Political Theatre category archive

At Psychology Today, R. Michael Alvarez attempts to understand why so many Republicans want to give Mitt the Flip:

Recently the Los Angeles Times reported on some interesting focus groups that probed the opinions of typical Republican voters. The story noted that while these voters all wanted to see Obama defeated next November, that “none showed particular excitement about the current slate of Republicans hoping to run against him.”

In particular, these Republican voters saw Romney as distant and unlikeable. When the focus group moderaters asked the participants to describe what family member each Republican candidate might be, Gingrich was described as a close family member, “a grandfather, a father, a favorite uncle.” But Romney, who the talking heads think will be the eventual nominee, was described in distant and negative ways—my favorite, “The dad who’s never home.”

He goes on to consider how Mitt might flip his image.

Though no doubt causing a flap, that’s the one flip certain to flop.

As a counterpoint, courtesy of Steve Benen, here’s Mitt condemning flip-flopping, yet another issue on which Mitt has flipped:

At SeattlePI dot com, David Horsey traces the roots of the conspiracy to take down Herman Cain’s candidacy. It’s been a-brewing a long time.

A nugget:

Sure, go ahead and scoff. Go ahead and believe Cain is merely the latest politician to be toppled by a bimbo eruption. Go ahead and ignore the clear truth: Herman Cain is such a big threat to the Media Lords’ leftist agenda that he had to be eliminated.

This conspiracy goes back much farther than the brief months of Cain’s campaign, of course. It began back in the 1960s when the liberal media elites identified a Kenyan-born baby with an American mother; a child they could groom in secret to become their tool to destroy Christian America. They arranged a fake birth announcement in Honolulu’s newspapers, indoctrinated the boy in the Muslim cesspool of Indonesia and, when the time was right, brought him to the exotic, multiracial pleasure garden of Hawaii where he could easily fit in and begin his surreptitious climb to power.

Follow the link. It’s worth it, if only to see the editorial cartoon.

. . . a cultural construct that exists only in the eyes of those who see it, though it be a powerful fiction, a brain-eating destructive zombie of a lie.

CrookedTimber recalls the Immigration Service’s list of races from 1914:

African (black), Armenian, Bohemian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Cuban, Dalmatian, Dutch, East Indian, English, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Herzogovinian, Irish, Italian (North), Italian (South), Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Magyar, Mexican, Montenegrin, Moravian, Pacific Islander, Polish, Portuguese, Roumanian, Russian, Ruthenian (Russniak), Scandinavian (Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes), Scotch, Servian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Spanish-American, Syrian, Turkish, Welsh, West Indian.

The prosecution rests.

Via Bart Cop.

Steven M. thinks he has figured out why the Republican Party persists in promoting policies and theories, such as voodoo economics, that are demonstrably false:

I think Republicans see themselves the way Wall Streeters see themselves — as people to whom nothing really bad could possibly happen, no matter how dire America’s problems are. If they get in, push more tax cuts that increase debt, and make spending cuts that worsen unemployment and leave more infrastructure to crumble, they’ll just find some scapegoat, sexting or illegal immigrants or Dodd-Frank, to blame everything bad in America on. If that doesn’t work, they’ll start a war, and make it just controversial enough that Democrats will hesitate to support it, then treason-bait those Democrats for their hesitancy.

Follow the link for the rest of his reasoning.

Herman Cain is off the stage, but the circumstances of his exit, stage rightwing, raises larger questions.

This weekend, Bob Cesca observed

By the way, it’s revealing that an affair is cause for Republicans dumping this guy, and repeated instances of sexual harassment where there are legitimate female victims isn’t a cause for dumping him.

Thom Hartmann explores this question with a caller, without reaching a conclusion:

I have my own theory.

It has to do with beliefs about who should be in control of the wombs of the world.

Buried deep in the Republican “family values” psyche is a belief that it should not be women.

At Comically Vintage.

If you listen to nothing else, catch the bit about six minutes in where Mike Papantonio describles how Newt the Gingrinch is the perfect Republican candidate:

Eric Alterman on the shibboleth of “some people say” and the cult of balance:

Herman Cain has “suspended” his campaign, while continuing to say, “Look, I’m the victim here.”

Josh Marshall explains that “suspending” a campaign has a legal meaning: the money train can keep chugging.

You’ll note that Herman Cain didn’t drop out of the presidential campaign. He “suspended” his campaign. And that’s not just a spinny weasel word. It has significant campaign finance implications. For one, it means he can continue to raise money.

DougJ at Balloon Juice cuts to the quick on the current and altogether fabricated kerfuffle about whether or not the Democratic Party is “abandoning the white working class,” pointing out the difference between “effect” and “cause” (emphasis added):

I don’t know if people vote lived experience or what they see on their teevees, but he’s (David Brookes, quoted earlier in the post–ed.) actually right that the working class votes against incumbent presidents when the economy is bad. And it’s bad right now, especially for the middle-to-lower-middle-class. One of the reasons black and brown working class people will vote Democrat anyway is that the Republican party openly hates black and brown people. Also too one of the reasons the white working class votes Republican, no matter the economy, is that the Republican party openly hates black and brown people.

The Republican Party’s odious Southern Strategy continues apace.

Follow the link for DougJ’s take-down of David Brooks’s contribution to the discourse.

At Psychology Today, Bella DePaulo reveals the lies that liars tell themselves to excuse their lies.

The article is essential to understanding Republican talking points.

Via Radio Free Oz.

Read the story of the One Percent at BartBlog:

• Part One.
• Part Two

.

More here.

Marc Pitzke of Der Spiegel looks at the Republican aspirants for the presidential nomination and is not amused.

No mainstream American pundit would dare be so frank.

A snippet:

They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They’ve shown such stark lack of knowledge — political, economic, geographic, historical — that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe.

Tough times demand tough and smart minds. But all these dopes have to offer are ramblings that insult the intelligence of all Americans — no matter if they are Democrats, Republicans or neither of the above. Yet just like any freakshow, this one would be unthinkable without a stage (in this case, the media, strangling itself with all its misunderstood “political correctness” and “objectivity”) and an audience (the party base, which this year seems to have suffered a political lobotomy).

And so the farce continues. The more mind-boggling its incarnations, the happier the US media are to cheer first one clown and then the next, elevating and then eliminating “frontrunners” in reliable news cycles of about 45 days.

Who needs anti-American propaganda (remember “anti-American propaganda”?) with these folks in the news?