers – their whole reason for existing is a gigantic fraud. “Taxed enough already” indeed.
Not that this is really good news, but Obama’s effort to pass climate energy legislation seemingly gets another boost every week: coal mines blow up, oil wells spill, nuclear reactors leak radioactive waste into drinking water….just as the nonsense in Arizona gives new momentum to another Obama initiative, immigration reform. Two other issues are also boosting the immigration effort: evangelicals who hope Latinos will vote GOP if the GOP stops fighting immigration reform, are defying rightwingers who want to block reform; also, people are beginning to ask how the Republican plan to build some sort of Maginot Line along the Mexican border can possibly work, when almost half of illegal immigrants cross the border legally and then overstay their visas. And a lot of the rest of them use tunnels, which makes a fence kinda stupid.
As we learned earlier, the GOP leadership said publicly that they would not defend its incumbents against attacks from the right by teabag candidates. Senator Bob Bennett was just tossed out of his own reelection race by the Utah GOP, and some raised the prospect of Bennett running as a write-in; John Cornyn, head of the Republican committee that is set up to elect Republicans to the Senate, reiterated that Bennett will get not a nickel from the party. Wouldn’t it be neat if Bennett stuck it to the Republicans by (a) switching parties, or (b) backing Harry Reid in shooting down GOP filibusters?
For that matter, since the Maine GOP has been hiacked by teabaggers, and has approved a platform slamming Obamacare, unions, motor voter which helps minorities too much, apparently), gay marriage, climate change legislation….isn’t this the perfect time for Collins and Snowe to quit a party that clearly doesn’t want them anymore, and join the Democrats? Particularly when their fellow Maine Republicans are acting like a Mongol horde?
And lastly, I finally figured out why I keep laughing involuntarily whenever John Boehner comes on TV to yell and scream about Obama’s evil communist plots. It’s because he sounds exactly like Sylvester the Cat. Suffering succotash! That one had been bothering me all year.
77 percent of Arizonans want Obama to pass immigration reform – they prefer a federal law over their own brand-new, idiotic state law. (elsewhere on the net, Republican operatives have admitted privately that they chose Tampa rather than Phoenix for their 2012 convention partly because the new Arizona immigration law would make the GOP look bad. Ouch!).
Maine Republican caucus-goers were forced to apologize for vandalizing a junior-high building. They tore down a poster, went through a teacher’s personal effects, and stole property. Even the kids were incensed. My favorite quote: “Republicans opened a closed cardboard box they found near Clifford’s desk and later objected to the fact that it contained copies of the U.S. Constitution donated to the school by the American Civil Liberties Union. “ After busting into the guy’s private effects, they complained that he had a copy of the Constitution!
More frat-house hijinx! The House GOP killed a jobs bill by attaching poison-pill language calling for any federal worker who even sees pornography to be fired. One giggling Republican brayed “We certainly should do more of this type of thing!” And actually they have played this kind of frat-house stunt to obstruct an energy efficiency bill, a health care bill, and a health and education bill. And if the Democrats don’t fold, the Republicans run ads like “Barbara Boxer Votes To Allow Convicted Sex Offenders To Receive Taxpayer-Funded Viagra!”
[ As we noted earlier, the Republicans are stomping all over Democratic ideas because, as they have admitted, they have no ideas of their own. They launched an abortive effort to set up a fancy cool-ideas council which really consisted of holding town halls so the party leaders could crib from the ideas that the voters themselves suggested. Then they set up a remake of “Contract With America” which, again, is just a suggestion box so that voters can do the party’s homework for them. And now House GOP leader Cantor has set up a website called “YOUCUT”, and again the idea is that you, the voter, come up with ideas for how to cut government spending. The problem with the plan is that the cuts proposed on the site are described dishonestly, and even if voters chose all of the cuts, it would only save a billion out of a trillion-dollar budget. So the Republicans are dishonest AND lazy AND futile. ]
The Oklahoma legislature has passed legislation mandating that abortion patients must: give up their personal details so they can be posted on a website, look at an ultrasound of their embryos, give up the right to sue a doctor if he lies about the state of the fetus, and give up any form of insurance coverage for abortion, unless you get a special policy.
http://thinkprogress.org/
And some other reasons to smile:
A new poll shows that a majority of voters would not support Sarah Palin for presidency. A majority of ALASKANS. One of the most conservative, Republican states in the union, and they don’t want her to run. Meanwhile, her opponent should she get the nomination, Obama, is hitting his highest approvals since October 2009, according to a new PPP poll.
The latest USA Today analysis shows that Americans are paying less tax than at any time in the last 60 years – going all the way back to Harry Truman. This is largely based on the middle class tax cut in the stimulus bill that the GOP opposed. So much for the teabaggers – their whole reason for existing is a gigantic fraud. “Taxed enough already” indeed.
Not that this is really good news, but Obama’s effort to pass climate energy legislation seemingly gets another boost every week: coal mines blow up, oil wells spill, nuclear reactors leak radioactive waste into drinking water….just as the nonsense in Arizona gives new momentum to another Obama initiative, immigration reform. Two other issues are also boosting the immigration effort: evangelicals who hope Latinos will vote GOP if the GOP stops fighting immigration reform, are defying rightwingers who want to block reform; also, people are beginning to ask how the Republican plan to build some sort of Maginot Line along the Mexican border can possibly work, when almost half of illegal immigrants cross the border legally and then overstay their visas. And a lot of the rest of them use tunnels, which makes a fence kinda stupid.
As we learned earlier, the GOP leadership said publicly that they would not defend its incumbents against attacks from the right by teabag candidates. Senator Bob Bennett was just tossed out of his own reelection race by the Utah GOP, and some raised the prospect of Bennett running as a write-in; John Cornyn, head of the Republican committee that is set up to elect Republicans to the Senate, reiterated that Bennett will get not a nickel from the party. Wouldn’t it be neat if Bennett stuck it to the Republicans by (a) switching parties, or (b) backing Harry Reid in shooting down GOP filibusters?
For that matter, since the Maine GOP has been hiacked by teabaggers, and has approved a platform slamming Obamacare, unions, motor voter which helps minorities too much, apparently), gay marriage, climate change legislation….isn’t this the perfect time for Collins and Snowe to quit a party that clearly doesn’t want them anymore, and join the Democrats? Particularly when their fellow Maine Republicans are acting like a Mongol horde?
And lastly, I finally figured out why I keep laughing involuntarily whenever John Boehner comes on TV to yell and scream about Obama’s evil communist plots. It’s because he sounds exactly like Sylvester the Cat. Suffering succotash! That one had been bothering me all year.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
the myth of the nonpartisan populist teabagger, exposed
The teabaggers keep saying they are non-partisan populists who want to protect the little guy from the Big Boys who are jeopardizing their economic future – the want accountability for the fat cats who wrecked the economy on Wall Street, and so forth.
So they should support the financial reform bill, right?
Um, no.
Bob Corker, Republican Senator from Tennessee, made the terrible mistake of talking to the Democrats about their finance bill. Corker didn’t even support it – all he did was talk to the Dems about it.
What did the teabaggers do? They phonebanked Corker, carpet-bombing him with phone calls condemning him for even talking to a Democrat.
Thus exploding the myth that these tea party clowns are nonpartisan defenders of the little guy. They are Republicans hell-bent on destroying Democrats and defending their corporate paymasters.
And this is course is why the teabaggers protested, when Obama wanted to defend the common man from abuse by insurance companies. And why they protested against Obama for doing a lot of the same things Bush did. And why they protested even though Obama gave them a tax cut. And why they take their orders from the former Republican House Majority Leader.
Bob Corker is no liberal sissy. Rough tough construction company guy, multi-millionaire, ran a racist campaign ad against Harold Ford, hard-core supporter of the Iraq war, opposed the stimulus and the bailouts, filibustered unemployment benefits….Rock solid Republican. But he could be the latest hard-core conservative to be targeted by the wingnuts for not being wingnutty enough.
So they should support the financial reform bill, right?
Um, no.
Bob Corker, Republican Senator from Tennessee, made the terrible mistake of talking to the Democrats about their finance bill. Corker didn’t even support it – all he did was talk to the Dems about it.
What did the teabaggers do? They phonebanked Corker, carpet-bombing him with phone calls condemning him for even talking to a Democrat.
Thus exploding the myth that these tea party clowns are nonpartisan defenders of the little guy. They are Republicans hell-bent on destroying Democrats and defending their corporate paymasters.
And this is course is why the teabaggers protested, when Obama wanted to defend the common man from abuse by insurance companies. And why they protested against Obama for doing a lot of the same things Bush did. And why they protested even though Obama gave them a tax cut. And why they take their orders from the former Republican House Majority Leader.
Bob Corker is no liberal sissy. Rough tough construction company guy, multi-millionaire, ran a racist campaign ad against Harold Ford, hard-core supporter of the Iraq war, opposed the stimulus and the bailouts, filibustered unemployment benefits….Rock solid Republican. But he could be the latest hard-core conservative to be targeted by the wingnuts for not being wingnutty enough.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
The GOP slides to the right
Earlier I noted how the GOP has slid so far to the right, that it is leaving its former heroes behind -- they have slammed McCain, Lindsey Graham and Newt for being insufficiently wingnutty. Practically socialists!
Keith Olbermann neatly juxtaposed two such stories tonight: Glenn Beck screeching that Mitt Romney is a socialist for advocating a decent health care system in Massachusetts. And Rudy Giuliani equating the dream of a nuclear-free world with leftist silliness, neatly papering over the fact that wingnut icons like Reagan pursued the same dream.
Keith Olbermann neatly juxtaposed two such stories tonight: Glenn Beck screeching that Mitt Romney is a socialist for advocating a decent health care system in Massachusetts. And Rudy Giuliani equating the dream of a nuclear-free world with leftist silliness, neatly papering over the fact that wingnut icons like Reagan pursued the same dream.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Glenn Beck inspires more wingnuts to challenge GOP candidates in primaries
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/02/beck-primary/
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Tea Party convention in February
The National Tea Party convention will be held at Nashville’s Opryland Hotel this February; tickets are $549. 500 dollar tickets to the Opry, way to reach out beyond old white voters! Palin and Bachmann will speak; the media will be cordoned off in the lobby, banned from the convention itelf, and definitely banned from the Palin event (if Palin shows up).
So the wingnuts are taking giant strides toward organizing a movement which will not only rival the GOP but split it in two.
So the wingnuts are taking giant strides toward organizing a movement which will not only rival the GOP but split it in two.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Huckabee acknowledges that Rush is the true party leader
Mike Huckabee is arguably the strongest GOP presidential candidate for 2012; he has a legitimate claim to being the top leader of the party.
But wait! I'm wrong! The real party leader is...
COURIC: Were you referring to anyone in particular or anyone specific because I know Rush Limbaugh had criticized the day before you made that statement.
HUCKABEE: No one in particular. I wasn’t criticizing Rush. He’s got a bigger megaphone and microphone than I do and I’m not going to get into a war with him. It wasn’t about Rush Limbaugh; it was about the general tenor.
