…were Romney, Pawlenty, and Huntsman. The rest who showed up at the debates needed to get off stage and clear the field for the serious candidates.
I think it might have been George Will who told me that. Or maybe Hugh Hewitt, I can’t remember.
Regardless, these are the same kinds of pundits who push for a Lugar and a Dewhurst and a Charlie Crist (who is himself now backing Obama); and yet many Republicans commenting here often openly wonder why I’m distrustful of the kinds of GOP opinion leaders who would tell state voters — be they in Nevada, or Delaware, or Indiana, or Missouri, currently — who is and who isn’t a viable candidate.
I may disagree with the voters in a given state. But that doesn’t mean I want to see them neutered through rule changes or rigged primary schedules or manufactured social media campaigns by the likes Karl Rove, the RNC, and the barrage of useful idiots on “our” side who want nothing more than to break into the ranks of the GOP establishment.
And I would think that people who fall back intellectually on federalism in other rhetorical circumstances would recognize the dangers of centralizing GOP power and then handing the reins of the party off to national political consultants, focus-group leaders, pollsters, and opinion leaders who seem consistently more interested in numbers than they do ideas.
Sorry. It’s time for a change. At least, so I hope.
Good idea. How about starting with repealing the 17th Amendment?
I thought Huntsman was spot on in that clip.
I thought Huntsman never specified a damn thing in that clip, speaking only in gassy generalities.
“I know my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and while there may be differences between some Democrats and Republicans, I can tell you that 99 percent of my colleagues are decent, honest people trying to do the right thing for the country, but we work in a setting that makes it very difficult for people to see that.”
I think you’re on pretty safe ground Jeff.
Not many months ago anti-GOP sentiment here was significant. Today it’s all but gone, replaced with a de facto pragmatism, one that apparently feels taking shots at Obama is the best course of action.
I wonder just when the words “losing more slowly” will sink in.
The national debt rises ten thousand dollars each second. Social Security’s LOCKBOX! pilfered, this hunk of socialism’s insolvency increases ten thousand dollars a second. Prescription drug plans go redder ten thousand dollars more each half second. And Medicare — that most sacred of all statist plans, the one good Republicans and their folks depend on as much as all the left’s dependents — goes south nearly one hundred thousand dollars a second.
So here comes Mitt Romney, trailing Paul Ryan and his calculator.
What are they going to trim?
And how’s that working out for them? You win some, you lose some, you live to fight another day. Unless you’re Lugar or Crist. Meanwhile, our wins are changing the definition of “viable candidate.”
This war isn’t to be won in one cycle or two or four. It took a hundred plus years to get here. We’re three years into seriously taking it back.
Anything I can do to help speed along the process, Pablo. If that means keeping front and center those who who consistently wield power even though they have proven themselves persistently wrong or even at times craven, well, that’s what I’ll do.
Plus, it makes deadrody’s shorts bunch up, and I dig knowing that.
I’m not addressing your ratio for its own sake, Pablo, but I wish someone would analyze what sea change has occurred, with Obama polling even with The Presumptive Nominee today, such that we can expect something from the next ninety-seven years, especially against more interest-bearing red ink than we can count…
hey, when George Will calls Donna Brazile a racist to her face on LameStream media, something is in the air.
The important thing is to have fun doing it, Jeff. Carry on.
/Happy
warriorOUTLAW!JH
Let’s remember in WI many polls showed it a deadhead for Scott Walker. But he blew it out at election.
It’s like the exit polls. What people do inside the voting booth is private, regardless of what they say outside of it.
My point, Darleen, is that we shouldn’t trust even a mighty Republican blow out across the board. Less even.
Losing. More. Slowly. Like voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.
It’s fun/infuriating watching polls, but my gut is that Obama is losing badly, and I’m hearing that the internal polls of both camps are telling them the same. I’m prepared to move on to the problem of what to do with Mitt Romney.
