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The cover story in the new issue of National Journal says the Republican Party "has finally admitted it has a problem." There is, however, ample evidence to the contrary.
The Republican Party honchos who huddled in [Charlotte, N.C.] for their first big gathering since the election devoted lots of time talking about the need to welcome Latinos and women, close the technology gap with Democrats and stop the self-destructive talk about rape.
But the party's main problem, dozens of Republican National Committee members argued in interviews over three days this week, is who delivers its message and how, not the message itself. Overwhelmingly they insisted that substantive policy changes aren't the answer to last year's losses.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus declared, "It's not the platform of the party that's the issue. In many cases, it's how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said."
An RNC member from West Virginia added, "We don't need a new pair of shoes; we just need to shine our shoes."
I see. So a few months after a national election in which President Obama won re-election fairly easily, Senate Democrats unexpectedly expanded their majority, and House Democrats received well over 1 million more votes than House Republicans, GOP officials took a long look in the mirror and decided ... they're awesome just the way they are.
Indeed, Priebus seems to think his party would have been just fine were it not for Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.
The so-called "Growth and Opportunity Project," tasked by the Republican Party to study in detail why the GOP is struggling to compete at the national level, includes party insiders who "appear to be unanimously blaming its losses on ill-considered messaging and outreach."
There's a lot of this going around, and it's evidence of a party that stuck its head in the sand -- and just kept pushing.
Think about what we've seen from prominent Republicans in the wake of their electoral failures. Jim DeMint, the former senator and now head of the Heritage Foundation, believes his party simply needs better communication skills -- and nothing else. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) thinks the GOP would be better off if candidates stopped saying "stupid" and "offensive" things.
Literally just two days after Election Day, Charles Krauthammer's offered this take: "The problem ... for Republicans is not policy but delicacy."
Republicans are looking at the landscape and see a rhetorical problem. Americans would love the party's regressive economic vision, thirst for more and longer wars, and desire to win a repressive culture war if only GOP officials and candidates could figure out a way to be more persuasive in their sales pitch.
This might make Republican feels better, but it's clearly misguided. Republicans have found themselves on the wrong side of the American mainstream, not because of inadequate talking points, but because most of the country likes Medicare, doesn't hate gay people, thinks the rich can afford to pay a little more in taxes, wants fewer wars, supports taking steps to prevent gun violence, and believes the government should stay out of our bedrooms and doctors' offices, among other things.
I don't imagine GOP leaders want my advice, but the writing is on the wall for all who to choose to look -- as Republicans have become radicalized, they've found it harder to compete at the national level, and they've put a greater distance between the party agenda and the opinions of the American mainstream.
What the party has, in other words, is a policy problem that can't be fixed with sloganeering, media training, and "delicate" talking points.
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On the wikipedia under sleazy weasel ....there he is .Reince Priebus
The kind of person who exudes slime .
RP = What a Twit ..............
ReiNCe PRieBuS...
Republican National Committee Public Relations Bull S---
At least Paul Ryan is testing the "Barbarians at the Gate" trope, used to justify massive changes in message due to an existential threat.
The thing to watch is if they understand that their errors in methodology. Messina's data guys embraced empirical techniques as did Romney's. But Obama's team was 10 times larger and embraced the internet as a means of doing message testing on massive audiences virtually instantly at tiny cost. Experiment informed programs is what Obama's folks called their approach to using randomized tests to empirically prove the effectiveness of one message versus another, as Sasha Issenberg points out in this (MIT technology article)
The GOP could be doing these simple things to test various ideas (such as the barbarians at gate message to justify a shift in messaging to Latinos), but as far as I know, they are unable to embrace it. Romney naturally used the conservative/ corporate model of microtargeting techniques. There's is a top-down model, of "managing" relationship with customers (in this case the voters). There is no assumption that the customer may be right, and may have a perception which will require the organisation to make changes to its practices. The purpose is to find out what sugar coating will make the customer oblivious about how they are getting screwed.
Another weakness they have is the role that high paid advisers have in biasing the empirical results. In many cases, this is unavoidable. Data mining can establish false correlations, that a domain expert must dismiss. The GOP made incorrect assumptions about who the likely voters were- something that was an unprovable point until the election, based on a epistemological problem about where they thought the nation was. But some blind spots are institutional and more difficult to overcome. High paid party hacks both conservative and liberal have a vested interest in minimizing such data driven techniques, because it severely devalues their compensation. Why rely on 7 figure "wise men" whose gut checks on the effectiveness of a million dollar advertising expenditure that is so often erroneous, or subject to corrupt relationships with advertising outlets?
It's why OFA languished in the DNC, and why the DCCC was unable to persuade districts who voted for Obama to vote for a democratic representative in 14 key swing districts.
