This is an object lesson in the bifurcated nature of politics, on one level it is a discussion about whether the growth level of entitlements should be and other such dry wonkishness. On another level it is a reenactment of the Lord of the Rings with the other party representing Sauron and thus no good thing can come from them and there can be no compromise only all out victory or defeat.
Thought better of it…
You did praise a passel of over-reaching, rigidly ideological governors and the utterly childish Ryan plan. Those aren’t brave statesmen doing their best, they’re ideologues trying to enact conservative line-item changes.
Both sides have their problems, but to claim that the 2010 class of Republicans is anything but rabidly ideological and willing or eager to damage the country is to be ignoring the facts.
That hasn’t happened, yet.
And that has what to do with the OP? David Frum? Posts 2, 3 and 5?
I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he’s suggesting that “Republicans are evil” is closer to reality than current Republican economic ideas. A case (however shaky) can be made for Republicans are evil. But their economic ideas are in conflict with math.
The CBC program ideas profiled David Frum a week ago (54:49).
If you want a quick and dirty spread of his general views I suggest you fast forward to 32:10-37:50
I trust you mean Republicans when you refer to a side which refuses to compromise.
The problem is not a discussion of entitlement. The problem is that the new mainstream Republican economic theory is total bullshit. Bill Keller today noted that they have a list of “economists” who support their ideas, and the list sounds very much like the list of “scientists” who support creationism that went around a few years ago. At best you have some people from right wing think tanks, the rest are professors at fifth rate universities and bloggers. Mainstream economists, even right wing ones, know that you don’t cut unemployment by cutting the hell out of the Federal Budget, and they know that the Fed isn’t the root of all evil.
As for Frum, remember he got fired for speaking his mind. That is what I call political correctness.
Handily? Usually when a leading opponent crashes and burns, you pick up votes. In this case the support of the nitwits just moves to the next insane candidate. Bachmann -> Perry -> Cain -> Gingrich. (The last example shows they even bring them back from the dead to support them.) It is clear that the lunatic candidates are splitting the lunatic vote, but it is also clear that the lunatic vote represents a clear majority of Republicans these days.
Really, Cain? Harold Stassen had a better platform, and I don’t mean when he was a real candidate.
He is? Newt has been polling pretty well lately against ol’ Mitt, and had a major NH newspaper endorse him last week.
Ryan is all hype, and will make things worse. Daniels sold off highways to private investors. Walker is an anti-labor hardliner. I’m not familiar with the others.
I would love that. But I’m not sure it can get past the endemic labeling. I think progressives might do better to adopt the conservative label & then advocate for the same progressive ideas they had.
Romney is an extreme economic conservative,
and possibly further right on economic and foreign policy issues than any of the religious value candidates and their base. There’s more than one kind of conservative.
And what if one party is itself an extremist organization? Can a Palestinian justifiably denounce Hamas? Or a Brit the BNP? Surely there is a point at which a party is actually obnoxious enough to be characterized as obnoxious?
I have to admit I read that Frum article with a bit of partisan glee, like vengeance standing triumphantly over the body of his enemy’s suicide. “Finally”, I say to myself, “somebody in the Republican party gets it.” Whether it was sincere or not, it sounds sincere, is the problem, and if any Republicans with power will listen and act upon the warnings.
Of course, given the intransigence of the GOP, I don’t expect much.
Why are they “evil”? :rolleyes:
Breaking the stranglehold of the unions and getting rid of excessive welfare and regulations is not a bad thing.
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And all this venom from the guy who came up with “axis of evil” phrase. That’s some mighty mind righ there.
/QUOTE]
So Saddam, the Ayatollah, and Kim Jong-Il aren’t evil people? :rolleyes:
Because greed, bigotry and malice have been core Republican values for decades. All that’s changed recently is that they’ve added “insane” to the list of reasons to condemn them.
