Republicans & Conservatives

Tea Party vs. Two Party

mfinbh — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:10:29 -0500

The American two-party system is fracturing, as both sides are struggling with immense war debt, a crippled manufacturing base, and a Federal Reserve that is devaluating the currency in order to prop up financial institutions that gambled trillions and lost; their bets became our losses as they were “covered by the house”. Progressives have been decrying the centrist wishy-washiness of so many Democrats for years, and there was an outspoken expectation that once the Democrats were in power, new, more liberal parties could emerge to challenge the old-guard Democrats to veer left or be shown the door. The surprise is that the right beat them to it (and here's why that's fine...)

The Republican Party is imploding: many laughed as ½ term Gov. Sarah Palin walked away from her job in Alaska because she felt she could be more effective from outside government. Crazy? Foxy? Blithering idiot? None – and all – of the above; because La Palin has become the camera-ready face of the far right, and in the shallow world of contemporary media politics, that is about all it takes to grab attention (substance be damned).

Thus, the off-year special election in the 23rd congressional district of New York has given us a glimpse of the breakup of the Republican Party, as many of that party’s stalwarts have defected – following the Twittering Palin – to the Conservative Party, which has abandoned its longstanding tradition of simply endorsing the Republican, instead pushing a fairly conventional Republican out of the race. These conservatives mean business, and although they narrowly lost this race, don’t think for a minute that they won’t continue to pursue and fine-tune this method, forcing an ever purer version of the right’s hardcore ideology, previously reserved not for government, but for am talk radio.

Democrats should take no glee in the mess on the right, unless they play it right. It should be seen as a warning bell, because mainstream Democrats will be facing an enormous primary season push to the left in the coming month (with eleven months to go before the midterm elections). This week, MoveOn raised $2 million in pledges in one day to force the hand of the Democratic Party:

(from MoveOn solicitation letter 11/03/09)
"You tell us how much you'd give. Then, we make sure the media, Senate leadership, and conservative Democrats know just how many of us are willing to support a challenge against anyone who blocks reform. Hopefully, none of them actually do it, and health care gets an up-or-down vote.

But if the nightmare scenario happens, we'll encourage viable primary challengers to come forward, and if they do, make sure all of us who've pledged have a chance to support them. In other words, potential primary challengers will know there's a huge group of Americans who are ready to help. And conservative members of the Democratic Caucus will too."

This is an important move for the left, because there is an expressed intent to actively work within the Democratic Party, and that’s the key here. The effect of this effort won’t be the same in every district, and the Democratic Party could begin to rupture just as the Republicans have begun to do.

Where does it lead? Of course both sides would like to inject more ideological purity into their representation, but when there are four or six competing parties or factions, history has shown us that too often the worst hard-liners will win out.

Our currency is being devalued by a Federal Reserve using its power to prop up only the wealthiest investors (most of whom have moved their wealth out of this nation’s currency into high risk international trades), while millions more are going bankrupt and being put out of their homes and their jobs by the very institutions that were saved by the government (homes lost to foreclosure, jobs by the seized flow of credit that is killing small and mid-size companies). Many of the homeless and jobless now marching to the beat of Palin and her media tea party brigade find comfort in hate and scapegoating, worshiping a message of racial, ideological or even sexual purity.

We must heed history’s warnings. Millions of angry unemployed and displaced conservatives, given the direction of a charismatic leader (in today’s environment, probably from the media world), well-armed and hungry for power, can start a civil war. The contemporary American version would take the form of civil unrest and massive, coordinated riots, straining the resources of government authority.

There is activism and there is anarchy. Activism is the only civil approach. Let the Republicans fracture into two parties, but it is critical that liberals fix – and maintain – the Democratic Party, and thus retain a majority that can advance a progressive agenda. We must not allow a party schism to occur in the Democratic Party.

Please Join the conversation at http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/24771

Obamanologues at Flashpoint

obamanologues — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:26:07 -0400

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Obamanologues at Flashpoint
Theater (916 G Street NW,
Washington DC)

Written by R.M. Peete

Directed by
R.M. Peete

September 25
at 7 p.m.

September 26 at 7
p.m.

September 27 at 2
p.m.

September 30 –
October 3 at 7 p.m.

October 4 at 2 p.m.

October 7 at 7 p.m.

October 8 at 8:30
p.m.

October 9 – 10 at 7
p.m.

October 11 at 2 p.m.

[Pay-What-You-Can Previews: September 23 and 24 at
7:00 p.m.]
Tickets: available www.obamanologues.com and at the door

Ten, twenty, or thirty years from now, what
will you recall about the election of President Barack Obama?