I’m in a very blue place and I talk to a lot of people who are largely ambivalent about Romney, while they’ve had it up to ^^^HERE^^^ with Obama. Remember how Reagan was polling in ’80? Someone posted an awesome clip recently of the coverage of the returns coming in and the anchors’ shock at the landslide they were watching unfold. I suspect we’re going to see something like that again, which is why I plan to watch MSNBC.
Indeed. We should ride them like rented mules.
We won’t, Pablo. We won’t ride then for years because we can’t afford it, not fiscally, not mentally, and not emotionally. Surely not rhetorically. Not a chance.
Before I get charged with having no alternative, of course I have no solution. Losing more slowly is losing. Best I can muster is John Galting the fucks — having the guts to simply refuse to participate, which with regard to a sound rhetorical base, I suspect we haven’t got close to the integrity and resolve to ride that rented mule.
Jeff’s been right all along, as if that was in question. This has always been a war of perspective, that of craven selfishness against that of self-accountability. I doubt we’ll muster what it takes to reverse a hundred trillion dollars in acting very badly for a very long time. We won’t even talk it over maturely, not with roughly half the nation on the lifetime subscription to Bill Maher’s talking points.
Some won’t. Some will. We’ll have to see who moves the needle and in which direction. Leaving it to the wolves simply leaves it to the wolves. Me, I’m not quite ready to take to the hills just yet.
And what is forfeit?
What is forfeit under the Republicans — and I mean this literally — is progress on paying down what we’ve run up. It’s way over a hundred trillion dollars, with another hundred or so in pensions and other crap at the State level.
Romney could end all federal programs Jan first and we’d still have debt. What he’ll do is trim a tiny amount here and there and when the caterwauling goes up, he’ll be run successfully against by the next socialist statist the left can Manchurean into the 2016 election.
Rinse and repeat as they say. The Bigs will NOT cave to the little people and their vote. Not ever.
We’ll be heading for the hills eventually, from the looks of this thing. From the looks of us.
Me, I’m going in with the local grassrooters. It is literally the only hope we have. Take the bitch back at ALL local levels and pray.
First, the GOP had their convention and Romney actually is the nominee now.
Second, the only poll that matters is still two months away.
It won’t be entirely up to Romney. Which is why we need a right-thinking, math capable Congress.
That’s the spirit. But there’s nothing wrong with punching up, either.
That is truly the only way.
We’re not seriously having a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington conversation here are we?
That being my point: Ace of Polls and all the rest are playing that same ole game of daily numbers, aren’t they? Because only ORmoney — The Presumptive Nominee — can poll even with this SOB.
No we are talking about taking over the party apparatus at the precinct, ward, city, county and state levels. And those are the farm systems for the major legislative branches.
I know what you’re talking about, BT. The question was a rhetorical one, actually, an incredulous one. All the players on the national stage started out as a bright new penny once upon a time.
When the Visigoths control the state parties, the RNC controls nothing.
Ideally, McGehee.
Your faith in human beings is much firmer than mine.
An aside: Among other things, once in awhile I get involved in online media: about a billion ad slots a month in publications to 18-40, educated, $100k+ earners.
Voters. Voters hungry, as Pablo points out, for change.
So we have a load of ads we could peddle to the Republicans for pennies on the usual CPM dollar. Standing inventory it costs almost nothing to trial to an interest well outside our usual profile. Try it and see what happens, right? Everybody wins.
So we hit them at every level from congressional rep to State office — every Republican entity we can think of who could be in a position to push the notion of damn near free ads — millions of them a month — to the top of the Establishment all the while using them themselves locally.
We pitch some of them three times.
Not one taker.
A political Party is going to sort out in the next ten national terms, as Pablo also alludes, a hundred years of mismanagement?
The serfs taking over the kingdom doesn’t happen without bloodshed.
Everybody knows Visigoths aren’t human. Just ask the RNC.
Bob Bennett would say he got bled pretty bad.
Charlie Crist bled so much he’s turned Blue — despite being so orange.
