Beavis farted, Butthead sniggered, “eh-eh-eh-eh” (or was it the other way around?), and for years they were the signature act of MTV’s counter culture music television revolution. The ultimate rebel against your elders genre of the period and now many of the younger “leaders” of the GOP took its message literally. Today’s Republican Party is so bereft of leadership and direction it at times looks like a B&B reunion tour with the old white guys trying to remember the 50s and 60s and what it might have been like to be radical but their lot have always worn suits and looked brainwashed.
As late as last week I was willing to look at Rush’s CPAC sideshow and on-air rants as a combination ratings booster and calculated strategy to force the Party of NO! to define itself along his far-right lines. Now as respected (whatever that means) GOP pundits climb on the “simmer down Rush, you don’t speak for the party bandwagon” they seem to do so at their peril.
Even a red meat issue like ‘stem cell research’ (which Obama will today overturn the Federal funds ban for research) allows them to be contrary just for the sake of being contrary. When conservatives drop their objection line because it is “a distraction from the country’s economic slump,” this is not your grandfather’s GOP. The moral objection no longer exists? It’s just knee-jerk contradiction for the hell of it. While the families affected by diseases that can be tackled through this research would beg to differ with Cantor on the definition of “distraction.”
How irrelevant are their talking points? The New York Times’ Bob Hebert in an Op-Ed piece entitled ‘Country on Fire: Republicans Have Hangnail’ wrote:
”More than 4.4 million jobs have been lost since this monster recession officially got under way in December 2007, and we’ve got people wigging out over earmarks. Folks, get a grip. Some earmarks are good, some are not, but collectively they account for a tiny, tiny portion of the national budget — less than 1 percent. Freaking out over earmarks is like watching a neighborhood that is being consumed by flames and complaining that there is crabgrass on some of the lawns.
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said, he was “shocked at the GOP reduced to snickering at line items in legislation that sound funny. And we’re not just talking about the usual crazies: we’re talking about Saint John McCain, cracking jokes about “Mormon crickets” and “beaver management” when a minute or two on Google reveals that these are, in fact, serious issues.”
We’re used to watching Democrats in-fight and implode as the various wings of their party internally fight. Conventions are the traditional bellweather implosion point because, unlike Republicans, Democrats must let everyone’s voice be heard. And so they come and fight and speak and lobby the platform with every wild-eyed idea possible and then come November the Republicans open a giant can of organised, lock-step, Stepford Family mutant, whup-ass and the Dems sit there every November wondering what happened?
While we waited, this summer was different. The Obama campaign took a page out of the Republican’s playbook shutting down Hillary supporters at every turn. So when they got to the convention they were a well-organised unit. Even the: “Hillary following PUMAs” (Party Unity My Ass) were silenced and brought onboard.
The anti-free trade anarchists marching ominously through the streets of Denver (and Minneapolis for the Republican Convention) wearing black bandana masks got little, if any, MSM coverage. Centrist Democrats of Bill’s era who wondered as late as June/July if Obama could win the general election based on Hillary winning so many key states late despite an insurmountable lead were calmed and the infighting was on the Republican side(!)
Now that the Dems are finally back in control and exercising some long neglected political muscle, we still worry if the silliness surrounding the GOP is not just part of some grand Karl Rove created plot to regain power?
Said Hebert, “In the midst of the craziness, conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe — a conflagration of their own making — on the new president. Forget Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Hoover Bush and the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich and all the rest. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama’s downturn.”
The number show the public is not buying the SPIN and yet they keep playing to their loyal base of 25% of the population. And that’s not likely to win any elections soon. From the hip-hop RNC chairman trying to appeal to urban America, Senator McCain Twittering David Letterman-like top 10 lists of earmarks (the Administration said they want to keep government moving forward, this was Bush’s last budget and come the next cycle earmarks will be gone, said OMB Director Peter Orzag) and John Boehner and his theatrics on the floor (throwing the bill into the air and his sound byte played around the world “Oh… My… God…” before suggesting we need a Herbert Hoover depression ensuring spending freeze?
Said Krugman, “but it’s getting truly serious when the House minority leader – essentially, the nation’s second-ranking Republican (after Rush Limbaugh) – declares that the answer to the economy’s downward spiral is a spending freeze. That’s not a retrogression to Herbert Hoover; even Hoover knew better than that. I’d really like to see some genuine bipartisanship in America. But that can’t happen until we start having at least somewhat sane partisans.”
I mean yes, it is Karl Rove quietly appearing on all the shows. He has the same awe and fear inspiring ability of Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series (he who must not be named…) and… how powerful is he really after managing the President to a 28% approval rating and the coronation of Rush Limbaugh as party king?
Nope. They want us to believe it is an act of calculated brilliance when they really are in as bad a shape as they appear to be. Now, what if Senators Spectre, Snow and Coleman all became Independent wiping out the moderate wing of the party altogether? Hey, I can dream.