The DNC can be reformed, but only if we own up to our own screwups. A strong light needs to be shined on this. If we are going to return Nancy to power in 2014, we have to start work now reforming how we GOTV for progressive House members.
I don't see how anybody that has watched politics for any number of years can not be worried the Republicans are right in that all they have to do is change the messaging.
Everybody does realize Republicans just ran a Presidential candidate whose campaign was nothing but lies and still got 47%, right? What happens if Democrats run a white guy next time? Do they get the minority votes in the numbers they did? Do Democrats get women when Republicans change their messaging on that? ...
Democrats need to do a lot of message-changing too, and it needs to be about serious policy education so that the public actually understands how their economic interests are undermined by Republican policies.
Of the two parties, Democrats are better able to look at our own messaging, indeed, we already do. There's been numerous calls for stronger rebuttal of the right's talking points, stronger advocacy of fact to counter their fiction, a strong need to define who we are to the public rather than allowing the right to incorrectly define us.
We need a gathering point for our opinions at the place that can affect messaging changes and that point must be the DNC itself.
This is the DNC website. "contact" is at the bottom of the homepage. Let's tell 'em.
I have and continue to. Howard Dean put in some revolutionary reforms with Party Builder, but there is an oil and water situation going on, where the apparatus is resistant. Theoretically, the DCCC had internalized the lessons learned from the Obama campaign about how data driven techniques were the key to victory. Aaron Strauss came in saying all the right things (eg this RollCall article). Yet the 2012 results were a ludicrous.
I'd love it if people thought in terms of rational analysis of the issues.
Try an experiment- View Debate #1 again (youtube)- jump around in it. Why is it so hard to understand today why anyone would think Romney "won" that debate? Is it because we know more about the "issues" today?
No.
It is simply that the social animals who survived were those that had the best ability to select powerful leaders and reject those leaders when they became weak. We have only more recently developed faculties to compete with emotional-intuitive mechanisms of inferring strength. If one contestant gives the appearance of the being dominant, yet says nothing convincing on the issues, which of our mental faculties convinces ourselves who is "best"? Knowing today that Romney is a loser, we have a hard time understanding how they could at the time be perceived to be strong.
Similarly for Clinton versus Biden. Do we judge Clinton for her positions on climate change, wall street reform or globalization (neoliberal economic theory)? Because she is at the right wing of the DEM party on nearly every issue confronting the nation. Or do we judge her on the basis of her perceived dominant status as the "stongest" competitor?
@JohnMesserly
The media contributes to the messaging when they put out their opinions on the deliver of the message rather than the substance. Consider how many people judged debate #1 just on what the media opined was a weak performance by the president rather than what he and Romney said in the debate. This problem is readily apparent when the major networks have politicians on talk shows and they are not challenged by the program moderator. Would Paul Ryan be considered serious if the media had forced him to deal in the arithmetic of his budget rather than let him talk in generalities? Ryan is just another Palin who is being allowed to have a microphone because the media is playing into a self perpetuating myth that Ryan is a political heavyweight. The MSM media is incapable of doing its job when it is more interested in sound bites than substance and the shows are more concerned about what guest politicians will come on network talk shows.
I like Hillary Clinton, but there are others I would prefer to see as our next president. I really like Howard Dean and wish he'd run. I also like Andrew Cuomo. I prefer either of these candidates to Biden or Clinton, but for different reasons.
Mike, #1.7
Ryan is neither an intellectual, an economist nor a heavyweight. He is a right-wing ideologue who is out of touch with everything the American people want. How smart can he be, then?
Or in other words the RP needs to get improve is propaganda machine
America loves it some alpha-male. Display confidence (earned or not) and forcefulness and too many people are fooled.
Look into the camera and say "2 and 2 is 3" and follow it up with "and that's why we must preserve freedom for the middle class who will not allow Socialism in our great country ..., right to protect yourself, ..., and a whole lot of jobs" and a whole boatload of buffoons will vote for you.
MSNBC could use the same Experiment Informed Program technique that is revolutionizing campaigning. They can focus test stories via a blog, and then do on air versions of the story based on how many facebook likes they get. They could do this not just with MaddowBlog, but with blogs directed at the Chris Matthews, versus Joe Scarborough versus Ed Schultz demographics.
They can profile their viewers and make sure that each show has at least one story they are pretty excited about. It's not hard to have the site present altered presentations of a story so producers can get real feedback on their craft- what plays well and what doesn't..
Of course, if they have dinosaurs in their web group, or starve the group for budget then you basically have the elements of why Romney lost. Live or Die- makes no difference to me. Someone will figure it out because it isn't rocket science how to get virtually free feedback on the quality of your show before it airs.