Obamanologues provides a unique, historical account of a
one-of-a-kind event in U.S.
history with characters that represent diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds,
political affiliations, and socioeconomic groups.

With stories ranging from conversational
to rebellious to scholarly, Obamanologues
depicts emotions and behaviors displayed
by people in living rooms, classrooms, bus stops, and churches throughout the country.

This political theatre production is one
you do not want to miss!

GOP Divide: Big Mouths v. Big Money

Bob Fertik — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:35:10 -0400

Josh Marshall highlights the deep divide within the GOP that has been exposed by Sonia Sotomayor's nomination:

a key dilemma for the GOP in the early Obama era is that they are increasingly divided between people who want to get the party back into the business of winning elections and ultras who want to go totally off the deep end with often extreme rhetoric and quests for ideological purity. What's more, these 'pragmatists, for lack of a better word, are cowed by the ultras because in a shrunken GOP the ultras make up a much larger percentage of the party.

The truth though is that taxes and fiscal policy, while key issues for conservatives, simply aren't visceral and divisive in anywhere near the way race and gender are. So while this schism has been there for months, the Sotomayor battle -- still only three days old -- has thrown gasoline on the fire and intensified the rift dramatically.

Battles between "pragmatists" and "ideologues" are not unusual - they probably exist within every political party in every country. Many progressives recall the famous fights within the German Greens between the realists (realos) and fundamentalists (fundis).

For Republicans, it's a battle between Big Mouths (led by Rush) and Big Money (led by the Bush Mafia, whose capo di tutti capi is now Jeb Bush.)

Usually the "pragmatists" have an edge in these battles. Pragmatists usually win because they have more staying power. Ideologues are usually hot-tempered and therefore burn out faster.

What's unusual about the current GOP battle is that the "ideologues" are vastly more powerful than the "pragmatists." It's not remotely an equal battle - it's a rout.

For all his many flaws, Rush isn't the burnout type. He lives for ideological warfare and thrives on it. Not only does he get an Olympic-size ego boost every single day, he also makes a fortune. And the more attention he gets, the more he makes. So if Rush is at the center of an argument, he can never lose by definition. Instead he gets to laugh all the way to the bank.

And the joke is on the Republican Party, which will always lose.

If empathy wasn't a thought crime, I could almost empathize with the poor GOP...

Torture Supporters

Bob Fertik — Sun, 17 May 2009 12:37:57 -0400

Torture is what distinguishes civilization from barbarism. It is a moral issue that allows no compromise. Who supports torture, or refuses to oppose it?

Institutions

Wall Street Journal (1/6/09)
Washington Post (1/7/09,1/10/09)

"Pundits" and "Experts"

Fred Barnes @ Murdoch (1/11/09)
Bradley Blakeman @ GOP (12/18/08)
Steven Calabresi @ Federalist Society (11/26/08,12/18/08)
Tucker Carlson (12/1/08)
Lee Casey @ GHWB (2/17/09)
Linda Chavez @ Bush (12/21/07)
Liz Cheney (5/17/09)
Alan Dershowitz @ Wall St Journal (9/12/08,1/16/09)
Erick Erickson @ Redstate (1/11/09)
Charles Fried @ Reagan (1/11/09)
Frank Gaffney (1/23/09)
John Gibson @ Fox (11/21/07)
Jack Goldsmith @ Bush DoJ (11/25/08)
Stephen Hayes (5/16/09)
Daniel Henninger @ WSJ (1/15/09)
Charles Krauthammer @ WP (5/15/09)
Bill Kristol (11/29/08)
Andrew McCarthy @ National Review (12/29/08,1/6/09)
Judith Miller (5/16/09)
Peggy Noonan (4/19/09)
Bill O'Reilly (1/14/09,1/28/09, 1/29/09,2/12/09)
David Rivkin @ GHWB (2/17/09)
Joe Scarborough @ MSNBC (5/19/09,5/22/09)
Steve Steckler (11/26/08,12/18/08)
Stuart Taylor Jr. @ everywhere(7/12/08,11/20/08,12/5/08,12/9/08, 1/11/09)
Marc Thiessen @ Bush (1/22/09, 2/12/09)
Victoria Toensing (5/16/09)
Evan Thomas @ Newsweek (1/14/09)
George Will (4/19/09)

Elected and Party Officials

Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) (2/6/09, 2/20/09)
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) (2/6/09)
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) (5/24/09)
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) (5/17/09)

Michael Steele, RNC Chair (5/17/09)

MO Rep. Brian Nieves (5/17/09)

A Brief History of Political Hatred

Bob Fertik — Mon, 04 May 2009 06:51:40 -0400

This morning Joe Scarborough had a segment that was unconsciously amazing. He replayed a comment he made on yesterday's Meet The Press about how deeply the Republican Base hates President Obama - and how counterproductive that hatred is for the Republican Party. "You can't scare children and dogs," he said. Then he explored that topic with his Morning Jo(k)ers.

