Yes, Virginia, there is a Republican Party

I hope so, because what they have masquerading as Republicans today, are merely scoundrels and incompetents, Bush/Cheney/ Getrich wannabes. I don't know how quickly they can recoup, because they have allowed some dastardly things to happen in America, under their watch. America needs a loyal opposition, not obstructionists, which has been their role, in the Senate, since they lost control of that House. They will have to jettison the hate-mongers, from Limbaugh to Thompson, if they want to be serious. Nothing less will satisfy America. She is tired of rip and tear politics, that they have specialized in since the days of Nixon !! Good luck, Republicans, kick them phony Republicans out on their ear !! They are unwanted baggage !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.

In keeping with the Swamp tradition, the journalist doesn't talk to or quote a Republican--even in an article on the Republican Party!

The Swamp is working overtime to drive away half its potential readership....

The 06 and 08 election cycles were good for the GOP. They were a much needed opportunity to clear out the dead wood, refocus and rebuild. It's healthy for any political party (and obviously for the republic) for a parties to cyclically gain and lose power.
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Or to paraphrase Christopher Buckley in the wake of 06: it's time for the GOP to spend time as back benchers and allow the Democrats to screw things up.
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And welcome back, Mark Silva.

Merry Christmas, Bruce, and a Happy New Year.

"[Jeb Bush} is the chief executive's chief executive, not the go-along, get-along sort of compromiser that life in a legislature requires."
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Interestingly, once upon a time Jeb was considered the family scion, "the smart one", the one to assume the mantle of president; while Dub'ya was "the dumb one", the non achiever who'd never amount to anything. What strange turns history makes.

Keeping with the Bruce tradition, a moronic comment is made. If you aren't going to contribute, Bruce, shut up in the New Year.

For a much better article on the same subject, see http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16847.html.

The Politico.com article quotes several Florida Republican leaders. Just goes to show that most non-Swamp journalists have no trouble finding Republicans, and no problem quoting Republicans.

Give it up already! Republicans will never have a chance w Bushes in tow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw9bxJb--3c

With reactionary conservatism. The Republican Party has become the party of dumb. They will deny it, but for years now, their candidates have played the dumb card. No matter what the question – George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, global warming, Freedom Fries, stem cell research, Dan Quayle, evolution, Star Wars – they’ve always come down on the dumb side of the answer.

The result has been a gradual dumbing down of the Republican party until the only places that really bought what John McCain was selling were places (the deep South) where poor people are still being duped into believeing that tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans is some how going to help them put food on their table, gas in their pickem'up truck and ammo for their 12 gauge shotgun.

Republicans prefer media outlets whose bias is toward dumb. Faux News leaps to mind of course, but there is also the "New York Post," "The Washington Times," the editorial page of "The Wall Street Journal," the "Pittsburg Tribune-Review," William Kristol of "The New York Times" of all places, and AM blowhard radio. Republican supporters all.

Any of these entities, given the choice, will take dumb over smart every time. Rush Limbaugh defended his title as the Prince of Dumb the other day by claiming that Barack Obama had caused the current economic mess.

"The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen," Limbaugh said on his radio show. That’s dumber than even William Kristol would go.

The GOP could start lurching back to smart in an effort to win back voters but it seems to be going the other way. They’re already talking up Sarah the Blunder Woman for president in 2012. Many smart conservatives – George Will, Colin Powell, Christopher Buckley, Chuck Hagel – are or already have, jumped ship.

Republican "leaders" will have to be content to win the dumbed down talking point games with their deadender followers rather than elections from now on. They can’t afford to lose any more true believers or their won't be anyone left in the party.

We have very, very *real* problems right now - this is no time for the usual idiotic Republican spin, petty politics or game playing. News flash - the majority of the American public with an IQ over 100 (most GOPer's don't qualify) are sick of it. We simply do not want to hear your trash anymore.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayt_SoGPZ6o
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"Keeping with the Bruce tradition, a moronic comment is made. If you aren't going to contribute, Bruce, shut up in the New Year."
Posted by: FuzzBall | December 27, 2008 12:05 PM
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I for one welcome Bruce's comments (and maybe I'm the only one). I often disagree with his politics, but his comments are never moronic. Snarkier than they need to be by half, of course, but never moronic. (Snarky can be fun, but only when it's not overdone.)
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BTW, by the word "contribute" you mean to say cheerleading for the Democrats, right?