But wait! I'm wrong! The real party leader is...
COURIC: Were you referring to anyone in particular or anyone specific because I know Rush Limbaugh had criticized the day before you made that statement.
HUCKABEE: No one in particular. I wasn’t criticizing Rush. He’s got a bigger megaphone and microphone than I do and I’m not going to get into a war with him. It wasn’t about Rush Limbaugh; it was about the general tenor.
Monday, 23 November 2009
The wingnuts increase their grip on the GOP
The Republican National Committee is working on a “purity test” for its candidates. All candidates must oppose Obama’s stimulus bill, oppose Obama’s health reform, oppose health care rationing (which no one is proposing) and federal funding of abortion, oppose Obama’s cap-and-trade plan, oppose gay marriage, oppose card check, oppose immigrant amnesty, support troop surges, support the containment of the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, and oppose all gun control. If the party even believes that you deviate from the party line on more than two of these issues, you will get no support or money from the party.
Sieg heil! All apostates and counterrevolutionaries to the tumbrels!
Meanwhile Wingnut senator Jim DeMint has gained power by being the go-to guy to give the wingnut seal of approval to conservative candidates. He is backing a rightwing challenger to California candidate Carly Fiorina, who has now tacked to the right and flipflopped on the stimulus package. Moderate Republicans are sucking up to him, trying to get his approval so they don’t get primaried to death from the right, or cut off from GOP money (DeMint’s PAC has more than a million bucks for 2010). The party is terrified of him – he could push the GOP’s 2010 candidate slate way to the right and into the Loss column. Even John Cornyn, a rock-ribbed conservative, is irritated, and Coburn and Inhofe are also unconvinced.
But how to stop him? Even Michael Steele is starting to sound like Robespierre.
Sieg heil! All apostates and counterrevolutionaries to the tumbrels!
Meanwhile Wingnut senator Jim DeMint has gained power by being the go-to guy to give the wingnut seal of approval to conservative candidates. He is backing a rightwing challenger to California candidate Carly Fiorina, who has now tacked to the right and flipflopped on the stimulus package. Moderate Republicans are sucking up to him, trying to get his approval so they don’t get primaried to death from the right, or cut off from GOP money (DeMint’s PAC has more than a million bucks for 2010). The party is terrified of him – he could push the GOP’s 2010 candidate slate way to the right and into the Loss column. Even John Cornyn, a rock-ribbed conservative, is irritated, and Coburn and Inhofe are also unconvinced.
But how to stop him? Even Michael Steele is starting to sound like Robespierre.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Next target for the wingnuts: McCain
The latest polling shows that J.D. Hayworth, a far-right anti-immigrant radio host and Tea Party activist, is in a virtual tie with John McCain for the Republican nomination for McCain’s Senate seat. Hayworth has said he’s interested in running but he hasn’t committed.
This is perfectly fitting, because McCain helped throw gasoline on the fire all across Planet Wingnut, when he surrendered to the wingnuts and unleashed Palin on the world. He helped created this mass-insanity movement.
This is perfectly fitting, because McCain helped throw gasoline on the fire all across Planet Wingnut, when he surrendered to the wingnuts and unleashed Palin on the world. He helped created this mass-insanity movement.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
chaos and opportunity in the GOP
The GOP brand gets weaker every day. Only 22 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans now, way behind both the Democrats and the Independents; among other things, this means the GOP would need a huge majority of independents to reject Obama, just to get a tie in 2012. Also the latest ABC poll shows that 72 percent of Americans support the kind of limited public option offered in the Senate bill.
The GOP isn’t helping itself with its seemingly endless series of embarrassments. GOP screeching about Obama’s bow to the Japanese emperor blew up in their faces when the media posted images of Bush kissing the king of Saudi Arabia and holding hands with him, and Nixon bowing to Mao. More and more conservatives are ridiculing the GOP whining and yammering about trying terror suspects in criminal courts. Beck made conservatives look even more ridiculous by equating Obama with a rapist: "We're the young girl saying 'no, no, help me,' and the government is Roman Polanski." And the RNC had to admit a week ago that their employee health plan covers…abortion.
The newspaper of record for the wingnut movement, the Washington Times, is collapsing – the Op-Ed editor is now complaining to the EEOC (!) on grounds of religious discrimination. Meanwhile the Tea Party Express and the Tea Party Patriots are locked in a nasty, spitting, hair-pulling brawl, complete with expulsions and expensive lawsuits, over the direction of the wingnut movement; among other things, the TPP people think the TPE people are too subservient to the GOP – some wingnuts really do consider the GOP as the enemy worth rebelling against and attacking at election time -- and accusations of shoddy business practices are filling the air. One teabagger announced he would rejoin the GOP only if the national party met a lengthy list of demands, particularly declaring war on all Democrats and anyone who votes for health reform. The splintering of the wingnut movement into an alphabet-soup of competing movements like the TPP and TPE calls to mind Monty Python’s satire of the dozens of Palestinian terror movements in “Life of Brian”.
But establishment Republicans still kowtow to the rightwing loons. Pawlenty, terrified of the wingnuts, is tacking to the right, flipflopping on climate change, and veering wildly to starboard on ACORN, death panels and the 10th Amendment. And Palin, for all her airheadedness, still seems to be a major player in the conservative movement, simply because everyone is terrified of her and her wingnut followers. Mark Kirk, GOP Senate candidate in Illinois, who originally ridiculed the selection of Palin as vice presidential candidate, is now sucking up to get her endorsement. No dice. Palin also launched the death panel insanity and the intra-GOP lynching of Scozzafava – like it or not, everybody pays attention when she has another one of these grand mal seizures of wingnuttery.
Also, Politics Daily points out that because a number of Republican presidential primaries are winner-take-all, in 2012 Palin could rack up a bunch of early victories in places like wingnut-rich Iowa and South Carolina, and wrap up the nomination quickly the way McCain did last time. One spoiler could be Huckabee, who also has wingnut cred and is now more popular with the party faithful (or perhaps Romney who has more money than God). The party could change the rules, or try to unite behind an anti-Palin candidate, but that would require a unity of leadership which the party doesn’t seem to have right now.
The current chaotic, leaderless state of the GOP could provide the kind of power vacuum that Palin could exploit, whereas in normal times no credible political party would ever nominate her.
The Democrats smell blood: they know the wingnuts have overstayed their welcome within the non-crazy 80 percent of America. Robert Reich is joining the chorus of Democrats calling for Reid to ignore the Blue Dogs and get going on reconciliation. Tom Harkin is among those planning to counter GOP obstruction efforts by forcing Republican Senators to stay on the Senate floor 24/7 to make their obstructive tactics stick.
The GOP isn’t helping itself with its seemingly endless series of embarrassments. GOP screeching about Obama’s bow to the Japanese emperor blew up in their faces when the media posted images of Bush kissing the king of Saudi Arabia and holding hands with him, and Nixon bowing to Mao. More and more conservatives are ridiculing the GOP whining and yammering about trying terror suspects in criminal courts. Beck made conservatives look even more ridiculous by equating Obama with a rapist: "We're the young girl saying 'no, no, help me,' and the government is Roman Polanski." And the RNC had to admit a week ago that their employee health plan covers…abortion.
The newspaper of record for the wingnut movement, the Washington Times, is collapsing – the Op-Ed editor is now complaining to the EEOC (!) on grounds of religious discrimination. Meanwhile the Tea Party Express and the Tea Party Patriots are locked in a nasty, spitting, hair-pulling brawl, complete with expulsions and expensive lawsuits, over the direction of the wingnut movement; among other things, the TPP people think the TPE people are too subservient to the GOP – some wingnuts really do consider the GOP as the enemy worth rebelling against and attacking at election time -- and accusations of shoddy business practices are filling the air. One teabagger announced he would rejoin the GOP only if the national party met a lengthy list of demands, particularly declaring war on all Democrats and anyone who votes for health reform. The splintering of the wingnut movement into an alphabet-soup of competing movements like the TPP and TPE calls to mind Monty Python’s satire of the dozens of Palestinian terror movements in “Life of Brian”.
But establishment Republicans still kowtow to the rightwing loons. Pawlenty, terrified of the wingnuts, is tacking to the right, flipflopping on climate change, and veering wildly to starboard on ACORN, death panels and the 10th Amendment. And Palin, for all her airheadedness, still seems to be a major player in the conservative movement, simply because everyone is terrified of her and her wingnut followers. Mark Kirk, GOP Senate candidate in Illinois, who originally ridiculed the selection of Palin as vice presidential candidate, is now sucking up to get her endorsement. No dice. Palin also launched the death panel insanity and the intra-GOP lynching of Scozzafava – like it or not, everybody pays attention when she has another one of these grand mal seizures of wingnuttery.
Also, Politics Daily points out that because a number of Republican presidential primaries are winner-take-all, in 2012 Palin could rack up a bunch of early victories in places like wingnut-rich Iowa and South Carolina, and wrap up the nomination quickly the way McCain did last time. One spoiler could be Huckabee, who also has wingnut cred and is now more popular with the party faithful (or perhaps Romney who has more money than God). The party could change the rules, or try to unite behind an anti-Palin candidate, but that would require a unity of leadership which the party doesn’t seem to have right now.
The current chaotic, leaderless state of the GOP could provide the kind of power vacuum that Palin could exploit, whereas in normal times no credible political party would ever nominate her.
The Democrats smell blood: they know the wingnuts have overstayed their welcome within the non-crazy 80 percent of America. Robert Reich is joining the chorus of Democrats calling for Reid to ignore the Blue Dogs and get going on reconciliation. Tom Harkin is among those planning to counter GOP obstruction efforts by forcing Republican Senators to stay on the Senate floor 24/7 to make their obstructive tactics stick.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
wingnuts attacking GOP leaders
The next time you hear the Republicans yammering that they want more bipartisan efforts in Washington, look what they’re doing to Lindsey Graham. Right after they barbecued Olympia Snowe for daring to talk health reform with the Democrats, they are crapping all over Graham for daring to talk climate change with them. The local GOP has censured Graham – the man who led the impeachment fight against Clinton -- for “weakening the Republican brand”, as though the wingnuts themselves aren’t already doing that. So the GOP civil war extends to destroying anyone who even talks to “The Enemy”, and strengthening the brand means ideological purity and purges of anyone even remotely suspected of…contact with reality.
As for Snowe herself: new polling shows that in her home state it’s the Democrats and Independents who like her, while the local Republicans dislike her, 40-46. The polling also shows that a generic conservative challenger could wipe her out in a primary. So switch parties already!
The Club For Growth still hasn’t forgiven Mike Huckabee. Huckleberry holds some rightwing views that appall even some Republicans, like his plan to put HIV patients in concentration camps. But as governor in Arkansas – you know, out in the real world – he had to do some things that were, ya know, realistic and pragmatic, even though they infuriated Planet Wingnut. And they still haven’t forgiven him, even though he is actually the wingnut candidate with the best chance of grabbing the GOP presidential nomination away from some moderate apostate like Romney.
