Joe Klein: The GOP Has Become A Party Of Nihilists
This is, IMHO, 100% on target.
I quit trying to pretend that there was a balance of crazy after the 2000 election, and it's good to see some in the MSM finally beginning to face the facts. Of course we all wish the facts were different, but pretending won't make it so. The crazies have taken over the GOP, and the first step in undoing this is making it clear to everyone.
This is, IMHO, 100% on target.
I quit trying to pretend that there was a balance of crazy after the 2000 election, and it's good to see some in the MSM finally beginning to face the facts. Of course we all wish the facts were different, but pretending won't make it so. The crazies have taken over the GOP, and the first step in undoing this is making it clear to everyone.
posted by Winston Smith at
9:46 PM
17 Comments:
it's good to see some in the MSM finally beginning to face the facts
Hehe. The MSM. Joe Klein? Your "mainstream," mebbe, but not the other half of the country's.
More Dems believed Bush knew about 9-11 [trufers] than believe Obama wasn't born in the US [birfers], 35-28%.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/03/each_party_has_its_fanatics_97748.html
More Dems blamed the Jews for the financial crisis
http://bostonreview.net/BR34.3/malhotra_margalit.php
...32-18.4%.
But whatever, WS. Even if one side has more nutburgers than the other, it doesn't appeal to the best arguments and where we should go from here, and focusing on the nutburgers on the other side is a delusion of its own.
BTW, did you hear we're "God's Partners" in matters of life and death? True story.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0809/We_are_Gods_partners_in_matters_of_life_and_death.html?showall
Were you or God looking for a partner? I sure wasn't.
Even though it was just a rhetorical flourish [at least I hope it was], if Sarah Palin had said it, even Joe Klein would have noticed.
Love,---TVD
LOL
But Tom, the point is that there's not a *balance* of teh crazy.
Nobody 'round these parts ever claimed that the Dems weren't nuts.
Problem is that (a) your boys are about...oh, let's say ten...times as crazy as the Dems, and (b) teh crazy is the order of the day on your side of the aisle.
Normally I'd agree that we shouldn't focus on the nutburgers...but it's (b) that make it unavoidable.
The Dems are just ordinary politics crazy...a degree of crazy which, God help me, I've more-or-less learned to live with.
The crazy on the right is (i) pervasive and (ii)just about off the scale in intensity.
(Oh, and don't forget the mendacity and incompetence...)
I used to quote that 9/11 poll all the time to try to make sure Dems didn't get too comfortable...but one crazon just can't be used every time to try to balance out the steady stream of new crazy from the right. (And nobody believes that poll anyway. Likely to be problems with the wording...though I'd really like to know the facts there. Which, incidentally, includes how many Republicans think the Bill Clinton is to blame...)
So yeah, bro, I'm totally with you. Lots of Dems are kinda nuts.
Which, sadly, puts the Dems head and shoulders above the GOP, and, God help us, makes them our only hope.
When you thought the anti-Obama folks couldn't get any nuttier:
Dear Wonkette editors,
I posted a very serious article recently in Townhall.com about witchcraft in the White House, and later realized that your website had made a farce out of it. I saw that your staff and readers made a lot of extremely cruel comments about me and my story. Why are you people so rude? Does anybody take anything seriously anymore?
Do you really, truly, seriously think it is OK for a president to use a forged birth certificate? Do you actually believe it is appropriate for a man who was raised a Muslim to pretend he is a Christian and go to a church for 20 years with an anti-American preacher? Do you really want a president who was brainwashed by communists since he was a child, up through university, to hate America to be our president? Do you think that it is fine if a family member of the president defiles the White House with voodoo? Don’t you know what fate could befall our nation as a result of allowing Satanic forces to gather over the White House?
After 8 years of a president sent by God to lead the American people and rescue us from the horrors of 911 and Islamo-fascists, it now boils down to this? How incredibly tragic. You folks don’t really seem to understand the extreme peril that our nation confronts. Stop making fun of me. Take off your blinders! Wake up!
