R.I.P. Republican Party

[kalm]

-
Obama is black and white

[kalm]

Oh no, I will fully admit there are examples of black and white thinking on the other side. Take feminism for example. I'm just generalizing here. Conks are more decisive by nature and dons are more nuanced.

Well, why didn't you just say that in the first place.

I'm sorry but I felt I needed to spell it out for you Z. My apologies.

[JoltinJoe]

Matt Taibbi is full of it. The real reason that the modern Republican Party has become so extreme is because the modern Democratic party has become so extreme. The reason reason that modern conservatism has become so extreme is because modern liberalism has become so extreme. They have all become mirror opposites of each other.

Modern liberalism is as false a movement as modern conservatism. Liberalism lost its moral high ground when it consciously abandoned it and permitted itself to be co-opted by non-theists and extreme feminists. This caused a great movement, a movement which had depended on the support of the pulpit to win support for civil rights, to lose that support as it advocated extreme positions on church/state issues and abortion on demand. By aligning itself with positions which were morally indefensible, liberalism lost the voices from the pulpit and intentionally moved "forward" without them. In losing these voices, liberalism lost its conscience.

When modern "liberals" -- a term that they have wrongfully co-opted too -- look at the other side of the aisle, they see only their equal opposite. Newton was speaking of physics when he observed that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. But the observation is true in politics too.

I agree that the movements are "false", but to imply that the two developments are connected is irresponsible. I don't think you can prove a cause/effect relationship and I don't believe one has "developed because of the other"....

First, I disagree. Second, you're wrong.

Seriously, I'm wondering why you think this is "irresponsible." I think not only it is true, but that there is a, in fact, an explicit cause and effect connection between the way social liberals used the federal courts to impose their views, and the rise of social conservatives in national politics.

[kalm]

I agree that the movements are "false", but to imply that the two developments are connected is irresponsible. I don't think you can prove a cause/effect relationship and I don't believe one has "developed because of the other"....

First, I disagree. Second, you're wrong.

Seriously, I'm wondering why you think this is "irresponsible." I think not only it is true, but that there is a, in fact, an explicit cause and effect connection between the way social liberals used the federal courts to impose their views, and the rise of social conservatives in national politics.

That's a very interesting notion. Where does that exist outside of the abortion issue?

[BDKJMU]

Do you think the Democrats are "kumbaya" uniters? That's not how your man Obama talks.it's his way or the highway.

No, I don't think there's much outreach from either side although I see Obama's "authoritarian" reputation as more reactionary than philosophical. Gannon mentioned it in another thread that Obama is the worst and most divisive president in history, just like Bush was, and just like the next president will be.

So yes, both sides are to blame, but I still think the Republicans are much better at the demonization.

The level of demonization towards Obama doesn't hold a candle towards the demonazation by the left towards Bush.

[AZGrizFan]

I agree that the movements are "false", but to imply that the two developments are connected is irresponsible. I don't think you can prove a cause/effect relationship and I don't believe one has "developed because of the other"....

First, I disagree. Second, you're wrong.

Seriously, I'm wondering why you think this is "irresponsible." I think not only it is true, but that there is a, in fact, an explicit cause and effect connection between the way social liberals used the federal courts to impose their views, and the rise of social conservatives in national politics.

Well, a liberal would tell you that their use of the courts to impose their view was in direct response to conservatives trying to force their morals on the masses. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

[JoltinJoe]

First, I disagree. Second, you're wrong.

Seriously, I'm wondering why you think this is "irresponsible." I think not only it is true, but that there is a, in fact, an explicit cause and effect connection between the way social liberals used the federal courts to impose their views, and the rise of social conservatives in national politics.

Well, a liberal would tell you that their use of the courts to impose their view was in direct response to conservatives trying to force their morals on the masses. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Abington School District v. Schempp (1963)
Griswold v Connecticut (1965)
Roe v. Wade (1973)
The Moral Majority founded 1979. Rev. Falwell is criticized by fellow Baptist ministers for breaching the traditional notion of keeping religion out of national politics. He responds that the religious must respond to attacks on the national morality.

I think the answer which came first is clear.