It will be interesting and fun to watch as the GOP implodes on their way to being a regional party with pockets of strength outside the South – and unless they get their act together the South won't always be a haven for them either.

As long as the Republican party continues to offer huge outsized tax breaks for the filthy rich and nothing for everyone else, the extremist nuts will be the only one's left carrying the GOPer banner after 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhDc_EEDKaQ

After the complete denial and rejection of the GOP in two straight elections I find it disingenuous and childish but not surprising that they would spend all of their time bashing President-elect Obama and desperately trying to tie him to Blago/"dirty Chicago politics" etc, before he has even taken office. Where were these partisan hack Republicans when Bush and Cheney were busy spending every single waking day the last eight years running the constitution through a shredder? That's right, they were cheering them on. My days of caring what the Republicans think are OVER, they had their chance and they blew it. For the last two decades, the Republicans have steadily purged themselves of all moderates, of anyone who did not toe the party line, of anyone who did not support the party leaders with every fiber of their being. Under leaders like DeLay, Gingrich, Cheney, Bush, Rove, McConnell, Boehner, Rumsfeld and a dozen other of the top far-right powerbrokers, apostasy was ruthlessly punished. Moderates were primaried out, the religiously or socially tolerant were excoriated, the legislatively balanced were forced from their positions -- all in service to a supposed permanent ideological governance, one that valued ideological purity over all else. Over knowledge, over experience, over common sense, over the very fabric of the law -- the ideology of hard-right conservatism trumped it all. Toe the line, and you were granted jobs in the administration, or positions of leadership in Iraq, or plum committee assignments. Voice disapproval -- you were nothing. You woke up the next morning to a White House Press Secretary declaring that you were a disgruntled brat, one with emotional or mental impairments that were responsible for your pitiable desertion.

After twenty years of purging, all the Republicans have left is that hard-right extreme. They shoved everyone else out willingly: it seems hardly surprising that now, faced with the fruits of it all, they are finding that all constituencies of the nation that they sought to condemn, belittle or purge are no longer interested in supporting them now.

I have no particular interest in them learning this lesson, of course. As far as I am concerned the last thirty years have proven modern conservatism to be not just ill conceived, but paranoid, divisive, willfully incompetent, obtusely premised, and in sum utterly valueless to the nation -- a waste of political oxygen. Something to be burned at the stake, and the ashes scattered, never to be heard from again.

But I expect they will, in the next years, at least try to retool their party into one that at least pretends to be more tolerant of, well, anyone not fully immersed in the notion that Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan and James Dobson rule the universe. The coming bloodshed between the two factions -- conservative true believers who can look at the last eight years and see absolutely nothing worth doing differently, nothing but a smashing but sadly misunderstood success, VS those that truly wish to temper the party in an effort to regain at least some semblance of their former power -- will, no doubt, be a glorious thing to behold.

Get your popcorn ready!

So where are all those people complaining about the Obama's going to Hawaii? No problems with the Republicans hitting sunny Florida to lick their wounds?
What a surprise.

As for Jeb Bush, it's true--as a governor he just tried to bully the legislature and has no interest in compromise; but if he wants to run for Pres. at some point, he may feel the need to run for the Senate in 2010. ugh

"With reactionary conservatism. The Republican Party has..."
Posted by: Jim Greenwell | December 27, 2008 3:16 PM
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Jim, that's an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Conservatism is by it's very nature not reactionary, in fact ANTI reactionary... which is, I think, part of the point you were trying to make.

To: Jim Greenwell and Leo Deux:
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Please post something original. Your posts have already been posted on the Swamp or the DailyKos before - multiple times. Those of us who read these threads and constantly see the same old, unimaginative posts are getting a little tired of them. Furthermore, since your posts have already been posted before under other peoples’ names, you are either plagiarists or have gotten into the habit of reposting too many times under pseudonyms. The former is just despicable, and the latter is an annoying waste of time and bandwidth. It also shows that you are entirely incapable of original thought.
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Have a Happy New Year.
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P.S. - If you believe even a fraction of your own plagiarism/reposts, you are ignorant too.

At some point, probably during the Regan years, the Republican Party began to realize the need to control as much of the media for the purpose of propaganda. In the United States, it is almost impossible to control the media, given that it is so widespread, across so many different types of media, but you have to hand it to the Republicans, they managed to grab as big a chunk of the media as they could, in an effort to propagandize.