As for the debates, Bernie Shaw's idiotic question to Dukakis is the counter example to the school that says that the moderator should be more active. The Lincoln - Douglas debate would not have benefited from an insightful and aggressive moderator. The trouble with debates is the public is mostly interested in the drama of two Bucks cracking antlers, the blow by blow ancient biologic story of dominance. The MSM knows there is good entertainment draw there but want to cater to it "responsibly". Few clear that bar because the entire enterprise naturally gravitates to strengthening the emotional-intuitive centers that are activated during a sports event. The physicality of how the candidates hold themselves, presenting a constant side by side view of the competitors to record reactions as "blows" are landed all add to the visceral drama of the visuals, but not the drama of the competition of ideas.
Both Matthews and Schultz were the most unabashed in treating the debate as disappointed boxing match fan boys who were eager to see their alpha hero lay out the challenger on the mat. The bitterly focused on Obama's lack of interest in zinging Romney with memorable sound bites. Instead of Muhamed Ali, they got an intellectual champion more interested with an honest debate with a rigorous examination of policy contrasts. To those expecting a "big fight" using silly season techniques to make fallacious or simplistic focus group tested appeals to preconceived ideas, to those expecting an emotional rush as larger than life personalities grapple in a morality play of right and wrong, the Liberal icon-hero was wimping out at the emotional-intuitive level, and they were right. So what they were engaging in was leading the tribe in settling on an a-rationally determined collective interpretation of the event. The highly negative progressive Twitter feeds co-operated in a vast cascade of the negative representation that spilled into even Rachel's and Hayes' commentary. They have brilliant minds, but they have many live tv elements to juggle as they attempt to present useful insight in real time. Sharpton came up with the best counter image that night- Romney as used car salesman, who only seemed to be convincing, but the car being sold is a clunker if you look under the hood about what he was saying.
The actual content regarding the issues was pretty boring to the commentators because it was the same old territory they had been going over for months. Perhaps it would have also been boring to their viewers. So they largely had nothing to say on the point counterpoint replay and analysis of the substance of the debate. This would have made for a fair examination of the competing ideas, but has far less entertainment value than the competing dramas of the two personalities engaging in a titanic wrestling match over the most powerful seat of power in the world.
Obama looks down during the debate. Michelle wears an elegant Thom Brown coat, and sports cute bangs- not since Jackie O was there a first lady this elegant.... blah blah blah.
Please. Please spare us.
The debates are a frickin' joke. The press is a frickin' joke. The public's intelligence of the issues is a frickin' joke. Ah hell, the whole election system we have is a frickin' joke and I don't have the energy or patience to go on here.
DisgustedWithItAlll
Bravo! About summed it up for me. I can't add anything
John forgets gerrymandering as the biggest reason repubs control the house...not lack of votes. Now the GOP wants to rig the electoral college. They don't believe in changing so...they'll lie steal and cheat to win. We just need to keep exposing them so the voters can keep rejecting them. Compared to the current GOP the entire country is far left.
There should be a national non partisan board to fix this gerrymandering in a balanced manner.
And now for the facts. Take a look at these districts:
{Source:Daily KOS)
... I could go on, but only if you are interested in facts, not loser talking points from Party Hacks who want to excuse themselves for their massive F-Up in 2012. 14 districts are like that. Gerrymandering does not explain why the DCCC failed to convince Obama voters to vote for a DEM House member. There are another 13 districts where just a modest 3 point increase past Obama's numbers- which they could easily do by going to the right of him- would have given us a total of 27 votes in the House, and Nancy Not Boehner would be running the show.
.
Gerrymandering was a huge blow, but fatalism or a defensive posture is stupid. Modern Organizing for Action techniques can put both the House and Senate in Dem hands in 2014.
PS- by "Party Hacks", I refer to all those party operatives with the exception of those pragmatic, resourceful and clever technocrats who have kindly dedicated themselves to public service for progressive causes. I have run into many, and they are impressive individuals who carry out thankless tasks, largely out of public sight. All I'm saying with my belligerent tone is that we need to upgrade the way we do things, and those who don't want to get on-board would better serve the party by just stepping out of the way.
Hear, hear. The useless dead weight needs to be removed.
Fixing Gerrymandered districts is not going to be easy.
I suggest an Amendment to say all house districts must look like Nebraska. 4 to 6 sides, borders are straight lines going north-south or east-west, sides can be curvy when they follow natural obstacles like Continental Divide or a major river, and all done by a computer program that all the states use to get the populations even.
But, I doubt that it will pass anytime soon. Maybe a Constitutional Convention is what we need.
Please proceed, GOP.
