Barack WHO?

You’d think the US Executives, Legislators and Judges could come up with a rotating safeword or some such to help ascertain identities over the phone.
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“Hello, the Speaker crosses at midnight.”
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“Only if she’s wearing the blue cashmere dress.”
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“Donkeys run where elephants gazed.”
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“Why, hello, Mr. President!”

he was either “very gracious” to reach across the aisle by contacting her, or “had run out of folks to call, if you are truly calling me.”

Yet another person refusing to take Obama at his word and projecting their own personality on the Mirror in Chief!

How civility has degenerated, during at least the last 8 years, maybe well before that. Imagine a Democratic President-elect calling a Republican. And Paul, she needs to apologize for that “either-or.” Gosh, he couldn’t possibly have been gracious, could he?

Those republicans are a paranoid bunch. You can’t show any “common courtesy” otherwise you are cast out by the cult.
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I can’t blame her for not wanting to get sucked in by a couple of jocks at a radio station.
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She could’ve been more gracious…how many Rahm Emmanuel impressionists are there, anyway? Call Rich Little….

You know, I think that a lot of the republicans have been a little taken back by the efforts Obama has been making to reach out to them and treat them like adults and with respect. This is of course after being treated with nothing more than contempt by the present administration for the last 8 years. I happen to have seen this particular congresswoman several times on Real Time where she is a frequent guest and often out numbered in her view point. While I don’t agree with her view points at all, I do respect the fact that she is willing to express them in a setting where she knows most are not going to agree with her.

“common courtesy”=Weakness to many on the right.

PNNTO: To the cult, she’s still a true believer. To rest of the population, she’s an uncouth boor, who has no respect for Obama nor the the office to which he has been elected.
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Let’s face it, Republicans are bullies who will say, or do anything to get elected. It’s been that way for almost 100 years. Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, McCarthy, Nixon, Gingrich, Atwater, Rove, Bushes I and II, McCain, Palin, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

Andy read Neal Gabler’s story from the LATimes when you get a chance.
About the McCarthy gene that runs through that party.
When I link my comment gets “disappeared”

He didn’t say, “3 December,” at the beginning of the call so she thought he was a Terminator. The bit about being punked by radio jocks was just a cover.

JNS on MSNBC with Schuster talking about the big 3 bailout. A first for her, I think. You go girl.

Paranoid much. Andy has it right, paranoia is a/the defining characteristic of the right. PNNTO’s link: The GOP’s McCarthy gene Think Goldwater is the father of conservatism? Think again.

PNNTO, my link to Gabler link got thru. But when I link to Maddow I get disappeared.
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Hmmmm.

Speaking of Maddow, here she is on Bush’s legacy.

It’s really true. I get disappeared whenever I link to Maddow. But other links get through fine. Can anyone else link to Maddow?

wvng – what link are you trying to embed?

PNNTO: did you see this in the NY Times?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/opinion/04seife.html?ref=opinion

I’m going to cut her some slack regarding “graciousness.” If I were a congressman outside of the highest ranges of the pecking order, I’d also be kind of curious why the president-elect would call me. Something along the lines of, “I’m just a peon – what do you want with me?”
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But I tend to be defensive, and I’d be leery of being scammed, too.
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Wouldn’t caller ID help, though?

kathy, the High Sheriffs decided to make a liar of me by approving my link to Maddow at #12. And they cleverly put a delay on posting #12 until I sent #13 to make me look not just like a liar but also an idiot. /shame
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It’s a great link, btw.

KT here–

PD: Re comment #2: I think you are being uncharitable. She was embarrassed, and trying to make a self-effacing joke.

Nice Guy, she knows Rahm. She works with him, she has, presumably, talked to him.

KT here–

Mr. Nice Guy: Wonder what Barack Obama’s caller ID says? I know whenever I get a call from anyone who works at the New York Times, it pops up as 1111111111111

KT here–

Also, any call from the White House comes up as 202 and nothing else.

Interesting link Andy thanks. My nephew is currently disenfranchised. He voted absentee from college. He filled out the ballot and attendant forms correctly but the return envelope from the county had the district and precinct reversed (i.e. District 3 Precinct 2 instead of 2 and 3) so he was disqualified for voting out of the wrong precinct.
Human error but not by the voter.
His first presidential election and he is pretty angry. I don’t blame him.

KT — You read her words in print and they convey a different tone that if you heard them out loud. I’ll stipulate your point.

KT – Comments 20 and 21: Unless Obama was calling using his Blackberry.

