Welcome to the Stupid Thing of the Week. North Carolina Republican Party chair Tom “I’m not gay, dammit!” Fetzer is throwing his party’s support behind the Palin/Beck faction and its move to purge the GOP of “moderates.” In a move that is leaving some political observers gasping or scratching their heads, Fetzer has invited New York Conservative Party congressional candidate Doug “Mr. Excitement” Hoffman to speak at the Republican Party’s Hall of Fame Dinner on Nov. 21 in Raleigh. Hoffman was endorsed by various Republican bigwigs – Palin, Pawlenty, Perry – over the GOP’s own candidate, Dede Scozzafava, who just wasn’t Neolithic enough for the new, improved, and increasingly nutzoid party.
Hoffman — who doesn’t even live in the New York congressional district in which he ran — of course lost the race, giving that congressional seat to Democrats for the first time since the Civil War. That’s success enough for Fetzer, though, who said Hoffman’s candidacy – against a Republican, remember – “inspired conservatives across the country . . . he will reach out to North Carolina conservatives to help us reclaim our government.” Well, good luck with that, Tom. Encouraging disarray in your own party is certainly one way to be remembered. By the way, here’s the kind of oratorical excitement you can expect from Hoffman if you head to Raleigh for his speech:
Here’s an idea for a new, fun, national hobby: making right-wingers’ heads explode. Not literally, but you know how red-faced, spittle-launching mad the likes of Limbaugh & Co. get when they hear about the latest “liberal outrage”? *That’s what I’m talking about. It’s not hard if you try, since one thing most conservatives share is a resistance to taking in new information that clashes with their worldview. For instance, have you noticed how jumping-up-and-down angry some righties get when someone says that decent health care should be considered a basic human right? I saw one guy sputter and spew so much over that simple concept, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I’m chuckling now just thinking about it. Now, the idea that health care is a basic legal right is shared by all advanced countries except the U.S., but you’d never know it by listening to conservatives, who think the whole concept is (take your pick), treasonous, socialist, or Satan’s work.
Now the good news: here’s another, new idea straight from Europe that ought to have O’Reilly, Beck and their followers doing back-flips and crapping their pants. If you think they go nuts over health care being a right, just wait till they find out that Finland has just passed a law that, beginning in July 2010, makes access to broadband a legal right for that country’s citizens. That’s right, the Finns are making quick computer communications a formal, legal right. They’re the first country to pass such a law, and plan to … wait, what’s that noise? Sounds like steam spewing out of some windbag radio jock’s ears. Woo-hoo! Mission accomplished! Read more about the Finns’ latest liberal outrage here.
Sen. John McCain’s daughter, Meghan (aka McCainBloggette on Twitter and elsewhere) is tired of Conservative pundits, like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter — to name two — telling her to shut up.
While Meghan’s busy trying to draw more people into the Republican party, recognizing new ideas and the need for an infusion of young people and diversity in the aging, mostly white party of crank and grump, others are freaking out because she’s speaking her mind. You know, exercising her Constitutional right to free speech afforded under the First Amendment.
Meghan is young, it’s true. She’s got the McCain party genes (in more ways than one). She’s got a lot to learn. But, something else she has that many of her far-right comrades don’t is common sense. For example, she writes stuff like this: “We will not get anywhere by continuing to sell hate and fear.”
While the Republican party seems to want, more and more, to silence any opposition — which is the opposite of what’s needed in a democracy — Meghan McCain is standing her ground and continuing to speak her mind.
Kudos to her. It’s for that reason that she’s a rising Republican star, whether the Republicans want her help or not.
So Michelle Malkin successfully rounds out the trifecta of extreme female conservative pundits, following Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter, who believe that I, and Republicans like me, need to shut up and get out of the party. Is this surprising? Not really, given my father’s complicated history with the extreme right of the GOP. But what confuses me is this: Malkin recently posted an item on her blog about how “drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.”
