Eli!

Buzz!

Eli why are we giving Palin more press. She is a nothing and does not deserve any kind of audience. She needs to get a job or something…a daycare center or whatever but we need to bury that name somewhere and get her our of our hair.

Eli!

I’m for the moon base option. Send them all. We can take up a collectiion.

ELI!!!Let the R’s implode. The D’s will split and maybe then there will be a progressive wing or a new party altogether. Today’s R’s are the No Nothings and the D’s are the Whigs.

If that includes the Democrats too, I’m sold.

Palin/Rush ’12

Eli !

ELI!

It does raise an interesting question, though: Would you rather have Sarah Palin running for president with a high probability of humiliating defeat and a slim chance of victory, or Mitt Romney running with a pretty good chance of making a strong showing and possibly even winning?

I kinda disagree with the premise of that question. I don’t think Willard has much more of a shot at the brass ring than Sarah Youbetcha does. Right now, this is Obama’s race to lose and I don’t think he’s that stupid or incompetent. Duplicitous and unprincipled, sure but not stupid.

BLUETOE!!!

Maybe the remnants of the GOP could sell off the rights to the name to the Blue Dogs and Liebercrats.

Petro !

I have almost decided to leave the top of the ticket blank in November, but find that pragmatism will trump principle if Santorum or Gingrich share that top spot with Obama. (Surely you jest re: Palin.) While I don’t think I could pull the lever for Romney, I could leave the Obama box blank, too. Then, again, when you think this “leader,” “conservative leader” or “businessman leader” cannot lead a charge against Limbaugh or the far right war on women . . . maybe my “not so bad” opinion is all wrong.

MARGARET! It depends on what happens between now and November, but you have to at least admit that Mitt would make a much more respectable and less humiliating showing than Palin.

Hiya Peg !

I agree with you … no surprise there. Mittens can’t win for losing. I think his $$$ will run out before the Convention, which would be apropos !

Like I said, I don’t think Sarah has a chance in hell of being the nominee, but it’s an interesting hypothetical. Is it better for the GOP to double down on crazy and get spanked, or stay relevant by being less batnuts?

but you have to at least admit that Mitt would make a much more respectable and less humiliating showing than Palin.

That much is certain.

Not to mention hilarious!

… and then have to blow Newt’s French Horn to fundraise …

We will get O again.
Neither Romney, ya he’s got lot’s of money and that’s about it, nor Frothy, the greatest gift the 1% can give to O, has a chance.
So more O. But this will a new O. No more elections to worry about. Just 4 years to make him more wealthy. Which means completely unfettered selling out the likes of which will be epic.
It’s set and done. The PTB knows with O, they will have the right pushing for his defeat and agreeing to everything the PTB says, ie. like our curent situation. And with O, they get all the D/liberal loyalists cheering the unending wars and corporate control, ie. like our curent situation. That’s the vast majority, all theirs. What could be better. I mean that’s their wet dream. One that will be realized, … again.
But the next term will be Osterity unleashed.

The American party system is as defective as its electoral mechanism and its distribution of political power by this mechanism. These defects makes irrelevant the fate of the two legacy parties. One or both legacy parties may disappear, and one or more newcomers will replace them. If these newcomers fail to affirm America’s empire, its security-surveillance apparatus and big finance capital, I’d expect a coup d’état to settle the political crisis if the party system became that dysfunctional. Democratic political can be found in the streets, not in “centrist” political parties.

Petro! I guess as long as it’s not in an airport Men’s room.

And nothing on FDL invites a rant against Obama like mocking Republicans…. Do you ever rest?

I’m not sure they have a choice anymore.

Some folks grieve longer than others, Margaret. Just sayin’.

One-hacked Pony …

*with due apologies to punaise*

It’s an interesting hypothetical, but personally, I see it playing out differently.

I think that – unless Romney is nominated and wins the general – 2016 is the year of maximum crazy for the GOP.

If Romney gets nominated and loses, the base’s heads will explode and they will take a blood oath to never go with a moderate ever again.

If somebody from the fruitcake wing – Santorum, Palin, Zippy the Pinhead, gets the nod then, even if they are trounced, the base will think: “Oooo, we’re getting closer!”

