Political Theatre category archive

Libido always is close to the surface in the pervy party that is preoccupied with sex.

On the one hand, experience shows that it’s silly to think about “front runners” two years before the nomination. On the other hand, silliness can be entertaining.

And the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Dan Simpson has compiled quite a list of made-in-America mistakes. Here’s one:

The first, no doubt provoked by the pathetic, anticlimactic Super Bowl, with its ad for the Maserati Ghibli, which we all are unlikely to be able to afford, is the tax-free status of the glittery National Football League, composed of very profitable teams owned by America’s 1-percent elite. The NFL’s not paying taxes dates from its early days, when people were not required to put their children to work in factories to buy a ticket to a game. The NFL should pay taxes.

Follow the link for the rest. It’s a collection of doozies.

At Boston Review, Claude S. Fischer struggles to understand Libertarianism and, particularly, its appeal to a certain segment of geeks.

What difference does this history and anthropology make to libertarian arguments about the good life? Plenty. If libertarians would move real-world policy in their direction, then their premises about humans and human society should be at least remotely plausible; we are not playing SimCity here. Instead, libertarian premises arise from a worldview that was strange at its origin and is strange now, after the global triumph of liberalism.

If you wish to understand the strange contemporary revival of Ayn Rand’s fever dream, this article is a good place to start.

Intellectually, Libertarianism is a fancy impressive-sounding rationale for justifying heedless, craven selfishness. Practically, it’s camouflage for Republicans who are ashamed to admit it.

Chris Christie goes all high school. A nugget from Dick Polman:

Nothing illustrates Chris Christie’s precipitous plummet more exquisitely than the punch he delivered this weekend to the groin of former ally David Wildstein.

Here’s some free advice for the increasingly unloved guv: If you truly want to tout yourself as presidential, even in the midst of a burgeoning scandal, then don’t behave like a peevish juvenile with a tenth-grade mentality. Because most people think of high school as a distant time and place best left in the rear-view mirror.

What the Booman said.

Via BartCop.

Reg Henry goes on the wagon for a month and find parallels between teabaggers and another group of tea fanciers: parallels of fanaticism and excess. A nugget.

What ironies abound today. We have a small political faction severe as the old drys but instead railing against the intoxicant of federal spending, an issue which did indeed need attention just as the dive saloons of yesteryear were an invitation to a hatchet.

Of course, this being America, everything gets taken too far. The drys of yesteryear made the whole nation as miserable as one of my Januarys. Today’s Tea Party, averse to compromise, has been happy to shut down the government in honor of a Constitution that is all about establishing a functioning government dependent on compromise.

The Booman remembers Pete Seeger.

Via BartCop.

Michael Smerconish suspects that one of his columns prompted Chris Christie to “unfriend” him. A nugget:

Now I think I’ve figured out why he wouldn’t cooperate. On June 5, 2011, a column of mine ran here under the headline “Can you imagine how Christie’s son feels?” The focus was his use of a state helicopter to attend his son’s baseball games. The column wasn’t mean-spirited. I wrote it from a dad’s point of view, reflecting on how my sons (then in fourth, seventh, and ninth grades) had complained about the vehicle in which I’d picked them up after school.

(snip)

That piece was the most negative thing I’ve ever offered about Christie, but now I think it was a deal-breaker for him, which is a shame. Time and again I’ve said that Christie is the GOP’s best hope to center itself, something I think is in the best interest of both the party and the nation.

Events have evidenced Governor Christie’s vindictiveness.

Smerconish is a decent fellow who considers himself “conservative”; he does not want to admit that the Republican Party has devolved into the irretrievably crazy, so he grasps at straws. “Christie the Centrist”* was the most recent straw.

I doubt it will be the last one.

______________________

*”Christie the Centrist.”

Yeah.

Right.

David McCumber analyzes the tactics of teabaggery and how the teabaggers, generally estimated at about a quarter of the electorate, rendered the Republican Party its servant.

A nugget:

The 22 percent of Americans who favor the tea party, as per the latest Gallup numbers, have learned how to influence policy to a degree once considered far beyond the grasp of their raw vote-getting numbers. And as a study just released by a labor-funded liberal advocacy group shows, they are increasingly running the legislative branch of government.

How? It’s called winning through intimidation.

Most moderate Republican lawmakers exist inside a dome of fear that they will draw right-wing primary opposition.

(snip)

Two truths play into this: (1) Turnout is often light in primaries, and votes are sometimes scattered among three or more candidates. And (2) Zealots vote.

As the authtor points out later in the article, this is not a spontaneous grassroots effort.

It’s Astroturf: wingnut think tanks powered by billionaire bucks fund the freak show.

I’ve been wondering, ever since Mike Hucksterbee’s latest outburst, why Republicans are so a-skeered of lady parts.

I’m guessing that Hucksterbee’s commments were a textbook example of projection.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Via BartCop.

Delaware Liberal explains the rise of Hey! Rubio!.

He’s the flavor of the month.

The media needs a mainstream Republican to talk about. They need to pretend that the two parties are roughly equivalent in common sense and rationality.