From Living The Dream | The Digital Cuttlefish.
August 13, 2011 at 11:11 am cuttlefish
Look at the fearless Republican candidates
Telling the people their comfortable lies
Magical thinking, revisionist history,
Alternate versions as seen through their eyesCompromise seen as a sign of your weakness,
No one admits to his previous deals
Matching the facts is completely irrelevant
Truth is determined by how a thing feelsLying is raised to an art or a science
The bigger, the better, or that’s how it seems
People are frightened by too much reality
Better to peddle them beautiful dreamsThere in the crowds, cotton candy surrounds them,
Melting away into sugary air
Sweet little nothings, political promises
Served by the ton at the Iowa Fair.In the New York Times, an editorial, “Magical Unrealism“, examining the antics of not the extremists, but the putative center of the Republican party. It’s one thing when the wingnut faction lives in fantasy land; it’s quite another when the mainstream is building castles in clouds.
Believe it or not I describe myself as Free Thinking Secular Humanist Kenysian Rockefeller Republican. As a very very young kid I can recall a conversation with my dad who was a die-hard Rockefeller Republican and activly worked in Republican state & local politices about the John Birch Society and while I don’t recall what exactly he said to me about them the lasting imppression I have had all my life was that they were wacko right wing extremists and outside of mainstream Republican thinking….that is until now.
Looking back ten, twenty, thirty and forty years now I am so shocked at how far the Republican party has moved to the right and how they have now come to embrace the radical irrational revisionst extemists of the reactionary fringe,… the Tea Party and even worse the Tea Baggers.
On the news today it was stunning to see that last night all 8 GOP candidates in the Ames, Iowa Republican primary debate would walk away from a 10 to 1 spending compromise deal with Democrats and the audience cheered the response!
Not at all willing to work with Democrats on a compromise deal these are not politicians and in my estimation they are not at a qualified to lead our coutnry. Each one of them (and I am sorry to say John Huntsman & Mit Romney joined the crowd) are uncompromising ideologues.
This country doesn’t need ideologues. This country doesn’t need any more seperation and division than it has right now. This country needs genuinne authentic stand-up honest leadership and while individually that group of Republican canidates may be able to lead a small group of uncompromising right wing ideologues they can’t, never should, and never will lead this great county of ours.
Matthew Yglesias wrote on this moment:
One can say that this was merely politicians playing to their base and some of them know better. And perhaps it was, but it’s extremely difficult to turn around and break a promise like that. So you have the entire Republican Party committed to the view not only that tax increases are undesirable, but that it’s unthinkable to include even small increases in a bipartisan bargain for large spending cuts. In a normal country, that would be an extreme and strange position to take, but I’m not sure it would be a damaging one. The question, after all, would simply be whether such an extreme party can or can’t win a governing majority. If it couldn’t, its weird views would be irrelevant. If it could, then it would deserve congratulations and good luck in its effort to implement an all-cut agenda. But by a series of odd quirks of fate, the Republican Party exercises substantial influence over budget outcomes even if it mostly loses elections. So as long as they stick to this view, it will be neither possible to raise taxes nor to substantially reform major spending programs.
Standard and Poor’s work may be shoddy, but it hardly strikes me as an insane conclusion that this is not the soundest political culture in the world.
Rationally thinking Republicans should feel let down if not outright eembarrassed and ashamed by that sad grouping.
]]>The New Crazy Anti-Obama Argument
Posted on: December 29, 2010 9:32 AM, by Ed Brayton
The right wing continues its pattern of ignoring perfectly valid criticisms of President Obama and opting instead for batshit crazy paranoia by declaring that he’s going to turn the country over to the Indians because we stole it from them in the first place. The Worldnutdaily headline reads:
Obama to give Manhattan back to Native Americans?
President believes nation can spare some sovereignty
And the AFA’s chief nutball, Bryan Fischer, leaves off the question mark and simply declares:
In other words, President Obama wants to give the entire land mass of the United States of America back to the Indians. He wants Indian tribes to be our new overlords.
Seriously, are they that stupid or do they know they’re full of shit? Anyone who thinks Obama, or any other president, is going to give Manhattan back to the Indians is either delusional or engaged in the most egregious demagoguery imaginable. And the fact that it won’t happen will not change their thinking one bit.
And of course, it’s all nonsense.
This guy, this kook, Bryan Fischer is a case in point reason as to why it is perfectly acceptable to use the perjorative phrase “Tea Bagger” to describe the crazy radical insane lunatics the Tea Party embraces, harbors, and give a voice too.
]]>Just what did Gingrich do? I’ll refer you to David Frum’s article: Gingrich: Obama Wants Whitey’s Money for an explanation of the depth of the absurdity of Gingrich (and D’Souza’s cover story in Forbes which Gingrich was affirming).
A couple of years ago here I published a short list of Conservatives I Like (but don’t necessarily agree with) and Therefore Listen To, Gingrich has managed to strike himself off that list.
For more on Gingrich and D’Souza you might also want to read:
I’m sure there will be more on this over the coming week or two.
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