I thought Erick Erickson’s essay on the disconnect between Washington Republicans and their “heartland” base was actually kind of interesting. It’s kind of a template for understanding how unhinged rubes feel about being played by much smarter political strategists. It reads like a history of how nutszoid lunatics have been led along by the nose by the likes of Karl Rove, and now they are sick and tired of the whole business and are forcing the Washington Establishment to actually act on their heat-fevered obsessions.
Who cares if it will work? The important thing is that they all feel better.
Ironically, I think this will end somewhat quickly with the whole party broken like Humpty Dumpty. What comes next, I can’t even say.
How long have you been predicting this?
The GOP just keep on winning at the lower levels and threatening at the higher so….
I’m with you.
What they’re not able to accomplish on a national scale, they’re enacting into law in their Red states.
They’re undermining the USA one state at a time.
Look at PPACA, and Medicaid, and how Republican Governors, and Republican state legislatures, have been able to keep their people from benefiting from the new law.
Look at abortion on a state level.
Look at voting rights in a state level.
Look at environmental standards.
Etc.
My concern, is that they’re starting to realize that their agenda is too radical to gain traction nationally.
So, instead, they’re staging political guerrilla actions, hoping to topple the whole nation, by picking off one state at a time, and undermining the nation, one state at a time.
Maybe I’m nuts, but that’s what I’m starting to think.
And I’m afraid I don’t think this ends in any other way, but in violence.
That last is very bad, because if it ends in violence our side will lose.
Not if as part of “The Sequester,” we close the military bases in the South – including Air Force and Naval facilities.
You know the ones – the bases named after traitorous and treasonous Confederate Secesh Generals, like Bragg, and Hill.
We’ve allocated far too many military resources into the Southern states, to try to help their shitty economies.
Is that why? I always heard that it was originally done by George Marshall because you can train outside easily year round in the south, but that he later regretted it because it made the military overly “southern.”
Or you can look at it from the point of view that the US military is controlled by the Federal Government, thus giving the Federal Government heavily fortified bases in the enemy’s backyard.
I don’t think a shooting war is ever going to erupt, not in the way a lot of people worry about.
I do think, however, that the US will eventually go the way of the Roman Empire, being split into semi-autonomous regions, and then splitting even more.
Listen to Ted Cruz or John McCain. Does their version of America sound remotely American to you? Because it doesn’t to me, and even with the old fascist-enablers dying off every day, they’re still making new ones.
Hope I end in the Visigothic part then, of the western successors they had the best culture and situation outside of Italy without having to deal with the Eastern Empire trying to conquer them and they largely skipped out on the Plague of Justinian.
Sure they were overcome by the Muslims, but that has a lot to do with luck. Or I guess if you’re Muslim, a divinely appointed time.
Eastern Empire and Islam is all about Location, Location, Location.
Holding Islam back from even entering Europe-proper (minus Spain) until almost 1500 is saying a lot, especially considering the Muslims then had technology and organization well above the average central European city-state or tribe.
Perhaps the southwestern US region will be like the Eastern Roman empire, holding back the invading “outsiders” while the rest of the US can devolve into smaller regions and undergo a renaissance of sorts.
China is obviously next on the list of being World HegemonTM. Numbers and economic power make it all but certain. And if we’re lucky, the US can be the Greeks and the rising Chinese empire the Romans. Basically, we’ll be patrons to the Chinese empire, lending them cultural and philosophical norms, while they play the un-winnable role of world policeman.
Pax Sino, anyone?
There’s a limit on how many states they can get. There are regions that won’t elect a Republican (at least unless clearly moderate) and there are many states (purple and red) that are becoming more and more blue.
We’re witnessing the slow death of an ideology. That’s never pretty.
The GOP just keep on winning at the lower levels …
Right because a lot of the state parties are horrible. And I’m not even talking about clown shows in red states like South Carolina. T-Mac was the best they could do in a place like Virginia? Or Ohio. They threw out Strickland after only one term despite the GOP making a corrupt mess of things(which gave Strickland his term to begin with).