Yes. I'm fine with the mistakes they're making, please continue.
However: political obstruction and voter suppression must stop, otherwise these losers will continue to lock down many states. Do you want Ohio and some other key states going to Rs next time, when the popular vote goes to Democrats? This has to be stopped.
I think, beneath the surface, the biggest problem the GOP has is that most people in the party ACTUALLY BELIEVE those awful things they advocate, like to the base of their spines believe it. Like it is a core element in the building blocks of each member's sense of personhood.
Which smells bad and is deeply unattractive, kind of like the way I always thought the anger of the anti-abortion protesters (even back in the 80s) contorted their features, their bodies. Like their eyebrows were permanently hitched into unpleasant contortions, like they didn't listen when their mothers told them not to make that sort of face, or it would freeze that way.
A core belief in hierarchies, core group superiority and hegemony, one-upping, sneering, bullying, stacking the deck, rigging the system, disregarding hypocrisy, sucking up to the powerful, scratching backs, having your hand out after every "favor", kicking the little guy, coming home and kicking the dog...
Fascism, a boot stomping on a human face forever. They've decided this is the universal system of humanity for all time, and the only strategic response is not to fight it, but to embrace it, reinforce it, and be made ugly by it.
We're better! Our race, our breeding, our gender, our god, our state, our hometown, our neighborhood, our high school, our demagogic TV network, our cheerleaders, our Stepford Wives.
We HAVE to be better, superior. It is an imperative, required, but without the virtue of actual evidence. An assertion, a will to power, a will to preserve power, a will to genuflect to power. Power is their god, regardless of what deity gets the "name" on the surface.
So wooing women and minorities into the GOP? That's a heck of a persuasive task, unless you actually BELIEVE that women and minorities SHOULD be persuaded to take their ordered low-status position in your hierarchy-driven pecking order BECAUSE that is what they should WANT.
After all, who wouldn't want that? In their view, at least. Throw your lot with us, you Lowly Ones. We may keep you in a subservient position in our cultural norms, but that is the way our Power God willed it, so it should make you HAPPY. Also, if you hang with us, you get the drippings off our SUPERIOR TABLE, which, anyone can see, is far better than anyone else is offering.
After all, SUPERIOR. Right? I mean, what other argument is needed? We are the best and we know it. EVERYONE should want to be with us. How can you not be persuaded?!
Feels a bit like the way the movies of late have interpreted (twisted, actually) the notion of the "popular" kids in high school as the meanest and bitchiest of the lot. Really? What kinds of fools make mean, bitchy people "popular"?! Popular means everyone likes you. I'd expect the "popular" crowd to behave a bit more like vote-sucking politicians, wanting to please everyone, make everyone like them (bringing candy to pass out in every class?)
Maybe this is a GOP-driven bizarro-world version of popular, contorted by power and S&M to fetishize and expect people to LIKE being derided, being a "bottom," being on the end of a lash. Ooh, give us more! We like it! We'll make you popular because of it!
When you have a party composed of people stupid enough to flunk the IQ test low enough to qualify for membership, this is what you get.
Personally, I always enjoy laughing behind the backs of people too stupid to know they're stupid, as they demonstrate their stupidity regularly in public. Which is what our trolls and the rest of the southern dumbasses who really are as stupid as they sound do every day for us.
So TCinLA, do you think all in the South, all Republicans, and all others who do not favor a progressive approach are stupid. I a a transplanted NYer living ing the South. I took my NY views to SC. I did not believe in progressive thinkingthen, nor do now. Stop being a belittening @!$%#
Priebus would be completely right if... and it's a big if... the American people were all as stupid and compliant as the right wing base. Thats a core problem for the right, the base swallows such low level nonsense that they must develop a seperate message for those of us with working brains and at least marginal distrust.
I believe you've outlined their problem exactly. This is the party that couldn't/wouldn't believe the national polls that Obama was ahead, and they simply denied this could not possibly be the case! Heck, I'm not sure a large percentage of their base has even accepted they lost the election as yet!
There's not much that can be done with this kind of denial of reality, except maybe hand them their sign.
Republicans are so out of touch with Reality...
The Right-Wing Nut Jobs blame Obama's re-election on cheating by ACORN!...
"This is the party that couldn't/wouldn't believe the national polls that Obama was ahead"
They didn't believe that the voter turnout would favor Obama. They thought that their voter suppression efforts would be successful in key swing states. They thought that Obama supporters were too lazy to stand in long lines to vote. That's why they unskewed the polls.
I have seen estimates of 200K voters in Florida that did not vote because of long lines. So, they were partly right. Long lines deter voters. It just did not deter enough of them in Florida to swing the state. And they did not account for the effect of Obama voters being motivated to vote by voter suppression efforts.
