Political Theatre category archive

Via Bartcop.

Thom Hartmann explains:

Via C&L.

Over at Unqualified Offerings, Jim Henley reveals the formula that right wingnut Dean Chambers uses to make sure that poll results just look right to him.

Here’s three pieces of the algorithm. Follow the link for the rest.

1. Does a poll show an Obama lead outside the so-called margin of error? The poll is skewed.
2. Does a poll show an Obama lead inside the MOE? That’s a “statistical tie.”
3. Does the poll show a Romney lead inside the MOE? Don’t call this a “statistical tie.” Call it a Romney lead*.

Dick Polman describes how, now that the deadline for withdrawing from the race has passed, GOP bigwigs are once again supporting Todd “Legitimate Rapes Don’t Make Babies” Akin.

In my local rag, editorial writer Darryl Lease fingers the missing element–something missing since at least the Nixon era:

Maybe he (Akin–ed.) will win. But, sooner or later, the Republican Party will need some help rediscovering what it’s lost here – its conscience.

Most of us can find ours in a mirror. Some GOP officials, it appears, will need special technology.

The Commander Guy:

Over 20 Conservative Leaders including Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Tony Perkins and some other(s) . . . say yes and call on Public to Tune out the Liberal Media! Who needs it when you have the wingnut-O-sphere!

Meanwhile, Bob Cesca worries that the wingnut fuss over the polls is groundwork for gutting out the vote.

Colbert points the way to sanity–like bad DJs, the pollsters are over-sampling:

Jay Bookman reveals his formula for predicting the Presidential election.

I cannot do justice to it with a summary or excerpt. Just read it.

Warning: Mild Language.

Via Delaware Liberal.

The Commander Guy reads wingnut blogs so we don’t have to.

Romney achieves consensus: He was a lousy less-than-effective governor.

The odious Southern Strategy, illustrated:

Image via Bob Cesca.

Warning: Some tasteless imagery.

The WMD section begins at the two minute mark.

The BooMan sums up the realignment of the Republican Party. The assessment is harsh. It is also accurate.

It is Nixon’s odious Southern strategy come to fruition.

Pretty much every intolerant asshole in the country has moved to the Republican Party, if they weren’t already there. The only exceptions are a few holier-than-thou progressives who can’t enjoy one moment of life if even one person is going hungry.

With that lone exception, all the prudes and bigots and tsk-tskers and money-grubbers and polluters and religious freaks and misogynists and fraudsters and warmongers have aligned with the conservative movement.

Yankee Republicanism is dead. All we have is the reactionary right aligned with a bunch a greedheads. You won’t find an inch of daylight between Pat Robertson and Mitt Romney or Mitt Romney and Paul Wolfowitz or Grover Norquist and Mitt Romney. We have the worst of all worlds.

I would not have said “aligned with the conservative movement.”

In these modern times, “prudes and bigots and tsk-tskers and money-grubbers and polluters and religious freaks and misogynists and fraudsters and warmongers” are the conservative movement.

The Southern strategy has consumed its creators.

Chuck for explains that Mitt the Flip’s moment of honesty will have little impact in Wingnut World, since, for its inhabitants, the 47% is those other guys.

He does not mince words.

It increasingly appears that the Republican Party is going to lose the presidential election and, indeed, may take down its Congressional candidates as collateral damage.

If that happens, Republican insiders will certainly argue that they lost because Mitt the Flip was not conservative enough. The Republican answer to every political failure seems to be that it was because they were not conservative enough. It generally is not an accurate answer, but it’s the only one they’ve got.

At the Guardian, Gary Younge points out that, actually, it’s not the person. It is the party. A nugget:

The trouble was that almost all the Republican contenders during the primary were either extremely colourful or, as candidates at least, stank. There was Newt Gingrich, who wanted to build permanent bases on the moon and, according to his ex-wife, demanded an open three-way relationship with the mistress who is now his current wife; Ricky Perry, who could not remember his own talking points; and Herman Cain, who was accused by several women of sexual harassment and proudly stated that he did not know the name of the president of “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan”. Each, for a while, was a frontrunner.

So when people wonder how Mitt Romney became the party’s standard-bearer they need to first remember just how low the standards were. To make sense within the Republican party was, almost by definition, to appear nonsensical outside it. More credible candidates took a look at what you’d have to say and do to compete and decided to sit the election out.

It is today’s QOTD writ large.

You just can’t get too much Richie Rich.

Oh, wait. Richie Rich was kind and likable.

This isn’t him.

Joking aside, I know that I and others are beating this to death.

I believe this is wholly justified. For the first time, after years of watching flips, we are getting a glimpse of a flipless Mitt, and, as Steven M. pointed out the other day, it ain’t pretty. A snippet from Steven M.’s post:

Romney has no ideological convictions, but — as I’ve said many times — he has a deep reserve of free-floating anger. In this he’s like Nixon, except that Nixon resented certain fixed groups (economic elites, blacks, Jews), while Romney seems to despise … well, anyone who gets in his way.

Video via AmericaBlog.

Via Democratic Underground.