What do Malkin and the other conservative pundits hope to accomplish by arguing that people “like me” have no place within the Republican Party? And who exactly are people “like me”? Young people? Moderate people? Young female people? People with tattoos who go to biker rallies?
However, I am consistently asked why I would want to stay in a party that has members so angry about my involvement. It’s as simple as this: I idealistically believe in the Republican Party, and I also have an emotional connection to it. But if the party continues to demand that people leave, I guarantee you that they will. If you tell people there is no place for them, they aren’t going to fight for their right to stay. They are going to rush into the open arms of the other team.
I, too, have noticed the talking heads adding the word “Southern” before the word “Conservative” lately.
As someone who grew up deep in the heart of Dixie — Montgomery, Ala., arguably the heart of Dixie — before a several year stop in Atlanta, another bastion of the Civil War, on my way to the Q.C., it’s difficult to argue there isn’t a connection.
Throughout my life, “Hello” has been immediately followed by “What church do you go to?” Even applications for sororities, class reunions and scholarships in my home state asked that question.
Every single year in high school some redneck would bring a rebel flag to school and set off a day of fighting, which was always terrifying. (By the way, I graduated in 1995 not 1965.)
Also since childhood, I’ve wondered why some white people assumed I was a bigot and that it was OK to use the ‘N’ word around me and talk about other races in derogatory ways — as if that’s behavior we all revert to when we’re left alone with our white-only friends and family.
Though, that shouldn’t be too big of a surprise since, to this day, you’re as likely to see a rebel flag flying in front of someone’s rural Alabama home as you are an American flag.
Part of why I left Montgomery was because of the constant assumption that I was a Conservative, religious, bigoted Republican because I’m white and part of an old, wealthy Southern family — by marriage.
So, yeah. I get why Southerners are taking the heat today and have to say: It’s not an amazing revelation since many in the South have been piling wood on this fire for a long, long time.
Alas, Voinovich was not entirely wrong. Not all Southern Republicans are wing nuts. Nor does the GOP have a monopoly on ignorance or racism. And, the South, for all its sins, is also lush with beauty, grace and mystery. Nevertheless, it is true that the GOP is fast becoming regionalized below the Mason-Dixon, and becoming increasingly associated with some of the South’s worst ideas.
It is not helpful that “birthers” – conspiracy theorists who have convinced themselves that Barack Obama is not a native son – have assumed kudzu qualities among Republicans in the South. In a poll commissioned by the liberal blog Daily Kos, participants were asked: “Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?”
Hefty majorities in the Northeast, Midwest and West believe Obama was born in the U.S. But in the land of cotton, where old times are not by God forgotten, only 47 percent believe Obama was born in America and 30 percent aren’t sure.
Southern Republicans, it seems, have seceded from sanity.
Though Voinovich’s views may be shared by others in the party, it’s a tad late – not to mention ungrateful – to indict the South. Republicans have been harvesting Southern votes for decades from seeds strategically planted during the Civil Rights era. When Lyndon B. Johnson predicted in 1965 that the Voting Rights Act meant the South would go Republican for the next 50 years, he wasn’t just whistling Dixie.
Why is this a surprise? This is the side of the political isle that enjoys listening to media personalities scream lies at them. Those same entertainers encourage their audiences to spread their vitriol through the general public, making it cool to be intolerant and belligerent. This, while waving their morality flags in everybody’s faces.
Let’s try this: Let’s look at Sotomayor’s qualifications instead of the color of her skin or the gender listed on her birth certificate.
At her Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, judicial nominee Sonia Sotomayor had to keep a straight face while Republicans heaped shame upon their party with a flood of ridiculous questions, unjustified jabs and tangential, pointless rants.
From sexist attacks about Sotomayor’s “temperament” to a rigorous interrogation about the definition of nunchucks, GOPers came up with a multitude of embarrassing ways to try to hinder the Supreme Court nominee’s confirmation.