Washington state's Republicans recently met to discuss their failures at the state level.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020230097_gopfuturexml.html
From the article:
In discussions after Reichert’s speech, many seized on data showing minorities are voting more often and more Democratic.
“It’s all about the numbers, folks,” said West Richland City Councilman Tony Benegas. “Without going into the minority communities, there is no future of the party.”
Benegas and others argued Republicans should adopt a more moderate approach on immigration by being more respectful and recognizing the limitations in proposals like fences and citizenship-verification systems.
Another major issue, education, got special attention in a forum moderated by McKenna. Speakers agreed Republicans can capitalize on some Democrats’ resistance to what the GOP calls reform. Republicans pledge to make education their top budget priority.
A particularly contentious exchange began when strategist Judy Yu argued Republicans should “abandon social issues” because the issues are “off-putting” to independents.
Kirkland activist Jeanie McCombs disagreed.
“This is one Republican who will not be a Republican if we throw away the plank that supports life,” she announced to the crowd.
The conference also appeared split on the type of candidate they support. In a straw poll, Marco Rubio, a tea-party-aligned Florida senator, led for president.
You refer, I take it, to the election of 2008? Or was it 1992? 1860?
DC Sessions,
I don't believe they'd concede to having lost the "war of Northern aggression!"
The cynical part of me can't help thinking this line of rhetoric is nothing more than a means of distracting the electorate while the GOP continues to push its election-rigging schemes into being. We'll all argue about whether this is a reasonable line of thought for a while, and then wake one morning and the electoral college will have been completely destroyed. Better to dismantle the damn thing entirely than to let the GOP gerrymander it so voters become completely irrelevant.
That's not cynicism. That's logic.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus declared, "It's not the platform of the party that's the issue. In many cases, it's how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said."
The RNC would have shown they 'got it' if they hadn't re-elected this slime as chairman.
Actually if it were this simple I doubt there would be much controversy. But of course Mr Benen, as a good shill does, has minimized and ignored serious points of contention. Not to mention the favorability of being the party of free stuff.
Do you go to conservative sites and chortle about how much your constant repetition of the "party of free stuff" nonsense hacks off those dumb libs? Just wondering.
Free stuff: intelligence, compassion, integrity..
Hey blanks, they're free! Does your ideology not allow you to freely utilize any of those?
Free stuff? Where the heck is my free stuff? I just paid my taxes, and it sure looks like I paid for what I am getting, as well as a lot of stuff I didn't want, like a couple of wars, weapons that don't work, corporate welfare, handouts to the oil companies, etc. The free stuff mantra is even dumber than the people spouting it, which is quite an accomplishment.
http://moelane.com/2012/06/09/troll-hunting-101/
Shooter,
When one party champions policies that are offensive to majorities of every demographic group except straight white men over 40, the other party will generally win the popular vote, as the Democrats have during 5 of the last 6 presidential cycles. That includes cycles where entitlements were cut and taxes were raised to 20% of GDP by Democrats -- hardly the party of free stuff.
The future for the Gerrymander Obfuscate and Poll-tax party (GOP) will continue to be dim until they realize that women, minorities, and immigrants are people too. Until that time, the tactics used by the GOP will continue to tick-off more and more younger voters.
To answer Steve's question, yes. The Hemorrhoid is gleeful when he elicits outrage. And the idiots here just keep giving it to him and scratching their Hemorrhoid thinking it'll go away after trashing his idiotic statements and "arguments" yet one more time.
Doesn't work that way. Scratching it just gives the Hemorrhoid exactly what it wants. Way to go.
Shooter, as opposed to the GOP being the party of takers for the rich. I'm sure that's gonna sell just fine. You just keep thinking, that's what you're good at - NOT!
Open wide shooter ...We're going to shove it down your throat...don't gag now
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus declared, "It's not the platform of the party that's the issue. In many cases, it's how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said."
Consider: Michael Steele ran the party and won the 2010 elections. For doing this, he was fired. Reince Priebus presided over a disaster, and for this he was re-elected. What is the difference between these two guys (hint: it's really easy to see)?
And that is the problem with the Southern White People's White Supremacy & Treason Party.
So Michman, how exactly do the rich take? Does that include Democrats feeding money to the banks? How about Democrats giving big money to Solyndra et. al.?
John, the party of free stuff has two types of voters... the ones that want free stuff and those that want to give it to them.
Shooter, when a Texas utility company used GOP connections and gains a special exemption from clean air standards for a 40-year obsolete coal-fired power plant, they take years off the lives of those downwind and run up medical bills for millions world wide.
