Political Theatre category archive

Via Juanita Jean.

Reg Henry, registered Republican, is fed up with primary elections in Pennsyltucky.

A nugget:

If you are a true GOP stalwart, the sort of person who thought Sarah Palin highly intelligent, it is probably about now in the column that you are saying: “This guy shouldn’t be voting in Republican primaries.”

Guess what? You are right. But you can rest easy, because in this primary Republican voters in my area had almost nothing to vote for: a governor opposed by a write-in candidate, some unopposed lawmakers, some committee people. To someone like me who thinks of voting as an act of civic communion, it was like going to the altar and finding that they had run out of bread.

I don’t agree with him–primaries are better than conventions, as the Virgina Republican Party learned to its sorrow, but he has a larger point–too often, because of gerrymandering and voter apathy, primaries don’t matter.

Here in Virginia, we have elections every year. Statewide offices come up for election in off-years (it’s nothing more than an attempt to reduce turnout in off-year elections, but it’s unlikely to change). Nevertheless, it’s easy to find Virginia voters who aren’t aware that elections are taking place in odd-numbered years, even though it’s hard to see how they could be so far inside their personal bubbles as to miss them.

Voting is not a right. It’s duty.

If you do not vote, and vote every time you can, you deserve what you get.

Unfortunately, you take me right along with you, and I should not have to pay the price for your dereliction.

Steven M. investigates the Mysterious Case of the Missing Teabags.

Follow the link; find out why they went missing.

A nation of immigrants ignorance.

Via Delaware Liberal.

Daniel Ruth is mildly skeptical of Marco Rubio’s readiness to hold the nuclear codes.

Ready for the presidency? Rubio isn’t ready to be promoted to sixth grade.

Read the remainder for his rationale.

What the Booman said.

You can say whatever the hell you want.

That doesn’t mean I have to be forced to listen to it.

They are not subject to polling.

Via Delaware Liberal.

In an effort to improve its “messaging,” the Republican National Committee goes for the obvious solution: Fewer messages.

Dick Polman comments:

The Republican National Committee thinks the cure to the party’s ills (five popular vote defeats in the last six elections) is to ensure that viewers see the candidates far less often, and that the candidates be exposed far less often to potentially adversarial questions. Accordingly, RNC members decreed last Friday that the ’16 candidates shall participate only in debates sanctioned by the RNC. The ’12 candidates debated each other 20 times; the aim is to cut that number in half.

In other words, they are putting the pig back in the poke.

More at the link.

Marco Rubio has decided that he’s presidential timber. The Rude One spots the indicators.

And how can you tell he’s ready? Because Marco Rubio talked about complex issues like a brain-damaged Twitchy commenter. “I think a president has to have a clear vision of where the country needs to go and clear ideas about how to get it there,” he told ABC combover Jonathan Karl.

Follow the link for in-depth rudeness.

Afterthought:

Of course Rubio’s ready to be president. As Republicans do not actually believe in governance, no qualifications are needed, now, are they?

Daniel Ruth marvels that ignorance has become a career path.

This (climate change denial–ed.) isn’t entirely a new phenomenon. Since the first John Birchers proudly wore their Franklin Roosevelt Is a Bolshevik hair shirts, addled skeptics have questioned scientific evidence — from believing fluoride destroys our bodies, to insisting vaccinations cause autism, to the notion global warming is a left-wing fad. But these folks were largely consigned to the lunatic fringe of moon howlers.

Today, they get syndication deals.

Tracy Rubin, who probably knows more about the Middle East than any other reporter, finds the scam in the scamdal:

Here’s the real Benghazi scandal: Republicans have turned the deaths of four brave Americans into a campaign tool to galvanize their base.

Eight congressional investigations, along with an independent review board, have laid out the facts about the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate. There have been 13 public hearings, the release of 25,000 pages of documents, and 50 briefings on the security failures that led to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. None offered a shred of evidence that White House political considerations led to their deaths.

Yet last week, as we head into campaign season, House Republicans voted to waste more taxpayer money on a new special Select Committee on Benghazi.

Read the rest.

Truth and governance matter not to the Republican Party. Power and theatre are their only concerns.

If that means that they dance on the graves of patriots, they dance on the graves of patriots.

Shaun Mullen wonders what Republicans will have to show the electorate in 2016.

Republicans have plenty going for them — their own television news network (Fox) and their own court (The Supremes), as well as a depressing number of people who will drink whatever reality-absent Kool Aid the party pours down their throats.

The party’s big problem in 2016 is that it doesn’t have another Romney. This is because the potential presidential candidates most likely to be appealing to the mainstream are Jeb Bush, who has a surname problem (this despite what some folks naïvely view as Hillary’s own surname problem), and Chris Christie, who has a corruption problem (he is so dishonest that he reminds me of an old school big city Democratic power broker and so dumb that he has driven the wealthiest state in the union to the brink of bankruptcy). So, we can forget about either being anointed the GOP standard bearer.

If Shaun is correct and not having another Romney is their big problem, they are indeed in trouble.

Much more at the link.

Hoist on his own teatard.

It mystifies me, not just as a news junkie, but also as a human being and ex-married person, how anyone could seriously propose that any member of the Clinton family would be in favor of, let alone promote and delight in, reliving the Lewinsky story.

Our public discourse has become a colossus of salacious stupid moderated by the stupidly salacious.

Via Delaware Liberal.