She’s not exactly known here in South Florida as the sharpest knife in the drawer, and we have a lot of “wacky” hispanic morning shows, so I’m inclined to take her at her word.

Andy from MA: Let’s face it, Republicans are bullies who will say, or do anything to get elected.

How does this help? It’s surely not true. Some Republicans are bullies; some Democrats are bullies. We can’t expect President Obama to change the tone if we’re not willing to help.

Did Robert Sullivan change his name?

Georgiac: It’s surely not true? I respectfully agree to disagree with you. You didn’t watch the same presidential election I watched.

pnnto – speaking of which, any theories why we’ve lost most of those on the right who popped in at least occasionally during the campaign? No stomach for discourse over issues? Embarrassed by being wrong about so many things they said? (But even Rusty commented again a couple of times). I frankly miss having a wider spectrum of opinions here.

She is quoted in the Miami Herald as saying she feels like a “bozo.” Given the Palin thing and the fact that there are similar pranksters in South Florida, I’d take her at her word. It was embarrassing.
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The interesting thing is, Obama is clearly reaching out to back-benchers on both sides of the aisle in his courtesy calls. He clearly wants to start off on a good foot, as opposed to the high-handed way Bush approached Congress. I’ll bet Ros-Lehtinen never got a call from GWB – unless it was a prank call.

Beats me Kathy. I know 4 years ago the last thing I wanted right after the election was political talk.
But I agree with you about the lack of wider opinions. Less the sillier commenters than say Murphy who, when he wasn’t being “provocative” Hillary is voting for McCain, had pretty good insight.

@Andy #15: Great link. We’d like to measure voter preference with a micrometer, but all we’ve got are cubits. Does highlight the need for clerks and elections commissions to keep improving. Error can be minimized, but it will never be equal to zero.
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Which, BTW, is the book that Seife wrote: “Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea”. Wonderful read for math geeks.

Andy, Georgiac: I think qualifiers are generally helpful, just as “you always” and “you never” are death in relationships. It seems pretty clear to me that there are more Republicans than Democrats who have clung to the old Rovian/Atwater/Nixon model of personal destruction, but it’s not as if no Democrat ever engages in distortions or lies. During the Democratic primary many of those of us who supported Obama were occasionally outraged by the Clinton camp, and vice versa. POV matters a lot here. So I’m with Georgiac on this one.
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In fact, my town voted two Democrats into the state legislature, but the one Republican candidate could not have been more courteous in his campaigning, or more gracious in his defeat. It’s a big world.

Andy & georgiac – While I don’t think “all Republicans are bullies” they do seem to have more than their fair share these days. It will be interesting to see how that plays out now that they are out of power. bullies don’t do well as the underdog.
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On the other hand, I can’t think of a Democratic “bully” off the top of my head. That, too, will probably change, although the line from the top is encouraging.

I guess in light of what I wrote at 33, I have to take back my criticism of R-L in comment 3. I’ll accept the consensus view that she was being funny.

Of course the irony is that now Ileana’s made herself a huge target for prank callers.

Listening to the Detroit hearings, and the commentary. I’m interested to know what you all think about what seems to be the Republican view of “to Hell with Detroit.” I’m wondering how this would help them win back the constituencies they lost in November.

Well, to be fair, over 60% of the country is against bailing out the big 3. Also – I’m not sure this can be characterized as a “Republican view,” many liberals are against the bailout as well. It seems like centerists/labor dems are the for-side and fiscal conservatives/green dems are the con-side.

KT, OT, but I learned on Maddow last night that bars, nightclubs and restaurants will be able to stay open 24 hours a day four days around the inauguration. So the Swamplander get together might could get a bit rowdy.

I suspect that more people are noticing the different standard and treatment that Big 3 get as opposed to Wall Street than is being recognized by the politicans and certainly the media.

In Scoundrel Times, Lillian Hellman wrote that McCarthy ate a stick of butter a day to “coat his stomach” so he could drink more.

The Red Scare morphed into anti-socialism morphed into deregulatory insanity… so McCarthy sowed the seeds, in my book, of our current crop of crisises.

Steve Benen tells me: Late yesterday, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen issued a statement on the amusing incident, touting Obama’s graciousness. She spelled the president-elect’s name wrong, and then also misspelled Rahm Emanuel’s name, twice.

MSNBC putting a D in front of R-L’s name just now. Said she only responded to the call when a “fellow Democrat” called to tell her it was legitimate. Guess those staff cuts are really getting to them. If they’re not careful they’ll turn into Fox.