As for your the party of free stuff, you are talking about loopholes for big business and those GOP political hacks lining up to sell those loopholes for pennies on the dollar, right? If not, please explain how GE manages to rarely, if ever, pay appreciable corporate income tax.
Sorry John, I don't believe a coal fired power plant takes years of life, and run up medical bills for millions. That's just absurd.
As for GE, these days they are primarily a bank. Democrats have been treating banks like their own children for years.
Go to an emergency room in Houston on a poor air quality day and count the number of children wheezing. Living near a old fashioned coal-fired boiler affects longevity in the same manner smoking cigarettes does, except it is not optional for those living near the plant.
Thankfully the Feds are finally forcing those dinosaurs to clean up or close.
Coal-fired utilities are the primary source of mercury emissions in the US. Atmospheric emission of mercury places the toxic metal in waterways and the oceans, where it ends up in fish. This is why pediatricians are beginning to warn parents away from feeding albacore tuna to children -- older and more carnivorous fish have higher mercury content. Billions of people consume fish world wide.
Sorry John, but if you're going to make a claim like that you're going to have to prove it. "Because I say so" won't cut it.
Republicans think they can put an evening dress and makeup on a pig and no one will notice that it is a pig.
Do you think they're wrong? But for a couple of comments by Akin and Mourdock, they would be in the Senate right now. Do you trust Americans to understand what's going on? (I don't.)
Yes! If they just put the right shade of lipstick on that pig, all will be well!
McCaskill hand picked Akin to be her opponent. She knew he just couldn't help himself. If it hadn't been the rape comment, he would have said something else equally disqualifying. The same can be said of Mourdock.
For me the worry is Democrats will grow complacent and will fail to take advantage of Republican stupidity.
Will grow complacent? When have they ever taken advantage of Republican stupidity? Democrats are essentially useless.
That's the same rationalization as the guy who says, "I'm not a racist, but hey, who doesn't enjoy a good _____— joke now and then?"
Put another way, Priebus blames a few Republican idiots for saying aloud that which the rest of the party is thinking.
You'll notice that they've decided they don't want the support of black people... or that free black people are inconsistent with their Confederate base, perhaps?
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
The GOP is the party of "Big Ideas". Turning any of these ideas into an actual plan is where they fail.
No, they are the party of petty ideas, now all universally gone stale.
Exactly. They accidently spoke the truth.
This gun issue with these politicians and rich bastards is about as ridiculous as it can get. These idiots sit there and want guns on the streets and no proper gun regulations at all just so they can continue to make profits at any cost. How would these politicians, religious extremists of hatred, and rich bastards like it if they had a gun pointed in their face where they wondered if they were going to see another day in this world? How would that make you feel? Well that is what you politicians, religious extremists of hatred, and rich bastards have done to the American people and the world. You politicians, religious extremists of hatred, and rich bastards sit and claim to be so religious or spiritual and you are a pack of hypocrites. Don’t make excuses that it is evil, when the evil is caused by you.
Yeah, I had a squabble with someone on FB this weekend. She pointed to an AP article concerning health care costs and triumphantly proclaimed that she had foreseen this rationing of care. I read the article myself and pointed out that it wasn't about rationing. Instead, it discussed whether there was any hope of pushing smokers and overweight people to adopt healthier habits or if we should just accept that their lifespans are shorter, no matter what care they receive, so their increased costs don't go on as long.
Well, my friend was certain this was just one step short of Death Panels and tried to correct me, but I reiterated what had been in the article.
Now this is an educated person, who's a licensed therapist, in fact. But she lives in Oklahoma, where there's a frenzy of GOP non-stop nonsense. My conclusion is that quiet, considerate conversation to dispel the conservative myths is something we can all do, and it just might change the minds of a few of the party faithful.
JL,
I had a similar discussion with a friend in Texas - she works in the insurance industry and was sure that Obamacare was going to cost gazillions. I talked to her about controlling costs and covering everyone because of the cost of paying through the ER was prohibitive. She then said national healthcare wasn't necessary since she had gotten heatlhcare through the ER with her very premature child many years ago. I asked whether she was covered by her employer, she said, "No, it was covered by Medicaid." I gently pointed out that Medicaid was "socialized medicine" and she stopped in her tracks.
The majority of people still don't understand what Medicare/Medicaid is: They know they like it, but they don't know what it is.
Well, here's where Organizing for Action has a chance of making a difference. I say chance because I've worked in corporate America on Very Large Projects, and I know how difficult it is to get going. Lots of analysis paralysis and mindless circles at the beginning.
But building an 'army of knowledgeable neighbors' who can intercept and rechannel some of the disinformation coming from the Republican machine is a very big step in the right direction.
Oklahoma: the state founded by southern whites (mostly from Texas) too stupid to steal land from the Indians by themselves, so they had to have the government do it for them.
