(h/t Joe Benevides)
Last night and this morning (between reboots after Firefox crashes), I’ve been reflecting on stuff —
the Team Obama approach to Iran
the House vote on the stimulus bill
the votes on delaying digital TV
Norm Coleman’s screwy election challenge
the bathetic suck-up to Limbaugh
Bernie Marcus’s conference call
— etc., etc. And you know, it all keeps taking me back to David Sedaris‘s metaphor of Dems and GOPers:
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
At local, state, and national level, I just don’t see the Republican Party surviving much longer. But what, d’ya reckon, will replace it?
The smart Republicans will probably become Democrats. It’s been happening for years, but that trend will probably accelerate. The Democrats will continue to become the new Republicans. Progressives will have to form their own party.
At least, that’s how things seem to be working out at the moment.
On that DTV bill – good that it passed. Kevin Drum’s sure right about the House Republicans, though. I think they’re still in authoritarian mode. Senate Repubs seem to finally be behaving like Senators again. Deprogramming may take longer for those in the lower chamber.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Maybe so, Cujo 1, but with the whole thrust away from the Reagan-Bush crapola.
Anybody who doesn’t take The New Yorker in hard copy, for pete’s sakes click here.
I’d be hesitant to say R.I.P. to Repubs just yet. They were saying that about Dems not too long ago. All it would take is some terrible event and a failure to handle it properly. Or a lessening of the financial crisis and the inflationary fallout. The “swing” is a fickle group and do not think they love you for they will, in time, break your heart.
Morning, dd. I’m not saying that conservatives are going away — we’ll always have some — but only that the GOP is so tapped-out and worthless by now, its useful life is over. Something else will arise in its place, I feel sure, so the back-and-forth can roll on.
Well, twice in my life time, I’ve heard it said that election losses and bankruptcy of ideas meant that the Democratic Party was over, and it’s happened once or twice before in my lifetime to the Republicans.
This kind of self-congratulation is not a useful way of thinking– it ignores history (a major party has not disintegrated in the United States since the late 1840s-1850s, and both political parties have had periods of dominance and retreat ever since), and it encourages the people who are pretending they’ve achieved final and complete victory to quit thinking about themselves and their relation to the other side. The only utility I can think of is the utility superstitions have for some folks– providing reassurance about things that might otherwise be troubling.
I started to write it’s way too early to talk this way, but I’m not sure when this would be a rational view of American politics.
I think the Republicans are in for a long season of trouble, and their current leadership shows no sign of a capacity to rethink where they are and accommodate the current national mood. The current mood won’t last forever, and it’s pretty clear that many Republican leaders who don’t wake up will be toast electorally before long. But the Republicans will retreat, regroup, and the circumstances will change. I’m sure we’ll see a couple more “deaths” of one party or the other in my lifetime, just as illusory.
I just opened my 401k statement and have now picked myself up off the floor. If something cannot be done about the massive amount of savings and wealth being lost in these plans by millions of Americans who are simply trying to do the right thing and plan for their future, then President Obama will be turned on just like George Bush was turned on for running this Country into the ground. It’s as simple as that.
OnlyWhenILaugh….Thats politics, the OLD/New Real Economy.
And if you are not politically connected you are shit out of luck.
NMC, congratulation (self- or otherwise) here? Not that I can spot. Nor can I recall anything in the 40+ years that I’ve been paying good attention that remotely parallels January 2009. This set of disasters is so much more extreme, numerous, and threatening than any I’ve experienced — up to and including Watergate (who could dream we’d top that?) — and the Republican response to it so much more unserious and inadequate (John McCain? Sarah Palin? Joe the Plumber? Rush Limbaugh?) than seems possible, that surely it’s unique.
(Except for Team Obama’s performance since ’07) there’s nothing TO congratulate. It’s just to be marveled at. And I really do think “Republicanism” as we’ve known it is a goner. It isn’t just Bush-Cheney killing it, but knuckleheads in Congress and the media too. Truly, who could imagine anything this surreal and out-of-sync?
Blago makes the “closing argument” to his non-existent case in the IL Senate beginning at 11 AM (CST) here.
Re. the stimulus package vote. A quote stolen from http://tinyurl.com/brk7s7.
” All politics being local, there is a simple but effective way for the Prez to get a few Republicans on board for the next stimulus package (and yes, there will be a need for several more).
Simply announce that it would be reasonable to conclude that anyone in congress who votes against spending the money must obviously not want to see any of it spent in his or her district.”
And from Politico:
Kycol @11-that’s exactly what SC House is saying to their guv who opposes the stimulus bill-they are bypassing him in order to accept about $2.1 billion for their residents.
If you can’t get the link at 10 to load, try this one.
You know how reporters describe loony speakers ranting as “rambling”? Blago is rambling.