Unions are near dead - and breaking them is a major reason why incomes have stagnated for decades. We don’t have “excessive welfare”, we have people reduced to homelessness. And removing regulations has ruined the economy and damaged the quality of just about everything.
Really? Isn’t it? Words mean things, as Rusty Limbaugh used to say.
Unions are a way of democratizing business decisions. You want less power to the people?
Welfare means well-being. We had excessive well-being, you say? Are we better off with less now?
Regulations are laws. Who decided which laws were excessive? I’ve seen Republicans fall over themselves to outlaw burning a US flag (before you were born). Doesn’t that seem excessive? But some environmental law, like air quality, that’s excessive? Who decided again?
Right. Promoting the rhetoric was great when it helped win votes, but when the rhetoric* actually starts being believed (almost religiously) by the voters and the GOP leader, that leads to an uh-oh moment. It’s nice that there are conservatives that can recognize the crazy, but he’s helped foster it. He had a hand in creating the monster.
*Government can’t accomplish anything (outside of the military), capitalism can solve all problems, intellectualism sucks, climate change is a myth, might makes right etc.
Of course Frum hit the nail on the head on pretty much everything in that article, but why do I get the feeling he’s angling for something?
Very few who remain proud to be members of the Republican party are going to heed a word Frum wrote, and he knows this, so who was the article written for? Democrats, who’ve been saying the exact same things? Former moderate Republicans, who feel they no longer have a political home? Independents, who aren’t sure whether to be more concerned about Democratic spinelessness or Republican malevolence? I’m just not clear what Frum hopes to achieve with his missive?
Frum doesn’t seem to understand what has happened to him and why. He was a propagandist for Republicans and wrote copy. When he stopped writing propaganda copy and started writing down his own thoughts, he got fired. He thought he was paid for his thoughts. He wasn’t. He was paid for agreeing in well written prose. Of course he got fired from all his gigs: he stopped doing his job to the point that he was undermining the work of his coworkers who were doing their jobs: writing right-wing propaganda.
And he is still doing it.
So he disagrees with the direction of his former fellow travelers. But what is he going to do about it? Pat Buchanan at least made a fool of his racist self running for office from a similar position and background. Will Frum start a new wing of the party? A new party? Will he join the Democratic Party or a third party? Will he vote for more moderate candidates? Will he join an OWS protest, or OWS counter-protest?
Personally, I think that he is going to continue to whine about it.
Because, in the face of the biggest world economic disaster in the last seventy years, the Republican Party not only has no serious answer to the meltdown, they also don’t even seem to care about it. More often than not, it seems like this is a party for which THE ONLY issue is the subjugation of homosexuals. A single-issue party devoted to oppressing a minority group is an evil thing, without meaningful precedent in the post-Civil War American political mainstream. Even in the worst days of George Wallace, the national Democratic Party was not single-mindedly devoted to the notion that the subjugation of blacks could and should continue forever. The Nazi comparison is more than apt–the range of problems which Republicans blame on this minority group, the obvious view of them as subhuman, and the fact that Republican debate audiences literally cheer the concept of death, brings to mind nothing more than Nazi attitudes towards Jews and accompanying nihilistic death-worship. If this is not evil, what is?
Maybe because they cheer people being executed? Maybe because they boo a brave member of our military who happens to be gay? Maybe because they are fine with people not as well off as they are dying in the streets? Maybe because when Rick Perry said, very reasonably, that the children of illegal immigrants, who didn’t have any say in being here, should be able to get an education, they had a fit.
Those horrible regulations have made the air and water a lot cleaner for you than they were when I was a kid. The destruction of unions by the right is a big reason why wages have stagnated. I’m going to laugh like hell when you get out of college and find there is nothing for you thanks to the stupid policies you support today.
Bush had his fun and North Korea has its nukes. Sometimes it is better to not call someone evil (even if they are) if you want to negotiate. Calling someone a poopyhead is more appropriate for the playground than the White House.