Scarborough tried to retrace the modern history of political hatred, but could only get as far as Clinton. He couldn't even remember the hate-mongering campaign that put Bill Clinton in office - the 1992 primary from the right by his own right-hand man, Pat Buchanan, against George H.W. Bush. "Peasants with pitchforks" was Buchanan's own description of his angry "populist" movement. Even though Buchanan lost the primaries, GHWB gave him (and Pat Robertson) the consolation prize of a primetime speech at the Republican Convention. Buchanan (and Robertson) used their time for angry anti-liberal "Culture War" hate speeches.

Continuing backwards, GHWB beat Mike Dukakis in 1988 by employing the infamous Lee Atwater, whose philosophy of politics was to savage his opponent as viciously as possible. Atwater's campaign featured the racist Willie Horton ads, perhaps the most vicious TV ad ever run.

Vicious TV ads began a decade earlier in 1978 with NCPAC - the National Conservative PAC - founded by John Terry Dolan, Charles Black and Roger Stone, with help from Richard Viguerie and Thomas F. Ellis. In the 1978 Senate campaign, NCPAC's shock ads "took out" veteran Democratic Senator Dick Clark. Thrilled with their initial results, they attacked six incumbents in 1980, and beat four - John Culver (IA), George McGovern (SD), Frank Church (ID), and Birch Bayh (IN). They narrowly missed Alan Cranston (CA) and Tom Eagleton (MO).

NCPAC proved that vicious personal attacks worked. While they started "outside" the Republican Party as an independent expenditure effort, their tactics were quickly adopted by the GOP itself and its candidates. In the 1990's, Newt Gingrich turned NCPAC's campaign messaging strategy into an everyday GOP dictionary of hatred through GOPAC.

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We Are a Majority," Language is listed as akey mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates, we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."

That takes years of practice. But we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that, like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used....

Contrasting Words

Often we search hard for words to help us define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

decay... failure (fail)... collapse(ing)... deeper... crisis... urgent(cy)... destructive... destroy... sick... pathetic... lie... liberal... they/them... unionized bureaucracy... "compassion" is not enough... betray... consequences... limit(s)... shallow... traitors... sensationalists...

endanger... coercion... hypocrisy... radical... threaten... devour... waste... corruption... incompetent... permissive attitudes... destructive... impose... self-serving... greed... ideological... insecure... anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs... pessimistic... excuses... intolerant...

stagnation... welfare... corrupt... selfish... insensitive... status quo... mandate(s)... taxes... spend(ing)... shame... disgrace... punish (poor...)... bizarre... cynicism... cheat... steal... abuse of power... machine... bosses... obsolete... criminal rights... red tape... patronage

Using these attack words, Gingrich led his Republican Revolutionaries - including Joe Scarborough - to power in 1994. Gingrich's rhetoric was powerfully amplified by rightwing talk radio, which also hit the national airwaves in 1994 with Rush Limbaugh. Somehow Scarborough has entirely forgotten the powerful force that swept him into Congress.

As Speaker, Gingrich famously shut down the federal government in 1995 because (he claimed) President Clinton made him sit in the back of Air Force One. In 1998, he used raw Republican hatred as the driving force to impeach President Clinton over the visceral opposition of two-thirds of the American people. Gingrich had finally gone too far, and his party lost several House seats that year. Gingrich's troops mutinied and put ruthless but quiet Tom DeLay in charge, along with his mumbling Speaker Denny Hastert.

Gingrich rose to power on the basis of rightwing hatred. That hatred proved too harsh to keep Republicans in power, so they toned it down on TV, and George Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" in 2000. But Rush Limbaugh and all of his imitators Kept Hate Alive on talk radio, and now it is the dominant rhetoric of the Republican base.

Today, serious Republicans have finally figured out their Base can't win elections. But if they try to silence their Base, the Base will put Sarah Palin and the Know-Nothings in charge.

Good luck, Republicans!

Update 1: Dana Houle has a great summary of the rise of the Republican Right after Goldwater.

