We’ve been watching as the Republican Party has been losing its collective mind. With the merger of the Tea Party and the GOP, we’re seeing more and more of the nuts getting the GOP nomination in prominent Senate, House and Governor races.
That’s emboldening the nuts in the GOP who already hold office. The latest case is GOP Representative Louie Gohmert and his “terror baby” allegations. Watch as Anderson Cooper gives him a forum and helps him make a fool of himself.
We’re getting to the end of the conservative movement that really kicked into gear with the election of Ronald Reagan, and now we’re seeing the inevitable final stages, as the loons on the far right start reeking havoc on the Republican Party.
Future historians tracing the crackup of the Republican Party may well look to May 8, 2010, as an inflection point.
That was the day, as is now well known, that Sen. Robert Bennett, who took the conservative position 84 percent of the time over his career, was deemed not conservative enough by fellow Utah Republicans and booted out of the primary.
Less well known, but equally ominous, is what happened that same day, 2,500 miles east in Maine. There, the state Republican Party chucked its platform — a sensible New England mix of free-market economics and conservation — and adopted a manifesto of insanity: abolishing the Federal Reserve, calling global warming a “myth,” sealing the border, and, as a final plank, fighting “efforts to create a one world government.”
You can read the rest of the article for some of Glenn Beck’s greatest hits.
What’s left of the conservative movement and the Republican Party?
We have the Reagan worshipers who have become so dogmatic that they think tax cuts solve everything at every time in history, regardless of the circumstances. These folks seem to forget that George W. Bush enacted huge tax cuts that would be followed by the greatest economic collapse in 80 years. These folks also turn on former allies like Bruce Bartlett and David Frum who dare top open a debate on how conservatives might adapt to the changing circumstances of today’s economy.
Then we have the religious right, who’s leaders keep getting caught up in sex scandals. All these folks who preach morality can’t keep it in their own pants. Most of the public has tuned out these self-righteous fools at this point.
We also have moderate Republicans who would like to see the government spend less and who also tend to be social liberals. These reasonable folks abandoned the party and the conservative movement long ago.
And finally we have the Tea Party clowns. Many of these folks are angry as hell – some are angry at everybody, while others don’t know why they’re angry. As noted above, they can be a force at times, and they may be the GOP’s not-so-secret weapon in the fall as anti-incumbent fever hits new highs.
Or, they may just turn off everyone else with their peculiar brand of crazy. Nuts like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and and Michelle Bachman can rile up these nut jobs, but they may end up giving the Democrats a lifeline as well.
Most people don’t like the crazies. The GOP did a great job for years of exploiting the loony left and painting the Democrats with a broad brush, and now the tables are turned, and the Tea Party folks are giving Democrats some good talking points for the fall.
Early yesterday morning, Valerie and Rob Shirk corralled their 10 home-schooled children into their van for the 2 1/2-hour drive from their home in Connecticut to Boston, arriving just in time to hear Sarah Palin denounce government-run health care at the tea party movement rally on Boston Common.
They thought it would be a learning opportunity for their children, who range in age from 9 months to 15 years old and who held up signs criticizing the government for defying the “will of the people.’’
“The problem in this country is that too many people are looking for handouts,’’ said Valerie Shirk, 43, of Prospect, Conn. “I agree with the signs that say, ‘Share my father’s work ethic — not his paycheck.’ We have to do something about the whole welfare mentality in this country.’’
Okay — that’s fine. There’s a legitimate argument that we should cut government spending.
But wait, there’s more…
The couple, who rely on Medicaid for their health care, were also upset about the nation’s new health reforms.
When asked why her family used state-subsidized health care when she criticized people who take handouts, Valerie Shirk said she did not want to stop having children, and that her husband’s income was not enough to cover the family with private insurance.
“I know there’s a dichotomy because of what we get from the state,’’ she said. “But I just look at each of my children as a blessing.’’
Whaaa?
How is this level of hypocrisy even possible? Shirk knows “there’s a dichotomy” considering at a rally protesting health care reforms while at the same time she’s accepting government-run health care, and she explains it away by saying that her children are “a blessing.”
