Rant of the Week, Perhaps of the Year
El Somnambulo is more likely to show up at Easter services (he’s Jewish) than to tune into ‘Conservative Talk Radio’. However, when a ‘conservative talk radio’ host, John Batchelor, goes all Howard Beale on the GOP and pronounces it dead, the Beast Who Slumbers collapses into a paroxysm of pleasure (not that that is an unusual response for the hot-blooded El Somnambulo). So, with no further delay allow ‘bulo to present his favorite selection from the Bible Batchelor’s vitriolic farewell to the GOP:
What about the Republican Party right now? Isn’t it on radio and TV claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility and American power? Bypassing the stupidity of these claims, I am on radio, on what is called right-wing radio, and it is easy for me to see that my loudest colleagues, who compulsively repeat the cant of Conservatism for Dummies, are not sincere students of the Republican Party but rather barkers, hookers, establishmentarian jesters, cultists, and, in the worst instance, just thatch-headed whiners. Fox News is a parade of wet-eared Republican office holders, yet there is usually just one each allowed of the categories the Democrats own in multitudes: a Jewish-American, an Asian-American, an African-American, a Hispanic-American. Then there is the beauty pageant of fast-talking, rude Fox blondes—if they are not all the same woman in mood swings—who stridently mock the Democrats, yet have almost nothing to say about the Republicans, as if the party was a disappointing ex or mother’s latest beau.
Now, because this is being penned by a right-wing radio host, his reasons why the Republican Party died 76 years ago are as unintentionally hilarious as you might expect, making the obituary all the less poignant:
What about Ike and Richard Nixon and the worshipped California cowboy manqué Ronald Reagan? Not one of them cared a toothpick for the Republican Party of their time and each struggled mightily to remake it. Ike was indifferent to partisanship: His beating of the splenetic Robert Taft in 1952 for the nomination was the success of a conqueror over a sharpie. Nixon was a troubled, spiteful Quaker who despised the Republican Party as the “Eastern Establishment,” and who governed as a liberal Democrat with the apostasy of wage and price controls, the EPA, and embassies to the mass-murdering Mao and the hollow Brezhnev. Reagan was a right-wing Democrat from homespun Illinois who, after years of failing in Hollywood and then charming California, swamped Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale with the passionate votes of the Democratic Party. I have long suspected that the Kennedys voted for Reagan twice.
Trust El Somnambulo. He has never lied to you (save for that little matter about promising to love you forever…). You want to read this one. In its entirety. Like an Easter Egg, it’s dee-licious.
Tags: Wingnuttery
Yeah, if only the Republican party had been more Hoover and less Nixon then everything would be a-0k today.
“thatch-headed whiners” that’s a new one. What does that mean? It’s kind of interesting how someone can be completely right about the problem (top paragraph), yet completely wrong about the cause (bottom paragraph).
This is an extraordinary rant — and the ending certainly doesn’t keep up with the rest of this article. It avoids Nixon’s meltdown with Watergate and avoids looking at Ike’s relatively successful pragmatism. Certainly neither Nixon or Ike would be all that welcome in current version of the Republican Party — and I think that if conservatives looked pretty honestly on Reagan’s record (tax hikes, amnesty, working with Democrats) they wouldn’t want him much anymore, either.
The person missing from this diatribe is Goldwater. Goldwater is both the father of the current ridiculousness and its best opposition. He didn’t want anything to do with the culture warrior BS and I really think that his focus on fiscal conservatism was not meant to be implemented as a stalking horse for greed.
But it is curious that he would go back to Hoover as the last true Republican. There is little about Hoover, I think that the current tea-obsessed would be at all interested in besides Hoover’s lassez-faire attitude to the collapsing of the economy.
What struck ‘bulo as bizarre was Batchelor’s phrase “troubled, spiteful Quaker” referencing Nixon as if that description somehow explained Tricky Dick’s behavior.
And, one has to wonder about someone mourning the alleged fact that the ruination of Rethugs was due to their failure to embrace the vision of Herbert Hoover. Although ‘bulo could make a pretty good argument that they HAVE.
This rant is so good, has so much subtext, and so many logical and emotional dead ends, that the Beast Who Slumbers just might write his master’s thesis on it. But first he needs to contact his educational advisor at Regent University.
I do think they’ve embraced Hoover. There’s a very large “let them fail” contingent in the Republican party. There’s certainly a lot of standing around not knowing how to respond to a crisis or even accepting that there’s a crisis.
I can’t decide what I love more; the original rant, El Som’s treatment of it, Cassandra’s follow up comment, the comments in the thread from that post which include…
and…
OR –
Kilroy’s comment on that thread in which he suggests that the Republicans might want to build a new party based on this video.
I can’t decide. I love everyone who just conspired to make me so happy.
‘Bulo is forming a band called the “Troubled Spiteful Quakers”.
Anyone wanna join? Don’t have to be Quaker…but you must be spiteful.
Do you take the shrill? ‘Cause I’m shrill.
Love that video. Republicans won’t build a party based on that because who is going to be scared of dancing to Julia Andrews?
Certainly Troubled Spiteful Quaker doesn’t capture the difficult complexity that was Nixon. I wonder if anyone could capture the man in three words. Did anyone see Frost/Nixon? Frank Langella was amazing as Tricky Dick — every time you were settling in to sympathize with Nixon, he would do something to yank that rug right from under you.
‘Shrill’ is a little too Grace Slick-ish for ‘bulo. Think Chrissie Hynde…:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSsatKLmm70