The Loyal Opposition
Yesterday, conservative commentator Rhymes with Right, in response to me saying what we all know to be true (that the Republican loyal opposition is controlled by the radical fringe of their party who believe that the President is not a natural born citizen, that believe he will create Death Panel, and that he seeks to indoctrinate their children), tried some false equivancy and said the following:
Your loyal opposition was to claim that the President of the United States conspired to murder Americans and aided/allowed an attack on US soil. Your loyal opposition was to claim that America deserved to be attacked on 9/11. Your loyal opposition was to question the legitimacy of the president’s election. Your loyal opposition was to call the president a fascist/Nazi. Your loyal opposition was to call for his death.
First, that President Bush’s election was in dispute in not a question of fact. It is a fact. Thus, it is not conspiracy theory to think he was not a legitimate President. One vote on the Supreme Court is the only reason Bush was ever President.
Second, it was not the liberals who said America deserved to be attacked on 9/11, that was your fellow conservatives Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.
Third, RWR confuses radical fringe with the establishment opposition. And in so doing he proves my point. There is no doubt that some liberals on our side of the fringe did call President Bush a Nazi, and some did believe he orchestrated or was involved in the 9/11 attacks. We call those latter liberals “Truthers.” They are akin to “Birthers” and “Deathers” today, in that they are adverse to facts and hold firm to conspiracy theories as their political ideology.
The difference between then and now, between the liberal or Democratic loyal opposition then and the conservative or Republican loyal opposition now is the liberal radical fringe was never in charge of the establishment opposition. We were led by weak compromising ineffective douchebags named Daschle, Reid and Gephardt. They were not “Truthers.” Indeed, I dare say that there were not “Truthers” in the Democratic Congressional Caucus, save Cynthia McKinney, who is all sorts of crazy, so much so that she was kicked out of office and the Democratic Party.
Now ask yourself, who is the face of the Republican Party today and who is likely to be the frontrunner for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination?
Former Governor Sarah Palin. And what is she? A “Deather.” Indeed, she is the original Deather. She was the one that created this lie on her Facebook page, that the government will create Death Panels.
The ranking Republican Senator on the Finance Committe, Chuck Grassley, is also a Deather.
Tonight, the official Republican response to President Obama’s healthcare speech will be made by Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany (R). He is a Birther, an insane loon who does not believe the President of the United States was born in this country:
Here is another Republican Representative engaging in a nod and wink to her whacked out supporters:
The point here is the conservative radical fringe is the establishment opposition, a point RWR does not understand. The crazies on the Right are in charge of the Republican Party and speak for all its members. There is no analogy to today’s political situation to that of eight years ago.
Back then, Democrats were sane. Today, Republicans are not.
That’s the point. Everyone has their crazies that should be locked in the attic. The GOP has let the inmates take over the asylum.
Agreed. Our complaint is not that there are fringe wackos on the right (as there are on the left), it’s that those wackos are no longer on the fringe — they’ve been allowed into the right wing mainstream and been allowed to dictate strategy. Those groups should be battling it out with the radical left for control of their own little Fringe World. Instead, what we have right now is rational, policy-minded Democrats (OK, many, but not all) trying to negotiate with paranoia-spewing, fear-mongering Republicans.
The problem is not for the Left. Right now, we get to be the only grown-ups in the room, able to make the rules if we can just learn how to talk over the kids’ crying. The problem is that this is not healthy for our democracy. Our system works best when we have two healthy, constructive, but opposing parties, both of whose first priority is to help our country improve. If the sane part of the GOP reasserts itself, we can get that back someday.
Unlike most of you here on this blog, I look forward to the days when we return to true conservative values, and simply lock our crazies in the attic and slip food under the door. After a casual pan of today’s media, the old way seems much more civilized than today’s method giving them microphones and digital cameras in order to boost a media network’s ratings.
Once they are removed from the public, the rest of us can sit around the table and solve our problems.
I blame John Kerry.