The Vietnamese Republican Congressman who ignored all the GOP pressure and voted for the House health bill is now being bombarded with emails comparing him to Mao and hurling racial epithets at him.
The Tea Party loons have officially registered “Tea Party” as a party in Florida. They have Crist in their sights.
Obama is eating this up with a spoon: almost any Republican who could be a credible candidate for 2012 is being slaughtered by the wingnuts: Newt, Crist, Huckabee, Huntsman….Only Palin has avoided their ire. (I don’t count Jindal and Pawlenty because nobody takes them seriously.)
The wingnuts also have a hate group protesting outside the schools used by the Obama daughters, and the group’s website calls the girls "satanic spawn" of a "murderous bastard."
GOP strategists are lamenting that McCain got two thirds of his votes in the South and that “we are too white, too male, too old, too out of touch." Their troubles with women, particularly, are mounting, what with the treatment meted out to Scozzafava and Sotomayor, the Stupak nonsense, and the notion popular among the GOP’s insurance buddies that being a woman is a preexisting condition. Former party leader Haley Barbour said purges are a dumbass idea. But the wingnuts are in charge: we saw the proof when GOP leaders went out there to cheer on the wingnuts at the Bachmann rally.
The wingnuts have succumbed to hubris before. Regularly they declare that America is forever conservative and that the GOP will ever rule the waves. Then Reagan is smacked down for trying to rip apart Social Security, Newt is slapped down for trying to shut down the government, and Bush is slapped down again on the Social Security issue. In 2009 the Democrats have elected two new House members and grabbed two Senate seats, but the wingnuts refuse to believe that America has rejected them.
As for Snowe herself: new polling shows that in her home state it’s the Democrats and Independents who like her, while the local Republicans dislike her, 40-46. The polling also shows that a generic conservative challenger could wipe her out in a primary. So switch parties already!
The Club For Growth still hasn’t forgiven Mike Huckabee. Huckleberry holds some rightwing views that appall even some Republicans, like his plan to put HIV patients in concentration camps. But as governor in Arkansas – you know, out in the real world – he had to do some things that were, ya know, realistic and pragmatic, even though they infuriated Planet Wingnut. And they still haven’t forgiven him, even though he is actually the wingnut candidate with the best chance of grabbing the GOP presidential nomination away from some moderate apostate like Romney.
The Vietnamese Republican Congressman who ignored all the GOP pressure and voted for the House health bill is now being bombarded with emails comparing him to Mao and hurling racial epithets at him.
The Tea Party loons have officially registered “Tea Party” as a party in Florida. They have Crist in their sights.
Obama is eating this up with a spoon: almost any Republican who could be a credible candidate for 2012 is being slaughtered by the wingnuts: Newt, Crist, Huckabee, Huntsman….Only Palin has avoided their ire. (I don’t count Jindal and Pawlenty because nobody takes them seriously.)
The wingnuts also have a hate group protesting outside the schools used by the Obama daughters, and the group’s website calls the girls "satanic spawn" of a "murderous bastard."
GOP strategists are lamenting that McCain got two thirds of his votes in the South and that “we are too white, too male, too old, too out of touch." Their troubles with women, particularly, are mounting, what with the treatment meted out to Scozzafava and Sotomayor, the Stupak nonsense, and the notion popular among the GOP’s insurance buddies that being a woman is a preexisting condition. Former party leader Haley Barbour said purges are a dumbass idea. But the wingnuts are in charge: we saw the proof when GOP leaders went out there to cheer on the wingnuts at the Bachmann rally.
The wingnuts have succumbed to hubris before. Regularly they declare that America is forever conservative and that the GOP will ever rule the waves. Then Reagan is smacked down for trying to rip apart Social Security, Newt is slapped down for trying to shut down the government, and Bush is slapped down again on the Social Security issue. In 2009 the Democrats have elected two new House members and grabbed two Senate seats, but the wingnuts refuse to believe that America has rejected them.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
The GOP surrender to the wingnuts continues
The recent brouhaha in New York has exposed the split between the Republican establishment and the wingnuts, and the wingnuts are winning. One after another, frightened members of the party establishment are surrendering and joining the teabaggers: not just the rightwingers like Palin and Rush, but moderate folks like Giuliani.
New defections: Michael Steele, who was trying to hold the line against the wingnuts and prop up Scozzafava in NY 23, is a changed man, telling those nasty centrist Republicans "we'll come after you…I don't need you to identify as a Republican. I need you to identify as a conservative. We are the conservative party."
Charlie Crist, who is now being attacked in CFG ads, is running scared, denying he ever supported Obama’s stimulus package.
Mike Pence has sided with the wingnuts too. He is even urging the entirely-unqualified Hoffman to run again in 2010 for NY 23. Please please please do!
New defections: Michael Steele, who was trying to hold the line against the wingnuts and prop up Scozzafava in NY 23, is a changed man, telling those nasty centrist Republicans "we'll come after you…I don't need you to identify as a Republican. I need you to identify as a conservative. We are the conservative party."
Charlie Crist, who is now being attacked in CFG ads, is running scared, denying he ever supported Obama’s stimulus package.
Mike Pence has sided with the wingnuts too. He is even urging the entirely-unqualified Hoffman to run again in 2010 for NY 23. Please please please do!
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
GOP leadership surrenders to the wingnuts
Stop for a moment and grasp the real significance of this week’s events: the teabaggers actively want Republicans to lose, if the Republicans don’t meet all of the wingnut litmus tests. They would rather elect a Democrat than a moderate Republican.
Even more amazing: the Republican party leadership has announced that they will NOT defend GOP establishment candidates if the teabaggers launch a primary challenge.
Wow.
The wingnuts say they aim to “save the Republicans from themselves”. They said they’d rather lose than compromise, so they are actually celebrating NY 23 today. Erickson over at Redstate insists that the aim in NY 23 was to beat Scozzafava: beating the moderate Republican was more important than beating the Democrat. They think a win by a moderate is a loss, so they’d rather that the moderate lose. Some extremist third-party candidates are actually hoping to siphon off enough votes to beat a moderate Republican and elect a Democrat. They will work to block Kirk in Illinois; Kirk, who questioned the selection of Palin for the GOP ticket last year, is now sucking up to her. They will back Chuck DeVore over Fiorina in the California Senate primary: DeMint said he is backing DeVore over Fiorina due to “Chuck’s willingness to stand up against his own party leaders.” -- he wants to “shake up” the GOP.
The thing to remember: bruising primary battles lead to November losses. And that is an advantage for the wingnuts: they don’t care about bloody primaries and they know the party leaders do care. All they need to do is show up and growl, and the leadership will run away. In fact they already are fleeing: Cornyn says the NRSC won’t spend money on contested primaries, so if teabaggers challenge incumbents, the incumbents (and party choices like Crist, and presumably Fiorina) are on their own. Cornyn asserted, lamely, that it’s all because the race in NY 23 shows competitive primaries are a good thing, so the grass roots can be heard. Cornyn is giving the wingnuts a big slice of his own power – refusing to contest contested territory -- because he is afraid of them and he knows the party leadership is toxically unpopular right now. So the wingnuts really are in charge: all they have to do is field a right-wing challenger, and the seat is theirs for the taking.
This won’t happen on the Democratic side. Liberals are starting to make the same sort of noises as the Republicans: “We provided the campaign troops in 2008 and gave you party leaders a 60-seat Senate caucus, so deliver the public option and a couple of other bennies like cap and trade, or repealing DOMA, or closing Guantanamo, or we’ll stay at home next time.” However, unlike the conservative extremists who have a long list of apostate Republicans to target and a longer list of transgressions which can earn their ire, liberals are more circumspect in threatening primary challenges against party centrists: so far they are only threatening Democrats who derail health reform.
And Obama and Emanuel are pulling the party the other way: while the left wing wants them to move left, Obama wants to scoop up all the moderates who are being driven out of the GOP. He saw independents drift away from the Democratic party in the 2009 elections, and he wants them back on board. Unlike the GOP, the Democratic party has a strong moderate wing, because Democrats have been recruiting moderates for 20 years while the GOP has been driving them out.
Some Hill Democrats are pulling the other way for a different reason. They are telling their leaders – steer clear of controversial issues such as immigration, gays and climate change, so they don’t lose in 2010. Another impetus pushing the Democrats toward the center.
So the Democrats won’t tear themselves apart like the GOP.
The wingnuts have won over Giuliani, who originally said the party must be inclusive, but now is slamming Scozzafava, and slammed Newt for endorsing her (Rush is slamming Newt too).
Meanwhile Bachmann’s effort to launch a teabag assault on the Hill, with calls, emails and visits to Congress, fell apart. One rally too many? Are the wingnuts as fatigued as the left is?
Kristol is erecting false analogies again, asserting that the GOP was split in 1976 and then rose to victory in 1980, so they could do it again. Two problems here: the Reagan-Ford squabbling in 1976 wasn’t about ideology, it was about two guys who both wanted to run the country (“co-presidents”??). And second, 1980 was about a brilliant, once-in-a-generation snake oil salesman: Reagan is now dead and the GOP has no one who can do what he did.
Four groups to watch, over on Planet Wingnut, are the Club For Growth (CFG), Freedomworks, Americans For Prosperity, and the Conservative Party. Chris Chocola’s CFG hunts RINO’s: they have attacked Snowe, Specter and Chafee, and supported GOP scumbags Chambliss and Bachmann; their violations in such efforts earned them a $350,000 FEC fine. They will probably go after Crist, and they could go after Huckabee too since they savaged him in 2008 over his “liberal” record in Arkansas . That’s how crazy these people are: a guy who wanted to put HIV patients in concentration camps, and who repeated the wingnut meme that moderation is unacceptable, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-evolution…is too liberal.
The teabaggers will hold a huge convention in Nashville in February – in the geographical center of Planet Wingnut. They are trying to pin down Palin as keynote speaker. The aim is to prepare and network for 2010 tea parties.
Two more signs about how out of touch the wingnuts are. First, recent polling shows that support for the GOP outside the south is down to a toxic 7-10 percent. But a recent CNN poll shows that even in the south, 57 percent said Obama did a better job than Bush. So even down south, Obama has some traction, and the wingnuts still have work to do even in their own backyard.
And another sign of how the non-insane part of America has rejected the wingnuts: the latest from CNN is that Joe Gaffe-A-Minute Biden has poll approvals that are 24 points higher than Cheney’s, despite the year-long Cheney family “Daddy was right and torture is good” tour.
And here is what election day did NOT mean.
One must ask how Republicans can be celebrating NY 23 when their candidate was driven out of the race: not only did they fail to deliver the conservative message with sufficient force, but the guy who did deliver it lost also. The real lesson from the election is two-fold: that people are really angry about the economy (which helped the GOP), and that regardless of party or ideology, lousy candidates lose. Deeds ran a lousy campaign in a red state and made liberal activists stay home with his centrist message, Corzine is a former CEO from the disgraced firm of Goldman Sachs, and Hoffman’s short time in the sun was riddled with stupidity: advocating the incredibly destructive and unworkable flat tax, “solving” the deficit problem by cutting pork and earmarks which only account for about 3 percent of the budget, screeching that ACORN had invaded his state and slashed an aide’s car (actually the idiot drove over a bottle), and allowing his storm troopers to illegally intimidate voters at the polls.