[Skjellyfetti]

Don't forget these cases of social liberals using federal courts to impose their views:

Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)
Loving vs. Virginia (1967)
Jones v. Mayer Co. (1968)

Liberals used the courts to fight injustice because that's the only way a minority's rights are protected from infringement. Without the Supreme Court, a backward Southern state could pass any law it wanted to and blacks or other minorities would have no legitimate recourse.

[D1B]

Matt Taibbi is full of it. The real reason that the modern Republican Party has become so extreme is because the modern Democratic party has become so extreme. The reason reason that modern conservatism has become so extreme is because modern liberalism has become so extreme. They have all become mirror opposites of each other.

Modern liberalism is as false a movement as modern conservatism. Liberalism lost its moral high ground when it consciously abandoned it and permitted itself to be co-opted by non-theists and extreme feminists. This caused a great movement, a movement which had depended on the support of the pulpit to win support for civil rights, to lose that support as it advocated extreme positions on church/state issues and abortion on demand. By aligning itself with positions which were morally indefensible, liberalism lost the voices from the pulpit and intentionally moved "forward" without them. In losing these voices, liberalism lost its conscience.

When modern "liberals" -- a term that they have wrongfully co-opted too -- look at the other side of the aisle, they see only their equal opposite. Newton was speaking of physics when he observed that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. But the observation is true in politics too.

single issue voter

Joe would vote for Satan if he was pro life.

[JoltinJoe]

single issue voter

Joe would vote for Satan if he was pro life.

But Satan isn't pro-life.

[JoltinJoe]

Don't forget these cases of social liberals using federal courts to impose their views:

Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)
Loving vs. Virginia (1967)
Jones v. Mayer Co. (1968)

Liberals used the courts to fight injustice because that's the only way a minority's rights are protected from infringement. Without the Supreme Court, a backward Southern state could pass any law it wanted to and blacks or other minorities would have no legitimate recourse.

"Liberal" meant something different then it does now. I'm actually far more liberal than you, if the term was being properly employed today.

[YoUDeeMan]

Conks are more decisive by nature and dons are more nuanced.

Sure...for example: a Conservative will tell someone that they are an azzhole. A Liberal will tell someone that they are acting like an azzhole...usually from a safe distance.

[D1B]

Joe would vote for Satan if he was pro life.

But Satan isn't pro-life.

Neither is god.

[JoltinJoe]

But Satan isn't pro-life.

Neither is god.

I sense another one your DumB talking points coming ... :yawn:

[D1B]

Neither is god.

I sense another one your DumB talking points coming ... :yawn:

I sense the return of Dodger Joe.



"Dear Jesus, please kill D1B. Amen"

[D1B]

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, if you're not a liberal when you're younger you have no soul, if you're not a conservative when you're older you have no brains.

Right at the time in my life when I should be sailing comfortably into that conkunism sunset, welcoming the open and rational and (no homo) embrace of the IT's and AZgrizfans of the world, I'm left with a conservative party that is failing miserably.

I know that I've been negligent on my Matt Taibbi articles lately so to bring you up to speed here is his latest that (I think) pretty much nails it.

As an interesting side note and if you're brave enough, feel free to post whether your political leanings we're left of center in your youth.

No, it was while watching the debates last night that it finally hit me: This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster.

Most importantly, though, the conservative passion for divisive, partisan, bomb-tossing politics is threatening to permanently cripple the Republican party. They long ago became more about pointing fingers than about ideology, and it's finally ruining them.

Oh, sure, your average conservative will insist his belief system is based upon a passion for the free market and limited government, but that's mostly a cover story. Instead, the vast team-building exercise that has driven the broadcasts of people like Rush and Hannity and the talking heads on Fox for decades now has really been a kind of ongoing Quest for Orthodoxy, in which the team members congregate in front of the TV and the radio and share in the warm feeling of pointing the finger at people who aren't as American as they are, who lack their family values, who don’t share their All-American work ethic.

The finger-pointing game is a fun one to play, but it’s a little like drugs – you have to keep taking bigger and bigger doses in order to get the same high.