Going into the 2004 election, it was a tossup. So much so that anything – anything – could make the difference between winning and losing.
So the Swiftboaters tried throwing some crap on the wall. It was debunked and shown to be lying garbage – but some of the crap stuck to the wall. Not much, but a little. And in 2004, a little was all you needed.
Now among the left it is CW that Kerry should have fought back harder. He should have questioned their patriotism and their sanity, and demanded to know why they hated the troops, and turned them all into a bunch of Crazy Eileens. But he didn’t. And the wingnuts learned that lies are rewarded.
And needless to say, I am not putting it all on Kerry the man. I am putting it on the consultants and on the Dem base themselves – us.
It wasn’t just the Swiftboating. It was a bunch of other stuff like gay marriage in Ohio, Catholic communion for pro-choice politicians – all sorts of crap got flung up there.
Now in 2008 it is not a tossup – Dems are ahead and Republican ID is down. So to make up the additional ground they are coming at us now with more lies, and bolder lies. Because we have taught them it doesn’t matter; there is no penalty for lying, and it might work.
So we turned the birther thing back on them – good for us. Now we have to do the same for death panels, socialist, indoctrinating kids, all of that.
They’ve got the media, but we’ve got the blogs. Are we up to it, or are we going to Kerry it?
I think, if you’re going to blame Kerry et al, you need to lay lots of it on the media and some of it on the party leadership…and then some of it on us.
1) The media, in general, treated “truthers” like the nut cases they are. However, now the media are treating “birthers” and — even more conspicuously — “deathers” as if they are mainstream and have a point that can be debated by sensible, serious people.
And I don’t think we’ve turned the birther thing back on them sufficiently. Look at the letters to the editor of many daily newspapers around the country: at least once a week or so, you’ll see a letter that references “he’s not an American.”
2) Where is the Democratic national leadership? Asleep? Afraid? Too busy bickering? or, possibly, waiting for Obama to fail because he’s not one of “them”? The Democratic party has a bit of a history of doing just that.
3) Finally, I think that the progressives and MOR’ers relaxed and went back to auto-pilot after last year’s election, allowing the national and local dialogue to be run by the nut cases. The blogs did their part last year and many continue to — but the blogs didn’t convince millions of people to vote for Obama. Knocking on doors, writing letters, putting up signs, making phone calls, etc., convinced them.
I remember calling elderly relatives to explain Obama to them and try to get their votes; sadly, I haven’t called more than my mom to explain that there’s no “death panels” and that we need a public option and why. I, too, am to blame for why the opposition, no longer loyal, has been allowed to lie so much and get so far with those lies.
I agree with all your points, PM.
1) The media is lazy, they like conflict and they hold Democrats to different standards. Part of it is the Republican leadership though. The Republican leadership is not putting distance from their base and it’s becoming mainstream
2) I don’t know what to say about elected Democrats. I think they just aren’t on the media as much, I guess. Democrats still seem to be looking for the elusive bipartisanship so they just aren’t as aggressive as Republicans I guess. I think the Democratic party is just much more of a big tent – Republicans are down to their core rabid base and Democrats have absorbed a lot of moderate-to-conservative people. It’s just harder to keep that together.
3) I definitely agree there. Conservatives work hard, really hard. Progressives tend to turn on their own. Instead of helping Obama and pushing Congress many progressives focused on attacking Obama. Conservatives seem undaunted by defeats, they just keep pushing. Progressives talk about not voting again. That’s a big difference.
the far left didn’t win the debate in November. Obama won the presidency, but the debate rages on, as it has for over 200 years.
on a less serios note, let me ad:
Al Gore won… BAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA nice tinfoil dude.
RWR, Protack, David Anderson and Maria Evans should stop blogging on this site. They keep getting rebuked and punked for the lunacy they subscribe to and for consistently getting facts and analysis wrong. They are making fools of themselves, which is understandable since all that is left in the GOP is a fringe, delusional base incapable of acknowledeging defeat and failure. So they are mad and irrational. But it does make for comical reading on occasion.