Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

“Obama 2012 ~ Because the Other Side is Nuts”

I stole that from John Cole and I hope he doesn’t mind.  But he’s hardly alone in thinking it.

… the GOP is intellectually stagnant. To disagree with the dominant GOP zeitgeist is tantamount to heresy. Everyone must toe the hard-right line of religious conservatives who ignore not only science but also obvious realities.

That’s from a Republican ~ a self-professed member of the “rational wing of the Republican Party.”  They exist but, particularly if Rick Santorum is the GOP presidential nominee, they may vote in some number for the Democratic nominee because, as was the case with Mr. Cole and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, the Republican Party left them.

I usually leave the deep-thinking analysis of politics (and a lot of other things) to those Moose who are much better thinkers and writers.  In this case, I’m leaving it to Ron Hill who wrote at Pam’s House Blend the quote above and other great things:

My hope is that rational conservatives will then work to help bring the GOP back to the common-sense middle. The truth is that our party has gone off the deep end. It’s as if  we’re watching the slow, painful death of a major political party.

It seems to me Mitt Romney could have done that.  He could have owned Romneycare and pointed out why it was good policy.  But then he’d have been too much like President Obama which many on the Right hold against him.  After all one of the architects of both healthcare bills recently said “they are the same fucking bill.”  Instead Romney ran to the Right which many predicted he’d have to do to have a chance for the nomination.  And now despite that  conservatives are still looking for a “true conservative” as the non-Romney nominee.

… we had Michele Bachmann, whose only redeeming quality was making Sarah Palin look informed and thoughtful by way of comparison.

snip

Most recently, we were treated to Newt Gingrich, the thrice-divorced serial adulterer who – ironically – was the darling of the “family values” crowd. Among other extreme views, Mr. Gingrich seemed to imply that America should bring back child labor.

And now we have Rick Santorum the same guy who lost his re-election bid by 18%, the second largest loss by an incumbent Republican ever.  Most folks wrote Santorum off early because he was in the Tim Pawlenty area of polling and the guy holds policy positions largely outside of the mainstream (he’s freakin’ nuts).  But nooooo, Santorum won the Missouri, Minnesota AND Colorado primaries/caucuses.  This changed the narrative despite netting Santorum zero delegates.  Now recent polling has Santorum up in Michigan and Ohio, and behind by single-digits in Arizona.  Mike DeWine the current AG in Ohio switched his endorsement from Romney to Santorum late last week.  Will that alone win Santorum the nonination?  Likely not but I do wonder if that gives other Romney endorsers pause or might hold off future endorsements.

So is Rick Santorum likely to be the Republican nominee for president?  My gut says “probably not” but then again I would never have thought that Rick Santorum would win any primaries or caucuses or would lead in states like Michigan or Ohio (Oklahoma or Kansas, maybe).  But will Santorum shoot himself in the metaphorical foot with some of his crazier notions?

Voluntary euthanasia in The Netherlands:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i…

Birth Control:

http://www.newser.com/story/13…

Jihadist training camps in Latin America:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Ending pre-natal testing because it leads to more abortions:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-50…

He lambasted the president’s health care law requiring insurance policies to include free prenatal testing, “because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society.”

Say wha??????

Santorum can’t seem to help himself.  And while part of me hopes he can keep the lid on the worst of the crazy long enough to win the nomination part of me fears him ::cough::George W. Bush::cough:: while still another part is sorry to see what may be the death of the Republican Party.

Back to our rational Republican:

If I sound harsh on a Republican – it’s only because I expect better from the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Goldwater. The nation, as well as the GOP, deserve better; the consequences of an intellectually stagnant and moribund Republican party are simply too awful.

snip

The GOP can do better, and America requires better. I’ve been a conservative all my life, but would have no choice but to vote for President Obama if Rick Santorum is the GOP nominee. Privately, many Republicans tell me the same thing.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 87 Comments

87 comments

  2. Strummerson

    It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to make policy arguments.  It means there is a space in which we can make real policy argument in the vacuous space occupied by the “democrats believe that government knows better than you and should pick winners and losers etc. etc. blah blah blah blah” crowd.  This is when we should be more rigorous and more creative and bolder.  This is an opportunity.  We’ve been playing policy defense for too long.  We haven’t really been on offence with regard to policy rhetoric since LBJ.  This could be the moment when we seize and own and steer the debate.  Elizabeth Warren style.  But I’m pessimistic for some reason…

  3. Shaun Appleby

    Has pulled back the curtain on a much wider issue.  The “evangelical” movement in the United States is thinly veiled cover for bigotry, racism, selfishness and expectations of ubermenschen entitlement among parochial, xenophobic misanthropes whom are not courageous or intelligent enough to deal with reality and their modest role in it.