No one said it would be easy. But at least at the local levels you could have executives saying that a hundred thousand new cops on the beat sounds real good until you figure three years down the road you are responsible for 100 million in salaries and pensions for these free cops.
Which, if conscientious public servants, the deal though tasty is not in the best interest of the local people who pick up the tab.
BT, that’s the problem right there.
Having lived in numerous big cities and small towns all across our great land, it seems that sooner, rather than later, they all turn into Potterville and not Bedford Falls.
If something is worth fighting for, it’s worth dying for. And i think liberty might qualify.
Perhaps we should change channels.
And his opponent says “I have friends in High Places who will give us free money from DC to pay for cops and pensions.”
Guess who gets elected. There is too much money and power concentrated at the top for the locals to get anything but bitch slapped by tools like Boehner.
Stop supporting the Party at all. Don’t vote for them at any level, don’t give them any money. As long as they have money to operate, the locals will be bought and paid for.
Exactly, B Moe.
The Tribes around us have the same sort of power struggles that the state legislature has, and by extension on into the federal government.
It’s either muscle or money or a combination of both that wins elections and gets to make the rules.
“We are going to implement this law, make the health kill system work for families all across America.”
Saying the game is rigged is the same as Obama claiming that Republicans are standing in the way of him saving America. When the truth is that Obama’s idea of saving America is yanking it in a direction the country does not want to go.
The game is rigged only if you believe it is and are unwilling to fight for what you believe in.
I can give you 4 examples where candidates went directly to the people against the wishes of the establishment and had a serious impact on the game.
Obama, Palin, Howard Dean, Ron Paul. Before him were Ross Perot and George Wallace.
Outside of pigment and a few other things, I’m not sure what is terribly different between the pair of them. I suppose Ryan is a cut above Biden, and anything short of Ramsey Clark Jr. is better than Eric Holder, but beyond that, it’s definitionally smaller stuff.
None of them have serious ideas or credibility in terms of cutting spending (cutting, mind you, not just slowing its growth,) curtailing/breaking up big banks or even personal/corporate tax code simplification and cuts.
Yeah, Palin and Ron Paul had a big fucking impact on this years convention.
If we raise enough hell locally maybe next time Boehner will use vaseline.
The system isn’t “rigged”, it is what it is. And what it is is a top-loaded statist system.
It’s funny, Pablo. I was mentioning to my wife just the other day that I used to be a happy warrior. It’s amazing what can happen to you over years of doing this.
I’m the later Twain. The Mysterious Stranger Twain. I’m post-travels Gulliver.
Seems to me that Palin had a lot of influence on local elections with her endorsements.
And Ron Pauls people had enough influence to force a floor fight at the convention.
Some people can drive a nail with one hit. Others take three. What matters is that the nail is driven, not how long it takes.
The more you see, especially with those ostensibly from your own side acting as useful idiots and even directly blocking your efforts, the more difficult it is to be a happy warrior.
Once people stop caring about liberty, they cease to be my allies.
Once people stop caring about liberty, they cease to be my allies.
It’s not a case of not caring, cranky. Everyone here cares about liberty and what to do about securing it from the mutherfuckers who would wrench it away wholesale from us.
In any case, as has been mentioned many times, we didn’t get here last night, last week or last year. We aren’t going to undo it in a few weeks or months or even years. It will take decades or longer. Most of us have our own “young skulls full of mush” to raise up. We need to get our children on board or the movement will be stillborn.
Palin has to have influence on local elections because she has been completely frozen out of the national scene by both the MSM and the Republicans. The clearest and most electrifying conservative voice since Reagan and she wasn’t even invited to speak.
Ron Paul forced a floor vote where he got dick stomped like the retarded midget the Party thinks he is.
How big a hammer does somebody have to hit you with before they get your attention. The Party elite wants to focus on the local level. They want to have your little rallies and get all stirred up.
Just remember your fucking place because they don’t want to have to remind you.
taking shots at Obama is the best course of action.
