“There is really only one strategy remaining for conservatives. Prevent an economic recovery while Obama is still president, thereby clearing the way for an anger-filled electorate to lift up a truly crazy candidate”
Time magazine’s Joe Klein “” a generally moderate/centrist columnist “” famously said of GOP last year: “How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? “¦ How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?”
Uber-cartoonist Tom Toles offers some similarly blunt words for the nihilistic right-wingers in Congress today — along with a cartoon he headlines “Ever so sorry”:
The cartoonist also provides stinging commentary:
The wayward forward
Where do conservatives go from here? They simplified their policy menu down to three ideas: cut taxes, reduce regulations and attack yet another foreign country. These ideas have been so successfully implemented that they have nearly finished us off.
Conservatives now have raised the back of their hands to their foreheads, tilted their faces to the heavens, and started a long catlike yowl about the deficits that their former flightsuit-clad hero George W. Bush delivered to the nation, thanks to the very same conservative principles named above. Hence the conservative dilemma. Cut taxes some more now? Oops! Those deficits! Reduce regulations? Oh, let’s see if a less-regulated Wall Street can destroy the tax base MORE thoroughly! Attack still ANOTHER country? How much could THAT possibly cost?
There is really only one strategy remaining for conservatives. Prevent an economic recovery while Obama is still president, thereby clearing the way for an anger-filled electorate to lift up a truly crazy candidate, the kind only frighteningly prolonged bad times could reward. Ever wonder what accounts for that smug, knowing look on Sarah Palin’s face? Now you know. – Tom Toles
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US politics is dividing along generational line. Young and open-minded supporters of the democrats versus for the republicans, the older and more conservative population. What if the older population is suffering from epidemic levels of senility or significant cognitive degradation? Is this why the wackos are so over-represented in the GOP?
The scariest part about Toles “stinging commentary” is that it is also a realistic and practical suggestion which may yet actually work for neo-cons, at least in the short run.
#1 – There is evidence to support this notion in my family, where an elderly conservative has severed ties with his only daughter over political disagrements that he would not let be. All conversations, no matter the start would go to these issues and morph into a big angy mess in spite of his daughters efforts to bridge the gap.
communication has stopped and we wonder if dementia of some sort is playing a role… very sad.
Yeah well look who’s expected to win big in November. Maybe Joe Klein thinks they’ve jumped the shark but this craziness seems to be popular with the voters.
“Connecticut Republican Linda McMahon is hitting some speed bumps in her campaign for a U.S. Senate seat. The problem? Her past as the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment.” Why can’t the GOP attract a thinking-person’s candidate to run for the US Senate!?
“Why can’t the GOP attract a thinking-person’s candidate to run for the US Senate!?”
If they were a thinking person they would not be in the Republican Party.
Luckily for the GOP, preventing an economic recovery also seems to be Obama’s plan for the next 2 years!
While what the GOP is doing will probably gain them political power it can not end well.
At a certain point if someone tells a lie and distorts information long enough, the they forget that what they are saying is a lie and they themselves believe it to be true. Anything that then contradicts the lie is rejected, deleted from memory or another falsehood is created to explain the contradiction.
I must admit to having a certain horrid fascination with watching this process take place in the GOP, Conspiracy Theorists and Global Warming Deniers.
Berbalang, it’s kind of macabre, isn’t it?
I don’t see it as being that generational, since plenty of us older people are pretty hardcore liberals. The young are more with it, but also tend to be passive. That’s what has to change.
There is almost a morbid fascination with what is happening in US politics. I can envision a scenario where it is January 21, 2013 and President Palin wakes up and has to answer the question. Now what?
The scary part comes if they actually try and implement what the extreme right wing party the GOP has called for. Goodbye healthcare reform, hello privatization of Social Security and the end of all funding directly or indirectly related to climate change research or its mitigation. In short increase national oil dependency in defense of an ideology.
I suspect that even 4 years of this kind of insanity would simply push the US over the edge in ever being able to deal with any of its pressing issues including climate change.
There are a number of ‘hopes” or positives. The first is that Obama has more than two years left, enough time for the slow recovery to continue and even gain some momentum. Second, there is hope that this momentum of the right will peak soon, maybe even before the fall elections. They certainly have enough extremist candidates. Even some ‘moderate” republicans may have second thoughts about the extreme libertarians.
I don’t see this as a generational issue. I recently went to my 40th college reunion. Many of my classmates are educators, medical doctors, lawyers and scientists, and at least 80% are democrats. The lawyer that I talked with the most works for a nonprofit involved in developing wind energy. We graduated a few months after the Kent State shootings, in the middle of the Vietnam War. I am an anti-war Vietnam vet who became a professor of biology/ecology and may keep working on science and teaching for another ten years.
You may attribute some of the bizarre behaviour of some to the stress of the impending and current consequences of peak oil and global warming!
The closer we get to 2012 and the wingnuts turn the mouth-frothing up to 11 the more I think the Mayans may have been on to something. If the wingnuts take over then collapse will become far more likely as magical thinking becomes policy. We are all Mayans now.