As for the notion that this is a referendum on Obama: sorry, but the folks at the polls said otherwise. Obama had nothing to do with it. In fact there were a lot of voters who like Obama but deserted Deeds and Corzine because they just didn’t like them. But in the end, the Democrats won two congressional races (one in a district that hasn’t gone blue in a century and a half), the GOP got two governorships, and there was a split on gay referenda, which sounds like a tie to me. And the tiebreaker is health care: Pelosi now has two more Democrats to secure a House majority for health care, whereas the two new governors are completely uninvolved in the biggest political battle of the year.
Another lesson from the voting: turnout! In 2008 the Obama hordes turned out. This year it was the teabaggers. Who will be motivated to show up in 2010? We know the teabaggers will show up. What about our team?
Even more amazing: the Republican party leadership has announced that they will NOT defend GOP establishment candidates if the teabaggers launch a primary challenge.
Wow.
The wingnuts say they aim to “save the Republicans from themselves”. They said they’d rather lose than compromise, so they are actually celebrating NY 23 today. Erickson over at Redstate insists that the aim in NY 23 was to beat Scozzafava: beating the moderate Republican was more important than beating the Democrat. They think a win by a moderate is a loss, so they’d rather that the moderate lose. Some extremist third-party candidates are actually hoping to siphon off enough votes to beat a moderate Republican and elect a Democrat. They will work to block Kirk in Illinois; Kirk, who questioned the selection of Palin for the GOP ticket last year, is now sucking up to her. They will back Chuck DeVore over Fiorina in the California Senate primary: DeMint said he is backing DeVore over Fiorina due to “Chuck’s willingness to stand up against his own party leaders.” -- he wants to “shake up” the GOP.
The thing to remember: bruising primary battles lead to November losses. And that is an advantage for the wingnuts: they don’t care about bloody primaries and they know the party leaders do care. All they need to do is show up and growl, and the leadership will run away. In fact they already are fleeing: Cornyn says the NRSC won’t spend money on contested primaries, so if teabaggers challenge incumbents, the incumbents (and party choices like Crist, and presumably Fiorina) are on their own. Cornyn asserted, lamely, that it’s all because the race in NY 23 shows competitive primaries are a good thing, so the grass roots can be heard. Cornyn is giving the wingnuts a big slice of his own power – refusing to contest contested territory -- because he is afraid of them and he knows the party leadership is toxically unpopular right now. So the wingnuts really are in charge: all they have to do is field a right-wing challenger, and the seat is theirs for the taking.
This won’t happen on the Democratic side. Liberals are starting to make the same sort of noises as the Republicans: “We provided the campaign troops in 2008 and gave you party leaders a 60-seat Senate caucus, so deliver the public option and a couple of other bennies like cap and trade, or repealing DOMA, or closing Guantanamo, or we’ll stay at home next time.” However, unlike the conservative extremists who have a long list of apostate Republicans to target and a longer list of transgressions which can earn their ire, liberals are more circumspect in threatening primary challenges against party centrists: so far they are only threatening Democrats who derail health reform.
And Obama and Emanuel are pulling the party the other way: while the left wing wants them to move left, Obama wants to scoop up all the moderates who are being driven out of the GOP. He saw independents drift away from the Democratic party in the 2009 elections, and he wants them back on board. Unlike the GOP, the Democratic party has a strong moderate wing, because Democrats have been recruiting moderates for 20 years while the GOP has been driving them out.
Some Hill Democrats are pulling the other way for a different reason. They are telling their leaders – steer clear of controversial issues such as immigration, gays and climate change, so they don’t lose in 2010. Another impetus pushing the Democrats toward the center.
So the Democrats won’t tear themselves apart like the GOP.
The wingnuts have won over Giuliani, who originally said the party must be inclusive, but now is slamming Scozzafava, and slammed Newt for endorsing her (Rush is slamming Newt too).
Meanwhile Bachmann’s effort to launch a teabag assault on the Hill, with calls, emails and visits to Congress, fell apart. One rally too many? Are the wingnuts as fatigued as the left is?
Kristol is erecting false analogies again, asserting that the GOP was split in 1976 and then rose to victory in 1980, so they could do it again. Two problems here: the Reagan-Ford squabbling in 1976 wasn’t about ideology, it was about two guys who both wanted to run the country (“co-presidents”??). And second, 1980 was about a brilliant, once-in-a-generation snake oil salesman: Reagan is now dead and the GOP has no one who can do what he did.
Four groups to watch, over on Planet Wingnut, are the Club For Growth (CFG), Freedomworks, Americans For Prosperity, and the Conservative Party. Chris Chocola’s CFG hunts RINO’s: they have attacked Snowe, Specter and Chafee, and supported GOP scumbags Chambliss and Bachmann; their violations in such efforts earned them a $350,000 FEC fine. They will probably go after Crist, and they could go after Huckabee too since they savaged him in 2008 over his “liberal” record in Arkansas . That’s how crazy these people are: a guy who wanted to put HIV patients in concentration camps, and who repeated the wingnut meme that moderation is unacceptable, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-evolution…is too liberal.
The teabaggers will hold a huge convention in Nashville in February – in the geographical center of Planet Wingnut. They are trying to pin down Palin as keynote speaker. The aim is to prepare and network for 2010 tea parties.
Two more signs about how out of touch the wingnuts are. First, recent polling shows that support for the GOP outside the south is down to a toxic 7-10 percent. But a recent CNN poll shows that even in the south, 57 percent said Obama did a better job than Bush. So even down south, Obama has some traction, and the wingnuts still have work to do even in their own backyard.
And another sign of how the non-insane part of America has rejected the wingnuts: the latest from CNN is that Joe Gaffe-A-Minute Biden has poll approvals that are 24 points higher than Cheney’s, despite the year-long Cheney family “Daddy was right and torture is good” tour.
And here is what election day did NOT mean.
One must ask how Republicans can be celebrating NY 23 when their candidate was driven out of the race: not only did they fail to deliver the conservative message with sufficient force, but the guy who did deliver it lost also. The real lesson from the election is two-fold: that people are really angry about the economy (which helped the GOP), and that regardless of party or ideology, lousy candidates lose. Deeds ran a lousy campaign in a red state and made liberal activists stay home with his centrist message, Corzine is a former CEO from the disgraced firm of Goldman Sachs, and Hoffman’s short time in the sun was riddled with stupidity: advocating the incredibly destructive and unworkable flat tax, “solving” the deficit problem by cutting pork and earmarks which only account for about 3 percent of the budget, screeching that ACORN had invaded his state and slashed an aide’s car (actually the idiot drove over a bottle), and allowing his storm troopers to illegally intimidate voters at the polls.
As for the notion that this is a referendum on Obama: sorry, but the folks at the polls said otherwise. Obama had nothing to do with it. In fact there were a lot of voters who like Obama but deserted Deeds and Corzine because they just didn’t like them. But in the end, the Democrats won two congressional races (one in a district that hasn’t gone blue in a century and a half), the GOP got two governorships, and there was a split on gay referenda, which sounds like a tie to me. And the tiebreaker is health care: Pelosi now has two more Democrats to secure a House majority for health care, whereas the two new governors are completely uninvolved in the biggest political battle of the year.
Another lesson from the voting: turnout! In 2008 the Obama hordes turned out. This year it was the teabaggers. Who will be motivated to show up in 2010? We know the teabaggers will show up. What about our team?
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Snowe belts the wingnuts for criticizing her
Snowe smacks down Pawlenty for implying she’s committed “deviations” from the party line:
"I've been a lifelong Republican -- I haven't changed, I don't know what the problem is -- I really don't….I know Gov. Pawlenty to be a thoughtful person and I know if he could have rephrased it or recharacterized it he would….All I know is that I've been a life-long Republican, I [spent] 16 years toiling in the minority in the House of Representatives and [was part of] the effort to get us the majority in 1994 -- now were in the minority and I'm still here….So, I don't know -- I think they could probably borrow more from me in that sense, in terms of being in touch with your constituents...I don't expect the national party organization to be a substitute for the people in Maine….We're a states' rights approach party and we should leave it at that... I think we've got to be inclusive in in the model of President Reagan...the big tent, I think that's what we have to be all about. I always think that we have to be flexible in accommodating a variety of views if we want to be a majority party in reflecting the spectrum across America."
Like I said months ago, Olympia needs to join the Democrats, and bring her friend Susan – the GOP clearly doesn’t want them, and will not let their voices be heard.
"I've been a lifelong Republican -- I haven't changed, I don't know what the problem is -- I really don't….I know Gov. Pawlenty to be a thoughtful person and I know if he could have rephrased it or recharacterized it he would….All I know is that I've been a life-long Republican, I [spent] 16 years toiling in the minority in the House of Representatives and [was part of] the effort to get us the majority in 1994 -- now were in the minority and I'm still here….So, I don't know -- I think they could probably borrow more from me in that sense, in terms of being in touch with your constituents...I don't expect the national party organization to be a substitute for the people in Maine….We're a states' rights approach party and we should leave it at that... I think we've got to be inclusive in in the model of President Reagan...the big tent, I think that's what we have to be all about. I always think that we have to be flexible in accommodating a variety of views if we want to be a majority party in reflecting the spectrum across America."
Like I said months ago, Olympia needs to join the Democrats, and bring her friend Susan – the GOP clearly doesn’t want them, and will not let their voices be heard.
Four 2012 GOP hopefuls crippled in GOP purge
The media, for some reason, is trying to focus solely on Virginia and New Jersey today so they can portray today’s voting as a negative referendum on Obama, an idea so idiotic that poll respondents have refuted it repeatedly and even Haley Barbour shot it down. They are neatly ignoring all the other races today (including a California race which is veering sharply to the left). The obvious exception is the New York race which is a lulu. Hoffman is being exposed as an ignorant flat-tax rube who admits that Glenn Beck is his mentor, and the teabagger effort to preemptively scream “FRAUD” in the New York race was undermined when their own troops were caught harassing voters with anti-abortion chants at the voting sites; the cops had to be called in. Imagine if this had been skeery negro Democrats carrying on at the polling places like that – you can just imagine the wingnut howling. But it’s okay when THEY break the law.
The Palin-Rush wing of the GOP, and Freedomworks leader Dick Armey, want to purge moderates from the party. One strategist said that if Hoffman wins, the effort will “metastasize”. They think they’re defending the Constitution and that it’s time to “take back America ” from that furrin black feller, and the moderates just get in the way. Their argument is that it is the moderates who are disloyal to the party because they are disloyal to…the conservatives; they really don’t perceive any disloyalty in their recent sabotaging of their own candidate Scozzafava or their attacks on fellow Republicans, because for them their delusional ideology is even more important that the party itself. They believe that the party establishment values compromise, electability, winning and retaining power more than purity and principle, and they would rather lose than compromise (Good! Leave the winning to us!). They not only reject the Reagan-era sentiment that Republicans don’t attack each other, but also the Rove/Atwater theory that, although focusing on the base is good, the aim is to get to 50 percent plus 1 and just win, baby.