Either way, in 2016 the clown car will have to be a greyhound tour bus it will be so packed with lunatics. Then the GOP either implodes or they finally regain their senses in 2020. Maybe.

Hmph! Yesterday one member of this clade hijacked a women’s health thread to go on his anti Obama tirade. It’s like disapproval and disavowal aren’t enough. It must be hate and that hate must be visceral.

I don’t understand your meaning. Can you elaborate?

don’t happen to much but gotta disagree, eli. repubs aren’t going anywhere, in my view. the base is fucking nuts. will never implode. here to stay. remember after the 2008 election? rachel used to do a thing every night “Republicans in Exile.” Steele was running the party and it was all a joke. But they came back. This is the democrats we’re talking about as oppsoition. they are incompetent fools. also, there’s too much money in the R party for it to implode. I think the Dems will continue to move right, even though they don’t have to. I’d love to see Palin as the candidate.

now. andy pettite. they begged him to stay last year (and offer him a shitload of cash) and he went back to TX. this year they have a full staff -it might suck, but it’s full- and he wants back. go figger.

I don’t disagree. I don’t think the implosion would happen this year, but another four years of calling moderate Republican Obama a socialist and trying to kill Medicare and Social Security cause a lot of self-inflicted harm.

Whoever wins, one thing is sure. We’ll lose.

I don’t understand your meaning. Can you elaborate?

Certainly. Please stop hijacking threads to climb up on your soapbox and flog the same dead horse you have been since you were a disgruntled PUMA.

That also is certain. :-/

LOL … Excellent !

I don’t think the base sees Mitt as a moderate, they see him as fringe, cuz he ain’t a real Xtian[according to them]

Agree with all else, perhaps 2016 takes the ReFugs so far off the edge that HRC decides to run …

I get it. It’s unproductive. We need to move on. But, everyone at his or her own pace.

You play an important role here. You can help those who have a tougher time with moving on.

With all due respect.

Sure, they can never be too crazy for the base, but if the base are the only ones who will vote for them anymore, they’re going to be pretty marginal.

But you’re right about the Democrats’ incompetence (although it could very well be collaboration *disguised* as incompetence), and I think Margaret may be right that the GOP is too afraid of its base to move away from it.

puma? did i say something about hillary?
hijack the thread? huh? I posted one opinion. And only responded to your response.
Soapbox? flogging horses? Do you disagree with what I have said? If so why not discuss those topics specifically?

I’m convinced that if there was a post about the number of extrasolar planets, somebody would see it as a segue into how much Obama sucks. Just want you to give it a rest. There are dozens of posts every week on this very blog critical of Obama. Do we seriously have to do this on every other thread too?

It just gets old buzz. Very old.

Whatever. It just gets old. That’s all. I’ll leave you alone so as not to be too disruptive of Eli’s thread.

As SD says, never give up.

ELI!

Palin is hot!!

Jeebus … ROFL !

STARBUCK!

Agreed. Palin will make an appearance at the R convention, a la Lindsay Lohan (they share the same psychic /s), with the “F/U” stenciled slyly on her eyelid ~ the one she blinks with . . . and at just the right moment. It’s all about keeping her name in the news for the foreseeable future (a la Lindsay Lohan).

Prezactly!

“you-don’t-agree-with-me-so-you-must-be-defending-Obama”???
When did I say that?

I think you have taken your personal issues with me and taken them to extremes.
I have no idea why what I originally wrote would illicit such a strong response.
I was just offering an opinion. And somehow that means I’m a PUMA, I hijacked the thread, and somehow, somewhere, I somehow accused you of defending O. Do you know how all this sounds? Read the comments, yours and mine, again. And ask yourself how this sounds.
But I agree with you that is not productive. You can have the last word. I have no interest in this ridiculous name-calling.

I’ll take Romney. A Palin loss would only embolden the fascists IMO.

And this is interesting

And more generally: Would you rather have a GOP that goes so far off the conservative deep end that it implodes and becomes a powerless fringe party, or a GOP that pulls itself back from the brink and starts moving back towards the center?

except I think you’re making a big error here. I don’t think there is “too far” for the Republicans in the current political climate. If the Democrats weren’t competing with each other to see how far right they can move then you might be able to make an argument for the Republicans eventually imploding. However, and it’s a big however, the Democrats keep moving right when the Republicans move right, therefore validating and legitimizing the Republican position. They, the Democrats, are working their asses off to normalize and mainstream everything coming from the “other side”. So, if something doesn’t give among the Democrats, eventually we’re going to run through the whole hard fascist thrill ride. Only when that’s over and we have a chance to pick up the pieces would there be a chance to do anything the right way.