As Racism Dies, So Does the GOP

Bob Fertik — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:11:05 -0400

When Barack Obama won the Democratic Party nomination and the general election campaign began, there were really only two questions: (1) was Barack Obama "ready" to be President, and (2) was white America ready to elect a "black" (i.e. off-white) man.

Obama answered the first question himself through his thoughtful and "Presidential" campaign, which contrasted sharply and decisively with McCain's cheap, nasty, dishonest, and erratic campaign.

But the second question could only be answered by the American people. And the answer is in: white America is ready to elect a black man.

We can see this clearly in the national polls, where Obama leads overall by 8%, and is doing better among whites than John Kerry. But we can also see it in key state polls where racism remains strong. Virginia, once home to the Confederacy, elected a black Governor (Doug Wilder) in 1989; it will now elect a black President. North Carolina, once home to Jesse Helms, is likely to follow suit. Today I am particularly inspired by Obama's 10-point lead Indiana, which was one of the last holdouts of the KKK.

Does that mean racism in America is dead? Of course not. But it means racism is dying. Obama's decisive lead means a minority of white Americans now judge a black person "unfit" based exclusively on the color of their skin - and that minority is getting smaller every day. It's hard to believe, but it's happening right before our very eyes. And even more than Obama himself, this transformation in the American character is truly inspiring and cause for Hope with a capital H.

And as racism dies, so does the GOP. In 1968, Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" transformed the Party of Lincoln into the Party of George Wallace, and rode to victory twice. In 1980, Ronald Reagan put "dogwhistle" racism at the very center of the Republican Party when he launched his campaign in Philadelphia Mississippi, whose only claim to fame was the triple-murder of young civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner - and every white racist (and every black) got the message, even if Republicans officially deny. Similarly, Reagan's attacks on "Welfare Queens" were an attack on poor black families - and every white racist (and every black) got the message. Like Nixon, Reagan also rode racism to victory twice.

When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 as a strong supporter of civil rights, Republicans were enraged and went to war against him the very first day after the election. This racist rage fueled the rise of Rush Limbaugh and rightwing hate talk radio, which in turn fueled Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution of 1994, officially known as the "year of the angry white man." That racist-driven hate lasted 6 full years and fueled Clinton's impeachment, which kept Clinton off the campaign trail in 2000 and let George W. Bush get close enough to steal the election in Florida.

Oddly, Bush avoided overt and even covert (dogwhistle) racism. One key turning point for his 2000 campaign was when he kissed Oprah Winfrey and surprised many of his opponents. After stealing the election, he appointed Colin Powell and Condi Rice to the most powerful posts blacks have ever held. Of course Bush refused to speak to the NAACP, used rightwing tax policies to transfer wealth from working-class blacks to rich whites, and sent blacks off to die in Iraq - but he never used racist rhetoric. It took Hurricane Katrina and the Superdome to expose Bush's hidden policy of massive neglect for America's poor blacks - and Kanye West to sum it up on national TV by simply saying, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

Racism is the blood that has nourished the Republican Party vampire for 40 years. Without a fresh supply of racist blood, the Republican Party cannot survive, and we're seeing the results in the current election. When McCain goes down to defeat, along with every Republican running in a swing district or state (and many that are just plain Red), we will watch the GOP die.

Update 1: Natasha Chart brilliantly describes the death throes of the GOP as the inmates take over the asylum. Incredibly, the best Republican team is already out on the field, including McCain and Palin; their bench is empty.

Update 2: Josh Marshall has an epiphany that the dying McCain campaign is reliving the wretched Republican rise to power in reverse:

As the McCain campaign staggers toward its conclusion, with electoral columns and pediments standing since 1966 buckling under their weight, the party seems to be cycling back through its history of character assassination, McCarthyism and wedge politics flimflam, only now with an desperate and parodic impotence taking the place of punishing rhetorical violence.

Southern strategy race-baiting, check! Hyper 9/11ist 'the Dems are terrorists' character assassination, check! Rep. Michelle Bachmann's neo-McCarthyite manifesto and call for a new HUAC, check! 'The Democrats want to bring socialism to America', check! Who lost Georgia? Aspirational neo-Cold Warism, check! Mix these in with a general stew of 70s-90s soft-on-crime, Dems are pedophile weirdo-freak-loser wedge politics and we've basically got the full ground covered...

has the GOP bag of tricks simply lost political traction and resonance or does the audacious slime that is so bracing and outrageous from the politically powerful simply seem pitiful from the hapless and impotent? For me the two trends are too deeply woven together to distinguish.

