Trenchant Political Commentary
This is just flat out funny. Dave Burris has charted out how the Republican Party can get back in the game.
The Republican Party of the Reagan Revolution was built on the legacy of Barry Goldwater and the shoulders of Ronald Reagan.
St. Ronny has been bowed to…now on with the comedy.
It consisted of a “three-legged stool” – social conservatives and other culture warriors, including 2nd amendment fans and homeschooling advocates, among many;
First leg of the stool = crazy people who are reliable flunkies and dupes, who will vote against their economic interests and will man the phone banks with gusto if they think they think someone is trying to turn them gay. (e.g. Dana Pico, Frank Knotts and Art Downs)
economic conservatives, including budget hawks and those advocating limited government and low taxation;
Second leg = Greedy ass losers who want all the benefits of being Americans without having to pay for any of them. (Burris himself is in this category)
and foreign policy conservatives, including neo-cons and defense hawks
Just read that sentence again and let the full comedy sink in. What do “foreign policy conservatives” have in common with “neo-cons” other than the fact that none of them ever served in any branch of the United States armed forces?
So to recap:
The renewed republican party is going stride to glorious victory when home schoolers who think the world is 10,000 years old link arms with a cabal of rich people who would just as soon move to Cayman Islands if they are asked to pay for anything, and another group of crazy people who think we can bomb our way to security.
Hilarious. Dave is going to party like it is 1999.
The cultural conservative thing, I can see. However, Reagan, despite his alleged intention to cut spending, left office with the biggest deficit in US history. And neoconservativism was so popular after eight years that the GOP was booted out of office at all levels across the country.
He may want to reassess what the Republican brand is all about.
Are you joking, colossally stupid, or do you just need reading comprehension classes? Do try to read the entire thing next time, Newt.
I read it and laughed my ass off.
Renaming your legs “Southern Republicans, Northeastern Republicans Mountain West Republicans” does not impress me.
It cracks me up.
Here’s my issue with Dave’s post:
He laid out the whole thing without actually changing anything. Like he was going to rearrange the deck chairs. (Huckabee instead of Falwell).
Pandora hit the nail on the head in the comments, the religious right isn’t going to compromise their principles (Goldwater’s abortion) to get there.
FTR, I suspect that Dave and the Republicans will care as much about our suggestions, as we listened to their suggestion of having Hillary as Veep.
The cultural conservatives have spent years being screwed by the corporate cons and the neocons. Why should they keep voting Republican? With Palin, they are basically saying “we own the party.”
After the 2004 losses, I spent a good deal of time over at dKos arguing with the What Do We Do to Fix the Dems crowd — mainly trying to argue for identifying the failures first, then fixing them rather than responding either 1) media assessments of the Dems problems or 2) our own emotions. This time in 2004 we were all talking about these things: 1) Values voters; 2) religion; 3) Southern candidates. None of those things was the real problem, but time and energy to get a real picture of what happened is useful.
But while they are arguing over big vs small government (which is a wanker’s argument from a bunch of people who won’t do what is needed to get to smaller government, we saw that already), they have a real structural problem — people under 30 are disinterested in most of what Rs currently stand for; minorities vote for Ds; and so do people in urban/suburban areas.
How wearisome this site has become, especially j330’s stuff. Used to read you often, but have tired of the steady expulsion of verbal odors…
DelLiberal has lost its way, in my view, gives liberals a bad name and no longer is worth the time it takes to click on a link. Sorry you own the name. There are plenty of liberals who can write effectively, but I have returned here, hoping you would get over yourselves and your self-importance and supposed fame and power and grow up a bit. It’s time, don’t you think?
You might consider this fine bit from Pres-Elect Obama’s incredible speech the other night: “Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.” Soon as he said that, I thought of some of the stuff I’ve read here.
Hope you give your approach another think. I think you might be smarter than you write, but I’m bored by your routine meanness, name-calling and arrogance. None of that is progressive. It’s lowest common denominator stuff.
I feel kind of sorry for you, but I no longer want to pick through the landfill to find that occasional interesting idea/line/item. Maybe you’d do better with an editor who could check your self-indulgence and force you to write with some discipline?
Anyway, hope your life takes a better turn soon…. Cheers and farewell.
Blah, Blah, Blah….
Farewell indeed. You will not be missed Weary.