Yes, look at Illinois – Quinn, Madigan, Cullerton. Quinn managing to force all his potential challengers out of the primary even though he is widely loathed. Madigan and Cullerton ruling like corrupt potentates from their safe districts. And don’t even get me started on Rahm Emanuel, who was surely Obama’s Rasputin.
Yes, Illinois is a very good example. It’s run by Democrats yet Quinn, Emanuel and Co. are screwing over their voters. Why would anyone want to vote for that clown show?
I think we have arrived at the end game.
This is an inflection point.
Right now, the best analogy I can make is to a black hole.
The lies the Republicans have told themselves about ObamaCare have created a singularity with such tremendous gravitational force, that it is sucking the entire party, logic, common sense, our credit rating, etc. into its maw.
And it’s just going to grind them up.
Boehner is in for a world of hurt, but it’s going to destroy all of them. What comes out the other side will something different. I don’t know what it will look like, but it won’t look like what we are seeing today.
Gullible Americans Fuel Obamacare’s Bad Rap
As long as the GOP keeps goosing that Heartland base with its media environment, they are going to get folks angrier and angrier that they haven’t delivered on their insane promises because the “Heartland” really is a tiny minority.
And when they do deliver, the folks will be angry because of the “unexpected” consequences.
It’s still a long time until Humpty Dumpty misses the step on the highwire act.
Hoping that “We wuz lied to by the GOP about Obamacare” is a realization that happens next summer.
I know that around here, the belief is still very strong that the PPACA will somehow be taken down. I am just not certain where they will direct their anger once the realization takes hold that people all around them are signing up and that this whole thing about killing it was just an illusion. Look at the level of complete disbelief that rolled over them when they realized that their candidate, Mitt Romney, actually lost. I think they are equally unprepared for acceptance of the reality of health care. The very conservative local paper her in Cincinnati came out this week with an editorial entitled, “Give Obamacare A Chance To Work”. Needless to say, it was flamed mercilessly by the true believers. I generally keep my ears open to conversations I hear around me as I go about my daily business. And it’s still very evident that almost every person out here has both feet firmly planted in a world that is purely imaginary. The walls of their bubble are so strong that it is completely pointless to even try to engage the vast majority of people around you. I overheard a few conversations related to the Ted Cruz bloviation this week, and the complete and total misunderstanding of what was actually going on and the fact that it was total theatre was just lost on people. I can only shake my head in disbelief at how far outside reality most people around me are right now.
You live in The Tan Man’s district?
Not in it, but right next door.
From the few Repubs I know in suburban Chicago, my take is that although they are criticizing “Obamacare” they will likely be first in line to sign up once they realize it helps their own narrow interests. I’ve seen that kind of behavior more than once. Have you noticed that kind of thing there where you are?
I’m also thinking many will sign up based on how their state offers the plans. Most opponents to Obamacare don’t even seem to know what ACA or PPACA is. They won’t even know they’re buying Obamacare related policies and as long as they don’t realize that, they will be delighted to participate.
Winger where I worked immediately put his older child back on his insurance. You see it all the time.
The reality is that for 99.8% of these people, their Tea Party loyalties stop at the front door of their home. It is a rare person who is going to “stand on their conservative principles” when it comes to their own personal well being or the well being of their families. That is how it is so easy for them to decry the “leeches and the takers”, while living in states which take inordinate amounts of federal money compared to more liberal or blue states. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force, and nowhere is it more prevalent than in the the ultra-conservative Tea Party world.