That is, unless something gives with the Democrats. And who thinks that will happen?

Not me.

One of my old bosses in the consulting business said: Buzz, lead, follow, or get the fuck out of the way.

We need to lead — each in our own way.

Well, then you end up with a scenario where the Republicans are the Crazy Republican Party and the Democrats are the Sane Republican Party. Given that choice, I think a majority are going to vote for the Sane Republican Party.

But we still end up with a Republican Party in control, just not the same one.

“If the republicans moved leftward, the democratic party as a whole would have to do the same….”

They sure would, which is why Obama and the dems are happy as clams to see Santorum dragging Romney’s latex ass to the crazy seats on the GOP bus. It means they can continue to protect the corporate status quo while talking like FDR trying to get us out of the depression.

What is hurting us most is that so many democrats are falling for the bullshit, instead of making it a point to bail on Obama. He WILL respond to pressure, but not if none is applied.

To lead you have to get the lead out of your ass.

LOL. Should I take that personally?

Aha, I think I mistook what you were musing about.

It would be a lot less work if the GOP started driving *away* from the cliff instead of accelerating towards it. If the GOP goes the way of the Whigs, then we would have to build the new party of the left from the ground up. An exciting idea, but exhausting to contemplate.

I agree with you, a moderating GOP sends the Democrats back towards the left where they’ve always belonged. And I lean towards the idea that this is the preferable outcome. (Although the other route is certainly worth thinking about, isn’t it.)

I don’t know that just a strong showing by a moderate would be enough to let the adults in the GOP “turn this car right around” A moderate Republican would have to actually win. I mean a moderate Republican that didn’t have a D after their name :)

Eli is way more my type….;) Good Night Folks…

I dunno, should you?

Nah!

LOLOL !

G’nite RevBev !

Oh, I don’t think a strong showing by Romney would cause the GOP to moderate themselves, because *obviously* he lost because he didn’t embrace conservative principles. I’m not even sure a Romney win would do it.

No matter how badly the Republicans wound themselves, the Democrats will play the role of Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, and Albert Schweitzer rolled into one by dissing its base, making awful strategic decisions, and splitting the difference with the worst wingnuts in hopes of winning over two swing voters in Macomb County, Michigan.

Aw shucks. Night, Bev!

I’m off too, to a celebration party of the Clackastanie rebels, a group in an adjacent county (Clackamas) that successfully fought off a Portland attempt to strong arm them into doing their bidding.

Clackastanie rebels. Has a nice ring to it.

BTW your screen name…nice. I know what an RF shunt is (or any other kind for that matter) but I would never have considered a screen name based on that.

I think they only *say* they’re trying to win over swing voters as a smokescreen. “No, no, we’re not selling out to big-money donors! We’re simply implementing a savvy political strategy to win over independent and moderate Republican voters!”

True that.

It looks like it would take “the full catastrophe” to steal a phrase from Zorba the Greek

What if we get a Mitt/Grifter ticket? and they win and Mitt dies? Holy Shit Fire.

I was considering “PICC Line.”

Both parties view electoral defeats (AND victories) as proof that they need to move farther to the right.

I think one of them would probably kill the other before the election…

Grifter would leave a trail, for sure …

Senator !

You all seem to be forgetting about the dyed in the fool Republican VOTERS. Party or no, they WILL vote against their own best interests (just like the Dums).

Starbuck, thanks for noticing.

I’m a TV guy – who thinks the web holds great promise for correcting the ills that broadcast media has done. Hence the desire to shunt the RF to ground.

Plus it’s a pen name taken from my line of work – just like my hero Mark Twain did.

Agreed, most will vote for the Sane Republican Party. But the crazy Republicans wouldn’t be a rump party. They’d be totally legitimate, and still setting the agenda even with Democrats in charge.

That’s a much bigger problem than who wins this particular election.

What can I say. Hope springs eternal in the deluded optimist’s heart.