So it starts with a bunch of these people huddling together and saying to themselves, "We’re the real good Americans; our problems are caused by all those other people out there who don’t share our values." At that stage the real turn-on for the followers is the recognition that there are other like-minded people out there, and they don’t need blood orgies and war cries to keep the faith strong – bake sales and church retreats will do.

So they form their local Moral Majority outfits, and they put Ronald Reagan in office, and they sit and wait for the world to revert to a world where there was one breadwinner in the family, and no teen pregnancy or crime or poor people, and immigrants worked hard and didn't ask for welfare and had the decency to speak English – a world that never existed in reality, of course, but they're waiting for a return to it nonetheless.

Think Ron Paul in the South Carolina debate, when he said that in the '60s, "there was nobody out in the street suffering with no medical care." Paul also recalled that after World War II, 10 million soldiers came home and prospered without any kind of government aid at all – all they needed was a massive cut to the federal budget, and those soldiers just surfed on the resultant wave of economic progress.

"You know what the government did? They cut the budget by 60 percent," he said. "And everybody went back to work again, you didn't need any special programs."

Right – it wasn’t like they needed a G.I. Bill or anything. After all, people were different back then: They didn’t want or need welfare, or a health care program, or any of those things. At least, that’s not the way Paul remembered it.

That's all the early conservative movement was. It was just a heartfelt request that we go back to the good old days of America as these people remembered or imagined it. Of course, the problem was, we couldn't go back, not just because more than half the population (particularly the nonwhite, non-straight, non-male segment of the population) desperately didn't want to go back, but also because that America never existed and was therefore impossible to recreate.

And when we didn’t go back to the good old days, this crowd got frustrated, and suddenly the message stopped being heartfelt and it got an edge to it.

The message went from, "We’re the real Americans; the others are the problem," to, "We’re the last line of defense; we hate those other people and they’re our enemies." Now it wasn’t just that the rest of us weren't getting with the program: Now we were also saboteurs, secretly or perhaps even openly conspiring with America’s enemies to prevent her return to the long-desired Days of Glory.

Now, why would us saboteurs do that? Out of jealousy (we resented their faith and their family closeness), out of spite, and because we have gonads instead of morals. In the Clinton years and the early Bush years we started to hear a lot of this stuff, that the people conservatives described as "liberals" were not, as we are in fact, normal people who believe in marriage and family and love their children just as much as conservatives do, but perverts who subscribe to a sort of religion of hedonism.

"Liberals' only remaining big issue is abortion because of their beloved sexual revolution," was the way Ann Coulter put it. "That's their cause – spreading anarchy and polymorphous perversity. Abortion permits that."

So they fought back, and a whole generation of more strident conservative politicians rose to fight the enemy at home, who conveniently during the '90s lived in the White House and occasionally practiced polymorphous perversity there.

Then conservatives managed to elect to the White House a man who was not only a fundamentalist Christian, but a confirmed anti-intellectual who never even thought about visiting Europe until, as president, he was forced to – the perfect champion of all Real Americans!

Surely, things would change now. But they didn’t. Life continued to move drearily into a new and scary future, Spanish-speaking people continued to roll over the border in droves, queers paraded around in public and even demanded the right to be married, and America not only didn't go back to the good old days of the single-breadwinner family, but jobs in general dried up and you were lucky if Mom and Dad weren’t both working two jobs...


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/bl ... z1nV7zSdjH" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/bl ... t-20120223" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Great article.

Same shit we've been saying here for years about our more violent and short sighted posters.

[kalm]

Conks are more decisive by nature and dons are more nuanced.

Sure...for example: a Conservative will tell someone that they are an azzhole. A Liberal will tell someone that they are acting like an azzhole...usually from a safe distance.

You just called a bunch of people assholes...from a safe distance.

[YoUDeeMan]

Sure...for example: a Conservative will tell someone that they are an azzhole. A Liberal will tell someone that they are acting like an azzhole...usually from a safe distance.

You just called a bunch of people assholes...from a safe distance.

Sure, but I'm amazingly consistent...I will also call someone an azzhole straight to their face. Call me a Libervative.

The point is that most Liberals do the same thing that most Conservatives do...attack anyone that opposes their views. They just try to convince themselves that they don't.