It sounds as though the wingnuts want to retain control over the GOP rather than starting over with a third party. The aim is to launch primary challenges against any Republican candidate who doesn’t obey them in all things, or, worse, cooperates with Obama and the Democrats. They have already prepared challenges for more than a dozen races. They don’t understand that such a strategy is even more impractical for congressional races than it is for presidential races: the primary fights will waste money and will drive candidates to the right and make them unelectable, even in a year like 2010 which was supposed to be the GOP’s year before the wingnuts launched their revolution. The real irony is that it is unnecessary: if the GOP had stuck by Scozzafava and sent her to the Hill, she surely would have been a loyal servant of Boehner like all the other GOP members, because the Republicans, unlike the Democrats, have firm party discipline. So there was no need to toss her out – they screwed her over just to prove they could.
So who are the wingnuts targeting for destruction? Everybody. Conservatives who are deemed to liberal, for any or no reason; conservatives who supported the stimulus or the bailout; who are pro-choice; who supported Bush’s big-spending ways; who dare to even talk to Democrats about health care; who preach pragmatism; who support compromise and reject extremism; who supported Scozzafava; who don’t support the anti-moderate purge itself.
The extraordinary thing here, is that in a very short time, this wingnut revolution has damaged no less than four strong presidential candidates for the GOP. Newt Gingrich, the Godfather of the conservative revolution, is now being targeted, and so is Mitt Romney (with all his flipflopping and his vaguely Marxist record in Massachussetts I’m not surprised). But the more fascinating victims of all this are, ironically, Sarah Palin herself, and Tim Pawlenty.
The New York conflagration has reminded all of America about the incredible destruction which Palin can wreak upon the GOP whenever she jumps into a political fight. She joins the GOP ticket and quickly sinks the McCain campaign. She jumps into the health reform debate screeching about “death panels” and makes the entire conservative movement look like fools. And now she has stepped into the New York race and launched the purge of GOP moderates. How much more damage can she do to the GOP, before somebody from the GOP establishment puts a bullet in her head some murky night? The problem being that there may not BE a GOP establishment left much longer.
The rise of the wingnuts has also made another potential president look really, really bad. One guy who got the message loud and clear when the wingnuts waved their switchblades in his face was Tim Pawlenty. Here’s moderate, centrist Timmy a few months ago, talking about the need for Republicans to reach out to women and minorities, and to come up with their own solutions rather than just tearing down everything the Democrats do:
“Ronald Reagan was president a long time ago. A lot has happened since then. So the challenge for us is how do you take the principles from the late ’70s and ’80s and apply them to the circumstances and issues and opportunities of our time.”
During the summer Pawlenty began to feel the heat from the right, and like Romney before him, began flipflopping: he flipped on climate change, he condemned the stimulus package and then bragged about getting the money, and was forced to backtrack after mouthing off in favor of secession.
Recently Pawlenty was supporting Scozzafava, but now he’s a changed man: he never even heard of Scozzafava. And he’s starting to talk about litmus tests for “real” Republicans: “Well, you can’t be for card check, you can’t get endorsed by ACORN, you can’t support the stimulus bill, you can’t be for bank bailouts, that would be a starting point, Chuck. But if you’re for all those things, you’re probably not a Republican.” Palin couldn’t have said it better. He also refused to express any respect for the now-toxic Olympia Snowe (she has actual conversations with Democrats!). Great! One more GOP presidential hopeful is now unelectable.
So this purge has damaged Newt and Romney, and has made Palin and Pawlenty look foolish for going along with it. For that matter, it will probably ding Huckabee once the wingnuts find out how liberal his record as governor was.
The key thing to remember is this: no Republican can go far enough to the right to win the acceptance of the wingnuts in the primaries, and still be far enough to the left to win the general election.
There are, in fact, some voices of reason in the GOP. Some non-wingnut conservatives are lamenting that the quest for simon-pure ideological purity is a sure way to shrink the GOP down to nothing: the wingnuts refuse to accept that their views are minority views, and that the party needs moderates, but Gingrich, Boehner, Tom Davis and others say they want moderates in the party. Conservative blogger Rick Moran was blunt: “the Anti-Reason Conservatives - those who reject reality in favor of persecution complexes, wildly exaggerated hyperbole, and a frightening need for vengeance against their imagined “enemies” - despite the fact that those imagined foes agree with them on virtually everything they think they stand for.” If the wingnuts retain power in the party and purge the apostates, could the moderates, instead of joining the Democrats, form a centrist third party? THAT is what Obama and Emanuel are probably watching for, and why they are tacking to the right.
Some in the media are trying to take the “two sides to every story” line, asserting an equivalence between the two parties when that has proven untrue so many times. They assert that the far left could do to Obama what the far right is doing to the GOP establishment. They forget that the progressives showed, all summer, a willingness to compromise, to get things done. They even tolerated Lieberman’s repeated betrayals (although he really is on his ninth life). And the Democrats still have a centrist wing – the GOP, not so much.
The Palin-Rush wing of the GOP, and Freedomworks leader Dick Armey, want to purge moderates from the party. One strategist said that if Hoffman wins, the effort will “metastasize”. They think they’re defending the Constitution and that it’s time to “take back America ” from that furrin black feller, and the moderates just get in the way. Their argument is that it is the moderates who are disloyal to the party because they are disloyal to…the conservatives; they really don’t perceive any disloyalty in their recent sabotaging of their own candidate Scozzafava or their attacks on fellow Republicans, because for them their delusional ideology is even more important that the party itself. They believe that the party establishment values compromise, electability, winning and retaining power more than purity and principle, and they would rather lose than compromise (Good! Leave the winning to us!). They not only reject the Reagan-era sentiment that Republicans don’t attack each other, but also the Rove/Atwater theory that, although focusing on the base is good, the aim is to get to 50 percent plus 1 and just win, baby.
It sounds as though the wingnuts want to retain control over the GOP rather than starting over with a third party. The aim is to launch primary challenges against any Republican candidate who doesn’t obey them in all things, or, worse, cooperates with Obama and the Democrats. They have already prepared challenges for more than a dozen races. They don’t understand that such a strategy is even more impractical for congressional races than it is for presidential races: the primary fights will waste money and will drive candidates to the right and make them unelectable, even in a year like 2010 which was supposed to be the GOP’s year before the wingnuts launched their revolution. The real irony is that it is unnecessary: if the GOP had stuck by Scozzafava and sent her to the Hill, she surely would have been a loyal servant of Boehner like all the other GOP members, because the Republicans, unlike the Democrats, have firm party discipline. So there was no need to toss her out – they screwed her over just to prove they could.
So who are the wingnuts targeting for destruction? Everybody. Conservatives who are deemed to liberal, for any or no reason; conservatives who supported the stimulus or the bailout; who are pro-choice; who supported Bush’s big-spending ways; who dare to even talk to Democrats about health care; who preach pragmatism; who support compromise and reject extremism; who supported Scozzafava; who don’t support the anti-moderate purge itself.
The extraordinary thing here, is that in a very short time, this wingnut revolution has damaged no less than four strong presidential candidates for the GOP. Newt Gingrich, the Godfather of the conservative revolution, is now being targeted, and so is Mitt Romney (with all his flipflopping and his vaguely Marxist record in Massachussetts I’m not surprised). But the more fascinating victims of all this are, ironically, Sarah Palin herself, and Tim Pawlenty.
The New York conflagration has reminded all of America about the incredible destruction which Palin can wreak upon the GOP whenever she jumps into a political fight. She joins the GOP ticket and quickly sinks the McCain campaign. She jumps into the health reform debate screeching about “death panels” and makes the entire conservative movement look like fools. And now she has stepped into the New York race and launched the purge of GOP moderates. How much more damage can she do to the GOP, before somebody from the GOP establishment puts a bullet in her head some murky night? The problem being that there may not BE a GOP establishment left much longer.
The rise of the wingnuts has also made another potential president look really, really bad. One guy who got the message loud and clear when the wingnuts waved their switchblades in his face was Tim Pawlenty. Here’s moderate, centrist Timmy a few months ago, talking about the need for Republicans to reach out to women and minorities, and to come up with their own solutions rather than just tearing down everything the Democrats do:
“Ronald Reagan was president a long time ago. A lot has happened since then. So the challenge for us is how do you take the principles from the late ’70s and ’80s and apply them to the circumstances and issues and opportunities of our time.”
During the summer Pawlenty began to feel the heat from the right, and like Romney before him, began flipflopping: he flipped on climate change, he condemned the stimulus package and then bragged about getting the money, and was forced to backtrack after mouthing off in favor of secession.
Recently Pawlenty was supporting Scozzafava, but now he’s a changed man: he never even heard of Scozzafava. And he’s starting to talk about litmus tests for “real” Republicans: “Well, you can’t be for card check, you can’t get endorsed by ACORN, you can’t support the stimulus bill, you can’t be for bank bailouts, that would be a starting point, Chuck. But if you’re for all those things, you’re probably not a Republican.” Palin couldn’t have said it better. He also refused to express any respect for the now-toxic Olympia Snowe (she has actual conversations with Democrats!). Great! One more GOP presidential hopeful is now unelectable.
So this purge has damaged Newt and Romney, and has made Palin and Pawlenty look foolish for going along with it. For that matter, it will probably ding Huckabee once the wingnuts find out how liberal his record as governor was.
The key thing to remember is this: no Republican can go far enough to the right to win the acceptance of the wingnuts in the primaries, and still be far enough to the left to win the general election.
There are, in fact, some voices of reason in the GOP. Some non-wingnut conservatives are lamenting that the quest for simon-pure ideological purity is a sure way to shrink the GOP down to nothing: the wingnuts refuse to accept that their views are minority views, and that the party needs moderates, but Gingrich, Boehner, Tom Davis and others say they want moderates in the party. Conservative blogger Rick Moran was blunt: “the Anti-Reason Conservatives - those who reject reality in favor of persecution complexes, wildly exaggerated hyperbole, and a frightening need for vengeance against their imagined “enemies” - despite the fact that those imagined foes agree with them on virtually everything they think they stand for.” If the wingnuts retain power in the party and purge the apostates, could the moderates, instead of joining the Democrats, form a centrist third party? THAT is what Obama and Emanuel are probably watching for, and why they are tacking to the right.
Some in the media are trying to take the “two sides to every story” line, asserting an equivalence between the two parties when that has proven untrue so many times. They assert that the far left could do to Obama what the far right is doing to the GOP establishment. They forget that the progressives showed, all summer, a willingness to compromise, to get things done. They even tolerated Lieberman’s repeated betrayals (although he really is on his ninth life). And the Democrats still have a centrist wing – the GOP, not so much.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Fort Sumter in the GOP civil war
The yahoos have fired on Fort Sumter, and the civil war has begun.