I agree. We should be celebrating abject failure more. Failure never gets the props it really deserves.
That was supposed to be wants you above, up there.
No. if you will, Palin had influence on local elections despite the efforts of the MSM and the Establicans. She bypassed them, just like Reagan went over the head of Congress directly to the people.
There are ways to be heard.
And Ron Paul’s people did force the floor fight.
And sure they lost. But they fought. With allied Tea Party folks.
And who had the sympathy of the people, the Paulbots or the Establicans?
Who gives a fuck about sympathy? Abused women gets tons of sympathy, usually after a bitch slapping.
But go ahead and keep going back for more. God forbid you seem disloyal.
There you go promoting Matt Taibbi again. Liberal. QED.
I keed.
Aside from those two statements being a little incongruous, who cares about the convention?
Take over local races.
Taking over local races as a third party I can see, but if you are supporting Republicans locally, you are supporting the top. A top that doesn’t care what is happening locally.
Does anybody want to try to discuss this, or are you going to just keep repeating the same cliches?
Show me one example of how the grassroots have affected a damn thing at the national level.
And rigged to me means there is something dishonest, or shady going on.
The Republicans are pretty upfront about how they feel about the TEA party and grassroots conservativism.
You all just need to keep the house clean, dinner on time, look pretty and speak when spoken to.
The Tea Party had a huge impact in 2010. Huge enough to take over the House.
But not big enough to do better than Boehner. Still plenty to do, none of it impossible.
They all need to take their tired old asses out to pasture and we’ll call them if we need them.
Well, it freaked the living shit out of the MSM, for one. Cut, Cap and Balance has gone from ridiculous to entirely possible.
3 years/1 cycle out. What were you expecting?
Discuss what? Assertions?
Oreo cookies contain depleted uranium. Discuss.
Fuck it.
I guess you really do get the government you deserve.
You all might want to put some ice on that…
I’m probably too late to this one, but doesn’t a lot of the problem stem from the confusion about what’s true vs. what can be true if you look at it through the right lens? That people truly don’t understand you can’t have everyone sit around and make $100,000 pensions without destroying the system?
Democrats aren’t even a functioning part at this point, as they don’t even pass budgets. We are approaching a compound interest window when the system has to be reset, and most of the country doesn’t understand that.
So would voting third party confuse them? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make the Democrat party something that Jeff wouldn’t mind voting for again?
I’m just typing “out loud” here, but I really don’t understand why Democrats let their party be hijacked like this. We’ve left “What’s the best way for society to order itself?” and entered full tilt fantasy.
Jeez, B. Go eat some supper and come back later.
At the risk of allowing you to expect others to disprove your negative, and at the risk of playing into the notion that national politics are all there are, the House passing a bill auditing the Fed would have been inconceivable either four years ago or if accomplished solely by Establicans by their own ideology. Never, ever happen.
Not only did it pass, it passed the Republican side unanimously and carried a huge raft of Democrats.
Under the hood that thing was all grass roots independents.
YES.
Not only doesn’t understand it in the majority, of the minority who at least intuits it, I suspect they’re too ready with the grimy little rice bowls extended to care.
We get the government people vote for. That’s what needs fixing.
Show me one example of how the grassroots have affected a damn thing at the national level.
see overton window link
That and utter fiscal insolvency built on a fraudulent global cabal’s system, Pablo. Which we mostly can’t talk about in any circles, save for the loonies.
And Ron Paul. The conversation is changing. That’s where it starts, unless we’re going to just go right to the shooting.
You’ve just identified the dynamic, Pablo, and that per newrouter’s Overton Window. The intersection; the crux of the matter.
Do or die.
Not so incidentally, entire States — Nevada, Minnesota, Maine, others – are coming back from the brink. All their politics are local and of the structural American principles, I’m banking on the right and weight of secession — whether literal or figurative — to be the new 800lb political gorilla.
Four States saying fuck you are plenty of choice for JHo to go rent a 20′ UHaul for.