I expect the Republicans will try to do whatever is necessary to fix the economic issues once they get into power. They won’t be constrained by the crazy talk they are using now just to get to back into power. They’ll do what the Democrats should have done: create jobs. Even if it means taking Krugman’s advice. Logical arguments don’t affect the Republicans now and they won’t affect them later. They will be free to do whatever they like. They’ll just wrap it all up in the flag and call it their own. Works every time.
The Democrats are no different than the Republicans except for their unfortunate history of actually supporting the working man, something they’d desperately like to rid themselves of, so they could cozy up to their corporate sponsors more easily, but they fear they’d lose their core constituency at the polls.
The Democrats could easily parry the wild flailing of the lunatic right with a few “Shut up, you morons.”, but they’re afraid to do that because corporate funding trumps, and helps buy, the working man’s vote.
So good riddance to the Democrats. They’ve proven they can’t get anything done because they try to serve two masters.
paulm… I think you nailed it on the head right there. What we are going to face here in the coming years and decades is nothing short of a major paradigm change for all of human society. I keep seeing one side trying to find ways to ease humanity through this dramatic transition off oil and hopefully avoid catastrophic climate change, while the other side seems solely concerned about who is going to control the strings of power regardless of the outcome and are willing to lie, cheat and deceive their way through this.
I concur that it’s clearly not a generational gap but a philosophical/political divide. I am of the boomer generation and remain left of center and am seriously concerned about the environment. People drawing on their own experience to making generalizations are using a very small sample size which is likely to be inaccurate. That said, some do move to the right as they age, including my father and others referred to in previous posts.
The republican party and many of their older base are having a real issue with adapting to a changing world. An early 21st century bereft of new concepts and challenges they do not understand.
That said- as they die off- their beliefs will begin to dissipate from the culture.
I am also a boomer and have not lost any of my progressive vigor-
some grow old and complacent as they get economically secure- some who have never been so lucky maintain their youthful ideas.
“Why can’t the GOP attract a thinking-person’s candidate to run for the US Senate!?”
That is the natural outgrowth of “The Government IS the problem”. If you view government as a joke that can’t do anything right it is hard to get your A-list talent to participate.
As a species we’ve blown up a balloon of materialistic growth that simply cannot be blown up any more, except to blow up or explode, as it is doing.
Evidence for reaching limits to growth are absolutely everywhere, from the financial balloon blowing up in our faces to the BP oil spill because we’ve reached Peak Oil and evidently feel we have no other option but to drill in places where we can’t repair a blow-out within three months, probably longer.
Peak Oil and Climate Change are manifestations of the balloon reaching limits to growth and exploding.
If we were smart we’d practice intelligence contraction instead and let air out of the balloon, but with the most angry, spoiled electorate in history where most voters lived lifestyles grander than those of any pre-20th Century king in transportation, entertainment, food and possessions suggesting we’re in for nothing but contraction in all areas couldn’t get one elected to dog catcher in Des Moines nor anything else.
So no matter what we do and despite our best efforts, the stuff’s gonna have to hit the fan. As Kunstler says, “Reality is knocking at our door, and it’s not happy with us.”
So then the question is, how do we respond when the inevitable is happening? We can do everything in our power in legislation and every other area to transition our economy to renewable energy and every other kind of sustainability and care for everyone the best we possibly can, which is what every regular commenter here and every true progressive and enlightened Democrat and everyone with both a brain in their head and heart in their chest wants.
Or we can completely misunderstand what is happening and lash out in hatred, blindness, bitterness and anger, finding scapegoats whether they’re black because of Obama (the last Americans to blame), or Asians because of the Chinese out-competing us (the last to the game), or Muslims and Middle-Easterners because Jesus put our oil under their feet (to quote Colbert).
Palin, Beck and Limbaugh are fanning the flames of this most intense stupidity ever, and it could not only not end well, it could end us all.
Why the hell are they still referred to as “Conservatives”? “Wackos”, “Nuts”, “Banker/Oil Cultists”, “Reality Challenged”…almost anything but “Conservatives” would be more appropriate.
Corporationists
one word
FEAR
If left alone, unchallenged,or the few that do (challenge the dogma and hatemongers that do the dirty work for power horders at the top who do) are defamed and thrown under the bus are not vindicated then you end up with a very large part of the population reduced to using their brain stems for all thought processes. If you are not young and full of hope but old and hope has been deluted by age and hard times. Then it is just easier to find other deniers to help you form a consensues that things like global warming are not real. To accept that for the majority of oneslife you have been raping the earth is just to much to accept. add the power shift to the youth and well… I can’t think anymore my brain stem is hurting. Add the fact that I do not consider myself old but the youth do does not help. When the truly old are gone i will be one of the old ones that the now youth will be oldish and the new youth will want to string me up in the commons does not help either. even if i am on the side of fixing things now. This will be our lagacy.