Back in the old days it was enough for Republicans to attack centrist Democrats like Clinton, so that no Blue Dog could command the political center and marginalize the GOP. But now the GOP wingnuts are going much further, purging their own ranks like the Khmer Rouge did, and the KGB, and the Jacobins of the French Revolution. In their zeal to win the civil war within the GOP, they even attack perfectly conservative Republicans who make the mistake of incurring their wrath. This political pressure could end up pushing BOTH political parties to the right.
The Republican wingnuts have spent eight years on a “RINO hunt”, driving moderates like Chafee, Jeffords and Specter out of the party (they would have nailed Colin Powell if he hadn’t retired); Snowe is trying to fix the GOP from with in, but people like her and Collins are being targeted also. The wingnuts have openly expressed contempt for moderates, they actually cheered when some moderate Republicans lost in 2008, and they are setting up primary challenges and even general election challenges against Republicans with insufficient zeal for extremism. They specifically targeted Scozzafava in New York because she was pro-choice.
They are not stopping at moderate Republicans, either. Even perfectly-reliable conservatives have felt their wrath. They slammed Bush and McCain for betraying conservatism. They attacked rock-ribbed conservatives like John Cornyn and Jon Huntsman, they targeted Lindsey Graham (the guy who impeached Clinton!) for preaching pragmatism, and “treasonous” Snowe and Bob Bennet for daring to even talk to Democrats on health care, Gingrich for endorsing Scozzafava up in New York, the GOP Congressional leadership for not being extreme enough, and Charlie Crist (could he switch parties?). If Reagan, who reached out to Democrats and labor, were still around, they would probably target him too.
They are pushing policies which antagonize entire sectors of the electorate: blacks, Hispanics, women, gays; they warned that Republican Senators who didn’t block the Sotomayor nomination would be driven out of the party just like Specter.
Usually the issues which drive third-party efforts are swallowed up by one of the larger parties; by that logic, the issues raised by the wingnut teabaggers would be taken over by the GOP. But the wingnuts have already insisted that they have no intention of letting that happen. So the wingnuts are not going to just make peace with the GOP and fade away into the mist. They fully intend to rule a political movement, and if it ain’t the GOP, they clearly will create their own.
The Republican leaders are pragmatists who like winning: Gingrich, Steele and Boehner endorsed Scozzafava, McConnell is willing to tack to the left to get a win, and Steele is trying in his own goofy way to reach out to blacks. The leadership knows they have enough problems already: support for their party outside the South is down to 7-10 percent and dropping, and they are now being attacked from both left and right. Their major voices are aimed at each other: Savage fights with Beck, Limbaugh fights with Steele, Dobbs fights with John Stossel. And they now face the dangerous choice of either running to the left and rejecting the wingnuts, who form the party base and control the party’s direction, or running to the right and rejecting the centrists, moderates and independents who elect all our presidents.
Logic dictates that they go left: one strategist even advocates a radical restructuring of the presidential primary process, to prevent the extremely likely event of a far-right wingnut like Huckabee or Palin winning the nomination but losing the general election badly. But for the most part, the GOP leaders not only refuse to accept that America has rejected the doctrines of Reagan (now that Reagan is no longer around to sell it and the GOP simply has no one left remotely like him), but they are also terrified of antagonizing the wingnut movement they created. They are beginning to realize that their control over the wingnuts has now passed into the hands of people like Rush Limbaugh, who can slap around guys like Michael Steele whenever he wants. The party leaders no longer even have the courage to point out the potential dangers of going so far to the right.
So, to the right they will go. Steele admitted that they want moderate votes but not moderate voices; Huckabee has rejected moderation, and Pawlenty is belatedly singing from the wingnut sheet music also. The congressional Republicans will tack to the right to forestall challenges from the wingnuts in the 2010 elections, and people like Snowe have little room to maneuver on the public option. This will cost them the voters they need for general elections – independents, blacks, women, Latinos. And moderate Republicans.
Obama signaled long ago how he was going to play this. He is has taken centrist positions on Bush’s policies, tax cuts, FISA, the hunt for bin Laden, free-market economics, merit pay for teachers, nuclear power, faith-based programs, government waste, policy on Israel and Iran, gun control, the death penalty, evangelicals, the Patriot Act, and Guantanamo. This suggests that he could also swing to the right on health reform: if he has a chance to sign a health bill that is actually good, but also philosophically centrist, he has a better chance of scooping up most of America’s centrists and independents, destroying the GOP, and then going back and getting more health reform later. In such a context, the notion of Snowe’s trigger plan doesn’t seem so crazy, as long as the worst policy flaws are fixed therein. Obama could also alternate between tacking left and right on cap-and-trade (which is already splitting the Democratic caucus anyway), gay issues, and immigration. He can also reach out to moderates and give Snowe and Collins a chance to get their voices heard. And of course continue to slap down all the lies when Rush and the wingnut gang spew them, because the media are afraid to do it. His main risk is avoiding the prospect of going too far to the right, so as to keep the far-left wing of the party from splitting off and Nadering him like Nader did to Gore: if the left gets screwed on health care, Obama will need to throw them some bones, and fast, to ensure both loyalty and turnout in 2010.
So the GOP will continue to slide to the right, away from the sentiments of most American voters, and then Obama will also slide to the right, and park in the center, where all political battles are won. Already, the gap between the GOP wingnut faithful and the rest of the country was so wide that McCain was unable to bridge the gap with his vice-presidential choice: his staff told him that the party would reject a moderate selection like Ridge, forcing him to go with Palin. But now the gap between the GOP and the rest of America will be Grand-Canyon-gigantic.
If the Republican leaders do try to resist the slide to the right, the wingnuts could fight back by taking the Hoffman-Scozzafava squabble national, now that the New York adventure has shown them that it’s possible: forming a national Conservative party, building on Armey’s teabagger infrastructure, siphoning off the GOP’s campaign troops and money, and presumably trying to find some national leaders who don’t look as insane as their rank and file. In 2010 watch for them to begin organizing in the spring, praying for bad unemployment performance, and working to ensure that the congressional seats in the red states go to true-blue wingnuts, not the hated moderates.
In 2012 the Republicans face at least two major dangers. First, if the wingnuts dominate the Republican primaries and nominate one of their own like Huckabee; moderate Republicans point out, in vain, that nominating said wingnut will hurt them in the electoral college, particularly since Obama quite obviously never did all the crazy things the wingnuts warned about in 2008, but the wingnuts ignore them and proceed with their Huckabee/Pawlenty ticket or whatever, and lose badly. Secondly, if, for example, the Republican primary voters don’t pick Palin, which is very likely, then Palin, faced with the choice of a third-party run or political oblivion, could Go Rogue and lead the Conservative Party, or some new face could run on the Conservative ticket. That would lead to a debacle of biblical proportions in the electoral college – Obama might lose Utah and that’s about it.
And the Republicans face more danger down the road. Right now the Obama factor is driving every category of wingnut crazy, but as the years go by, people will realize that the Obama Marxist Terrorist Apocalypse isn’t really coming as promised, and then in seven years the Democrats will nominate a couple of white guys, blunting one of the GOP’s most potent weapons, racist fear – all while the oldest, nuttiest wingnuts age off the system and reduce the GOP demographic even further. The Republicans will try to emerge beyond their far-right southern base and reach out to moderates in the north and west, only to find that Obama has rounded them up already (that said, however, the Scozzafava-Hoffman-Owen race happened a long way from Dixie).
Back in the old days it was enough for Republicans to attack centrist Democrats like Clinton, so that no Blue Dog could command the political center and marginalize the GOP. But now the GOP wingnuts are going much further, purging their own ranks like the Khmer Rouge did, and the KGB, and the Jacobins of the French Revolution. In their zeal to win the civil war within the GOP, they even attack perfectly conservative Republicans who make the mistake of incurring their wrath. This political pressure could end up pushing BOTH political parties to the right.
The Republican wingnuts have spent eight years on a “RINO hunt”, driving moderates like Chafee, Jeffords and Specter out of the party (they would have nailed Colin Powell if he hadn’t retired); Snowe is trying to fix the GOP from with in, but people like her and Collins are being targeted also. The wingnuts have openly expressed contempt for moderates, they actually cheered when some moderate Republicans lost in 2008, and they are setting up primary challenges and even general election challenges against Republicans with insufficient zeal for extremism. They specifically targeted Scozzafava in New York because she was pro-choice.
They are not stopping at moderate Republicans, either. Even perfectly-reliable conservatives have felt their wrath. They slammed Bush and McCain for betraying conservatism. They attacked rock-ribbed conservatives like John Cornyn and Jon Huntsman, they targeted Lindsey Graham (the guy who impeached Clinton!) for preaching pragmatism, and “treasonous” Snowe and Bob Bennet for daring to even talk to Democrats on health care, Gingrich for endorsing Scozzafava up in New York, the GOP Congressional leadership for not being extreme enough, and Charlie Crist (could he switch parties?). If Reagan, who reached out to Democrats and labor, were still around, they would probably target him too.
They are pushing policies which antagonize entire sectors of the electorate: blacks, Hispanics, women, gays; they warned that Republican Senators who didn’t block the Sotomayor nomination would be driven out of the party just like Specter.
Usually the issues which drive third-party efforts are swallowed up by one of the larger parties; by that logic, the issues raised by the wingnut teabaggers would be taken over by the GOP. But the wingnuts have already insisted that they have no intention of letting that happen. So the wingnuts are not going to just make peace with the GOP and fade away into the mist. They fully intend to rule a political movement, and if it ain’t the GOP, they clearly will create their own.
The Republican leaders are pragmatists who like winning: Gingrich, Steele and Boehner endorsed Scozzafava, McConnell is willing to tack to the left to get a win, and Steele is trying in his own goofy way to reach out to blacks. The leadership knows they have enough problems already: support for their party outside the South is down to 7-10 percent and dropping, and they are now being attacked from both left and right. Their major voices are aimed at each other: Savage fights with Beck, Limbaugh fights with Steele, Dobbs fights with John Stossel. And they now face the dangerous choice of either running to the left and rejecting the wingnuts, who form the party base and control the party’s direction, or running to the right and rejecting the centrists, moderates and independents who elect all our presidents.
Logic dictates that they go left: one strategist even advocates a radical restructuring of the presidential primary process, to prevent the extremely likely event of a far-right wingnut like Huckabee or Palin winning the nomination but losing the general election badly. But for the most part, the GOP leaders not only refuse to accept that America has rejected the doctrines of Reagan (now that Reagan is no longer around to sell it and the GOP simply has no one left remotely like him), but they are also terrified of antagonizing the wingnut movement they created. They are beginning to realize that their control over the wingnuts has now passed into the hands of people like Rush Limbaugh, who can slap around guys like Michael Steele whenever he wants. The party leaders no longer even have the courage to point out the potential dangers of going so far to the right.
So, to the right they will go. Steele admitted that they want moderate votes but not moderate voices; Huckabee has rejected moderation, and Pawlenty is belatedly singing from the wingnut sheet music also. The congressional Republicans will tack to the right to forestall challenges from the wingnuts in the 2010 elections, and people like Snowe have little room to maneuver on the public option. This will cost them the voters they need for general elections – independents, blacks, women, Latinos. And moderate Republicans.
