Alexander Burns and Jake Sherman of Politico have a piece up about how hard it is for the Republican leadership to deal with their clueless caucus. How can you stay on message when you have a constant parade of morons making idiotic statements about rape and terror babies and masturbating fetuses?
Now, Politico insists that they are a non-partisan outfit, so you know that they have to find counterexamples from the Democratic side of the aisle. They need to make a list of crazy or hateful remarks from Democrats that can at least approach the questioning of the president’s birth certificate or calling migrant workers “wetbacks,” or worrying about the imposition of Sharia Law. So, what did Burns and Sherman come up with?
It’s not that Democrats don’t have people in their ranks who say stupid stuff. It’s just that they’re never going to upstage a sitting president the way a congressman who sets himself on fire (rhetorically speaking) can upstage House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean calling the Benghazi uproar a “laughable joke,” or coulda-been Senate candidate Ashley Judd comparing mountaintop removal mining to rape, just doesn’t send the same ripples when Barack Obama’s the unquestioned spokesman for the party.
I think they meant “figuratively speaking,” but whatever. Neither Howard Dean nor Ashley Judd are officeholders. Neither has any current official role in the Democratic Party. Ashley Judd merely thought about running for office. Howard Dean’s comment, taken in context, wasn’t even remotely crazy. It was a simple statement of fact. The Republicans have been mercilessly exploiting the Benghazi tragedy and have set themselves on fire over the issue countless times.
As long as we’re not restricting ourselves to current lawmakers or officials, I don’t see why they couldn’t have dug up some 9/11 Truther stuff from Cynthia McKinney or raised the issue of Dennis Kucinich’s interest in Chemtrails and his encounter with a UFO. The truth of the matter is that Democrats simply don’t say crazy, nutty stuff on a regular basis that the party leadership has to condemn or tolerate through gritted teeth. Even Ashley Judd’s comment seems reasonable to me, if you acknowledge that it is possible to “rape” the environment by removing mountaintops and pouring toxic sludge into our rivers and streams. What Dean and Judd are guilty of, if they are guilty of anything, is of saying something truthful that can be exploited if taken out of context.
That is not remotely similar to what Todd Akin did. Louie Gohmert, Steve King, Michele Bachmann, Paul Broun, Trent Franks, Phil Gingrey, and E.W. Jackson are insane. This is no corollary caucus of nutcase buffoons on the Democratic side. At worst, there is a caucus of progressives who have unrealistic expectations about what is politically possible and who hold some political opinions that are not in the mainstream of American politics. Some of them may be a little idealistic or a little ignorant, but they aren’t crazy and they don’t say crazy things. It’s even rare that any of them say anything that the Democratic leadership feels compelled to respond to.
According to Progressive Punch, the five House Democrats with the most liberal lifetime voting records are Yvette Clark, Raul Grijalva, Jan Schakowsky, Keith Ellison, and Linda Sanchez. Can you remember any of them ever saying anything that defies logic and the natural laws of the universe?
The five most conservative House Republicans are unknown commodities. That’s because Bachmann and King and Broun and Franks and Gingrey aren’t even close to the most conservative members of the House. They aren’t the craziest or the most mean-spirited. They aren’t even on the outer fringe. All of them have more moderate lifetime voting records than Eric Cantor. They just talk loud.
To prove my point, the Republicans’ most recent vice-presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, opposes any rape exception for his proposed abortion ban because “the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.” In other words, there can never be a circumstance in which the woman’s interests come before the zygote’s interests.
That’s an unpopular position, which is why we keep hearing lame efforts to rationalize it. Rape is rare. Pregnancy from rape is even rarer. Late first trimester and early second trimester rape abortions
are rarer still. Just because Paul Ryan didn’t rationalize his position doesn’t mean he holds a different one.
This kind of thinking about women’s rights and autonomy is mainstream in the Republican Party. And the same kind of nuttery can be seen in their beliefs about climate science, plate tectonics, evolution, racial issues, Benghazi, the IRS, and the Kenyan Usurper.
It’s a fact of life that the GOP has gone crazy.
Now, Drudgico insists that they are a non-partisan outfit, …
Is that why they are funded by right-wing criminals?
Is it getting too hard for sane people to play the inside-the-Beltway game? Poor babies. Guess that “driving the agenda” motive behind Politico has fallen on hard times.
Crazy and rotten yes. But if one measures success by holding onto a Party’s base, by any and every means, then they can claim success. It’s just too bad they now babble instead of govern.
The very slyness of Politico’s comparison unveils their real agenda. Dean’s and Judd’s “stupid” remarks are different from the Rep craziness only because “they’re never going to upstage a sitting president the way a congressman who sets himself on fire (rhetorically speaking) can upstage House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)”, and their metaphors just don’t “send the same ripples when Barack Obama’s the unquestioned spokesman for the party”. In other situations they’d obviously be just as crazy as the science deniers and aficionados of fetus porn.
It doesn’t matter if Dean or Judd are Dem leaders. One may disagree with Dean, but I defy anyone to point out just how his statement is even remotely crazy. It’s more than Politico managed to accomplish. As to Judd, terms like “rape of the planet/environment/oceans” has been around for half a century. It’s standard rhetoric, and in that context Judd is absolutely right.
Politico is a strange beast: not news, not entertainment, not policy analysis. More like what Variety is to the egos and ten-percenters of Hollywood. Or like Twitter, a dedicated planter of stupid, content-free memes.
I don’t think Dean or Judd said anything stupid or that they shouldn’t have said. Both were speaking truthfully. I don’t give a rip if Politco doesn’t like it.
What a difference a day makes …
how did we get by before we had the concept of fetus porn?
We are watching the self-immolation of what’s left of the former Republican party. This rump of a party is like the South African watusi bird that flies in smaller and smaller concentric circles until it disappears up its own asshole. We’re watching it play out in real time.
Until now, the Republicans have maintained enough mainstream appeal and credibility to seem like a national party. That’s starting to shift now. Everyone sees they’re nuts. They’ll continue to get 30% support because that’s the share of the American population that shares their insane view of reality. The other 17% of the population that supported their standard bearer in the last election is growing ever slimmer. They are dying off. I hope I live long enough to see Texas turn blue. When that happens, it’s lights out, game over for the Republicans.
Gawd – let it be soon.
And still 40-some percent of the population votes for these bigoted religious extremists and hateful greedy people who don’t seem to mind the bigots so much. What are we doing wrong???
They’re organized. We aren’t. Simple as that.