Respectfully, Kristen
We hear that Obama is black, too!
The column she references was taken down by the Powers that Be behind townhall.com, I guess they aren't ready to go into Free Republic territory yet.................
But DA what about that 9/11 poll?!?!?!?!!11
Here's a debunking by MJ magazine about 9/11:
My own inquires, made while preparing the book Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11, suggest that there was a real government "conspiracy"—but not the one the 9/11 skeptics are peddling. Government agencies, particularly the FBI and CIA, did not inform the public that a terrorist attack might be imminent, and afterward, the FBI engaged in an unconscionable cover-up of its activities and blunders. FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has repeatedly fought to publicize the bureau’s inner workings, only to be blocked by the Justice Department and the courts. Likewise, the 9/11 Commission did not pursue many major lines of inquiry. It failed to take sworn testimony from President Bush or Vice President Cheney on what happened that day. We still do not have satisfying answers on why Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, second in command to the commander-in-chief, appeared to have been largely absent on 9/11. Why was he out of the loop while Cheney, who had no constitutional authority, ran the show from the White House bunker? And why did the commission not look into why our friends the Pakistanis, who helped create the Taliban, did not tell us what was going on? Or did they? How come John Walker Lindh, the young American convert, was able to walk into the inner councils of Al Qaeda, but CIA agents could not? These are but a few of the legitimate lingering questions that dog the official storyline.
It is clear that the real conspiracy of 9/11 (besides, of course, Al Qaeda's) was the federal government's deliberate cover-up of what it knew and never acted upon, as well as its ineptitude. Below, a few of the other major 9/11 conspiracy theories and some information that helps to explain their persistence, as well as their flaws.
Link
Even the Conservative Wongo woman, Ann Coulter, thinks that Birthers are crazy.
Love, DA
Well, like somebody once said, there will always be people on your side that you wish were on the other. But I hate to surrender the debate to them.
Sorry to drag in media bias, but the birthers are getting a lot more press than the truthers, although the "teabaggers"---Anderson Cooper's use of that term on the purportedly "neutral" CNN betrays his bias---who are largely well-behaved and far more numerous, are largely MIA on your video screen except when an incident happens to discredit them.
[BTW, the LaRouche people seem to be infiltrating the tea parties, and some say they're largely responsible for the Obama = Hitler stuff. Whether the LaRouchers are left-wing or right-wing is hard to tell. Sometimes batshit is just transcendent.]
No way, dude. I'm afraid I can't let you get away with that.
It's not that "the birthers are getting a lot more press than the truthers." Rather, it's that the birthers are objectively more prominent/salient than the truthers. The latter weren't even really a thing. It was one, flawed poll. The birthers are a substantial movement. Furthermore, the truthers elicited nothing but rolled eyes from the Dem establishment. The GOP establishment is actively fanning the flames of birtherism.
Again, and as almost always: the Dems have their crazies, but the crazies are virtually the heart and soul of the contemporary GOP. The GOP fosters craziness and uses it for political ends; the Dems eschew and discourage it.
Guys like you need to face this, Tom, and do something about it. So long as the GOP is deranged, American politics will be deranged. IMHO, that may very well be the biggest challenge we face as a nation.
Seems to me that conservatives believe that they can't win on the issues, can't win in rational debate. So they decided to drop the crazy bomb.
Personally, it is *in no way* clear to me that conservatism (slightly modified) couldn't win in a rational debate. If the GOP would just move slightly to the center, as the Dems did, I think they'd probably win. They could keep some of their most cherished views...no same-sex marriage (that's a winner), esp. if they allowed civil unions; tougher illegal immigration positions (sane middle American is with you there), pro-free-markets, pro-firearms, God in the public sphere (esp. if attenuated a bit, with maybe a little less Jesus),and so forth. Just stop being crazy, and I think the GOP wins most of the time.
Seems to me that conservatives believe that they can't win on the issues, can't win in rational debate. So they decided to drop the crazy bomb.