Obama signaled long ago how he was going to play this. He is has taken centrist positions on Bush’s policies, tax cuts, FISA, the hunt for bin Laden, free-market economics, merit pay for teachers, nuclear power, faith-based programs, government waste, policy on Israel and Iran, gun control, the death penalty, evangelicals, the Patriot Act, and Guantanamo. This suggests that he could also swing to the right on health reform: if he has a chance to sign a health bill that is actually good, but also philosophically centrist, he has a better chance of scooping up most of America’s centrists and independents, destroying the GOP, and then going back and getting more health reform later. In such a context, the notion of Snowe’s trigger plan doesn’t seem so crazy, as long as the worst policy flaws are fixed therein. Obama could also alternate between tacking left and right on cap-and-trade (which is already splitting the Democratic caucus anyway), gay issues, and immigration. He can also reach out to moderates and give Snowe and Collins a chance to get their voices heard. And of course continue to slap down all the lies when Rush and the wingnut gang spew them, because the media are afraid to do it. His main risk is avoiding the prospect of going too far to the right, so as to keep the far-left wing of the party from splitting off and Nadering him like Nader did to Gore: if the left gets screwed on health care, Obama will need to throw them some bones, and fast, to ensure both loyalty and turnout in 2010.
So the GOP will continue to slide to the right, away from the sentiments of most American voters, and then Obama will also slide to the right, and park in the center, where all political battles are won. Already, the gap between the GOP wingnut faithful and the rest of the country was so wide that McCain was unable to bridge the gap with his vice-presidential choice: his staff told him that the party would reject a moderate selection like Ridge, forcing him to go with Palin. But now the gap between the GOP and the rest of America will be Grand-Canyon-gigantic.
If the Republican leaders do try to resist the slide to the right, the wingnuts could fight back by taking the Hoffman-Scozzafava squabble national, now that the New York adventure has shown them that it’s possible: forming a national Conservative party, building on Armey’s teabagger infrastructure, siphoning off the GOP’s campaign troops and money, and presumably trying to find some national leaders who don’t look as insane as their rank and file. In 2010 watch for them to begin organizing in the spring, praying for bad unemployment performance, and working to ensure that the congressional seats in the red states go to true-blue wingnuts, not the hated moderates.
In 2012 the Republicans face at least two major dangers. First, if the wingnuts dominate the Republican primaries and nominate one of their own like Huckabee; moderate Republicans point out, in vain, that nominating said wingnut will hurt them in the electoral college, particularly since Obama quite obviously never did all the crazy things the wingnuts warned about in 2008, but the wingnuts ignore them and proceed with their Huckabee/Pawlenty ticket or whatever, and lose badly. Secondly, if, for example, the Republican primary voters don’t pick Palin, which is very likely, then Palin, faced with the choice of a third-party run or political oblivion, could Go Rogue and lead the Conservative Party, or some new face could run on the Conservative ticket. That would lead to a debacle of biblical proportions in the electoral college – Obama might lose Utah and that’s about it.
And the Republicans face more danger down the road. Right now the Obama factor is driving every category of wingnut crazy, but as the years go by, people will realize that the Obama Marxist Terrorist Apocalypse isn’t really coming as promised, and then in seven years the Democrats will nominate a couple of white guys, blunting one of the GOP’s most potent weapons, racist fear – all while the oldest, nuttiest wingnuts age off the system and reduce the GOP demographic even further. The Republicans will try to emerge beyond their far-right southern base and reach out to moderates in the north and west, only to find that Obama has rounded them up already (that said, however, the Scozzafava-Hoffman-Owen race happened a long way from Dixie).
Sunday, 1 November 2009
GOP abandoning moderates for the 2010 race
The wingnuts hate moderate Republicans almost as much as they hate Obama: they are deliberately attacking the centrists. Scozzafava would have held the seat for the GOP in NY, but Hoffman hated that idea so much that he took her on in a third-party run, risking time, money, reputation, career because the fight was worth fighting.
The wingnuts ran off Specter, they put in Hoffman even though he’s a clueless out-of-towner who can’t even field questions from the media, they are attacking Snowe, and if Hoffman wins they will be launching attacks against moderate Republicans across the country, thus accelerating the process of shoving the GOP so far to the right that in the end they will only have southern rural old white people – the cast of Hee Haw and that’s about it (or perhaps the cast of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).
Another thing that will accelerate the process of pushing Republican candidates to the right, is the fact that the national Republicans scrambled all over in their haste to support Hoffman instead of defending their own party nominee: with blazing speed Hoffman won the support of the Club For Growth, Kristol, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Bachman, the Wall Street Journal editors, Forbes, Santorum, Pawlenty, Beck, Rush, Hutchison, and lesser-known Republicans across the country.
The stunning thing is how far, and how fast, the GOP has moved to the right. Fifteen years ago Newt Gingrich was the Darth Vader of the far right, the Republican that Democrats loved to hate. Now, because Newt joined party leaders like Boehner and Steele in doing the sensible, expected thing of endorsing Scozzafava since she was the party’s nominee – now the true party faithful are screeching that Newt Gingrich is practically Chairman Mao.
Newt is now too liberal for the GOP base. Wow. He could actually be too liberal to win the GOP nomination in 2012!
Now, think about the ads the Democrats can run next summer:
“Hey, moderates, independents, centrists! The GOP and the wingnuts have declared war on you! They don’t want to hear your voices, they want to make you extinct! So come home to us! “
And THAT may be why Obama is playing footsie with Snowe, showing incredible patience with Lieberman, and thinking about giving in to the Blue Dogs on health reform. Sacrificing some ground on health care with an eye toward long-term strategy for 2010, 2012 and beyond.
“Look at us and our Big Tent! Your voices will be heard if you come over to our side!”
Hey, Newt, you can come too!...Um, maybe not.
Elsewhere on Planet Wingnut: Fox is showing how clearly they are owned by the GOP and the wingnuts, by giving Rush a half-hour platform from which to screech about Obama. I think that is great, because it shows Fox for what they are, and shows Rush for what HE is: he looks angrier, crazier, and sillier on television, which may be why he doesn’t make the obvious jump to TV. His physique is actually part of it: his chin wattles, neck wattles, arm wattles and beer gut shaking in every direction like an incredibly tacky Jello sculpture for a white-trash wedding, spittle flying in all directions, eyes bulging, as he hollers that Palin is ready for the White House and that the GOP is headed for disaster if it gives in to country-club moderates.
The new face of the GOP.
The wingnuts ran off Specter, they put in Hoffman even though he’s a clueless out-of-towner who can’t even field questions from the media, they are attacking Snowe, and if Hoffman wins they will be launching attacks against moderate Republicans across the country, thus accelerating the process of shoving the GOP so far to the right that in the end they will only have southern rural old white people – the cast of Hee Haw and that’s about it (or perhaps the cast of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).
Another thing that will accelerate the process of pushing Republican candidates to the right, is the fact that the national Republicans scrambled all over in their haste to support Hoffman instead of defending their own party nominee: with blazing speed Hoffman won the support of the Club For Growth, Kristol, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Bachman, the Wall Street Journal editors, Forbes, Santorum, Pawlenty, Beck, Rush, Hutchison, and lesser-known Republicans across the country.
The stunning thing is how far, and how fast, the GOP has moved to the right. Fifteen years ago Newt Gingrich was the Darth Vader of the far right, the Republican that Democrats loved to hate. Now, because Newt joined party leaders like Boehner and Steele in doing the sensible, expected thing of endorsing Scozzafava since she was the party’s nominee – now the true party faithful are screeching that Newt Gingrich is practically Chairman Mao.
Newt is now too liberal for the GOP base. Wow. He could actually be too liberal to win the GOP nomination in 2012!
Now, think about the ads the Democrats can run next summer:
“Hey, moderates, independents, centrists! The GOP and the wingnuts have declared war on you! They don’t want to hear your voices, they want to make you extinct! So come home to us! “
And THAT may be why Obama is playing footsie with Snowe, showing incredible patience with Lieberman, and thinking about giving in to the Blue Dogs on health reform. Sacrificing some ground on health care with an eye toward long-term strategy for 2010, 2012 and beyond.
“Look at us and our Big Tent! Your voices will be heard if you come over to our side!”
Hey, Newt, you can come too!...Um, maybe not.
Elsewhere on Planet Wingnut: Fox is showing how clearly they are owned by the GOP and the wingnuts, by giving Rush a half-hour platform from which to screech about Obama. I think that is great, because it shows Fox for what they are, and shows Rush for what HE is: he looks angrier, crazier, and sillier on television, which may be why he doesn’t make the obvious jump to TV. His physique is actually part of it: his chin wattles, neck wattles, arm wattles and beer gut shaking in every direction like an incredibly tacky Jello sculpture for a white-trash wedding, spittle flying in all directions, eyes bulging, as he hollers that Palin is ready for the White House and that the GOP is headed for disaster if it gives in to country-club moderates.
The new face of the GOP.
Saturday, 31 October 2009
Wingnuts: first take New York, then the nation!
The GOP thinks it can control the extremists, but German conservatives thought the same about controlling Hitler, and the Hoffman race in New York shows that the party cannot, in fact, control the wingnuts. Republican party leaders scrambled to switch their support to Hoffman and claim him for their own – ideology and pragmatism ironically worked together to overcome considerations of partisan loyalty. But that won’t be enough: the wingnuts are not just outpacing the moderates – they are deliberately targeting the “apostates” for extinction. Conservatives insist they’re trying to take back control of the GOP – as though the party wasn’t too far to the right already. So more RINO’s have bulls-eyes on their backs.
Supporters of the Hoffman’s moderate Republican rival support Obama 64-31, which suggests that Hoffman could lose. If Hoffman wins, he says he will caucus with the GOP, but simply having him enter Congress after slaughtering the chosen GOP nominee will cause shivers among the party faithful.
How will the wingnuts react nationally?
First we will take the Sudetenland! And then…the woooooorld!
Already the polls show that a generic congressional ballot, a Democrat-GOP tossup a month ago, now shows an 8-point gap in favour of Democratic candidates. Wingnuts are saying that the Hoffman race shows that they can beat moderate Republicans even in the northeast, and then try to take on the Democrats themselves, which must send shivers down the spines of the few remaining northern moderates like Snowe and Collins. These endangered centrists are afraid to run, or afraid of flank attacks during their races and even after they’ve won: the they now know they face potential primary challenges AND general election challenges from the right. Two other Republicans are facing challenges from the Conservative Party for House seats; wingnut Rubio is slowly catching up to moderate Crist in the Florida Senate race, and Kelly Ayotte has barely avoided a rightwing challenge in NH. So the moderates will tack to the right to defend themselves – but will it be enough to impede the challenges from the right? And does that in turn make them vulnerable on the left -- will that drive centrists into the arms of the Democrats?
What happens when a Conservative Party candidate takes the next step, winning a Senate or gubernatorial seat? Or something even bigger? This explosion could blow in a number of directions: big-name Republicans like Pawlenty could switch from the GOP to the new party, while nervous moderates like Snowe and Collins could defect to the Democratic party, decimating the GOP from both directions.