[citdog]

Don't forget these cases of social liberals using federal courts to impose their views:

Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)
Loving vs. Virginia (1967)
Jones v. Mayer Co. (1968)

Liberals used the courts to fight injustice because that's the only way a minority's rights are protected from infringement. Without the Supreme Court, a backward Southern state could pass any law it wanted to and blacks or other minorities would have no legitimate recourse.

KISS OUR REBEL DICKS!

Bless your heart.


Love,


THE SOUTH

[kalm]

You just called a bunch of people assholes...from a safe distance.

Sure, but I'm amazingly consistent...I will also call someone an azzhole straight to their face. Call me a Libervative.

The point is that most Liberals do the same thing that most Conservatives do...attack anyone that opposes their views. They just try to convince themselves that they don't.

Sure, but we're not talking about most people here. We're talking about how the argument is portrayed in the media, and Taibbi is spot-on with his assessment. Conks are way better and more organized in their demonization. It's now backfiring for them.

[JohnStOnge]

For the most part it's a bunch of unsubtantiated assertions about what the author apparently perceives as the opposition. But I want to comment on this statement:

Most importantly, though, the conservative passion for divisive, partisan, bomb-tossing politics is threatening to permanently cripple the Republican party. .

Is this person blind? Can he not see how the Democratic Party operates? With the Democratic Party, the primary set of villians "The Rich." That includes "corporations." Should we count the number of times Obama has implied that "the rich" are not contributing their "fair share?"

It is absurd to imply that "...divisive, partisan, bomb tossing politics..." is limited to Republicans.

Believe me, I wish people wouldn't resort to "...divisive, bomb throwing politics..." But it works. And both sides do it. A lot.

I guarantee you that if Democratic political consultants consider the eventual Republican nominee to have a shot you will see plenty of bomb throwing. You will see plenty of distortion. And I think you know that.

[kalm]

For the most part it's a bunch of unsubtantiated assertions about what the author apparently perceives as the opposition. But I want to comment on this statement:

Most importantly, though, the conservative passion for divisive, partisan, bomb-tossing politics is threatening to permanently cripple the Republican party. .

Is this person blind? Can he not see how the Democratic Party operates? With the Democratic Party, the primary set of villians "The Rich." That includes "corporations." Should we count the number of times Obama has implied that "the rich" are not contributing their "fair share?"

It is absurd to imply that "...divisive, partisan, bomb tossing politics..." is limited to Republicans.

Believe me, I wish people wouldn't resort to "...divisive, bomb throwing politics..." But it works. And both sides do it. A lot.

I guarantee you that if Democratic political consultants consider the eventual Republican nominee to have a shot you will see plenty of bomb throwing. You will see plenty of distortion. And I think you know that.

Wealth transcends partisanship, at least for the libs

[Ivytalk]

Sure, but I'm amazingly consistent...I will also call someone an azzhole straight to their face. Call me a Libervative.

The point is that most Liberals do the same thing that most Conservatives do...attack anyone that opposes their views. They just try to convince themselves that they don't.

Sure, but we're not talking about most people here. We're talking about how the argument is portrayed in the media, and Taibbi is spot-on with his assessment. Conks are way better and more organized in their demonization. It's now backfiring for them.

Taibbi is an azzhole. You think Pelosi is a saint, Schumer is Moses, and Obama is Gandhi. Poor deluded soul. Better buy a cheap indulgence from Brother D1B, S.J. (Society of Jerkoffs).

[JohnStOnge]

Conks are way better and more organized in their demonization.

You have GOT to be kidding. I can't believe you'd seriously say that. The "left" has been extremely successful in demonizing "the rich" and "corporations."

[BDKJMU]

Sure, but I'm amazingly consistent...I will also call someone an azzhole straight to their face. Call me a Libervative.

The point is that most Liberals do the same thing that most Conservatives do...attack anyone that opposes their views. They just try to convince themselves that they don't.

Sure, but we're not talking about most people here. We're talking about how the argument is portrayed in the media, and Taibbi is spot-on with his assessment. Conks are way better and more organized in their demonization. It's now backfiring for them.

You absolutely fooking delusional if you believe that. You must have slept through 2001-2008.