She talks about personal responsibility, yet she can’t stop herself from having more children even though she freely admits that she and her husband can’t afford it. She rails on those who are looking for handouts, yet she’s happily takes those handouts!
I don’t have time right now to lay out all the reasons, but the hiring of Erick Erickson from RedState.com as a contributor is just another example of how clueless CNN is these days.
Erickson has said he needs to “grow up over time” now that people actually listen to or read what he says, but that hasn’t stopped him from making more stupid comments. I’m glad to see bloggers get air time, but is this the best they can do?
Fox News took umbrage at the White House’s assertion that the network is oftentimes a research and propaganda arm for the Republican Party. “The Daily Show” reveals the relationship between FNC’s supposedly non-partisan news anchors and the opinion people like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly.
FNC apologists like to point at MSNBC and say that they’re just as biased the other way, but I’ve personally heard Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews be highly critical of Obama’s WH on a number of issues (torture, GITMO, the public option, etc.) over the past few months. Can Beck, O’Reilly and the hosts of “Fox & Friends” say they did the same thing when Bush was in office? And what about the hypocrisy of complaining about Obama’s WH treatment of Fox News when the same people were saying that the Bush WH should hang MSNBC out to dry? (Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino admitted in an interview on Fox that the Bush WH didn’t do anything with MSNBC late in his second term.)
Do these people realize that people are recording everything they say on television?
I’m not suggesting that Obama policies alone are driving the stock market. Many factors, particularly earnings, drive the overall market.
But, many conservatives were quick to blame Obama when the market slipped in the spring, implying he was to blame as opposed to the economic crisis he inherited. Melissa Francis and some of the other conservative market worshipers at CNBC were just a few of the examples. Well, the market is now up, and we’re not hearing conservatives talk about it much any more.
One of the original supply-siders, Bruce Bartlett, explains in a brilliant op-ed why the ideas that worked so well in the early 1980’s are irrelevant today. Bartlett is promoting a new book, The New American Economy.
I continue to believe that what the supply-siders did was good for the economy, good for the country and good for the advancement of economic science. The best economists in the country were pretty clueless about our economic problems during the Carter years. It was widely asserted that the money supply had no meaningful effect on inflation, that marginal tax rates had no incentive effects, and that it would take decades or another Great Depression to break the back of inflation.
As all economists now know, these ideas were wrong. All economists today accept the importance of the money supply–perhaps too much; during the recent crisis many asserted that fiscal stimulus was unnecessary because an increase in the money supply was the only thing necessary to restore growth. (How this would have been accomplished when interest rates were close to zero was never explained.) All economists now accept the importance of marginal tax rates to economic decisionmaking, and organizations like the National Bureau of Economic Research publish vast numbers of papers on this topic.
During the George W. Bush years, however, I think SSE became distorted into something that is, frankly, nuts–the ideas that there is no economic problem that cannot be cured with more and bigger tax cuts, that all tax cuts are equally beneficial, and that all tax cuts raise revenue.
These incorrect ideas led to the enactment of many tax cuts that had no meaningful effect on economic performance. Many were just give-aways to favored Republican constituencies, little different, substantively, from government spending. What, after all, is the difference between a direct spending program and a refundable tax credit? Nothing, really, except that Republicans oppose the first because it represents Big Government while they support the latter because it is a “tax cut.”
Bartlett exposes the caricature that has taken over conservative economic thinking, the slavish devotion to dogma that makes it impossible to consider the circumstances of our new reality. Think about it. Talk to a conservative about economic policy, and the answer, regardless of the circumstances, is usually the same – spending bad, tax cuts good. I can teach a three-year-old to repeat that.
Bartlett goes on to explain why massive spending was necessary with the economic collapse we faced last year, and the obscenely stupid response of many conservatives who suggested addressing the problem with more tax cuts.
Bartlett was an adviser to Jack Kemp and helped write the Reagan tax cuts. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the history of supply-side economics and why one of its chief architects is arguing that it doesn’t apply today.
Here’s a good article detailing all the childish gloating from the right. This is another example of how low our politics have sunk in recent years. Conservatives used to rail against liberals for alleged “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” but the contempt and hatred for Barack Obama has reached bizarre levels on the right. Frankly, they sound like a bunch of dumb teenagers taunting a rival team.
