Political Theatre category archive

Harold Meyerson sees a party realignment as Republicans continually move to the right, pulling the Democrats behind them.

A nugget:

In Obama’s defense, the Republicans he has to deal with have moved so far right that they make even the Gingrich-era GOP with which Bill Clinton grappled look like the Berkeley City Council.

(snip)

Republicans, to be sure, have long waged a war on government, but only now has it become an apocalyptic and total war. At its root, I suspect, is the fear and loathing that rank-and-file right-wingers feel toward what their government, and their nation, is inexorably becoming: multiracial, multicultural, cosmopolitan and now headed by a president who personifies those qualities. That America is also downwardly mobile is a challenge for us all, but for the right, the anxiety our economy understandably evokes is augmented by the politics of racial resentment and the fury that the country is no longer only theirs. That’s not a country whose government they want to pay for — and if the apocalypse befalls us, they seem to have concluded, so much the better.

From TPM:

“House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has shown that he’s shouldn’t even be at the table,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in a blistering floor speech Thursday morning. “And Republicans agree.”

(snip)

Cantor argues that he’s simply representing the reality of the House — that his overwhelmingly conservative caucus won’t vote in sufficient numbers to pass anything resembling a deal Democrats would take. (Democratic Senator Chuck–ed.) Schumer said that’s nonsense. “He’s not just representing it, he’s making it,” Schumer said.

The Richmonder summarizes:

Eric Cantor wanted to negotiate directly with Barack Obama–he got his wish. How’s that working out for ya, Eric?

Cantor is in way over his head.

“Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.”

Via Balloon Juice.

Addendum, Minutes Later:

From the lead editorial at the Inky:

The fight over deficit reduction has revealed the weakness of Republican leaders in Congress, who appear incapable of controlling the tea-drinking monster they helped create.

Heh.

Just when they really, really need a drink:

Hundreds of bars, restaurants and stores across Minnesota are running out of beer and alcohol and others may soon run out of cigarettes — a subtle and largely unforeseen consequence of a state government shutdown.

In the days leading up to the shutdown, thousands of outlets scrambled to renew their state-issued liquor purchasing cards. Many of them did not make it.

Now, with no end in sight to the shutdown, they face a summer of fast-dwindling alcohol supplies and a bottom line that looks increasingly bleak.

Via Atrios.

There is wingnut world, then there is the real world:

Via TPM.

I am continually bewildered by some of my leftie friends who think that President Obama was somehow elected Emperor Obama, who delude themselves into thinking he is much more liberal than he is, and who are angry that he has not by fiat enacted every single one of their pet projects.

Anyone who thinks Mr. Obama is anything other than a mildly center left Democrat just was not paying attention during the campaign.

(Yes, my kindhearted, outraged, outrageous friend from Philadelphia, I’m thinking of you.)

Do I wish Mr. Obama were more liberal?

Damn right, but consider what could have been, for Heaven’s sake.

Some of my fellow lefties also–and this is their most significant failing–delude themselves into thinking he governs in a vacuum and carries a magic wand. His name is Barack Obama, not Harry Potter.

Accordingly, I commend Angry Black Lady’s post on this topic to your attention.

At Philly dot com, Elmer Smith discusses the recent kerfuffle over a pledge that, among other things, attempted to portray slavery positively; he suggests that Republican candidates’ knee-jerk reaction is to sign any wingnut pledge thrust in front of them without reading it.

A nugget:

RICK SANTORUM didn’t wait to be asked. The day the conservative Christian organization Family Leader announced its defense-of-marriage pledge, Santorum called to ask where he could sign.

Even so, he managed to be only the second signer. Michele Bachmann was first to send back her signed document.

Neither was in as big a rush to clarify their position after learning that they had signed a pledge stating that black children were more likely to be raised in a two-parent home during slavery than they are “after the election of the U.S.A’s first African American president.”

Really?

I read that line and wondered why black people ever allowed slavery to be taken from us.

Santorum and Bachmann, on the other hand, wondered how to explain why someone who could cosign something so patently stupid should be trusted to govern.

Caustic, but not inaccurate.

Via Balloon Juice.

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

The dope is starting to realize it is roped.

Heh.

Eleven Dimensional Chess.

As I’ve said before, Chicago politics is a tough teacher.

Field calls my attention to this post listing ten reasons to vote Republican.

Here are the first three. Follow the link for the rest:

#10: I shall vote Republican next time because I am a white male. It does not matter if they are otherwise against me, but since I am a white male, and they say that they are for white males, I am for them too! Lies matter not to me. I am a white male.

#9: I shall vote Republican next time because I do not belong to any union. I have been told that unions are evil, and of course I believe it since Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity said so.

#8: I shall vote Republican because the President is not a United States citizen. I have been told that from the Tea Party, the conservative talkers, and Michelle Bachman. If they say it, I know those truths to be self evident.

Andy Borowitz has a communication from Rupert Murdoch regarding the News of the World phone voicemail hacking. A nugget:

Now, I’m sure many of you are wondering, how could I, Rupert Murdoch, one of the most powerful men in the world, have no idea what is going on? The answer, my friends, is simple: I get all of my information from my own newspapers. If you relied on News of the World, The Sun, and The New York Post for your information, I can assure you that you wouldn’t have a clue what was going on, either.

Some of you aren’t buying this argument. You maintain that a media titan like me would get his information from sources beyond newspapers – like TV, for example. Well, that’s true. But in my case, the only TV I watch is the Fox News Channel. So not only do I not know what is going on around me, I know nothing about the theory of evolution, global warming, or President Obama’s birthplace.

Planning to throw old folks into the street to keep the rich richer and the poor poorer and insurance execs supplied with country club memberships.

That dog ain’t gonna Hunts(man).

Shorter Orrin Hatch: Bleed the poor.

The reason they are called “the poor” is that they don’t have anything, for Pete’s sake.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Rachel Maddow rounds up a few whack-a-doodles of the right wing:

I am hardly a fan of Oprah, but that has more to do with her unleashing Dr. Phil on an unsuspecting world than with a belief that she is a tool of the Devil.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Via Balloon Juice.

Via Bart Cop.

Via BartBlog.

Update: Thanks to Joe Vecchio for pointing out that I misplet “Grayson” as “Simpson.”

Representative Grayson repeatedly fails to fall for the misdirection play.

Watch the interviewer totally miss and twist the point, while portraying a philosophy of “I’ve got mine” that is rather staggering:

Via The Richmonder.

What Jason330 said: Bush Beyond Thunderdome.

Harold Meyerson comments on the Republican Party’s intransigence and sees an unlikely parallel with another movement for which ideology trumped reality.

A snippet (emphasis added):

What we have here is an extreme world view — let’s call it Norquistism — that ensures impasse, paralysis or perverse outcomes whenever control of government is divided. It’s the doctrine preached by GOP activist and lobbyist Grover Norquist, who trots around the country collecting pledges from GOP candidates and elected officials that commit them to never, ever raise taxes, no matter what they may be offered in return.

(snip)

When zeal runs amok, the sense of proportion suffers. Today’s Republicans remind me of some leaders of the American Communist Party whom I got to know decades ago, after they’d left the fold. “We believed in the party line, in its infallibility, so completely,” one ex-commie told me, “that we’d forget the larger strategy for the momentary tactic.” So it was with Communists of yore; so it is with Republicans today.