King Cotton: Party Like It's 1862 -- UPDATE

The last time a mob of seditious Conservatives goofs tried to nullify the foreign policy of the United States government and cut a separate-but-equal deal with foreign powers on behalf of their government they called themselves Confederate States of America.

And, after much backing-and-forthing (and arm-bending by the Lincoln administration) England decided to tell them to go piss up a rope:

"Her Majesty's government heard the other day that the Confederate States have issued letters of marque, and to-day we have heard that it is intended there shall be a blockade of all the ports of the Southern States ;" and after stating that some of the questions had been submitted to the law-officers of the Crown, he said: " We have not been involved in any way in that contest, by any act or giving any advice in the matter, and, for God's sake, let us, if possible, keep out of it."

-- Foreign Minister Lord John Russell

Every other major power followed suit, declining to take sides in what was clearly America's internal problem.

Today these goofs call themselves Republicans or Tea Partiers or Independents or Constitutional Conservatives or Libertarians or whatever, depending on which way the wind is blowing and how strong the reek is coming off of their latest disaster, but here we are, once again met on yet another  battlefield of this country's endless struggle between the shallow, paranoid, racist end of America's gene pool, and the rest of us:

...

While Cotton's letter created divisions on the margins for the Republican Party, within Democratic circles there was uniform disdain, bordering on disgust.

Officials at the White House and the State Department confirmed to HuffPost that the freshman senator did not give them advance warning that he would be reaching out on congressional Republicans' behalf to a foreign government. They did not comment on whether Cotton's move violated the Logan Act, which prohibits unauthorized Americans from negotiating with foreign governments in relation to U.S. policy, but that suggestion has been floated in social media. Instead, they treated the letter as a dangerous piece of naivete.

"The erroneous and misconceived claims in this letter put at risk the basic conduct of American foreign policy, ignoring over two centuries of precedent and the ability of any President of the United States to secure political commitments or reach agreements with other nations," a State Department official told HuffPost in an email Monday afternoon.

"This letter is not a serious foreign policy critique," the official concluded. "It is an effort to score political points in ways that are profoundly dangerous.”

...

And once again, they will lose.  

Just as they lost in 1865.  In 1964.  In 2008.

But while their puppeteers and paymasters always have darker and more explicitly fascistic designs, for the Base, winning and then actually governing has never really been the point.  Humiliating the Kenyan Usurper at all costs, stomping the moochers, making Liberals cry and then rending the country ungovernable on purpose so that something something Freedumb! is as far as their little lizard brains can travel.

Which is why it is pointless to try and reason with them.


UPDATE:

I almost forgot to mention this modern example of Republican treachery from the godfather of the Southern Strategy himself:

Did Richard Nixon’s campaign conspire to scuttle the Vietnam War peace talks on the eve of the 1968 election to capture him the presidency?

Absolutely, says Tom Charles Huston, the author of a comprehensive, still-secret report he prepared as a White House aide to Nixon. In one of 10 oral histories conducted by the National Archives and opened last week, Huston says “there is no question” that Nixon campaign aides sent a message to the South Vietnamese government, promising better terms if it obstructed the talks, and helped Nixon get elected.

Nixon’s campaign manager, John Mitchell, “was directly involved,” Huston tells interviewer Timothy Naftali. And while “there is no evidence that I found” that Nixon participated, it is “inconceivable to me,” says Huston, that Mitchell “acted on his own initiative.”

Huston’s comments—transcribed and publishedon the web site of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California on Wednesday—are the latest twist in a longstanding tale of political skullduggery involving Nixon and his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson. It is a tale that features a secret “X-file,” a mysterious “Dragon Lady” and reports of wiretaps and bugging that has captured the imagination of scholars and conspiracy theorists for half a century.

Like many of Nixon’s actions, this particular transgression was born of paranoia. As the 1968 election approached, Nixon and his aides feared that Johnson would try to help the Democratic nominee—Vice President Hubert Humphrey—by staging an October surprise. When LBJ announced to the nation, just days before the balloting, that he was calling a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam to help fuel progress in ongoing peace talks, the Republicans thought their fears were realized.

Anna Chennault, a Republican activist with ties to the South Vietnamese government, sent word to Saigon that it would get better terms if Humphrey lost and Nixon took office, the FBI would discover. The South Vietnamese dragged their feet, infuriating LBJ who, in a taped conversation released by the Johnson presidential library several years ago, can be heard denouncing Nixon for “treason.”
...

This is who they are.

This is how they roll.

And they will never stop until they are forced to stop.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/yes-nixon-scuttled-the-vietnam-peace-talks-107623.html#ixzz3U3VqxEJ5