My position is that the left can't win an honest debate, and relies on demonization of the right with this "crazy" charge. [24/7 on MSNBC, and see previous remarks of Anderson Cooper on "teabaggers"].
Even if there are more crazies in the GOP [unproven and probably unprovable], the milieu should be the best arguments of the left vs. the best arguments of the right, and for whatever reason---we each blame the other side]---we do agree this isn't what's happening.
"Unproven" only in the sense of not conclusively proven. It is, rather--or should be--obvious to any reasonably objective observer. Discourse on the right has become all crazy all the time. There is no liberal Rush Limbaugh, there is no liberal Ann Coulter, there is no liberal G. Gordon Liddy. There are, of course, some liberal loudmouths, but they're all some function of less crazy and less popular than the myriad extremely influential, extremely crazy wingnuts aforementioned.
"My position is that the left can't win an honest debate, and relies on demonization of the right with this "crazy" charge." Well, I don't know whether you're right or not. All I know is that the right is crazy. Whether the left could win without pointing this out is a separate issue, about which I have no opinion.
But note: it ain't demonization if you're just statin' facts.
I agree that one type of discussion--the most important type--asks: regardless of how crazy each side might be, who has the best policy ideas?
But here's something for y'all on the right to consider: I spent years patiently sifting out the right-wing crazy, looking for the best arguments, and ignoring the nuts, and I still do this with regard to most issues. But in the end, I simply got fed up with wingnut bullshit. Liberals, in my estimation, were more often right anyway, and eventually the right wing simply made me f*cking sick with their hateful crazy. They simply used up my patience.
And finally: since in my view, the overall rationality of our political discussions and the civility of our political discourse are issues in themselves--meta-issues that may very well be more important than any particular policy issues, because they determine how ALL questions that confront us will be settled--by attending to righty craziness and hatefulness, I actually *am* attending to the real issues, the most important issues.
Like I said, I think a sane GOP would have a lot to offer. The GOP wouldn't have to be all that great to get my attention...and frequently get my vote. I mean, really: how good do you have to be to compete with the Democrats?
But as it stands today, I normally won't even consider voting for the GOP, because, quite frankly, they make me sick.
Since the people behind the teabag parties use the word teabag as a verb(as "teabag Obama" for "send your teabag(s) to Obama"), then the correct term for them is teabaggers, regardless of the fact that it is also urban slang for a particular kind of sexual act.
My position is that the left can't win an honest debate, and relies on demonization of the right with this "crazy" charge.
So, when Rush Limbaugh uses one of his favorite phrases, "Anal poisoning", that isn't crazy?
When Glenn Beck makes a joke about poisoning Nanci Pelosi, that isn't crazy?
When commentators say that Obama is a secret socialist, that isn't crazy?
Beams and moats, brother Tom, beams and moats..............
I understand. Perhaps they are sickworthy, but your "liberals, in my estimation, were more often right anyway" indicates a certain predisposition.
However, I cannot stipulate "obvious to any reasonably objective observer" arguments.
This observer sees the left asserting only its intellectual and moral superiority, and depending on mockery of the dumbest MFers they can dig up on the other side, and not on genuine affirmative argument, as if Obamaism is self-evidently correct and sensible.
I see Obamaism failing on its own merits, not because of "crazy" disinformation. [As you note, even your favorite punching bag Ann Coulter patently rejects birfers.] The president has the bully pulpit, and a largely unfiltering press. The administration's word gets out just fine.
As for your Frum-like Rx for GOP "moderation," when the shoe was on the other foot, Harry Truman said:
"The first rule in my book is that we have to stick by the liberal principles of the Democratic Party. We are not going to get anywhere by trimming or appeasing. And we don't need to try it...
The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign."
And BTW, I believe on the whole [no doubt there are exceptions in the reddest states], the GOP let the civil union issue slip under the radar. On the national level, most Reps believe it's an issue to be left up to the individual states anyway.
