Political Theatre category archive

The Richmonder.

Jon Tevlin will miss Michelle Bachmann. He laments the triumph of her opponent.

A nugget (emphasis added):

It’s not that Bachmann hasn’t tried. Her Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, a plank of her short but dazzling presidential bid, fell victim to the same assassin as all of her grand schemes and big ideas: the pesky but persistent fact.

Facts have plagued Bachmann like a flesh-eating virus, nibbling away at her statements with reckless abandon, making short work of the skeleton of her ideas.

Field points out the one constant in American “conservatism.”

It is quite true, and it’s not at all pretty. A nugget.

Since the Founding, the Right has decried government interference with the “free market” and intrusion upon “traditions,” like slavery and segregation, as “tyranny” or “socialism.”

Read it.

Delaware Dem notes the end of the Bachmann Spinner Overdrive era in Congress.

Ezra Klein reflects on the narrowing of the Republican political mind:

Imagine a policy spectrum that goes from 1 to 10 in which 1 is the most liberal policy, 10 is the most conservative policy and 5 is that middle zone that used to hold moderate Democrats and Republicans. The basic shape of American politics today is that the Obama administration can and will get Democrats to agree to anything ranging from 1 to 7.5 and Republicans will reject anything that’s not an 8, 9 or 10. The result, as I’ve written before, is that President Barack Obama’s record makes him look like a moderate Republican from the late 1990s.

Do read the rest

ABC embraces its role as GOP flack.

E. J. Dionne finds precedent for Oklahoma’s Senator Coburn’s initial statement on federal disaster aid for victims of the Moore, Okla., tornado:

It was only between 1840 and 1860 that disaster relief from Washington became contentious as a particularly extreme brand of states’ rights politics reared its head. Southerners, Balogh notes, began fearing that “extending federal power” in this way “might establish a precedent for national intervention in the slavery question.”

Make no mistake, it’s still about keeping the big house big and the subjugated in subjugation

The rest is window-dressing.

Ruth Ann Dailey seems to think that President Obama has a “hard-left ideology” but that, since voters like him, the Republican scamdals won’t touch him.

All that that tells me is she hasn’t been paying attention to what President Obama actually says and does.

Not even I, leftie liberal as I may be, have a “hard left ideology.”

And, compared to me, Obama is a cupcake.

Read more »

Via C&L.

Dan Amira reminds us (emphasis added):

The thing to understand is that “self-incrimination” is not tantamount to “admitting guilt.” Self-incrimination can mean providing any information that might be used against you, fairly or unfairly. Lois Lerner may sincerely believe that she’s committed no crime, yet fear that the government — which is currently investigating the IRS — could nevertheless try to use her words against her.

Considering the (legally invalid) antics of Darrell Issa, such fears are likely justified.

Citations of case law at the link.

Dick Polman notes that public buildings, such as schools, in Moore, Oklahoma, right smack at the intersection of I-35 and I-Tornado, do not have storm shelters, because freedom.

But Moore is hardly unique in Oklahoma; it takes its cues from state government, which doesn’t require storm shelters, either – all this, in a region that gets hit by tornadoes more times than anywhere else in America.

Maybe I’m just a blue-state guy posing a blue-state question, but I have to ask: Isn’t it the prime responsibility of government to protect its citizens, and provide for the common good?

Apparently not in red-state alley, because this is where Freedom comes in.

From the Roanoke Times:

Contempt is not a Christian value

Reg Henry is fed up with talking points:

Amazingly, a simple time existed not long ago when people just asked other people for the facts. Can you imagine it? The facts! Just the facts, ma’am. What’s the story, morning glory?

But then some chronically political person decided that the plain story would never do. It would be better to arrange the salient facts into a persuasive sequence in order to win arguments. The talking point, its hour come round at last, slouched toward Washington to be born.

It is important to understand that talking points are not neutral. They serve an argumentative purpose. If repeated enough, people’s brains throw a tiny rope out of their ears and slide down to a less tedious environment. At that point, political victory can be claimed.

Read the rest.

Via C&L.

The usual warning: Language, no taste.