    After decades of having it patiently explained to them that their deeply held prejudices had no reasonable or scientific basis, in fact were merely dumb and socially repellent, they have chosen to create an artificial reality within the bastion of “faith” in which no external evidence is admissible and their adolescent world-view is somehow protected by the sanctity of religious devotion.

    It is a pitiful display of human failing and weakness.  These are people intoxicated by their own delusions who are somehow validated in their tendency towards intolerance and violence by a profound lack of understanding of the solemn teachings of the very religion they claim as bulwark.  If we are Rome these are our Visigoths.  They speak a coded language but share a common purpose; anyone with an open mind and a tolerant soul is their enemy and in their hearts they seek to destroy us for our blasphemy against their bizarre, erroneous and shallow interpretation of Christianity and the role of mastery presumed by their righteousness.

    When they say “religious liberty” they mean the divine right to impose their narrow, selfish dogma on us all.  When they speak of their “faith” they are defining us in “heresy.”  When they say “freedom of speech” they seek to silence the rest of us in our “apostasy.”

    As Strummerson noted elsewhere they have adopted the founding fathers as their latter-day prophets and the Constitution as their Third Testament and have co-mingled jingoism and the Christian idolatry of the shopping-mall into a contemptible pagan hash suited to bonfires and lynchings.  These are our modern “Christians,” whose literacy and intellectual curiosity is not up to the challenge of actually reading their own Bible or exploring the centuries of contemplation it inspired; who have rejected the Sermon of the Mount and the sober teachings of the Synoptic Gospels for delirious interpretations of Revelations; who are content to have fractured fairy tales served up to them by demagogic personalities railing in favour of whatever prejudice has most recently exercised their intolerance or indignation.

    Well they might seek the signs of Satan, the Father of Lies, and obsess over his influence amongst the worldly for they are his own Children and are surfeited in his work.  Let those who have ears hear.

  4. Chris Blask

    “They’re fighting us because they fundamentally disagree with us. They want to eliminate us,” he said. “We have two different ideas of what god is, two different ideas of what humanity is, two different ideas of what social justice is.”

    No, Mr. Santorum, “they” are not fighting us because “we” have a different idea of what “god” is.

    Get a grip.

    We agree with them – literally – on who god is. We are Muslim. We are Christian. We are atheists and buddhists and new-age pagan crystal huggers.

    They may be all Muslim, but we are Muslim too. They hate American Muslims more than they hate you or American Christians. American Muslims may well hate them more than you do, too.

    They hate me, and I’m not even involved in the entire “who god is” conversation. They hate you differently than me – more similarly to the way they hate all Muslims who don’t agree with them – because you believe in a slightly different version of the same religion.

    This isn’t “Islam against America”, dammit. That isn’t even part of this. This is a bunch of extremist Abrahamic religious zealots hating you and every other Abrahmist who disagrees with them. The rest of us caught between all you zealots.

  5. Rashaverak

    Santorum can’t seem to help himself.  And while part of me hopes he can keep the lid on the worst of the crazy long enough to win the nomination part of me fears him ::cough::George W. Bush::cough:: while still another part is sorry to see what may be the death of the Republican Party.

    I understand your trepidation, but I do not think that ex-Senator Sanctimoron has a prayer of convincing enough of the public to vote for him that he achieves a majority in the Electoral College (assuming that he wins the Republican nomination).

    G.W. Bush was able to convince enough people in enough States to win that he was a “Compassionate Conservative” and a “Reformer with Results.” He adopted a bit of an environmentalist persona by saying that he was in favor of limits on carbon-dioxide emissions.  Enough people saw him as the kind of guy you would enjoy having a beer with to make a difference.

    Al Gore made GWB’s job easier by coming across as a stiff, as a phony (remember Earth Tones?), as an audioanimatronic candidate (Romney shares the same affliction), and as priggish (remember the Lockbox, and the sighing during one of the debates with Dubya?).