Maybe Sanitarium will follow a career trajectory similar to that of Girolamo Savonarola:

In 1497, [Savonarola] and his followers carried out the Bonfire of the Vanities. They sent boys from door to door collecting items associated with moral laxity: mirrors, cosmetics, lewd pictures, pagan books, immoral sculptures (which he wanted to be replaced by statues of the saints and modest depictions of biblical scenes), gaming tables, chess pieces, lutes and other musical instruments, fine dresses, women’s hats, and the works of immoral and ancient poets, and burnt them all in a large pile in the Piazza della Signoria of Florence. Many fine Florentine Renaissance artworks were lost in Savonarola’s notorious bonfires — including paintings by Sandro Botticelli, which he is alleged to have thrown into the fires himself.

Florence soon became tired of Savonarola because of the city’s continual political and economic miseries partially derived from Savonarola’s opposition to trading and making money. When a Franciscan preacher challenged him to a trial by fire in the city centre and he declined, his following began to dissipate.

During his Ascension Day sermon on May 4, 1497, bands of youths rioted, and the riot became a revolt: dancing and singing taverns reopened, and men again dared to gamble publicly.

Sarah might kill the Mittster. but from what I see, Mitt has neither a sense of humor nor a temper. Mitt has nada. Mitt is a cardboard cutout of himself. Sarah, on the other hand, has an massive ego the size of a giant floating Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade cartoon character. The kind that is waaaay too big to stuff into a clown car. That is why you never see her with other political conservadumb celebrities.

Oh man, Eli. Every part of me would like to change that – but as it is right now, you could not be more right.

“nothing on FDL invites a rant like mocking republicans…”

For which I am grateful. If I want to hear thread-after-thread about all the bitching about how such-and-such wingnut repub is talking out of his or her ass, I’ll go hang out at Digby’s and listen to her lead the cheers and wave the pom-poms for the “Obama sucks less!” team.

That when it rears it’s ugly little centrist head here, some people are honest enough to point out that Obama’s shortcomings, if not plain sellouts, are doing us far more harm than anything the GOP is doing, is a fine thing. It’s one of the reasons that this is, all things considered, the best damn blog going.

Incidentally, we’d better get used to the debate, whether it’s coming from pissed-off PUMAS who would like us to forget that Hillary did HER sellout because she thought it would get her the White House, or from progressives and democrats of all stripes…which I think it is starting to do, more and more.

If it weren’t for the fact that the snake-twirlers and bible-zombies are so hell-bent on getting their pound of political flesh that Romney’s utterly traditional republican values of greed and selfishness look like The Communist manifesto to them, then Obama wouldn’t be having this little “goat-rodeo” surge. It has a decidedly Bushian quality to it, in that the people pimping springtime-for-Obama don’t want to hear about the reality of what it costs to feed, clothe, and shelter oneself in “Amurka the Free!”. Nor, that the difficulty of that is happening while the rich are getting richer and while the war-making industry is awash in money.

None of this has been sustained by Rush Limbaugh, nor by Sarah Palin…and little, if any, by Romney, etc.

The custodian of corporate-bidness-as-usual is sitting in the Oval Office, in full-on Kabuki mode, while mouthing the occasional campaign progressive-platitude while perfectly aware that if he WANTED to do something about the situation, realistically, he lost the power to do it, in the mid-terms.

Folks, we are in for about 9 months of shuck and jive from Mr. Bipartisan. It’s what he does and what he is.

I, for one, think we should be talking about that, early and often. :o)

I really don’t think Mitt is dumb enough to choose Palin, and I don’t think Palin is humble enough to accept second billing again.

Yep. I never thought I’d live to see the day I regretted. The Eisenhower adminiistration. Obmama is actually a standar d deviation to the right of Eisenhower, who is hands down the best Rethug president of the twenti eth centur y. It was his. Adminis traction that took down Mcarthy, not Truman’s, and I would wager that Kennedy wouldn’ t have been able to do i t, speaking fr pm memo ry. It’s been a long time.

We definitely want the Rs to implode.

I don’t see the Ds moving right as a result, I see them reverting to centrist public policy (i.e., stuff that counts as Socialist in today’s positioning of the Overton window) as they no longer have to defend their right flank politically from all the distractors the Rs use, all the culture war stuff.