Publicizing Conservative Criminals

Bob Fertik — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:51:27 -0400

Matt Stoller published a letter from rightwing financier Howard Rich threatening to publicize the names of donors to progressive causes. Rich offered no reason for publicizing the names, but suggested they would be tied to any criminal actions these causes might engage in, including voter registration fraud.

Obviously these threats against progressive donors are outrageous. But let's use Rich's framework and turn the mirror around to conservative causes and their supporters.

Voter registration fraud is about as harmless a crime as there is. If a lazy voter registration worker turns in a registration in the name of "Mickey Mouse," that will not produce an election-changing vote unless "Mickey Mouse" shows up to vote with a valid photo ID. What are the chances of that?

Conservative groups, on the other hand, have committed the most heinous of crimes - include promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which is a war crime under the Geneva conventions.

So when will conservative advocates of war crimes be "publicized" - both groups like PNAC, their funders, and their ideological advocates?

My Favorite Things (conservatives' version): musical Flash animation

ThinkerFeeler — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:49:57 -0400

Check out this Flash animation of the song "My Favorite Things (conservatives' version)"

http://truthsite.org/politics/Presentations/FavoriteThingsGuitar.html

Don

GOP = GROSS OLD PERVERTS

mikekohr — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:44:38 -0500

In the last 23 months 10 Republican perverts have been exposed: Richard Curtis ®WA, Larry Craig ®ID, Bob Allen ®FL, Mark Foley ®FL, Michael A. Flory ®MI, Glen Murphy ®IN, John D.R. Atchison ®FL, Dennis Gallagher ®NY, Randall Tobias ® DC, David Vitter ® LA.

This rogues gallery accounts for at least 7 cases of infidelity, 6 cases of homosexual sex, 5 cases of prostitution/solicitation, 3 cases of rape/sexual assault, 2 cases of pedophilia, and 10 cases of hypocrisy.

The Republican party is the party of "Family Values," if your idea of a family is the Manson Family.

mike kohr

Will Hillary Drive the GOP to Political Suicide?

Bob Fertik — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:38:43 -0400

hwc notes that the biggest winner of yesterday's Republican debate was... Hillary!

I think it is more than fair to say that our girl Hillary has well and truly gotten in the heads of the angry white men in the Republican party. She has them in a full-blown tizzie and that is the best thing that could ever happen for Democratic Party chances in November 2008. Why?

I would suggest three reasons:

1. By attacking her every waking moment of every waking day, the Republicans are providing a blueprint for their fall campaigns. Penn, Wolfson, and Bill will take this playbook and use it to prepare a brutal gameplan to counter every strike. Even more, the Republicans outlined positions against Social Security, health care, and reployment from Iraq that are wildly unpopular with the electorate. The red-meat audience boo'd Ron Paul for saying he would pull troops out of Iraq.

2. Their efforts to demonize Hillary won't work. If Hillary Clinton is anything on the campaign trail, it's disciplined, focuses, serious, competent, and prepared. When voters see her, on TV or in person, they may or may not like her. They may or may not support her. But, they don't see some wild, crazy monster. Thus the opposite. It is Romney and Rudy who appear to be frothing at the mouth when they speak of Hillary.

3. I keep saying this, but gender is the overriding dynamic in the 2008 election. 54% of the voters are women and the majority of those support Hillary Clinton and the idea of a history-making election. There is an emotional attachment to the election the first female President and this emotion will become even stronger once Hillary is the nominee. These angry white men attacking the female candidate, not on policy issues, but like crazy abusive husbands is going to trigger a deeply emotional response. Not just among women, but among other groups who have felt the wrath of what Bill O'Reilly calls "the traditional white male power structure". The two Republican front-runners, Rudy and Mitt, are already at the point of "pulling a Lazio" and alienating wide swaths of American voters. They think they can use attacks on Hillary to energize their base, but their attacks are actually more likely to energize women voters (54% of the electorate), African American voters, Latino/a voters, Asian American voters, gay voters, and so on and so forth.

For those who didn't follow Hillary's 2000 Senate race in NY, "pulling a Lazio" means aggressively walking across the stage during the most-watched debate to thrust some piece of paper in Hillary's face. While former Rep. Rick Lazio was seen as someone who could unite the anti-Hillary vote (both male and female) to beat her, his assault on Hillary's "space" turned all the undecided women into Hillary supporters.

So yesterday's debate raises a fascinating question: could Hillary make Republicans so blind with rage that their collective heads explode, taking the entire Republican Party with them?