I guess Joe Klein agrees with me that the single most harmful thing a politician has done to our country since the invasion of Iraq was John McCain’s decision to put Sarah Palin on the ticket. The Stupid has metastasized, and we’re in for a world of hurt. We could do okay by replacing our 100 senators with 100 well-educated civilly-minded people off the street. But that’s not what the Republican Party is offering. They’re offering a slate of kooks, cranks, and crooks. Some are exceedingly stupid. Some of ridiculously ideological. Some are petty criminals. Some are all three. We aren’t just celebrating ignorance. We’re celebrating aggressive stupidity and a climate of lawlessness.
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
But our President is hoping to work with them after the election.
Yeah, that ain’t going work out.
yes, he said that. what’s he supposed to say. “I’m not planning on working with the Republicans, because they’re running crazy people and criminals”? “I’m only planning on working with people I agree with?”
How about nothing. Sorry, but Obama sometimes needs to just do more shutting up.
The public likes the idea of a president who acts bipartisan. It’s part of the reason why Obama is the most popular politician in the country. Look at what he does, not what he says.
And before you start talking about how Obama endorsed Paul Ryan again, WTF are you talking about?
Obama had major political capital and blew it. He should have ploughed over the Republicans from day one, just like they did to us during the last decade.
This country was so ready for a leader but, instead of hitting it out of the ballpark, he bunted and barely made it to first. Even the Kennedys must be regretting their ”passing of the torch.”
“plowing over” a large % of the population of the country is not democracy. What Bushco did did not enhance our democracy infact underminded it, let’s hope not irrevocably. Fortunately for the future of the usa Obama is not taking your advice.
That would not be bad, actually.
They are jingoistic. Freedom, liberty, founding fathers, constitution. But nothing about actually governing, making choices between competing interests. Except perhaps to roll back the progress of the past 80 years and to go back to the “good old days” of the robber barons, child labor, every woman Betty Crocker.
I keep thinking of the famous case Lochner v NY and how this case would be decided today. Probably the same way that it was decided in 1905. When I hear the Republicans talk, that’s what I hear. A reversion to the days where government did not have power to regular commerce in any meaningful way.
Scary.
Ah, me wasn’t that whole “authenticity” thing the basis for GW Bush in 2000? Seems “We’ve” been celebrating this concept for at least a decade now.
I remain convinced that this is a convulsion of the oldsters who simply can’t wrap their brains around the idea of a black man being President. Throw in a shitty economy, the usual circular firing squad mentality of democrats in general, and a pile corporate cash and we’re about where you’d expect us to be. It’s like 1994 except the media is more pervasive.
The corporate pile of cash has a great deal to do with what’s happening.
My better half thinks I am narrow minded in my political views and often compares me to her father, he’s the conservative, I’m the liberal. Last time she said this I tried to come up with someone on the GOP side that I admired to show her that I was more open minded. I couldn’t…..
Moderates are being driven from the GOP, heck even some conservatives are being punished for discussing compromise with Democrats.
Can anyone think a conservative Republican in politics today that is not an irrational extremist? Richard Lugar is actually the only guy who comes to mind for me but he is getting up there in years and will likely fade into the night in this atmosphere.
That ‘s the big change, I think. America’s always been a haven for the enthusiastically ignorant and aggressively stupid, but at least at the state level this did not always include political figures, even among Republicans. Now here in IL even formerly reasonable Reps are parroting the teabagger idiocy, and the ones pretending to be “moderates” are lying. The reality is, anybody with any intelligence or decency would no longer be in the GOP. America is now without either conservative or leftist voices in the political sphere. So all we have left is feelings, nothing more than feelings.
But that’s o.k. because politics has fuck all to do with policy.
As far as I can tell, for all but a handful of us, it is basically a form of self-expression, a way of telling people how you feel about yourself and the world by letting them know your choice of
consumer goodscandidates.I think that if we allowed more choices when you signed up, like “Hollister” and “Carhart” and “Twilight”, to be added to “Democrat” and “Republican”, we could get our voter-registration numbers up to Australian levels in no time.
I agree.
True. But this is not some whim or some accident: It is strategy. There is no point whatever in complaining about your opponent’s strategy–you have to counter it.
Why aren’t the Democrats countering it? Even if we did come up with some practical suggestions on some lefty blogs, are the Democrats going to read them and take them to heart and act?
I don’t think so. And I think that reveals a great deal about where we are. The democracy that you were taught you live in does not exist. Hasn’t for some time. Consider this: When Obama claimed the authority to assassinate American citizens without a presentation of charges and without allowing the accused to face their accuser, and without a trial and without a process of sentencing compatible with the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, that was the end of democracy right there. Without civil liberties, democracy is just an empty slogan, and no justice is possible. This started under Bush, of course, (or even before) but why didn’t Obama restore the constitution and the rule of law (as he promised)?
The answer probably has to do with the demands of empire, and how that is tied to the gathering collapse of industrialized civilization. But that empire is not a democracy–it is a tyranny.
We think we have a side. We don’t. The game is fixed coming and going. The Republican strategy of promoting criminals and crazy people is being abetted by the Democrat strategy of appeasement.
The purpose of the Republican strategy is to poison public discourse in order to destroy any notions of an American civic life shared by citizens in common. From there high emotion can be created (the real distress of our ongoing economic collapse is enough for that) and then directed by propaganda to any end that is chosen by the media’s controllers.
What end? I think history shows us clearly where this is leading. Read about the darkest periods in human history–the very darkest.
The goal is the maintenance of the elite in positions of power and control as the civilization that supports them collapses beneath them. A lot of people will have to be shed (killed) as civilization de-industrializes, which is why they need all that power and control.
(Of course if we were practical about seeking a sustainable way of life mass killing would not be necessary, but unfortunately sustainability is not on the agenda.)