We saw lots of talk radio shows pop up, who's hosts were incredibly bias, making an effort to get their audiences worked up with misinformation and outright lies. We saw the creation of the FOX news network, as an attempt to get a bias news source on cable television. Many newspapers and magazines were gobbled up to add to the voice of the Republican Party. Conservative web sites were created that made no effort to hide their political slant. It was incredibly effective. People listened, and they actually began to believe the Republican Parties skewed sense of morality was normal. Their propaganda outlets told them to listen to other propaganda outlets as a means to verify the veracity of each and every lie. They spoke with a unified voice and the weakest of minds were drawn like moths to a flame.

Now somewhere in the process, something went wrong. The lemmings that listened to that talk radio began to take up the propagandizing themselves. Suddenly the Internet was filled with bigots proudly wearing their hatred on their sleeves like a swastika armband. These weak-minded fools thought they could help their cause by spreading the propaganda themselves, far and wide. Especially to people that did not agree with them. It didn't do them any good to propagandize to their own rank and file, they must bring more people under their hypnotic spell, or their movement will fail. And so the most impressionable and weak-minded Americans began repeating what they were told to say.

This is when the propagandists lost control of their own propaganda machine. Suddenly the issues that got the most attention were the most radical. The crazy Republican rank and file went to all sorts of non-political online sites and began to spew their hatred and political insanity. That's when something happened. Americans began to realize how wrong the Republicans were. The propaganda message was being shouted as loudly as they could shout it, and they shouted it all in unison, but those they yelled it at, questioned it. The American people did not want their government to be torturing people. They did not want their government to be spying on them. But propagandists do not listen, their job is to shout.

So the shouting continues, but the people clearly aren't listening anymore. They found this thing called the internet, and they could get opinions from many more sources than the Republican propaganda machine could control. They found the opinions outside the Republican propaganda machine were much more in-depth, much better thought out, and not just some silly slogan. The people woke up and exercised the power of democracy. We have experienced a reemergence of participatory democracy that has never been seen in my lifetime.

I don't know what the future holds for the rise of the internet participatory democracy, but I know the Republican Party is finished. They will continue to lose more and more elections because they will continue to spew mindless propaganda. After the Republican party has been rendered totally impotent, I suspect their will eventually be a division within the Democratic Party, some Democrats will participate in the internet community, and some will not. Those that do will get elected, they will be directly accountable to their constituents. Not like the shitty representation we have today. Democrats that do not adapt will be removed. Eventually the Democratic Party could split into a more traditional representation model, and a more Internet participatory representational model.

When your best political strategy is yet another Bush, your party (Republican) is in serious trouble.

They say that between George and Jeb, Jeb is the "smart one." But that's not exactly a huge compliment, given that W. is the competition.

Bush's are all the GOP has got.
The Republican party is really Sarah Palin's party: dimwitted, spiteful and piggishly greedy. However, they feel the need to put on some kind of face of respectability, which would be brother Jeb. The fact that they consider a Bush, any Bush, to be their face of respectability tells you that the rest of the party is a veritable freakshow, unfit to appear in public.

There's been much talk about what the Republican Party must do next. That it's "brand" is bankrupt and it's time to regroup and reposition. Being the generous bi-partisan patriot that I am and generally being hopeful that the moderates within the GOP will reclaim control of the parties future, I am hereby offering some free advice to the GOP on how to wage more effective campaigns in the future:

1. Find some less-polarizing mouthpieces than Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. They stir the pot, but not in that awesome Rachel Ray way.

2. Immediately distance yourself from Fox News. To be sure, there's nothing Fair and Balanced happenin' over there.

3. Stop being so partisan. Some things (global warming, supporting the troops) are black and white, not red or blue.

4. Stop being so hypocritical. You gotta practice what you preach, or you'll continue to have zero credibility.

5. Bone up on Separation of Church and State. The Founding Fathers gave it to us for a reason.

6. Accept that most Americans do not want you regulating what goes on in their personal lives and bedrooms. So (and take a deep breath now...) just accept the fact that abortion and gay relationships are here to stay.

7. Start truly thinking about the poor and middle class instead of just your own pocketbooks. Politics is more than just lowering taxes for the rich. Whatever happened to your big tent?

8. Stop spying on and torturing people. That's not very nice.

9. Don't send our troops to die in battle unless you really know what the heck you're talking about.

10. Start agreeing with Democrats that Bush 43 is the worst president in history. Trust me, it's really fun when 99% of the world agrees with you.