Eventually the Rs, or whatever nationalist/nativist/Christianist party replaces them, will form up again. But that could take decades, and in the meantime we get our agenda into law unopposed, and we get our people flooding the federal bench as the Federalist Society stooges die off.

Aside from Single Payer and a massive drawdown of the military, the public policy our side gets in place while we are the effectively unopposed would include federal pre-emption of law governing the conduct of all elections and votinhg rights, and all immigration enforcement, and all health care law. “Castrate the states”, should be our central policy, to deny the enemy any refuge from their federal level slaughter. That way, even after they recover, they will never be able to get the expanded voting, citizenship, and health care constituencies back in the bottle, and public policy that screws these constituencies becomes impossible forever.

Overall, the idea is that they would be like the Rs for a generation after FDR’s election. They only get any power back by accepting and working within the consensus we will establish. They have to put up Eisenhowers and Earl Warrens, actual RINOs, to get elected.

Sorry for the awful post. I just bought an IPad and am trying to navigate the keyboard.M

Good point about Ike.

Can you imagine Obama leaving office with a clear and unequivocal warning about the military-industrial complex?

Agree on the 2nd part, but wrt to the first part, Mitt has done lots of dumb things, this isn’t out of the realm of possibilities.

Although Pappy Bush would prolly drop him out of an Airplane, to change his mind.

Didn’t Mitt fire the guy who helped him look good in the debates because he was getting too much press and too much credit? I don’t see any way he would want anything to do with a spotlight hog like Palin.

Not a bad post for you, either, Gtom.

But that situation presupposes a president who comes into office with large congressional margins and with a solid majority of the voters wanting and expecting some real changes, and that that preznint walks into the Oval Office not knowing the MEANING of the word “bipartisan”, and that he starts kicking republican ass and taking conservative names, on day one.

Lesseeee….anything like that happen in recent memory? Maybe, the first part? :o)

He could fly under the radar and blame all missteps on Palin … let her be Cheney to his “Dubya”.

It is rather daunting, isn’t it? I’ve had mine for about 9 months and I still am learning every day.

Well, if Willard gets to Tampa with the numbers already in hand, then he won’t have to lick so much flat-earth hiney, but if, for example, Santorum takes Texas, and a few other states, and Romney rolls into town without the magic number, then it’ll be a republican convention that would give Hunter Thompson a journalistic hard-on that a cat couldn’t scratch.

There will be political blood in the aisles, as the republican “big tent” shows itself to have a startling resemblance to a cross between a Munich Bier-hall putsch and a 1934 Nurenburg rally. Minorities, social programs of every stripe, rag heads, people-of-color, women….will all be on the chopping block, one way or another. And Romney’s plenty smart enough to want to avoid that, if he expects to have a snake’s chance of winning.

On his behalf, I think that, after Florida, Gingrich was getting offers to entice him to get out and clear the field for Romney. Very few people thought that Santorum could galvanize enough peckerheads to bugger Romney’s “inevitability” aura, but he has, and now, the last thing that the “moderate” republicans want is for Newt to bail. If he does, it will mean that Romney will have even more trouble closing the deal, and every state that turns out for Santorum, even a loowwww turnout, is a dagger for Mitt.

There are going to be some deals offered, rejected, and then struck, probably, which would turn Machiavelli’s stomach. :o)

People who want a Republican president thinking, “Well it couldn’t get worse” or “A Republican president will REALLY show them” scare me. It’s as if they don’t live in the same world that we do and will be immune to the pain in the world that Right wing Republican “values” producers.

What I want is an outcome that will drive Obama to the left. I don’t know who that is.

What role does Ron Paul play in this? Anything?

Will Romney allow Obama to go left?

Will a crazy Palin allow him to more more left?

Eli’s right about Palin; to anyone without a room-temperature IQ, she’s badly-damaged goods. All she can do is be-devil Romney, especially if he comes into Tampa still struggling. If she hasn’t already endorsed Santorum, she’s likely to do it fairly soon.

Whatever deals Romney cuts, or offers to cut, the wingers will be very suspicious of just promises from him. I think the fight over the second spot could get really nasty. If Romney picks a snake-handler he’ll pay for it in the election with independents, without whom he can’t win. If he picks a moderate, the loons will raise holy hell.