Here in this area, the economy is generally better than it is in many areas of the country. Unemployment is below the average, and there are a good number of decent paying jobs, especially if you have some education and experience. So all in all, this area has avoided the worst impact of the protracted downturn that affected so much of the country. So most of the people have insurance through their employers, and have generally had it for some time. But there are a significant number of people in this heavily Republican area, many of them young, who work multiple jobs to pay the bills, yet don’t have health care. And I would guess that most of them vote Republican, simply because of the overwhelming right wing presence which covers this area. Your parents were Republicans. Your grandparents were Republicans. Everyone on your street while you were growing up was a Republican. So that is the “acceptable” way to vote if you want to maintain proper status. But this fact is running headlong into the reality that this political status quo is in direct contradiction to what is personally beneficial to so many of these voters. And I think that over the long term this could be a game changer in areas like this where Republicans have dominated politics for generations. The Republicans know this, and that is why they are fighting this like it is the last battle before potential extinction. Because the reality is, the political landscape will be changed forever if this thing takes root and blooms all over the country.
I think I saw the other day that this area will have dozens of different plans from which to choose. Like twice as many as the national average. And they are all cheaper than the national average, too. So the GOP down here has to be shitting their pants at the prospect of having to stare local constituents in the eye in 2014 and 2016, families who are benefiting greatly from their new-found medical care, and tell them why they don’t deserve to have and that it is in the best interest of the country that they go back to relying on emergency room visits for everything, to fore-go preventive care for themselves and their children and to just forget about being protected from medical bankruptcy because of, well……”FREEDOM!!!”
It will be a political suicide mission, and they know it.
Hey Mike.
I take it you live near Cincinnati, in Ohio?
I lived there for my entire life until 2 years ago, and I now live in Atlanta Georgia.
West Side or East Side?
Actually, I live north of Cincinnati but my wife is from the east side.
Wait until they realize that the Medicaid that wasn’t extended or that their state turned back is the same Medicaid that funds Granny’s nursing home costs.
Not sure when that reality will hit, but it’s coming.
Fox Spews, hate radio and The Drudge Report are what forms the opinions of millions of people. They are being fed insanity by a 21st century yellow press. It sucks you can’t even debate these zombies. They are living “far outside reality”, that’s for sure.
I note that Erickson refers to Cruz’s recent performance as a “filibuster”. So it’s like I said the other day, as far as the rubes are concerned, it was a filibuster.
O/T. Interesting about Erickson. He writes a piece in our paper, at least weekly, sometimes about national issues, but often about local ones. And we’ve got a run-off election in less than 3 weeks for Mayor of the newly combined “non-partisan” city-county government. City is majority AA and Democratic. County is majority white, and votes Republican. Last Friday, the title of his piece was that the Black candidate scares white voters more than the white voter scares black ones. The AA candidate is a former mayor and the white one is the current mayor. The piece has set off a firestorm, and the Black candidate is demanding an apology from Erickson, the current mayor/candidate, but strangely enough, not the paper, which bears huge responsibility for publishing the piece and bolding the words and phrases most likely to offend a large segment of the local citizenry.
Passions are now sufficiently inflamed. This is what the conservative media, at all levels, does now. Rile up the true believers and promote conspiracy theories. The GOP will not reform until the conservative media in its current forms loses its hegemony on the party’s base.
Erickson: “Much of the base believes that privately the bulk of the GOP has given up.”
Yes, they’ve given up in the same sense that when a football tea has a lower score at the end of the game than the other team, they give up. In other words, they understand that they lost the game.
One of the most interesting things is that the Tea Party doesn’t seem to understand this basic concept.
That could be a fun metaphor to explore for this.
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Not for the Onion ……………
I suppose that essay is interesting, in that it displays that someone who is positively, wildly delusional can and will be very popular among the wingnut base.
This part: “A lady called my radio show Wednesday night. She and her family are already feeling the effects of Obamacare.” What effects? Erickson doesn’t tell us. She sure does like Cruz fighting against the delusional “effects of Obamacare”, though, which are THE WORST THING EVER HITLER COULDN’T HAVE DREAMED OF BEING THIS EVIL. Except that that’s untrue. There simply is no devastating outcome that could come from the ACA, none. The woman is being lied to, or she’s lying to us, or both.
