This is rapidly turning into Animal Farm, the way you can practically change a few nouns and have identical speeches from Republicans and those zany islamists.

At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law so early in the discussion, acting like a good Nazi is a prerequisite for appealing to the GOP base.

I say, let ’em try to out-nazi each other. With each up-ratcheting of the GOP rhetoric, the foolishness just looks more, well, foolish. And that’s a good thing, from a standpoint of exposing these neandrethals.

I think Jesusland is shrinking dramatically as a reliable geographic base for the GOP.

And now they have Jamaat al Muslimeen of Trinidad & Tobago to worry about. Scary Muslims in Trinidad! Scary Muslims in Guyana! Scary Muslims at the West Indian Carnival in Brooklyn!

Bringing together the first two comments, I was reminded of Animal Farm just this morning, in the context of Boxer the faithful horse.

It seems that the faithful have been naive in the extreme, and may only now be starting to wake up. Let’s hope so. Let’s hope that Bush’s lumping together of islamocommiefaghippies with anyone opposing his slave legislation may have finally taken the shine off him in the eyes of the staunch Bush supporters. Let’s meander into the realm of fantasy, and hope that some at least finally wake up to the fact that the Bush junta have been pulling that stunt for 6 years, and that the entire baggage is bullshit.

And then we’ll all have ponies of our very own.

Maybe Zakaria should have thought of that before he spent five years pimping Bush and the neocons, up until — what, yesterday?

The admirable Orcinus blog has made it a forte to compile examples of right-wing terrorism in America. Strange how that is my only regular source for such reporting… Sure, the planned attack on JFK Airport is cowardly, worrying and hardly a chalk-up for Islam, but why is it that this makes CNN headlines while militiamen in the south stockpiling grenades and whatnot does not? Had a Muslim been found with enough illegal weaponry to invade a police station we’d never hear the end of it.

And where are the attempts by muslims to bomb abortion clinics? Isn’t it a (debunked) fact among right-wingers that feminists are only fussing over the machismo and traditionalism of Steyn and those other honorable fellows while letting the far worse muslims all over the world off the hook? Anyone with sensory apparati can see that said feminists have their priorities as straight as Clint Eastwood playing the harmonica with John Wayne while voting for Reagan on top of a horse.

Check out Pamela’s latest vlog:

[Link]

Between 7m30s and 8m she mentions that she speaks to her dead friend who introduced her to Atlas Shrugs.

Totally agree about Zakaria’s record, moron, but he’s right about the political mood of the GOP. In contrast, Frank Rich, of whom I’m usually a pretty big fan, is, for the first time in a long time, dead wrong about the political mood of the country in today’s column (behind a sub wall, nat’), which compares the end of the Nixon presidency (tragic) to the end of the Bush presidency (pathetic).

Here are the nut ‘graphs:

But in at least one way there may be a precise political parallel in the aftermahts of two failed presidencies rent by catastrophic wars: Americans are praying for the mood pendulum to swing…

Edgy is out; easy listening is in; style, not content, can be king. In this climate, it’s hardly happenstance that many Republicans are looking in desperation to Fred Thompson. Robert Novak pointedly welcomed is candidacy last week because, in his view, Mr. Thompson is ‘less harsh’ in tone than his often ideologically indistinguishable rivals and ‘a real-life version of the avuncular fictional D.A. he plays on TV.’ The Democratic boomlet for Barack Obama is the flip side of the same coin: his views don’t differ radically from those of most of his rivals, but his conciliatory personality is the essence of calm, the antithesis of anger.

I think Rich has this almost precisely wrong. The bloom is already off the Obama “boomlet” (though it could return), in part because Democratic voters crave a clear and concrete new direction more than “the essence of calm” that he’s offered so far. And those of us who watched the recent GOP presidential debate can be excused if we don’t believe that that party has any interest in making our politics less harsh. Rich seems to have bought pretty standard Beltway bullshit from Novakula. Thompson is “avuncular” like Dubya is “compassionate.” It’s all in keeping with the Reagan variation on the Goldwater formula. The modern GOP and its media lackeys like their moonshine with plenty of mixer. But one forgets the harshness of the base beverage at the nation’s peril. (Matt Taibbi’s portrait of Rudy Giuliani in this week’s Rolling Stone is a lot closer to the mark.)

Rich’s take seems as tin-eared and off-base as all the “death of irony” nonsense in the immediate wake of 9/11. I think the political mood in this country is as ugly as it has ever been in my lifetime (and I remember Watergate well). Hunter S. Thompson, the great muse of early ’70s political and cultural ugliness, would have understood it well.

Between 7m30s and 8m she mentions that she speaks to her dead friend who introduced her to Atlas Shrugs.

And that she’s one of two friends. Sad.

Thompson is “avuncular� like Dubya is “compassionate.�

Fred Thompson is Jabba the Hutt’s sleazy cousin — just compare their smiles. Jabba doesn’t talk about Fred much, though, because even murderous slave traders have *some* standards. Unlike that section of the Repub ‘Base’ that’s salivating for one of their patented “strong daddies” to smack them around, steal their money, threaten their posterity and wreck their neighborhoods… just the way they like it…

I’ll be laughing a lot less if one of them actually gets elected.

That’s the scary thing. As much as all of the first- and second-tier Republicans are cripplingly flawed knuckleheads, the fact is* that eventually one of them will have to win the nomination, and they will be given a giant fundraising engine, an integrated media operation that made Bush a war hero and Kerry a lying, shirking coward in 2004, a cowed mainstream media that always finds new things to hate about Democrats, a base that can be fired up by appealing to peoples’ worst instincts about darkies and homos (and ignore flaws in their own candidates), an opposition party that often functions like badly-herded cats, and a field-tested willingness to bend and break election laws to get their guys over the hump in key states.

