Hey c'mon errybuddy! Less go. Less go down t' the quad n' Stop Trump. Errybuddy's doin' it!
No. Nobody's doing it. But paunchy old guys stumbling across the political stage with their asses out thinking they're leading a movement is kinda hilarious, so by all means, Head For The Quad!
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It seems almost as if Donald Trump, on a bet, set out to prove that Larry, Moe, and Curly cannot be transformed into well-bred gentlemen, and we are now at the point where the entire party has degenerated into a huge pie-throwing brawl.
Quote;
"we are now at the point where the entire party has degenerated into a huge pie-throwing brawl."
I might have to disagree with this quote. You see I have witnessed what you described of the GOP for quite some time. Go back to Palin as VP. The GW primary of outright trashing John McCain (not that there there isn't enough McCain trash for a dumpster fire).
The Herman Cain's, Santorum's, Stepford Bachmanns.
John Birch rise to Tea Party republican office holders.
IThe prosecution rests your honor.
What we are witnessing now is the inevitable denouement of the "Reagan Revolution". Nixon was the last Republican President to do something positive with government domestically even if he was reluctantly shoved there by the Democrats. Of course, like all Republican Presidents before him except for TR and Ike (who was not really a Republican), he was corrupt and venal because Republicans truly believe the raison d'etre for government is to serve the interests of the wealthy. The Southern Strategy, also begun by Nixon involved enlisting racist, ignorant, religious rubes and working class people into a Base that previously had been mainly businessmen Midwestern farmers and suburban professionals. So dog whistles were enlisted and states rights invoked during campaigns to please the new part of the Base and then once-elected officials pivoted to the traditional part of the Base with tax cuts, deregulation, exporting jobs and all the rest. This kind of contradiction couldn't go on forever and, of course, it didn't. (And it has nothing to do with DFB spending more time at Applebee's with the prols.). So here we are now with the Mittbot, who represents the Old Base endorsing one of the two remaining candidates -and it's the one that actually represents the the New Base that he actually detests because of his rage against Trump who actually is a part of the Old Base. Ha-ha.
and now that they have attracted all those they wanted to attract, they don't want them. the Republicans are now setting out to subvert democracy. (O.K. I can't stand Trump and he's an idiot, just so we're clear)
It just dawned on me (I admit I'm slow on the uptake sometimes) that the oligarchs are going to be the biggest losers of this insanity. In a few months they'll have lost control of SCOTUS, face a probable 16 consecutive years of a democratic WH, and likely lose the senate too. Admittedly, their money goes a long way in the states, especially with scientific gerrymandering. But for the amount they have spent, the network they have built, Their takeover of the GOP looks like business Drumpf would have pulled, a total flop.
An unintended consequence of the vulgar yam's rise to power.
I'm enjoying the fire-hose feed of high-octane, Light Sweet Schadenfreude as much as anyone (really; if I had a wine cellar, I'd want to store up bottles of Elephant Tears and barrels of Hard Both-Cider), but I do have a worry.
Scenario: The DFB & Co. "Hitler Reacts"...re-enactment (Officer: "Sir, we've lost communications with Field Marshal Mittens' forces. He won't be able to halt the Trumpanzer advance into Cleveland." DFB: *reaches for his glasses with a shaking hand...*) ends as expected. Hillary moves to the Right in order to scoop up the newly disenfranchised Establishment Rockefeller Republicans. After all, these guys have money and influence...and money, lots and lots of money. And we Dirty Fucking Hippies don't.
Result: A (T)Rump party of the White Far Right with a faction in Congress and control of local and state governments in the Grey States (because, let's face it, Red isn't really their color), but insufficient national strength to win a Presidency; a larger, but more conservative Democratic Party that can dominate the Presidency, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and perhaps the House if enough sitting Republicans can be persuaded to defect to the Democrats...and us Progressives kicked to the curb because Hillary's Democratic Party can replace us with "moderate" DFB-type Republicans.
I really hope that's not something that can happen as a result of all this...
Although I am as pleased as anyone by the spectacle of our Oligarchs becoming incensed that one of their number hijacked their rigged game, I would not count them out. After all, having wrecked the world economy and plunged the U.S. in 2008 into the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, they made a remarkable comeback in the mid-term elections of 2010. Obama and the Democrats made mistakes, to be sure, but I persist in thinking that the decisive element in the 2010 elections was the Oligarchic propaganda machine, which galvanized the Right and discouraged turnout on the Left (which had been so instrumental in the 2006 and 2008 elections). Come November, the Oligarchs will put their propaganda machine into the shop for its periodic tune-up, giving the President-elect the two-week post-election "honeymoon" they've alloted to Democrats, and the machine will come back out firing on all cylinders as the Cabinet nominees and other major appointments of the President-elect are brought under the barrage of nonsense aimed at crippling the new Administration and bending its policies rightwards before negotiations with the reduced Republican majority in the House of Representatives even begin. So as much fun as it's been watching the usually depressingly monolithic radical Right in disarray, we still have a long road ahead of us in the struggle to win our country back.
@lordprivyseal: even if your worst-case scenario comes true, that's 10 times better than the alternative. I voted for Bernie in the primaries, but have no hesitation pulling the lever for Clinton in the general. You want Cruz or Trump picking the next Justice? aww hell nah, that's reason enough right there.
Even if things don't move forward one inch during a Clinton presidency, that beats things sliding backwards with a republican. Obama's 7 years have been a moderate, slow and steady move in the right direction (after having to curtail things from speedily going in the wrong direction), and that's the best we can realistically expect. Slow and steady, moderate increments. Look at what we're dealing with here, a completely unhinged right, and a complicit in the bargain press. I freaked out for about the first three years of Obama's presidency, like what are you doing?!, but as it turns out, he really was playing 17th dimensional chess. He steadily, slowly, oh so slowly, tied the g.o.p.'s dick into a knot, like some years-long tai chi slow play. And you would want to not press the advantage, and not vote Clinton after all that?
Your modern Republican mainstream representative in Congress at the present moment from last week's hearings on Flint, Representative Buddy Carter, Republican, Georgia:
“The law?” Carter replied, contemptuously. “The law? I don’t think anybody here cares about the law.”
"Even if things don't move forward one inch during a Clinton presidency, that beats things sliding backwards with a republican."
Or, to paraphrase what my friend Phil Sandifer said on his Tumblr, given a choice between a Democratic candidate, who will at least slow (and might even start to reverse) the trends leading to the Anthropocene extinction, and a Republican candidate, who will accelerate them, the choice is pretty clear. (Actually, he considers the real choice even clearer, but acknowledges that not everybody is ready to give up on electoral politics just yet and that there are even understandable reasons to prefer them to a revolution.)
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