What’s Erick’s “Cult of Destruction” business? Republicans are criticizing Cruz, well boo hoo. Everything’s got to be presented in apocalyptic language for these people. The longer I read Erickson, the more enraged I got.
Then there’s his commenters. One of the first says that military spending should be passed in a CR and the rest should be left to rot. If the President and Senate don’t want to defund Obamacare, this genius says propose defunding, say, the entire welfare program. “Checkmate”, he says.
Mean, delusional, horrible, dictatorial, tactically unsound…this guy needs to run against an ultraconservative who doesn’t want to burn government to the ground STAT!
Weird.
What happens next? I look into my crystal ball and see the following figment of my imagination . . .
I see the formation or a third party on the extreme right. Maybe it will be one that already exists, or else a new one led by Cruz. The majority of the Tea Partiers will flock to it.
It will try to be be a national party, but will not be able to win elections except in parts of the South and some other areas.
The GOP will survive for a while, but in a weakened condition. They will be a minority in both houses.
On the other hand, if and when real moderates gain control of what’s left of it, they may be able to gather strength.
The media has played a sorry role in developing and maintaining this travesty, and to me the biggest question is what direction they will take. That’s the part I really can’t quite see. Probably a lot of them will die before they change.
The fascist party and the corporatist party will continue to battle each other, more than the DEmocrats, for years to come.
Obamacare will help a lot of people and the economy will continue to improve, in part because of the savings from Obamacare. Growing strength of the Democrats will make further improvements in Obamacare possible. Maybe we’ll even get to single payer some day.
It looks like a perfect storm for the Republicans, because they are falling apart just at the time when the country is trending more to the left anyway. And that trend is happening for very solid, natural reasons that will not be stopped. Namely, because people are fed up with the excesses of corporatocracy, and they WANT and NEED help from the government. It’s been a long time coming but I think we will start to see the slow birth of something like a new New Deal.
If we can possibly win the house in 2014, that may be the start of it.
The Tea Partiers will continue just the way they are but their power will fade. They will sink back into the margins of American life where, in fact, there has always been a lunatic far right.
The rise of the Tea Party, even the rise of right wing talk radio long before it, was due to the fading strength of the GOP. This pandering to the right was like a jolt of drugs that kept the GOP going for another few decades, but the whole sorry mess is finally catching up with them. There is a legitimate place for a conservative party, but right now they are very far from that place.
I agree, except that the Democrats will be the Corporatist Party. President Emanuel? President McAuliffe?
Democrats are not “the” corporate party, they are “a” corporate party. They are far from ideal. But the Democratic party contains significant elements that are interested in actually helping people, elements that don’t believe “corporations are people too.”
Just ask Wall Street and the big banks which party they’d rather have in power.
I wish some of them lived here. Democrats here are only interested in lining their own pockets. Yes, Republicans are the same.
Why should the Tea Partiers want to form a thrid party when they have more influence as the tail wagging the GOP dog? Unless the GOP establishment turns its disenfranchisement skills on the Tea Partiers in the primary/caucus process.
You should ask them that. Essentially I think it’s ideological purity and excess spleen. Yes they have been the tail wagging the GOP dog, but they don’t want to be attached to that dog. If you cut off the tail, the tail can’t do much any more. But that’s a small price to pay for freedom.
The GOP obviously has serious internal fissures that have been worsening over the course of the Obama administration. Now, as a result of their electoral loss in 2013, and their total inability to deal with the actual reasons for it, they are turning on each other.
The point has been made that, given their circumstances, the TP are acting logically. Yes, but you have to understand that those “circumstances” consist not only of external, but internal conditions, i.e. their interpretations those circumstances. Their interpretations have lost touch with reality, the end result of several decades of Fox News and right wing talk radio.
So they are reasoning logically, yes, but from almost totally false premises.
WTF???
Catapulting the propaganda is a full time job.
The cited event never took place.
The person quoted doesn’t exist.
But that never stopped a wing nut on a mission from the Republican god of money from making stuff up.
100% Truthiness to a tender wing nut’s ears.