It’s stunning to me how many conservative intellectuals have stood by and said little while the crazies have taken over the conservative movement. Some of them had the guts to take on Sarah Palin, and more are starting to speak up as idiots like Joe the Plumber and demagogues like Glenn Beck become the new faces of conservatism.
David Frum has been one of the loudest voices of sanity on the right, and he takes on Glenn Beck in his latest column.
We conservatives are submitting our movement to some of the most unscrupulous people in American life. This submission disgraces conservatism, discredits Republicans, and damages the country. It’s beyond time for conservatives who know better to join us at NewMajority in emancipating ourselves from leadership by the most stupid, the most cynical, and the most truthless.
The entire column is worth reading, as Frum defends Cass Sunstein against Beck’s hysterical fire.
Jon Stewart calls out Beck for grossly flip-flopping on the quality of U.S. health care. Beck has either lost his mind or is a total hypocrite. You be the judge.
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
This is what the right in America has come to, which shouldn’t be a surprise when one celebrates ignorance and mediocrity.
Give Peggy Noonan credit – she’s not “going with the flow” when it comes to Sarah Palin. Noonan cares about the future of the GOP, and she dishes out some tough love for the party.
Sarah Palin’s resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain—to review the bidding, see her strengths, acknowledge her limits, and let go of her drama. It is an opportunity they should take. They mean to rebuild a great party. They need to do it on solid ground.
Noonan gets to the essence of Sarah Palin by looking at her with open eyes, and without all the drama surrounding the current state of politics.
In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn’t say what she read because she didn’t read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn’t thoughtful enough to know she wasn’t thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. “I’m not wired that way,” “I’m not a quitter,” “I’m standing up for our values.” I’m, I’m, I’m.
She goes on to destroy all the arguments being thrown around in her defense. This one is priceless.
“She makes the Republican Party look inclusive.” She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.
Here’s her closing argument.
The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.
It’s not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won’t be that way.
We are going to need the best.
She’s right – we need the best. As a strong supporter of Barack Obama, I think we have the best, and Sarah Palin makes Obama’s job easier in one sense. She’s a disaster for the GOP, a party that keeps sinking lower with clowns like Ensign and Sanford after the party seemed to hit rock bottom in the fall. From a purely political point of view, the current GOP, and any future GOP that features Sarah Palin, gives Obama some breathing room. He’s going to make some mistakes, and he’s tackling some very difficult and controversial issues at a time when our economy is in the ditch. If he takes a political hit from time to time, he can feel comfortable that the GOP doesn’t pose a serious threat.
On the other hand, we are facing serious problems, and one political party is offering next-to-nothing when it comes to providing solutions. The GOP has become a bad joke, when we could use some tough Republicans to help us on spending and engage in real negotiations over the budget and entitlements. The GOP has to do better than this, and Sarah Palin is holding them back.
Frank Rich addresses the victim mentality that has consumed Palin and much of the Republican Party.
In the aftermath of her decision to drop out and cash in, Palin’s standing in the G.O.P. actually rose in the USA Today/Gallup poll. No less than 71 percent of Republicans said they would vote for her for president. That overwhelming majority isn’t just the “base” of the Republican Party that liberals and conservatives alike tend to ghettoize as a rump backwater minority. It is the party, or pretty much what remains of it in the Barack Obama era.
That’s why Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops.
The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. Yes, she is of the religious right, even if she winks literally and figuratively at her own daughter’s flagrant disregard of abstinence and marriage. But family-values politics, now more devalued than the dollar by the philandering of ostentatiously Christian Republican politicians, can only take her so far. The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.
With the opening statements from Senator Leahy and Senator Sessions, we might be looking at an ugly fight in the confirmation hearings of Judge Sotomayor. Leahy basically called out those who are trying to twist her words, and Sessions shot right back, basically alleging in his opening remarks that Sotomayor is not an impartial judge.
Given the colorful history of Senator Sessions, I’m wondering how many Republicans and conservatives will cringe when hearing some of his statements.