WaPo: One of the military judges at Gitmo having denied the Obama Admin’s motion for a 120-day stay, DoD may have to withdraw the charges against that detainee.
The Republican Party won’t survive much longer? Please tell me that you are exaggerating. The Republicans were saying this back in 2002 an 2004, and several other times before that. The Democrats are merely 4 years removed from putting up John Kerry as their candidate and having him lose to a clearly inept Bush.
the democrats put up an extraordinary, once in a lifetime candidate in obama and got 52.9 precent of the national vote. do the math. people aren’t that enamored with the democratic party.
the GOP heads will roach-up somewhere and get a plan of attack going. if the democrats go sit on their laurels and think that the republican party is dead then they’ll be in for a 2006/2008 congressional landslide.
and in Mississippi, the Democrats just lost 7 of 8 state-wide, with only an incumbent, Jim Hood, keeping his seat.
will the republican party rethink and alter its ideals and goals, altering the face of its party somewhat? probably so. but to say they are dead is absolutely absurd.
It’s not dead yet but it’s dying, J-R, because eventually even Mississippians get sick of shit-with-glass.
but Mississippians have been eating shit with glass for years. people will continue to vote against their economic interests for moral and social reasons.
also, peoples memories are short. they’ll forget all of the republican nonsense in 3 or 4 years if Obama bombs and the republicans put up a decent candidate.
Okay, but let’s see now . . . Obama’s history of bombing? the GOP’s of finding decent candidates? Hmmm.
Don’t count the Republican party out. It’s down, but it will stagger back to its feet over time.
Political winds follow social, economic, and international forces and dynamics … sometimes a party is running with the wind, sometimes it’s sailing across the wind, and sometimes it’s tacking against the wind.
The Republicans right now don’t even know which way the winds are blowing, but they’ll figure it out. Sensible people will realize that the John Boehners and John Kyls have exhausted their puny resources and they will replace them with better leaders. It will happen.
The new Republican mantra du jour is, “Back to Basics.” Whatever that means. But I think a lotta Americans are going to interpret is meaning, “No We Can’t and We Won’t Let Them.” It isn’t going to resonate well.
The economy may get better … in which case the Democrat’s recovery plans will be applauded and the voters will show their appreciation at the polls. Or it may get worse … and Dems may become the circle at the center of the bullseye. Again, the voters will vote their feelings.
The United States of America became, effectively, the United States of Franklin D. Roosevelt, beginning in 1933. The Republican party’s primary goal in the intervening 76 years has been to roll back most, if not all, the social, economic, and international gains the nation made under FDR and to remake American government and society into something resembling the pre-FDR era.
President Obama is taking the nation on yet another new departure … he is attempting a do-over on our international relations and standing, on our military ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan (funny no one ever mentions what our military is doing in the Philippines, but if no one else raises it, neither will I), and certainly on the relationships of capital, business, and the American consuming public.
The Republicans are totally bereft of original thinking on any of these issues, so they stonewall even the best, even the very best, of ideas advanced by Democrats. I was married to a woman a lot like that one time, thousands of years ago.
So don’t administer extreme unction over the GOP. They have to sort out their ultra-right wing nuts and put them where they are neither seen nor heard, they have to distance themselves from the evangelical right (which Republicans never countenanced until recently), denounce and put lotsa space between themselves and the likes of Rush Limbaugh, pick off the beggar lice of the pro-lifers, quit posturing and posing with the NRA, and find the truly important issues that confront the nation, then establish sensible positions that voters can support. That was a horrible run-on sentence. But I was a PE major … what do I know?
As you’ve probably heard, the IL Senate just dumped Blago, 59-0, and the homepage of the ChiTrib is quite a sight.
IL’s new guv sounds like quite an improvement.
I’m watching him now, here. Think Blago’s up next, but I’ll be cooking.
Under the headline “C’mon. That’s Too Easy,” Josh says:
“Roll Call says that Sen. Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican, is being considered for Commerce Secretary by the White House. Of course, New Hampshire has a Democratic governor who would presumably send another Democrat to Washington, becoming the Democrats’ sixtieth senator.”
Heh. This guy golfs his ball.
When I fork over $2.00 for my Starbucks, offer a thank you and get a “no problem” response, it bugs the hell out of me. First of all, shouldn’t I, a patron of this business, be the recipient of this expression? And secondly-I wouldn’t assume it *would be* a problem to serve a paying customer. Well-it seems to bother some other people as well. And others who say, “it’s just my age”-well some privileges should come with age and this is one of them for me.
Pretty darn savvy. Hope Judd Greg can stand up to the pressure he’s bound to get from his colleagues to turn this one down.
My cork the ass saying is have a blessed day….Retailing Religion for my dollar literally makes me feel nasty.
Yeah Mag-that one, too!