No matter how awful or retarded or incompetent the Republican nominee is, he’ll have (at worst) a 40% of winning the 2008 election outright, just because the GOP machine is so capable. They can’t govern to save their lives (or the lives of people in New York, New Orleans, Iraq, etc.) but they do know how to win elections, no matter how badly damaged the goods are that they’re peddling.

* I’m not Gary. Honest.

They can’t govern to save their lives (or the lives of people in New York, New Orleans, Iraq, etc.) but they do know how to win elections, no matter how badly damaged the goods are that they’re peddling.

Maybe, but the playbook is old and tattered. They can’t run on their record, and they can’t really blame Teh Liberals for America’s ills. Let’s not forget, they lost in 2000 and won a squeeker in 2004. They had to pull out every stop to barely eke out 2004, and most of their rhetorical tricks have lost their potency. “Gaaaah! Faaaags!” isn’t going to cut it this time.

I think the Republicans’ best strategy would be to run away from Bush– to nominate a Republican Who Is Not A Wingnut. All the top-tier candidates, including Thompson, are Grade-A, bona fide wingnuts. I can’t imagine any of them escaping the stink of George W. Bush. Every single one of these guys is basically on the record saying “I will do the same things George W. Bush did.” Good luck with that.

Actually, the concern is they will polish a narrative that says “I will do the same things Bush did, but I will do them right, completely and successfully, leading america to greater victories around the world…”

They COULD win with a combination of the “bush was right, but incompetent and weak” message and the “democrats will run away from the evil brown people, who are coming to kill you and your family, and did I mention they were brown?” message.

I am afraid america is still vulnerable to a message of thinly veiled hatred, racism and american exceptionalism. And that’s what somebody will end up selling…

mikey

Romney said, “How about people who are in settings—mosques, for instance—that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror? Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping?�

As long as we start with the Repub National Convention, Willard. Or the NRA. Of course, Willard “Mitt” Romney has already shown that he’s pissing-his-Armanis scairt of the big mean NRA, so not much hope there.

I think the Republicans’ best strategy would be to run away from Bush– to nominate a Republican Who Is Not A Wingnut.

That would certainly increase their chances in the general election, but a moderate conservative would never get the Republican nomination. Rove’s base has come to dominate the party, and they ain’t lettin’ go anytime soon.

I think the grim fact is that the last decade is just the beginning of a very long struggle. Wingnut extremism is likely to be a dangerously strong part of the political scene for years to come, even if they lose the White House in 2008.

And, to nod to Orcinus again in this thread, it turns out Ron Paul dances with the racist militia devil. So the supposedly sane voice might just be the worst of the lot.
If the Dems give Hillary the nod I’m going to go back to looking into a move to Canada. Obama can win. Edwards can win. Gore can win. Hillary can’t.

Gads, I don’t care who the dems nominate, I’ll vote for absolutely ANYONE other than the Rethugs.
If we can’t win it this year I don’t see how we’ll ever be able to.

This is the rhetorical equivalent of driving a Hummer because you have a little weenie.

I’ll say it again – if the Republicans nominate anyone OTHER than Ron Paul, they are toast. People can and do disagree with him on policy, but he has everything the others lack – integrity, conviction, a record of voting consistently for the things he BELIEVES in, *having* things he believes in (aside from getting re-elected), a deep respect for the whole Constitution, and a desire for peace and trade instead of a lust for war, more war, all the time.
He has no scandal attached to him, he’s been married to only one woman (imagine that !), and he’s willing to work across the aisle when necessary (without childish name-calling ).

Edwards can win. Gore can win. Hillary can’t.

I keep seeing this in the blogosphere, and I don’t agree with it at all.

Clinton has a disapproval rating of 40%. Figure at least 28% of that are the dead-enders that won’t vote for a Democrat under any circumstances. That leaves 12% that are possibly persuadable – if, for example, all they know about her is the wingnut/MSM charicature, which we know she can overcome, because she’s done so – in upstate New York, for example.

Also, a 40% disapproval rating means there are 60% who either approve of her already or haven’t made their minds up, and are waiting to see what she’s like in debates and campaign appearances. (I’ll include in that 60% people who would vote for Hillary Clinton just to get Bill Clinton back into the WH.)

Judging from the debates tonight, Clinton has already made some people who opposed her candidacy take a second look. She came across as intelligent, strong-minded, and unwilling to play the MSM’s trivialization games.

Please note, I am not a Clinton fan: I prefer Obama. But one thing I see in the blogosphere that bothers me greatly is people saying her candidacy is doomed because “too many people hate her already.” That’s just not true.

One of our local weeklies unfortunately carries a digest of New York Times bull. One of the terrifying bits of content was that something like 40% of Republicans are unhappy with Mr. Bush’s performance and would like to see someone much more right-wing in the White House.
Anybody heard anything confirming this? If so, it is a little — alas, English doesn’t have a word for “the kind of terrifying that makes me projectile-vomit my descending colon”.

But perhaps it should.

Please note, I am not a Clinton fan: I prefer Obama. But one thing I see in the blogosphere that bothers me greatly is people saying her candidacy is doomed because “too many people hate her already.� That’s just not true.

I concur. I’m not crazy about her either, but I think people who say stuff like that are putting too much stock in the unmoveability of our public. Our incredibly trivial-minded, no-attention-span public.

It’s funny. When I hear and see the incredibly nasty, stupid, trivial, misogynistic ways that the media, and the Republicans, use to attack Hillary Clinton, they all begin to look like a bunch of schoolyard bullies to me. I end up wanting to vote for Clinton simply to stick it to anyone who is childish enough to listen to, or repeat, these taunts.