In fact, I came up against the gun-grabber issue with another friend last week. I had mentioned the shameful one-sided effort of Virginia Republicans to redistrict, so as to make Democratic victories nearly impossible in the future, and she responded with her shock at President Obama's executive orders taking away guns. Huh?
I told her that the executive orders dealt with ancillary issues and that any gun access matters would be done through Congress with ample debate. She didn't believe me, so I e-mailed her a link to the list of executive orders. Nothing on there about banning guns or ammunition. Everything there is common sense management, such as gun registration, getting a permanent ATF director, telling doctors they're allowed to ask about guns in the home, helping with security on school premises and so forth. I'm hoping she'll take that to heart and pass it along to her friends who are so afraid they're going to lose their guns.
Watch it, TC. I'm a Tulsa native myself. ;-)
JL...
So, why did you move to Montana, of all places?...
Hey, I've been all over, pretty much. Tulsa, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Dallas, New York, Wilmington (DE), Los Angeles, San Francisco and now here. It's quiet.
David
You'd be surprised the kind of people you'll find in Montana. I know couple who the husband taught history of the American West at the state university at Billings. The wife taught high school English Lit. Both are very Liberal. And they both come from military family backgrounds!
And we have a Democratic governor and lieutenant governor, two Democratic Senators and Democratic secretary of state. Missoula is a significant blue dot here--sort of the Berkeley of the Northern Rockies.
BUT. . .there are lots of pockets where the people are living in a different age. It's part of the charm.
;-)
"Why's everybody always picking on me? Charlie Brown he's a clown..."
My apologies to..Lieber and Stoller and of course The Coasters.
And yes, they are space cadets.
Reince Priebus . . . a twit before he opens his mouth. And the good ol oddfellows party gave this wuss another term? Unbefarginlievable.
I think they're spiraling out of control and nobody knows which way to go. Like an addict who has to hit bottom before he can accept that he needs help, I predict we haven't seen the worst of this yet.
JL: It is an amazing train wreck, and I admit that I can't take my eyes off of it. Yup, I agree that it's not over.
The unfortunate thing is, when you look at right wing movements in recent history, what it takes to finalize their trainwreck frequently pretty much wrecks the country they're in, and takes a loooooong time to recover from. Examples: Spain, Chile, Argentina, Brazil... Germany...
Right, TC. I actually went to Buenos Aires twice in the early '80s. First time was before the coup and it was a lovely, bustling, lively city. The second time was shocking, hardly recognizable from the previous year. There were children (well, I guess they were 18, but they looked barely old enough to shave) with military weapons menacingly posted everywhere you looked. We even got stopped when our driver accidentally went over the 35 mph speedlimit on a very accommodating road. I thought we were going to be shot. But at least there was no graffiti--anywhere.
Poor Argentina. So proud, sophisticated and beautiful. Then raped and ruined by a military dictatorship. We can't let that happen here.
This is the predictable convulsions of a gasping, dying worldview and it's going to be very, very ugly. I predicted this after Obama won in November concluding that Wingnut World had essentially died. There's a problem, though: Obama won't stick the knife in. Obama keeps heading rightward, and keeping the Asswhole Movement alive. And I didn't foresee the rigging of the electoral process assuming that since they gave it up before this election they wouldn't resuscitate it.
As long as President Reverse Reagan keeps being to the right of Ronald Reagan, this won't die. It'll live and get even stronger. Obama is not doing us or the country any favors appeasing these people.
This is not going the right way.
DWIA, did you see the story this weekend about President Obama calling out Fox and Limbaugh for deliberately generating hostility and creating an unworkable atmosphere in Washington? Essentially, both sides get their audiences worked up and energized on purpose, but the difference is that Republicans attack any in their party who want to negotiate, whereas Democrats realize that negotiation means you don't get everything.
At the risk of bringing your considerable anger down on my head, I for one don't want to stoop to their level of obstructionism. My view is that you make some progress and then improve on it as you can.
The problem is we aren't making progress.
We're still going in the wrong direction. All Obama has done is righted the listing U.S.S. Plutocracy -- nearly sunk by the 30+ years of failed conservative economic ideas and policies -- and set it sailing in the same direction. W couldn't even make his tax cuts permanent. Too-big-to-fail is chiseled into the regulatory framework. We were more right on 1/2/13 than on 11/5/12. We were more right on 11/5/12 than on 11/5/08. We will be more right in three months when Obama agrees to cuts in earned benefits. We have approving Keystone XL to look forward to by Obama and Senate Democrats.