    John Kerry also had something of that audioanimatronic quality, though not as much as Al Gore.  (Kerry did not help himself in the authenticity department by going hunting in Southeast Ohio in duds that looked like they had just come off the rack at the nearest Eddie Bauer’s or Cabela’s.)

    Rick Sanctimoron does not at all come across as the guy that you’d like to sit down and share some suds with.

    Rather, he comes across as the Eighth Grade Hall Monitor at Saint Aloysius Catholic School, ready to turn you in to Sister Mary Moses of the Burning Bush for having been seen entering a movie theatre that was showing a film that had been rated Condemned by the Legion of Decency, or for copping a smoke in the Boys’ Lavatory during Recess.

  7. Strummerson

    Will there EVER be a concerted public relations campaign on behalf of the ACA?  If the recovery holds and we could get opposition to repeal below %50, which shouldn’t be difficult as opposition is currently around %53, this thing will be much closer to being in the proverbial bag.  I think it’s a mistake to leave it to Obama to do in the course of his re-elect effort.  As long as we have these odious super-pacs, let’s get one promoting the benefits and refuting the slanders.  It’s already very very late to start, but hopefully not too late…

  8. fogiv

    …what may be the death of the Republican Party.

    fogiv sed:

    03/24/10:  http://www.motleymoose.com/sho…

    Republican leaders and officials have actively courted this nutzoid element with their fear-mongering, coded racism, talk of tyranny, treason, and Armageddon.  The GOP must face down this monster they have helped make, before they are lost forever, mired in the fever swamp.

    12/08/09: http://www.motleymoose.com/sho…

    The Republican Roadster, the once-feared electoral muscle-car of the 80’s and 90’s isn’t exactly ‘track ready’ these days — if being lapped by barely literate (judging from the signs) old white people atop an armada of Rascal Scooters is any indication.  The Party of Lincoln and Roosevelt, of Ike and AuH20, is long gone.  Has today’s GOP taken the Teabagger ramp, launching in a fatal arc over the shark?

    04/14/09: http://www.motleymoose.com/sho…

    The political party that barfed up the hairball that is Sarah Palin, helmed by Michael Keepin’ it Real Steele–or depending on the time of day–Rush Limbaugh (the talk radio equivalent of government cheese) has bought the proverbial farm. Dead. Teets up, like Colonel Sanders and Ayn Rand.

    Photobucket

    this for you:

    Photobucket

  9. HappyinVT

    Today’s single campaign event was also notable for what it lacked — many of the hallmarks of a traditional Romney campaign stop. There was no warm up music, no mention of “America the Beautiful,” a minimal amount of signs, and a noticeable lack of energy from the crowd; People applauded only sparingly as Romney defended his fiscal conservatism and lauded the entrepreneurial spirit of the people of Ohio. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…  

    This is also a campaign stop where Romney laid into Santorum for voting to raise the debt ceiling while standing next to Rob Portman who … yes, you guessed it … voted to raise the debt ceiling.

    And the Romney campaign is sending out Tim Pawlenty among others to stump for their candidate.  Woohoo!  A fun time there.

  11. Strummerson

    Following the logic of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funding for abortion services, does your concept of “religious liberty” mean that all deployments of federal tax dollars be subject to approval by the Catholic Church?  

    Does this effectively put an end to the death penalty, or would you privatize it?  

    What about military actions?  Many on the left were very upset that their tax dollars were committed to prosecuting wars in the past decade, yet they were not exempt from paying taxes.  If the Catholic Church opposed a military action, would it need to be funded privately in order to preserve the religious liberty of Catholics?  

    Which other religious groups would have the power, under your administration, to veto the use of tax dollars for purposes that run counter to their beliefs?

  12. Strummerson

    Don’t know why I didn’t know this one, but not only was Abraham Lincoln the first president to sign a federal income tax into law, but it was a progressive income tax that didn’t distinguish between earned income and capital gains.

    Yep.  Abe Lincoln invented US Federal Income Tax.  THE COMMMMMIE!!!

    http://www.csmonitor.com/Comme…

  13. HappyinVT

    In Michigan:

    “If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy,” Romney said. “So you have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies.”

    NBC, which reported the above quote, reached out to small government group Club For Growth, whose vice president for government affairs, Andy Roth, was unsurprisingly upset.

    “It’s hogwash,” he said. “It confirms yet again that Romney is not a limited government conservative.”

    The ads just write themselves.

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