As for this Big 3 thing, one of the things that troubles me is that according to the restructuring plans the companies have submitted, the cost cutting will start with reducing their labor force anyway. So this bailout is really not about saving rank-and-file jobs.
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Polls are showing that most Americans are opposed to any bailout. For the people who are for it, I wonder if people would feel differently if they were asked to directly write checks to Detroit. For instance, if each of us were asked to pay $1000 directly from our checking accounts in order to save the Big 3, I wonder how many of us would be willing to.
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The other last thought is even though the money the government gave to AIG and Citi and the investment banks were mind-numbingly large, they did get some equity in the deal. Preferred with a high interest dividend, plus warrants in many cases. But the auto guys want loans but no equity or other return. Once the loans are made, the government are stuck bailing them out potentially forever for fear that those loans never gets paid back.
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I guess I’m wondering why the only choices are writing the auto industry a check for cash. Instead, why don’t they have a sales/leasing agreement in which the government buys/leases 100,000 cars? Then at least the government gets something while Detroit gets the money and well as get rid of some of their excess inventory and buys them a little time to reduce their capacity. The bought cars can then be assigned to government employees or something.
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I don’t know if that is actually a good idea, but I’m surprised that there isn’t some brainstorming of alternate ideas than just writing Detroit a check.

any theories why we’ve lost most of those on the right who popped in at least occasionally during the campaign?
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I co-founded a pre-blog discussion area. (Still up at http://www.themote.com) It was a descendant of Slate’s first The Fray implementation and did have a variety of views for some time. Some future bloggers, David Niewart and Ace of Spades, for example, posted regularly there. Thoughtful ones from the right, in addition to Ace and a couple of his performance art ilk.
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But as it became clear that there were no WMD, they just went away, one by one.
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What makes it worse is that they live by ridicule,and are therefore particularly afraid of it. Laughing and pointing drives them nuts. And since they have nothing substantive to say, well, they are kinda stuck.

KT: Yeah, what’s the story on the Time-sponsored SwampRat Rendezvous at the inauguration? I haven’t seen any official notices on schedules, bands to play, where to pick up the tickets for the free drinks, etc.
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Warning: this post may contain varying degrees of facetiousness.

Off topic.
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So I went back to visit the Mote. I am indeed still moderating the American Politics thread. But there was a new thread that I thought might interest the education buffs. It’s essentially a personal blog of someone starting out as a teacher, drama and some English. I thought some of the education/teacher folks might be interested.
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http://www.themote.com/viewThread.asp?thread=169&First=1

Good god.
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I always knew she was dumb as a stump, but DAAAAMNNN!

@KT
I stand corrected. As always, its hard to convety in print the full effect of the spoken word. That’s why I retain the annoying tendency to overuse CAPS and italics and exclamations!

and smileys

Obama – once he got through – should have asked her if she had Prince Albert in a can, then giggled and hung up.

jay: “Laughing and pointing drives them nuts. And since they have nothing substantive to say, well, they are kinda stuck.”
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Oh come on jay, lack of substance has never stopped them before. Why, here’s one of their favorite targets now: I’ve been ruminating over economic prospects for next year, and I’m getting scared.
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The shrill one has always been good for a RW laugh.

any theories why we’ve lost most of those on the right who popped in at least occasionally during the campaign?
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They hate that they were wrong. To have to admit it would be unbearable. And Jay’s right, they can’t stand to be mocked – it sends them into an apoplectic rage. It’s a pity – because I enjoy mocking them.

Jay, maybe my “Captain Obvious” alter-ego is filling in while my brain is on vacation, but your description sounds like textbook bully. I prefer “many shades of gray” over “black and white,” but in this past election, and on this forum, it seemed like the number of Repugs that behaved decently were few in number, tipping the comparison precariously toward “black and white.”
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Oh, and textee is still around.

But I tend to be defensive, and I’d be leery of being scammed, too.
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Jeez, how about you have your assistant call the transition office and find out if the call is for real? None of this is that hard. She’s an idiot.