Of course, it’s up to Sotomayor to explain her philosophy, but Sessions seems to be itching for a fight, regardless of what she might say in these hearings.
The Sarah Palin farce was on full display last Friday, and more commentators are willing to speak the simple truth that she’s not suited for national office. Eugene Robinson sums it up nicely.
What can you say about a public official who ridicules those who would take the “quitter’s way out” — as she faces reporters to announce that she’s quitting? A governor who claims that “the worthless, easy path” would be to serve out the remaining 18 months of her term? An ambitious politician who says that “life is too short” to worry about, you know, boring things such as responsibility or duty?
You can say that all of us who ever took Sarah Palin seriously — or pretended to take her seriously — should be deeply ashamed. And you can say that John McCain should publicly apologize for putting the nation he loves at risk by choosing Palin as his running mate. Imagining Palin within a heartbeat of the presidency should be enough to make even die-hard Republicans shudder.
The reasons she gave for stepping down are not just contrived or implausible but literally nonsensical. She can most effectively serve the people of Alaska by ceasing to exercise the powers of chief executive? She worries that as a lame duck she would somehow be compelled to waste taxpayer money on useless junkets? In her “Don’t Cry For Me, Alaska” news conference announcing her departure, the folksy non sequiturs — “Only dead fish go with the flow” — were like nuggets of Cartesian logic amid a tub of mush.
But I’m stating the obvious. The thing is, Palin’s unsuitability for high public office has been obvious all along. Tina Fey got it right; the rest of us were far too reluctant to state plainly that the emperor, or empress, has no clothes.
Many of us in the blogosphere called this one early. It was obvious after her first two interviews that Sarah Palin was a joke as a vice presidential candidate. In many ways it wasn’t her fault. John McCain made the selection.
The pundits on television had to be more restrained, as Palin and the McCain campaign were “all in” playing the victim card.
Let’s stipulate that if there is some heretofore unknown personal, medical or family crisis, this was the right move. But Gov. Palin didn’t say anything like that. Her statement was incoherent, bizarre and juvenile. The text, as posted on Gov. Palin’s official website (here), uses 2,549 words and 18 exclamation points. Lincoln freed the slaves with 719 words and nary an exclamation; Mr. Jefferson declared our independence in 1,322 words and, again, no exclamation points. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1,796 words — still no exclamation points. Gov. Palin capitalized words at random – whole words, like “TO,” “HELP,” and “AND,” and the first letter of “Troops.”
Gov. Palin’s official announcement that she is resigning as chief executive of the great state of Alaska had all the depth and gravitas of a 13-year-old’s review of the Jonas Brothers’ album on Facebook. She even quoted her parents’ refrigerator magnet. (Note to self: if one of my kids becomes governor, throw away the refrigerator magnet that says: “Murray’s Oyster Bar: We Shuck Em, You Suck Em!”) She put her son’s name in quotations marks. Why? Who knows. She writes, “I promised efficiencies and effectiveness!?” Was she exclaiming or questioning? I get it: both! And I don’t even know what to make of a sentence that reads:
*((Gotta put First Things First))*
Ponder the fact that Rupert Murdoch’s Harper Collins publishing house is paying this, umm, writer $11 million for a book. Ponder that and say a prayer for Ms. Palin’s editor.
I’m no latter-day Strunk & White, just a guy who was struck by Palin’s spectacularly rambling and infantile prose. It bespeaks a rambling and infantile mind. But perhaps not. Perhaps this is all a ruse. Perhaps Gov. Palin wants us to believe she’s an intellectual featherweight who is slightly shallower than an actor on High School Musical. Maybe she’s trying to throw us off the trail.
Naah. A lot of people thought that about George W. Bush. He couldn’t be so block-headed, they said. He couldn’t be as childish and churlish as he came off. Oh yes he could. And so, too, might Ms. Palin be as vapid and puerile as her inane statement suggests.
Palin is cashing in. She’s going to get rich with her book and speaking fees, which is rather ironic as Begala points out. I hope she stays in the spotlight, as she’ll be constant reminder to all independents and moderate Republicans of what’s wrong with the Republican Party.