We can now. People are staring to get familiar with this. It’s not a great leap to get them looking at the numbers down the bottom. As nr said, Overton Window. It’s moving. Let’s give it another push.
Heh. Crosstalk is fun.
The last line of that sucker is the most important.
That needs to be the plan. And we’d better be teaching it, because we’re bound to do the latter before this is over.
We get the government people vote for. That’s what needs fixing.
We get the politicians people vote for. The politicians change but the government doesn’t seem to.
JHoward says September 3, 2012 at 6:19 pm
Not so incidentally, entire States — Nevada, Minnesota, Maine, others – are coming back from the brink. All their politics are local and of the structural American principles, I’m banking on the right and weight of secession — whether literal or figurative — to be the new 800lb political gorilla.
I am not arguing against that, what I am disputing is the notion that either Party can be fundamentally changed at the top at this point starting at the local level. Going third party locally and cutting off all funding and ground support for the Rs seems the best way to really change things.
B Moe, the indies have already committed to taking back the Republican Party. Given all the pushback against third parties — RON PEROT! — I’d say they handed the rest of us a favor.
So we need to elect politicians who will do it.
Isn’t that what we always think we’re doing, Pablo?
What things are you going to change like that? I don’t give the party money, and I don’t know anyone who does, so I wouldn’t know where to begin doing that. Third party only changes things if they win elections. Hell, I vote Cool Moose every chance I get, but you can see how that works out (in the right sidebar.) It seems to me that the best way to change things is to get good people elected, and then get some more of them elected, and then throw out the ones who disappointed you and then get more good people elected.
All that takes votes, and lots of them. People are starting to wake up. We need to wake more of them up. I think we may need to the Tyranny of Math.
We own this country. Politicians are employees of ours. And when somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go.
Thanks for the reminder, Clint.
*resort to*
Toss that up there where things are otherwise incoherent.
More so lately. But mostly, we vote for the guy who is promising us the shit we want or (especially in my case) for the guy we despise the least.
I am just in a bad funk. H. L. Mencken said something to the effect that the only thing either Party gets right is that the other is incapable of governing.
Hammer. > Nail.
the guy we despise the least
No kidding. More often than not the guy or gal I despise the least turns out to be as much of a shitheel as the other guy anyway.
Feel better, B. In the meantime be glad you don’t live here. We have roofers coming tomorrow and it’s going to take 3-5 days to tear off the old roof and put on the new one. It’s been 102 or better lately, so it’s looking like 5. The air conditioner guys are going to tear out the condenser upstairs, too while the roof is torn up. It’s going to be noisy and hot and our dogs will be going crazy with all the strangers and noise.
I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.
Yup. And a problem that needs solving.
So we need to elect politicians who will do it.
we need a new speaker of the house. orangeman can’t do the job time to let him go. that’s the next “most important election evah”.
This cheered me up a little: Obamacare summed up in one sentence. Former student JG?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdnY8r7_fLw&feature=player_embedded#!
Rhode Island is about to put a Republican in our “Kennedy seat”.
Brendan Doherty is a stand up guy, a former State Police Chief, and a Republican in RI which ain’t easy to be. David Cicilline is a mob connected piece of shit who would be most notorious for running around town with his entourage of boy toys were it not for his books-cooking that left Angel Tavares holding the bag when he took over as Mayor of Providence. The pull quote from that last is this:
I’m gonna feel pretty good about helping to flip that seat. It should be a safe D seat. It isn’t.
Progress.
“hey, when George Will calls Donna Brazile a racist to her face on LameStream media, something is in the air.”
A hint of bourbon breath most likely.
That is spectacular, B Moe.
b moe let that one go viral
that’s a great 1 minute ad with some editing.
“I’m the later Twain. The Mysterious Stranger Twain. I’m post-travels Gulliver.”
Daggers sheathed in ones back will eventually tell. Cassandra’s face longs for the sun shine but rarely finds it.