And neither can I agree the Democratic Party has moderated: where we once had centrists like Speaker Gephardt, we now have Speaker Pelosi. Any reasonable objective observer should be able to tell the difference.
As for your "liberal" Rush Limbaugh, who functions only in the toy department, I give you Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean, who is a member of the real world:
"This is a struggle of good and evil," he told the gathered activists, who paid $100 apiece to hear the new Democratic chairman. "And we're the good."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4125240
[Nice website.]
"This observer sees the left asserting only its intellectual and moral superiority, and depending on mockery of the dumbest MFers they can dig up on the other side, and not on genuine affirmative argument, as if Obamaism is self-evidently correct and sensible."
Well, to my eye the problem is not that we're digging up the dumbest m***** f***ers, but, rather, that the dumbest m***** f***ers are virtually running the show over there, and they are virtually unavoidable. In fact, I start to wonder whether there IS anybody else over there. Even the non-crazy folks refuse to denounce the crazy ones. Steele won't, for example. Liz Cheney, chip off the old block, ostentatiously refuses to correct them.
Mebe Obama's failing, mebe not. I don't see it, but it could happen.
What I see is roughly the same thing I've seen for sixteen years: the Dems being in the ballpark, doing more-or-less at least semi-sensible things and pushing policies that are, whatever the details, at least quasi-reasonable...and the GOP being batshit crazy.
Dude, you even lost Peggy Noonan last time...
And I admit, as you point out, I'm more liberal than conservative, so maybe it's just bias on my part...
...though it might be worth noting that basically everybody in the entire world other than American Republicans seems to more-or-less agree with me here...
Pelosi is no Gephardt, that's for sure. The latter is my kinda guy; the former I can't stand. But one person does not make a party, not even the Speaker of the House. Both Clinton and Obama have gently tugged the Dems toward the center, while Shrub and Cheney did the opposite. But this is something that should be provable or disprovable empirically...and, of course, I could be wrong.
Howard Dean? Howard Dean is your answer to Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck, Cheney, Shrub, et. al.?
Dude, he said, with an admonishing tone...
C'mon, man. You don't even believe that. The point is that if you stack up the fifty or a hundred most influential/prominent Dems and the fifty or a hundred most influential/prominent Republicans, the number and intensity of crazy in the latter group is going to far outweigh that in the former.
Again: there is no liberal Limbaugh; there is no liberal Coulter; there is no liberal Santorum or De Lay or Cheney.
Code Pink, dumbasses though they are, can't stack up against the teabaggers in numbers or intensity.
There is not always a balance of everything. Sometimes one side is more something than the other.
Currently, the American right is way, way crazier than the American left.
Changing the fact requires facing the fact.
You keep mentioning people from the toy department; I'm talking about Dems in the real world. I see no reason to drag in the Olbermanns, et al. And Santorum, Delay and Cheney are all out of public life. We're talking 2009 here and the glory days of attack are over---your side runs the show now and you're obliged to defend affirmatively.
You can't govern purely by attacking the opposition; surely you see that.
And Limbaugh never called the other side evil, but the chair of your party did. You know your reaction if it were Michael Steele who said such a thing.
As for the teabaggers, delegitimization and mockery are no replacement for genuine argument. It's a bad habit, and one the majority party needs to break damn quick. If you don't, I'm confident there will be electoral consequences, as it's sick-making.
Dude, you're apparently oblivious not to this or that slip up, indiscretion or unhappy locution of your party, but to it's overall crackpot orientation of the last sixteen-plus years.
Limbaugh is not an outlier, he's basically the voice of your party now. Your politicians go on his show, use the anger he whips up, refuse to denounce his insanity.
But you don't want to talk about that part? Fine. Let's talk about your last administration, which came very close to stealing an election, used 9/11 for political gain, let the perpetrators escape in order to prosecute an irrelevant war (against the *enemies* of those who perpetrated 9/11, no less), polarized the country, demonized their political opponents, apparently manipulated "terror alerts" for political gain, etc., etc.