When one side is fu king insane and going in an insane direction, the REASONABLE thing to do for the other side is to OBSTRUCT them. To get in their way. Obama and Democrats let them keep going in the same direction, just not as fast as the insane people want to go. This is after Democrats WON the election?!?!
Stop going their way!
It doesn't matter what Obama says. It matter what he does. Wake up, folks.
What I'd like to know is: where can I send the shovels?
Leave it in the sun to rot.
No, you can't leave it in the sun until you drive a cedar stake through its chest.
I thought, it had to be aspen?...
I guess Cedar would help with the stench but Dogwood might be more appropriate in this case.
It's the train wreck you can't take your eyes off of.
And it appears as though the GOP in New Mexico finally accept Roe v Wade (40+ years later), just not for rape victims. Because, you know, "tampering with evidence".
Quite astonishing, really.
That is just so much bullpucky...
The results of an abortion are SIMPLER to analyze than waiting up to nine months for a live birth... Not to mention, the stress placed on the rape victim by forcing her to carry the child of her RAPIST to term...
They would be raping her all over again, by turning her into no more value than an incubator...
"It's not the product, it's the marketing!" The battle cry of incompetent executives leading enterprises into extinction since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Is there such a thing as a delicate Sociopath? What's next, piranha play-pals (for kids)?
Yeah, nothing wrong with da Republican platform:
No medical procedure for Rape victims.
No government services for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients.
No convenient voting for urban dwellers.
Rig electoral college.
Tax the poor so rich people won't have to pay their fair share.
Send poor Americans to the emergency room for drs. appts.
Support your local Koch Bros.' need for more coal and less democratic government.
Destroy the Unions!
Make Hispanics show their papers even if they've been American citizens for the past 20 generations.
And, austerity for all!
If only those Republicans could be more effective in sending the rest of us their message, they'd do so much better! Yeah, right! -Kevo
Most of them are still believing 2012, like 2008 in their view, was an aberration. They really believe the 2010 results more faithfully represented the moods and positions of most Americans.
The moral aspect of their theo-/ideology does not just apply to their fight against abortion and contraception. They believe they stand in opposition to 'EVIL' on all questions of the day. Just as they refuse to compromise on any issue, they refuse to even examine their positions let alone consider modifying them.
What the party has, in other words, is a policy problem that can't be fixed with sloganeering, media training, and "delicate" talking points.
So now we have a concerted assault on the "real" power of the people... each of the States...I'm not talking about nullification, which is a concern, but the GOP's plan of gerrymandering...I actually didn't know much about gerrymandering until now...thank you Rachael and Steve for keeping this on the front burner...
WTF is a "Reince Priebus" anyway?!?
But on a more serious note, I've made an observation based on GOP behavior lately, and their efforts to rig the electoral college.
I think they realize that national elections are out of reach (given the changing demographics of our population), so their new strategy is to take over local and state governments, and once in power they will defy the federal branch almost entirely. With gerrymandering this could be within the realm of possibility.
I call it a "silent secession".
Quit telling them what they're doing wrong!!
If they can't figure it out themselves, why should Democrats help them?
Actually, the more anyone to the left of Limbaugh make the case for this analysis, the more they'll feel the irresistible need to completely reject it as even a remote possibility.
That is telling me they still believe there's rape and legitimate rape, and they are anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-average American, anti-minorities and anti-women. They still believe it and they just want to change how they say it. All they have done the last few years is make slogans to sell to the American people to get elected and then do just the opposite. Remember jobs jobs jobs?
Phenner nailed it with this conclusion.
Yeah, I thought it was about jobs, jobs, jobs!
But, of course, they voted down every new idea Obama had which promoted jobs and economic growth.
That tells me they are full of ..it.
In fact, for at least 40 years they have been full of ..it, and will probably stay on course for the next 40 years. Getting fuller....of ..it.
Right, India. I had sort of forgotten what it was like at the beginning of Obama's presidency until I watched the recent Frontline show on that subject. It's available to watch on demand online at the pbs.org site under the Frontline category.
When you hear our trolls say that Obama had it all his way during the first two years (when both houses were controlled by the Dems), it conveniently leaves out the reality that on Inauguration evening, GOP leaders met and decided their reaction to everything he proposed would be, "No!" The show goes through a number of "learning experiences" that were foisted on our president in the early months, where he actually tried his heart out to engage the other side in meaningful, productive discussion. They flipped him the bird.
I'm holding out hope that enough people were awake and aware during this shameful display of obstruction that the GOP can be held to account.
JL,
You and me both! It was shameful. The president tried so hard to engage them. Can you believe that he invited the Republicans to come and watch a showing of LINCOLN at the white house and not one had the courtesy to come. They have no respect at all.
They treat President Obama like dirt. It is unforgivable. They have no character and no manners.