Indeed, Cassandra. You can’t fix a problem that you don’t understand. Democrats did go through similar things post-2004. The initial thought was that Democrats just needed better branding, but that was just a symptom of the real problem. The real problem is that Democrats didn’t really stand for anything and were more of a collection of different interest groups. In 2008, instead of running as “not Bush” and “like Republicans, only nicer,” Democrats didn’t shy away from running as Democrats.
That is an important point. When Democrats run on social justice, economic fairness and opportunity they win because those are items that always rate high for voters.
When they run as “not as bad” Republicans they lose. The crux of the Republican problem now is much tougher than the Democrats problem in 2004 because, on a fundamental level, people don’t like Republican policies.
As I stated in an earlier post, they created this monster, and by monster I mean the religious right. For years they have relied on this voting block and promised them everything they wanted. Did they really believe they’d never have to deliver on these promises?
Foolish and dangerous. The three legs of the stool theory doesn’t hold water. The religious litmus test is now demanded of all republicans. Geography won’t save them. The “word of God” is not open to debate or compromise.
Is it a bar stool? Is this bar stool at a redneck bar? it sounds like that’s where it is coming from. I don’t see this stool at a nonhomophobic bar, This stool seems like it is definitely sitting at a bar that prides itself on still having smoking in it, still having a cigarette machine in the doorway and being able to hang the dixie flag in the corner where the pool table is…
most likely this is one of those bar stools where the legs aren’t even either. you have to put a folded up napkin under one of the legs to keep the stool from wobbling to and fro.
pandora wrote:
Just ask the DE Republican Senatorial candidate.
The Republican coalition relies more than anything on conservative minds, not conservative principles. Conservative minds bow to authority and tradition. Thus the Republican platform is based on reinforcing things that people are already quick to believe in. Social conservatism relies on appealing to God’s authority and ownership of the levers of power of major churches to emphasize that tradition must be interpreted as anti-gay and anti-abortion, and avoid mention of beating swords into plowshares or helping those less fortunate. Economic conservatism, rapidly becoming a tough sell, relies on psychological branding through advertisement and scaremongering about taxes an communism, as well as dusty pseudointellectual arguments about Milton Friedman and phony Laffer curves. The final plank of conservatism isn’t “foreign policy” but rather facism and xenophobia, that sense of nationalism and cultural jingoism that can be adapted both by neocons (“destroy our enemies abroad”) and paleocons (“purge our nation of immigrants and those who are not patriotic”). Conservatism by nature easily allows for plentiful hypocrisy – “We must stop big government from giving our money to aid those we are feeling xenophobic about” along with “We must allow big government to spy on those we are feeling xenophobic about”. “We must be pro-business and avoid socialism” along with “We must be pro-business and bail out failing corporations”. They can be pro-war or anti-war in the name of xenophobia, depending on how the war in question is being framed.
Progressive minds depend on one key factor – social justice, also known as the collective good. The world is somewhat evenly split between mental conservatives and mental progressives, so victory is a matter of holding your base and stealing a portion of your opponent’s base. Everything about Obama, almost by definition, appealed strongly to the progressive base. To steal conservatives, he talked using Biblical allusions, promised not to take anyone’s guns, threatened to hunt and kill Osama Bin Laden, offered a tax cut, and emphasized that Democrats (Clinton, FDR) were the people you turned to in times of economic hardship. These are appeals designed to assuage the forces of xenophobia, tradition, and self-interest. McCain’s appeal to social justice was choosing Palin and to pay lip service to alternative energy; he also made reference to his “maverick” and “bipartisan” style, but displayed very little of it on the campaign trail – he hoped his past actions would get him by, but progressive minds are focused on the future, not the past.
Conservatism will not die, but it inevitably moves leftward when new ideas turn into traditions and things that made people xenophobic become more familiar and less scary. Twenty years from now, the world will still be divided between conservatives and progressives, but the progressives will have won most of the battles, just as we defeated slavery, ended segregation, and established social security and medicare.
I think XStryker’s above comment is deserving of a rescue! Good stuff.
Thus the Republican platform is based on reinforcing things that people are already quick to believe in.
*
dood!
that was why it was hilarious to see the chorus of the tripe-mouthed phrase ‘now we must be the loyal opposition’ within hours of the end of the election count.
Mike Castle put it in WNJ print Wednesday morning and it appeared out of dear GOP talking head Heather Wilson that evening on the MSNBC circuit..