Political Theatre category archive

Dick Polman sums up last night’s cavalcade of stupid.

Paul Krugman considers the rise of the right wing in Europe and the U. S. A snippet (emphasis added):

The story is quite different in America, because the Republican Party hasn’t tried to freeze out the kind of people who vote National Front in France. Instead, it has tried to exploit them, mobilizing their resentment via dog whistles to win elections. This was the essence of Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” and it explains why the GOP gets the overwhelming majority of Southern white votes.

But there is a strong element of bait-and-switch to this strategy. Whatever dog whistles get sent during the campaign, once in power the GOP has made serving the interests of a small, wealthy economic elite, especially through big tax cuts, its main priority — a priority that remains intact, as you can see if you look at the tax plans of the establishment presidential candidates this cycle.

Sooner or later the angry whites who make up a large fraction, maybe even a majority, of the GOP base were bound to rebel . . . .

Via.

Atrios.

I don’t watch candidate debates. I can read about them the next morning in 10 or 15 minutes, instead of wasting hours of my life that I can’t get back.

Tonight, I might just watch some Three Stooges. At least their work had coherence.

One way to tell that Donald Trump is beyond the pale is this: Even Charles Krauthammer, who can pretzel himself to support the most twisted Republican policies, is excoriating his positions.

. . . only if you use it:

At our Drinking Liberally gathering Thursday, one of our members who follows the numbers predicted that the Republican establishment, to such an extent that there is such a thing anymore, would eventually unite behind Marco Rubio as the anti-Trump.

He may on to something.

The next morning, my local rag reported that our Congressman, (who, like our previous governor, has the ability to hide his very right-wing positions under a veneer of mild-mannered behavior) endorsed Marco Rubio in the face of overwhelming evidence that Marco Rubio is as dumb as a post and incapable of original thought is neither capable of nor qualified for governance.

And don’t pay no never mind to the predictions of a “brokered” convention. As Michael in Norfolk points out, there ain’t no brokers any more.

In Florida, it’s a policy.

Big twits. Really big twits.

Alfred P. Doblin notes how Chris Christie stood for truth copped out (emphasis added).

ON Sept. 11, 2001, I was working at the Herald News, the sister publication to The Record. In the wake of the attacks, there were unsubstantiated reports of people celebrating in the streets of Paterson. No such stories were ever confirmed. So when I heard Donald Trump say he saw thousands of people celebrating the 9/11 attacks in Jersey City, I thought finally Trump had crossed a line.

Governor Christie would, to borrow an analogy from Jimmy Fallon, “Hulk out.” Certainly, Christie, who has demonized union officials, critics and the little people who occasionally made their way to the microphones of his faux town hall meetings in New Jersey, would give it to Trump good. Instead he said Trump was factually incorrect and left it at that. He is avoiding a head-to-head, Predator vs. Alien showdown.

The man who says, if elected president, he would stand up to Vladimir Putin couldn’t take on a billionaire developer and television personality who disparaged the reputation of thousands of Muslims living in New Jersey.

Read the rest.

At The Nation, Max Berger analyzes how Nixon’s and the Republican Party’s odious Southern Strategy has finally reached to the point of backfiring upon its creators and of threatening to backfire upon the United States. (My two or three regular readers will know that the long-term effect of Nixon’s decision to appeal to racism and bigotry for short-term electoral support has long been a recurring theme in these electrons.)

Here’s a bit; do read the whole thing.

Since the civil-rights movement, the Republican establishment?—?the big bankers and CEOs that actually run the party?—?have danced with racists in the white grassroots by conflating racism and fear of the government. Instead of providing all Americans with decent healthcare, education, jobs, or housing, the racist white grassroots and rich establishment agreed that everyone should be on their own?—?so black people and immigrants don’t accidentally get anything good.

(snip)

The emergence of fascism has always depended upon democracy’s failure. The growing proto-fascist, white-supremacist movement in the Republican Party is preying upon non-rich white people who are literally dying of despair, turning to drugs and suicide to deal with a reality they can’t bear, and a society they believe doesn’t care for them. Over the past 15 years, the death rate for white men has actually increased?—?an unprecedented rise in modern times that’s comparable to the emergence of the AIDS epidemic. White people are right that they are under attack?—?they’re just pointing to the wrong culprits. For the wealthy elite who fund the political operatives and media companies that tell white people who to blame for their plight, the race war is a very useful substitute for the class war.

What’s new in this moment is the Republican establishment’s losing control of the grassroots for the first time in the post–civil rights era.