I should add; the shelf-life on any concern by House republicans about turning Obama into a sympathy figure by bearing down on him too hard, is going to start to run out along about early summer. They’ve been laying low for a while now, but they can’t afford to let him get up too much steam. I think the notion that Obama is going to be able to kick back and stroll in for another four years, while the republicans tear each other to shreds, is still not going to happen. Too many spinning plates and too many seats lost in the mid-terms will prevent him from carrying off the “relaxed, cagey, incumbent” pose.

I think “drive” is a more appropriate word choice than “allow”.

I would dearly love to see Sarah get one really good smack down. My heavens, she prances around like a queen saying bat shit silly shit as bad or worse as the occupants of the clown car. Worse, I have had to listen to her now for almost four year, holy shit, four years.

I would like to think that a massive electoral defeat would finally make her realize that no one who is not crazy likes her. But she would more likely just blame it on that ol’ lamestream media tellin’ all those lies about her, you betcha.

Also.

I agree Obama is not going to waltz in for another four years. There is a boatload of animosity out there and every last thing will come out, you can count on it. And then there is the matter of money. Obama will have plenty but do you really think he will outspend the Kochs, Adelson, et al.? I hate to even think of it for what it would do to this country but Sarah still scares the shit out of me. I am thinking of migrating to Canada?

I literally don’t think she is emotionally equipped to process a defeat unless it is really devastating. I want her GONE!

narcissist personalities never understand that they have been taken down.

Democrat, Republican, who effing cares. I would rather see the multinationals who run the whole country (and much of the world, and yeah, I’m looking at YOU, G8, hiding up in Camp David) given the Versailles treatment. If that doesn’t happen, then we’re screwed, plain and simple. If it DOES happen, then both Democrats and Republicans are screwed, and maybe they’ll go away and let us have our country back.

It probably doesn’t matter, cause the game is rigged and whoever is pulling the strings will work it the way they want, no matter who the candidates are and who the “winner” is. Don’t forget that ‘W’ was obviously a dumbass, but even so, he was “installed” in 2000.

Would you rather have

Coming late and haven’t read all the comments, but I’d rather have a true old school Democratic Party running candidates like FDR, Truman, and JFK.

Damn right.

But if the Republican Party collapsed completely, I’m afraid the Democrats would eagerly rush in to fill the vacuum – the ones that aren’t there already,

it is sadly (disgustingly) true that the democratic party is already the moderate wing of the republican party.

…and there is no “left” with any authority in the US.

I’d rather there were no Republican Party… unfortunately, there are two…

Obama is a fraud. The Democratic Party is a fraud

De-elect the murderer-in-chief and his blood-thirsty concubines in Congress..

Vote progressive third party -ABO: Anyone BUT Obama!

There are enough cultural differences (god, gays, guns) to retain brand differentiation between Democrats and Republicans if the Republicans turn back from the brink of full-on crazy. This is the norm of American politics – one party with two faces. The best outcome at this juncture would be for the republicans to implode and Obama to win. Then, the republicans would become a regional and rump party of old, rural, white people. The Democrats would retain the center as the party of Wall Street. And….in the wake of Republic Windows, Madison, and Occupy, the left could get its act together and create a Labor party. The structure of the constitution predisposes us to a two-party system, but not necessarily one Bircher and one Wall Street party.

The recent talk of a Santorum-Gingrich ticket almost made me soil my underwear in glee. However, I’m not that confident that the resultant Democratic win would be all that great. I mean look at the wonderful legislative record of the 111th Congress with Barry at the helm. But, I suppose it beats the alternative. I’ll probably swallow hard one more time and pull red lever “A”, (Chicago straight Dem ticket voting on the old machines of the 60′s).

I find myself agreeing with Eli and with everything you wrote on this thread.

But we are talking logic – and I have not always seen logic in the actions of the rich and corporate as they push the buttons that bring about the result they want. If Mitt runs they may abandon Obama for Mitt, as illogical as that may be, just to support a fellow member of the tribe, despite a Mitt victory perhaps putting a spine in the back of Congressional Democrats so that they stop some of the right wing agenda that they now roll over on so as to please Obama.