And that takes us to 2012. Could Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich or even Pawlenty decide to go for the Conservative Party’s presidential nomination if they don’t get the GOP nomination? Could we have two races, one for the GOP nomination and another for the third party, with some candidates potentially running in both? Polls show that half of America’s Republicans think Palin is unfit for the presidency, and those who supported Palin for 2012 are now switching their allegiance to the new polling leader, Huckabee (Pawlenty is getting no traction at all despite repeated efforts to suck up to the wingnuts). So Palin might be tempted to, what’s the phrase? Go rogue. Beck, lucid for once, first slammed Gingrich for supporting Hoffman’s third-party effort, but now he is warming up to the wingnut-party idea, and he thinks Palin will run on a third-party ticket.
The thing is, setting up a new party in time to run for the White House in 2012 is a huge undertaking, as Ross Perot found out in 1992. So watch for the preliminary maneuvers to play out next year.
Supporters of the Hoffman’s moderate Republican rival support Obama 64-31, which suggests that Hoffman could lose. If Hoffman wins, he says he will caucus with the GOP, but simply having him enter Congress after slaughtering the chosen GOP nominee will cause shivers among the party faithful.
How will the wingnuts react nationally?
First we will take the Sudetenland! And then…the woooooorld!
Already the polls show that a generic congressional ballot, a Democrat-GOP tossup a month ago, now shows an 8-point gap in favour of Democratic candidates. Wingnuts are saying that the Hoffman race shows that they can beat moderate Republicans even in the northeast, and then try to take on the Democrats themselves, which must send shivers down the spines of the few remaining northern moderates like Snowe and Collins. These endangered centrists are afraid to run, or afraid of flank attacks during their races and even after they’ve won: the they now know they face potential primary challenges AND general election challenges from the right. Two other Republicans are facing challenges from the Conservative Party for House seats; wingnut Rubio is slowly catching up to moderate Crist in the Florida Senate race, and Kelly Ayotte has barely avoided a rightwing challenge in NH. So the moderates will tack to the right to defend themselves – but will it be enough to impede the challenges from the right? And does that in turn make them vulnerable on the left -- will that drive centrists into the arms of the Democrats?
What happens when a Conservative Party candidate takes the next step, winning a Senate or gubernatorial seat? Or something even bigger? This explosion could blow in a number of directions: big-name Republicans like Pawlenty could switch from the GOP to the new party, while nervous moderates like Snowe and Collins could defect to the Democratic party, decimating the GOP from both directions.
And that takes us to 2012. Could Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich or even Pawlenty decide to go for the Conservative Party’s presidential nomination if they don’t get the GOP nomination? Could we have two races, one for the GOP nomination and another for the third party, with some candidates potentially running in both? Polls show that half of America’s Republicans think Palin is unfit for the presidency, and those who supported Palin for 2012 are now switching their allegiance to the new polling leader, Huckabee (Pawlenty is getting no traction at all despite repeated efforts to suck up to the wingnuts). So Palin might be tempted to, what’s the phrase? Go rogue. Beck, lucid for once, first slammed Gingrich for supporting Hoffman’s third-party effort, but now he is warming up to the wingnut-party idea, and he thinks Palin will run on a third-party ticket.
The thing is, setting up a new party in time to run for the White House in 2012 is a huge undertaking, as Ross Perot found out in 1992. So watch for the preliminary maneuvers to play out next year.
Friday, 30 October 2009
It’s official: the conservative movement is splitting into two parties
The Republicans are screeching that the likely McDonnell win in Virginia is a referendum on Obama – neatly ignoring the fact that (a) Virginia has been a red state in almost every election for the last half-century, and (b) in the same election the Republicans are likely to lose in New Jersey and collapsing into a bloody civil war in New York . Even more terrifying for Republicans, now that the teabaggers have turned the NY race upside down and hurt the GOP nominee, other teabag candidates elsewhere in America are thinking about attacking Republicans from the right. Bradley Rees in Virginia and Don Ryon in Ohio are running on the Conservative Party ticket just as the NY candidate did (Ryon is targeting a pro-choice Republican like the guy in NY). Another teabag candidate may soon pop up in Alabama. Watch for more “Conservative Party” eruptions in 2010.
Meanwhile Republicans are staring slack-jawed at Obama’s accomplishments, just from this week -- extending HIV treatment, lifting the HV travel ban, hate crimes legislation, stopping unnecessary boondoggle military programs, causing the first jump n GDP growth in two years, saving around close to a million direct and indirect jobs via the stimulus, public-option bills announced in both Houses, improving intelligence oversight, stopping abstinence-only funding, smart grid technology (thanks, Cesca!).
Also the birthers got seriously spanked in a California court. The judge not only dismissed the suit claiming that Obama was occupying the presidency illegally, but he also pointed out that no court can rule on the issue since only Congress can remove a sitting president. The judge also slammed the plaintiffs for flinging treason charges at the other judges who ruled similarly.
And a new poll shows that a huge majority of Americans – 58-18 – blames Bush, not Obama, for the recession. The source: Fox! Ouch!
Meanwhile Republicans are staring slack-jawed at Obama’s accomplishments, just from this week -- extending HIV treatment, lifting the HV travel ban, hate crimes legislation, stopping unnecessary boondoggle military programs, causing the first jump n GDP growth in two years, saving around close to a million direct and indirect jobs via the stimulus, public-option bills announced in both Houses, improving intelligence oversight, stopping abstinence-only funding, smart grid technology (thanks, Cesca!).
Also the birthers got seriously spanked in a California court. The judge not only dismissed the suit claiming that Obama was occupying the presidency illegally, but he also pointed out that no court can rule on the issue since only Congress can remove a sitting president. The judge also slammed the plaintiffs for flinging treason charges at the other judges who ruled similarly.
And a new poll shows that a huge majority of Americans – 58-18 – blames Bush, not Obama, for the recession. The source: Fox! Ouch!
Sunday, 25 October 2009
GOP pols hit the panic button
Republican pols call for radical surgery to prevent disaster in 2012:
Some Republicans are so horrified about the butt-whupping that they are clearly going to suffer in 2012, that they are proposing radical surgery on the whole party, to prevent the patient from dying on the table.
Mainstream Republicans are terrified that the wingnuts, dittoheads and teabaggers will once again dominate the GOP primaries and render up a wingnut nominee like Palin or Huckleberry in 2012, who will spend all summer emitting dangerous, frightening lunacy, culminating in a landslide defeat on a scale comparable to Hoover, Landon, Adlai Stevenson, Goldwater, McGovern, Mondale….
This race is three years away, but already the GOP leaders are going public with their panic.
The race in upstate New York, in which the wingnuts are defying the GOP nominee entirely, and supporting a third-party wingnut who threatens to throw the race to the Democrats, has caused sphincters to pucker through out the GOP.
Some Republicans (apparently including one at the Philadelphia Inquirer) are talking about rigging the primary system to give more power to big-state moderate Republicans, or creating a Democrat-style system of superdelegates who could stop the wingnuts from nominating some reactionary maniac. Their argument is that 2012 will be all about Obama, so even if the Republicans nominate a moderate, the wingnuts will still come out in droves to vote against Obama.
So, notwithstanding all the screaming from Fox and Rasmussen, who are arguing on no evidence whatsoever that Obama is on the ropes, Republican leaders know that they face not just a serious ass-kicking, but their most mortal danger since Watergate.
But there are a couple of problems here.
First, most Republicans refuse to admit they have a problem.
Second, seeking big-state moderate Republicans these days is like looking for a unicorn carrying the Holy Grail on his horn.
Third, finding some Jedi Council of superdelegates who have the guts to defy the wingnuts is just not going to happen – if they had the coglioni to defy the teabaggers, they would have done it by now. They still entertain the fantasy that they can control the wingnuts, just as German conservatives were confident that they could control Hitler. But all Boss Limbaugh has to do is growl, and the party leaders will come to his heel and lick his fat, veiny ankles.
And fourth, as that New York race shows, the GOP can’t go too far toward the center, because the wingnuts could split off from the party entirely. All they need is a leader – Palin, Buchanan, Roger Ailes, Ross Perot…Clearly, for this crowd, sanity is not a prerequisite. Like lower order mammals, they will simply follow the loudest voice (Rush, perhaps?).
In other words, Doctor Frankenstein (let’s call him Rove) realizes that his monster (let’s call him Rush) is galloping across the countryside throwing little girls into wells, but they have no plan to bring him down.
“He was supposed to be a thing of beauty! Not a monstrosity!”
Some Republicans are so horrified about the butt-whupping that they are clearly going to suffer in 2012, that they are proposing radical surgery on the whole party, to prevent the patient from dying on the table.
Mainstream Republicans are terrified that the wingnuts, dittoheads and teabaggers will once again dominate the GOP primaries and render up a wingnut nominee like Palin or Huckleberry in 2012, who will spend all summer emitting dangerous, frightening lunacy, culminating in a landslide defeat on a scale comparable to Hoover, Landon, Adlai Stevenson, Goldwater, McGovern, Mondale….
This race is three years away, but already the GOP leaders are going public with their panic.
The race in upstate New York, in which the wingnuts are defying the GOP nominee entirely, and supporting a third-party wingnut who threatens to throw the race to the Democrats, has caused sphincters to pucker through out the GOP.
Some Republicans (apparently including one at the Philadelphia Inquirer) are talking about rigging the primary system to give more power to big-state moderate Republicans, or creating a Democrat-style system of superdelegates who could stop the wingnuts from nominating some reactionary maniac. Their argument is that 2012 will be all about Obama, so even if the Republicans nominate a moderate, the wingnuts will still come out in droves to vote against Obama.
So, notwithstanding all the screaming from Fox and Rasmussen, who are arguing on no evidence whatsoever that Obama is on the ropes, Republican leaders know that they face not just a serious ass-kicking, but their most mortal danger since Watergate.
But there are a couple of problems here.
First, most Republicans refuse to admit they have a problem.
Second, seeking big-state moderate Republicans these days is like looking for a unicorn carrying the Holy Grail on his horn.
Third, finding some Jedi Council of superdelegates who have the guts to defy the wingnuts is just not going to happen – if they had the coglioni to defy the teabaggers, they would have done it by now. They still entertain the fantasy that they can control the wingnuts, just as German conservatives were confident that they could control Hitler. But all Boss Limbaugh has to do is growl, and the party leaders will come to his heel and lick his fat, veiny ankles.
And fourth, as that New York race shows, the GOP can’t go too far toward the center, because the wingnuts could split off from the party entirely. All they need is a leader – Palin, Buchanan, Roger Ailes, Ross Perot…Clearly, for this crowd, sanity is not a prerequisite. Like lower order mammals, they will simply follow the loudest voice (Rush, perhaps?).
In other words, Doctor Frankenstein (let’s call him Rove) realizes that his monster (let’s call him Rush) is galloping across the countryside throwing little girls into wells, but they have no plan to bring him down.
“He was supposed to be a thing of beauty! Not a monstrosity!”
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