The craziness and incompetence on display at the hearings has been more than matched by the absurd smears leveled at Sotomayor in the conservative media. The shining lights of conservatism — such intellectual heavyweights Pat Buchanan, G. Gordan Liddy and Rush Limbaugh — have outdone themselves with uninformed, offensive rants about the nominee.
Last week Republicans on Capitol Hill held a strategy summit on how to defeat key parts of the president’s health care plan.
At one point, Republican pollster Frank Luntz declared, “You’re not going to get what you want, but you can kill what they’re trying to do.”1
Luntz wrote a confidential memo that laid out the Republican strategy: Pretend to support reform. Mislead Americans about the heart of Obama’s plan, the public health insurance option. Scare enough people to doom real reform.
Since most people don’t know much about the public health care option, these lies could take root if we don’t fight back. Can you send this out to all your friends and neighbors?
5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OBAMA’S PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE OPTION(more…)
That’s right, folks. After announcing to the world that he wouldn’t allow homosexuals near his children, Joe the Plumber (aka SAMUEL the Plumber) says Republicans just aren’t doing it for him anymore.
Joe the Plumber, aka Samuel Wurzelbacher, sat down for an lengthy interview with Christianity Today to discuss his views on the future of the Republican party. Wurzelbacher took the opportunity to speak out against gay marriage, which he says is wrong. The unlikely conservative spokesman went so far as to say he doesn’t allow openly gay people “anywhere near” his children.
Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he’s so outraged by GOP overspending, he’s quitting the party — and he’s the bull’s-eye of its target audience.
Secession fever is apparently sweeping through Conservative World, and it’s getting closer to the Carolinas. Boy, talk about your swine flu! First, a poll a couple of weeks ago, taken after Texas Gov. Rick Perry broached the subject at a Tea Party, revealed that the GOP in Texas is evenly divided over whether the Lone Star state should secede from the United States. Now, a new poll from Research 2000 shows that 43 percent of Republicans in Georgia say their state would be better off as an independent nation than as a part of the United States. (52 percent preferred staying in the union, no doubt having read something in history books about secession’s results a couple of centuries ago). My only question is: Why do conservatives hate America?
NOTE: Spector is a switch from way back. He was a Democrat until 1965. He’s been a Republican since then — well, until today.
As one commenter said on The Political Carnival blog, “omg — all the repubs just dookied in their pants.”
Veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter disclosed plans Tuesday to switch parties, a move that will push Democrats closer to total control of the U.S. Senate.
Specter’s switch is a huge boost for President Barack Obama as he tries to advance his agenda on energy policy, health care reform and other issues.
With 60 votes in the 100-seat chamber, Obama’s fellow Democrats could stop Republican filibusters — stalling tactics used to delay or defeat legislation.
Now, if Norm Coleman would stop being such a whiney baby poor looser, the Dems will have 60 votes in the Senate. Why is 60 the magic number? With 60 votes, Democrats can push through damn near any legislation they want — all while swearing they’re not voting along party lines.
WATCH: MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, “Norm, it’s over; you lost.”
Congressional Republicans, who have been busy responding to charges that they’re little more these days than the “Party of No,” held a press conference today in which they promised to release their alternative budget (alternative to Pres. Obama’s). The press conference turned into an unintentional comedy act, with one reporter after another asking spokesman/House minority leader Rep. John Boehner for actual details.
You see, the GOP managed to show up at their big, previously hyped press conference without any real budget recommendations, just a list of budget “goals.” OK, actually, there was one specific proposal, and you can probably guess what it was. Think: Republicans, budget proposal … yes, you guessed it! A humongous tax cut for the wealthy! Also, some wording in the info-packet-that-was-supposed-to-be-a-budget reveals that the GOP has no plans whatever for dealing with global warming — although they are still in favor of drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness and the continental shelf.
At this point, Congressional Republicans seem like something out of a sci-fi show — maybe a tribe that got lost in the past, and now they’re attempting in vain, but comically, to find their way back to the present.
