Republican Hypocrisy category archive

Or not.

Fred Clark cuts to the quick.

The SPLC has more.

Sign the petition.

It is most interesting how folks who work hard and diligently pay into social security for 35 or 40 or 50 years suddenly become deadbeat slackers when it’s time for them to collect social security benefits.

More here.

From the inside of the teapot (emphasis added):

And yet, “Boiling Mad’’ (the book the columnist is discussing–ed.) also reinforced something I’ve experienced in my own exchanges with Tea Party types. Their views often betray a gut-level emotional element or a lack of policy knowledge or inconsistencies or contradictions that would hinder any easy or long-term translation into a governing philosophy. (Unity, as any political tactician can tell you, is far easier in opposition than in support of something.)

Grimes, for example, rebuts the pro-Obama arguments of friends this way: “The problem is, you guys are trying to sell this on facts. You can have all the facts, but if you don’t trust the mind-set or the value system of the people involved, you can’t even look at the facts anymore.’’

Reimer, meanwhile, wants smaller government, but not cuts to Medicare or TRICARE (the military health care program), on which she and her husband rely.

Afterthought:

Scary black man.

Sheesh.

And, ya know, they don’t realize it. It’s camouflaged as “the mind-set or the value system,” even in their own eyes.

Fred Clark reaches the logical conclusion.

Also, this.

Via Thoreau.

Bob Cesca (follow the link for context):

But this is the modern Republican Party. All about race. It’s the party of Palin, Bachmann, Steve King, Rand Paul, Newt Gingrich — a party where substance is irrelevant and fire-eating wedge politics are everything.

The only thing extreme about this is the language.

Let us look at it critically. Suppose he had said

The most prominent spokespersons for the Republican Party emphasize cultural differences with a view toward garnering support from those who trace their lineage to a western European heritage.

Is that better?

It’s the same damn thing.

I’m a Southern Boy.

I know the damned code.

It is the odious Southern strategy.

It’s all they have.

(Of course, it’s not all about race. Race is a stalking horse, just as race was a stalking horse for the monied classes of the Old South to justify slavery and secession.)

I am not arguing that government spending must be cut.*

That is the argument of Republican Responsible Fiscals, who are against feeding at the government trough, except when are for it.

The Richmonder has a neat little post about this.

___________________

*It sorely needs to rearranged, but, as I look at the roads and schools and the air traffic control system and other such stuff, it probably needs to be increased.

I also think that projects properly undertaken by the government, such as roads and schools and the air traffic control system and other such stuff, should be undertaken by the government and not serve as pretexts for shoveling money to cost-overrunning consultants and profiteers when government employees could do them as well and for fair salaries.

Via TPM.

The Booman looks at the record (emphasis added):

Here’s some historical fact. In the Roosevelt/Truman term from 1945-1949, public debt dropped twenty-four percent. During Harry Truman’s full-term (which included most of the Korean War), public debt dropped twenty-two percent. During Dwight Eisenhower’s two terms, public debt dropped by 11% and 5%, respectively. During the Kennedy/Johnson term, public debt dropped eight percent, and it dropped 8% during LBJ’s full term (which included the beginning of the Vietnam War). During Nixon’s first term (which included the remainder of our major involvement in Vietnam), public debt dropped three percent. It wasn’t until the Nixon/Ford term from 1973-1977, that our debt rose, and it rose a meager 0.2 percent. Jimmy Carter dropped the public debt 3.3%, despite a very weak economy.

This was our history until Ronald Reagan came to power. During Reagan’s two terms our public debt increased eleven percent and nine percent, respectively. Under George H.W. Bush, our debt increased fifteen percent. This was rectified under Bill Clinton, whose two terms delivered a one percent and seven percent reduction in our public debt. And then came George W. Bush.

In Bush’s first term, our public debt increased seven percent. During his second term, our debt increased by a post-war record of twenty-percent.

The Nation analyzes the instant replay of the Sherrod play. To anyone who has studied the race-baiting demogues of the Jim Crow era, the Pitchfork Ben Tilghmans and the like, it’s a familiar strategy, much older than the excerpt below describes. Fake left with the race and go right with the economy:

But this story is older than the Tea Party, older than the current drove of right-wing demagogues. It’s the story that has been told to white middle- and working-class voters by the right since the Reagan administration in order to explain their dwindling paychecks and prospects: racism is over; it is minorities who now have too much power; they are stealing your jobs, your future. And with that insidious whisper (now a shout), the specter of reverse racism chases away the all-too-real and yet all-too-abstract forces of neoliberal economic policy. Who can focus on the workings of contemporary global capitalism when the Zimbabwe-fication of America is nigh! Obama, of course, crystalizes this narrative, giving it agency, power, motive, a face to deface. But it existed before him too; it litters, for example, civil rights case law since the ’70s, in Bakke v. Regents, in Gratz v. Bollinger and in Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven affirmative action case that got Sonia Sotomayor into so much hot water with the right.

Joan Vennochi notices the interplay between teabaggers and racists, as revealed by the Shirley Sherrod matter.

Short version: Teabaggers are okay with having racism and racists at their events, speaking from their platforms, and fellow-travelling with them (one might ask, who is fellow-traveling wit whom here), until the connection gets noticed. Then they change the subject.

Read the long version. Because, well, she nails it.

At the Shockoe Literary Messenger.

Mad Kane:

The GOP’s Honesty Deficit
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Though the GOP deficit hawks
Are famed for “must pay for it” squawks,
They nix plugging the hole
Caused by tax cuts. How droll!
Yes, that’s how hypocrisy talks.

Via Mosquito Blog.

Via Bart.

(Link fixed.)

The Philadelphia Inquirer speaks sense on Teabags, the NAACP, and racism. A nugget:

Since when has it become racist to point out racism in America? That’s where this country finds itself, as many purporting to want a color-blind nation refuse to admit that not everyone shares their dream.

Case in point, the beat-down the NAACP has been receiving for having the audacity to point out the obvious: that racists have been infiltrating tea-party movement gatherings because any criticism of America’s first black president gives them a buzz.

A resolution passed by the NAACP at its national convention this week didn’t say being a tea-party member was equivalent to being a racist. It asked the movement to condemn the extremists too frequently seen at its meetings who carry racist signs and make bigoted comments.

(snip)

Tea-party leaders such as Matt Kibbe, CEO of the conservative public-policy group FreedomWorks, say the movement has already made it clear that it doesn’t tolerate racism. Apparently, they need to make the point more strongly. Instead of acknowledging that fact, however, tea-partiers have tried to turn criticism away from them to the NAACP.

Two thoughts:

• No racist I have ever known has admitted to being racist. They have always had elaborate justifications to convince themselves that they have respectable, acceptable reasons for hatin’ on the black or the brown.
• Polls suggest that Teabaggers represent less–some indicate substantially less–than 20% of the population while seeming to get 18,000% of press coverage. Take away the ones motivated significantly by racism, and the movement turns into a burp.

I am colored too.

I am pink.

And I am a member of the NAACP. I was late, but I finally joined.

And, well, you know, the NAACP is correct.

Teabaggers suborn racism.

They are merely the latest manifestation of the Republican Party’s odious Southern Strategy.

I’m a Southern Boy. I know the damned code, for God’s sake.

Video via Oliver Willis.