Notice we're not now even discussing crashing the economy, nor letting New Orleans drown, nor the pervasive rot of corruption on your side of the aisle in Congress, including the loathsome K Street Project, Frist's telediagnoses, trying to elect a completely unqualified idiot to the vice-presidency behind a seventy-year-old cancer survivor...and we're not even mentioning here the armed teabaggers, the Obama-is-the Antichrist crowd...it's exhausting and depressing just thinking about it all.
Anyway, the Cheney/Bush admin were were some crazy m***** f***ers if there ever were any. And now we are uncontroversially talking about the heart and soul of your party.
You might not like me focusing on the failures of your party, but that's the topic at hand. And, as I've explained before, the basic argument goes like this:
The GOP is f***ing insane
The Dems are merely dopey
Ergo: most sane folks like myself support the Dems.
We can talk about specific policies, but that's a different subject.
Well, I could compile my own laundry list of lefty bogeymen, but my heart's not in it. But calling the other guys insane seems loony to any neutral observer, and still harping on the 2000 election would seem loony even on MSNBC, let alone a neutral forum.
We're trading memes at this point, but I had to laugh today when I saw libertarian Matt Welch of Reason Magazine quoted:
It’s been a hilarious August, watching media supporters of President Obama’s health care package puzzle over the obscure motivations of the noncompliant Americans rallying against it.
“Racial anxiety,” guessed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
“Nihilism,” theorized Time’s Joe Klein.
“The crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy,” historian Rick Perlstein proclaimed in the Washington Post.
While the commentariat’s condescension is almost comical, the whole evil-or-stupid explanation misses the elephant in Obama’s room: Americans of all stripes, it turns out, aren’t very keen about the government barging into their lives. . . . This isn’t about liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. A majority oppose Obama’s policies because they fly in the face of this country’s bedrock values of personal liberty and limited government. Robbing Peter to pay Goldman Sachs does violence to that fundamentally American ethos.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08222009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_real_reason_americans_are_angry_185998.htm
But the anger is largely based on outright lies and propagated by loons on the right. So Matt Welch is apparently a moron. It's not people trying to defend Obama, it's people trying to figure out the genuinely irrational behavior on the right. It's always hard to explain irrationality.
Jeez, I don't even have a position on health care and I'm astonished but the lunacy on the right. People screaming about death panels and government-imposed health plans and whatnot. I'd like to see an intelligent discussion of it. I could honestly go either way. But when one side consistently shows up in clown shoes, shrieking about the antichrist and socialism and death trains with shackles...and now with 100% more guns...well, call me a partisan hack, but I get real sympathetic with the other guys, who, confused though they might be, are actually talking about policy, sticking largely to the facts and acting like human beings.
And as for the 2000 election:
See, though folks on your side are always waving the flag, I really do love this country, and I really do think it's something special. And I really do think it is--or usually is--a democracy. And I really won't forgive people for stealing an election and making a mockery of that. I wouldn't forgive either party. Any party that did such a thing would make, in me, an enemy for life.
So you get over it if you want. But as my people say: hell no ain't fergittin'.
I really believe all that stuff about the grandeur of America. You can call that naive or stupid or whatever if you want, but I don't see it changing any time soon.The GOP make a mockery of American democracy. And for that, f*** those SOBs.
I've got to chime in in partial defense of TVD today. Consider the existential questions of the previous presidency:
* should we continue to pump up housing prices despite the rest of the economy being soft?
* Should we invade Iraq?
* "" When we haven't finished off AlQ?
* Should we cut taxes despite strong evidence that we're going to go into huge deficit?
* Should we bail out AIG, and by extension (government uninsured!) investment banks (IE Goldman Sachs)?
etc, etc, etc.
Obama's only been in office for a few months, and he's already made one of the same mistakes. And he's put someone in charge of treasury who has a huge conflict of interest with, yes, Goldman Sachs--who immediately reinvested their windfall by giving big bonuses. Trickle-down, baby!
-mac
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