11. You might also want to reconsider pairing up guys named Dick and Bush. Those two things always lead to trouble.

12. Stay away from angry, sarcastic, condescending candidates. Voters prefer humility, respect and class from their presidents.

13. Nominate a candidate who is intelligent, curious and articulate. The whole "have a beer with the guy" thing is so passe. The bar's officially closed.

14. Pay more attention to people like Mitt Romney. Your traditional "base" has shrunk to the size of a pimple on an elephant's butt. Romney, with his fiscal conservatism and moderate social positions, represents your future even if he is flip-flopping on every issue like a fish out of water.

15. When Americans are facing the worst economic crisis in 75 years, terrified for their jobs, homes and savings, do not obsess for the final months of your campaign that your opponent (a) pals around with terrorists, (b) has a half-Aunt who may or may not be an illegal alien, and (c) is both an elitist and a socialist. This kinda makes voters feel like you're utterly clueless about the issues most important to them.

16. Stop playing so damned dirty. It clearly doesn't work anymore.

17. If you see Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt coming down the street, run the other way.

18. No matter how strong the temptation, do not make as a centerpiece of your campaigns the support of cartoon-like characters like Joe the Plumber, Ed the Dairy Man, Doug the Barber, Tito the Builder, Christine the Florist, Phil the Bricklayer, Cindy the Citizen, Rose the Teacher, Corina the Nurse, Vicki the Realtor or Clark the Cook. This cheap tactic turns your campaign into Sesame Street, and toddlers don't vote.

19. For what it's worth, unmarried teenage pregnancies are nothing to be proud of, especially when you're the Family Values party.

20. And for God's sake, whatever you do, do not put a crazy, moose hunting, blunder woman from Alaska on your ticket ever again, especially when the person at the top of your ticket is a 72-year-old cancer survivor. Americans want a vice-president who can name the countries in North America and knows that Africa is a continent not a country. They want someone smart and qualified... like Dan Quayle.

I know this is asking a lot of our Republican friends but the world needs you to put down your pitch forks and put on your thinking caps. There are many important issues that we need to address and as much as I personally would like to see the Republican party fail and fall into the abyss of irrelevence, I know it that it wouldn't be a good thing for our country.

Posted by: John W. | December 27, 2008 10:29 PM
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Leo Deux and Jim Greenwell is your old friend John E. So is JM and allardice. On other threads, John E goes by Change We Do Believe In, E=mc2 and too many other post names to count.
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He's easy to recognize when you bear in mind that he likes to do that and you're attuned to his written "voice". He posts the same things all day and using the exact same phraseology, the same grammatical errors and the same lack of organization. Why? I guess, because he thinks people will be fooled into believing there's a groundswell supporting his "thinking".
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An original thought from the many faces of John E? Forget it.

Posted by: John W. | December 27, 2008 10:29 PM
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Your old friend MJ also goes by the names Juanito and Leo T and too many other post names to count.
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He's easy to recognize when you bear in mind that he likes to do that and you're attuned to his written "voice". He posts the same things all day and using the exact same phraseology, the same grammatical errors and the same lack of organization. Why? I guess, because he thinks people will be fooled into believing there's a groundswell supporting his "thinking".
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An original thought from the many faces of MJ? Forget it.

Posted by: Vic | December 28, 2008 12:13 PM
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Here's an interesting development: John E's fevered mind has split Juanito Leo (which he used to call me) into two separate imaginary "people". You haven't ranted about your boogey man Juanito Leo in quite a while now, John E. I confess I'd forgotten about him.. uh, them? ...whatever.
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And your last post was another impressive demonstration of your copy-and-paste skills. Now you can go back to YouTube and watch your Hannah Montana videos.

Posted by: civil war guy | December 28, 2008 5:20 AM
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Some very good points there. Some less so. Number 11 was funny. Anyway, congratulations for not celebrating the fantasy of a one party state, like some here.
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Yes, America need at LEAST two parties. I wish we had more, and proportional representation like most of the world's democracies, but that's a different conversation.

Posted by: Juanito | December 28, 2008 3:10 AM
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Hey... you're really MJ! ...Uh, no wait. I'm MJ. Never mind.

And your last post was another impressive demonstration of your copy-and-paste skills. Now you can go back to YouTube and watch your Hannah Montana videos.

Posted by: MJ | December 28, 2008 12:30 PM

MJ transcript:
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"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Hopefully, they give the Republican party a decent and permanent burial! They never do anything for our nation they usually do something TO this nation. Say bye! whiteagle38