Thanks for the Seife link, Andy. My oped page was unreadable today, because of a printing failure.
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There’s one thing that’s misleading about the oped, IMO. There’s nothing special about votes here. You can’t count 2.9 million anythings to the nearest 100 and get the same number every time. You couldn’t count 2.9 million go stones just about evenly divided between black and white and the same two numbers every time.
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MPR posted 10 or a dozen examples of challenged ballots, including the lizard people guy (he wrote in lizard people at the bottom of each candidate list, and filled in a little dot he made. Didn’t even use the write-in slot.) I found only one of them ambiguous.
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It’s hard to swallow, but the right way to end the senatorial race between Mr. Coleman and Mr. Franken will be to flip a coin.
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If this were for sheriff, I’d agree. But the Senate decides who to seat in disputed elections. If the republicans had a 57-42 majority, I know who’d win this race.

On the general topic of RW stupidity, here’s Saxby: He lauded Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) efforts on his behalf, and told Beck that he would push moderate Republicans to move rightward:
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Interesting selective process they have chosen.

This post from Greenwald made me gag a little. It’s like the Habsburgs, but without Habsburg Jaw. Yet.

It’s hard to swallow, but the right way to end the senatorial race between Mr. Coleman and Mr. Franken will be to flip a coin.
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I agree with jay at #55. I propose swords. Or one-liners.

Oh come on jay, lack of substance has never stopped them before.
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My point is that they got no ridicule ammo left, and since there’s no substance to turn to, they’ve got no material. Wait ’til some wingnut drums up some scandal–maybe the stuff CNN has been running an Napolitano may serve. They’ll be back then.

They already have the coin they will be using
http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2008/12/04/5002/ny_times_minnesota_recount_doomed

Oh, I do second the recommendation of Seife’s book about zero. It’s very good.

jay, here’s some material for them: Fun times — the chairman of the Republican National Committee is trying to argue that GOP Senator Saxby Chambliss’ victory in the hard-fought Georgia runoff is proof that Barack Obama doesn’t have a national mandate.
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Oh wait, no substance there either: So when the GOP crows about their ‘big victory,’ they should keep in mind that they won where they were supposed to win, and that the flip-side of denying Democrats a 60-vote majority is that with Georgia in the bag, Republicans now hold just 41 seats.
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In the end, whether the repugs have material or not depends nearly entirely on the role the msm and the chattering classes choose to play. And, considering that they pretty generally consider all politics to be a game, it is not hard to imagine what that role will be. Because this woman is still on my teevee:
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I actually happen to know people who need government, and so they would care more about the programs, and [less] about the things we kind of make fun of…But as sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us.

More evidence that the selective pressure in repuglican circles is for idiots: Sanford isn’t just some random conservative blowhard, ranting at the end of a bar; he’s a governor and alleged "rising star" in Republican politics. That he has no idea what he’s talking about is apparently inconsequential.

Jayack – I know you’ve suggested before that RW’s have nothing substantive to say, but that’s so depressing if true that it’s hard to believe.
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This reminds me that reading Sanford’s piece this week about how the Republicans can win again if they just stop being hypocritical (well, it would probably help) about their conservative principles just stunned me. Among other things, he seemed to be inevitably implying that old white guys are either the most hypocritical themselves, or the least able to spot hypocrisy. A wishful thinking essay unattached to demographic reality.

Kathy, read my link at #63 on Sanford and economics. Their core problem as a party is that they have relentlessly scrubbed anyone from their ranks who considers issues outside of a very restricted ideological box. And much of the “thinking” that occurs within that box is, by necessity, delusional.

Kathy: in my post @ #6 I did identify republicans by name who IMHO would do or say anything to be elected and were bullies. I didn’t say ALL republicans.

kathy, seriously: did we see anything from the Repugs in this last election that could not be placed in one of these categories:
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- hate
- fear
- greed?
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Have we seen anything since the election that would fall outside of those three?

I know you’ve suggested before that RW’s have nothing substantive to say, but that’s so depressing if true that it’s hard to believe.
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Bruce Fein. John Cole. Gregory Djerejian. People like that.
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They’ve either switched sides or gone apolitical. It’ll be interesting to see whether reality is a wedge issue that tears the Republicans apart or not. Palin represents the Know Nothing wing. We’ll see whether Obama’s bringing the realists inside the tent discredits the nativist mouth-breathers, or the Washington insiders with the mainstream republicans.
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This is another version of the republican death spiral question.

wvng, Pawlenty is saying the exact same thing in Minnesota. He is beholden to the Taxpayers League which is the Minnesota version of the Glub for Growth.
He plays to the simpleton vote.

Continuing the #65 thought, it is important to remember that senators with Sanford’s “understanding” of macroeconomic principles still have 41 votes in the Senate. Does anyone out there think that they won’t try to obstruct a meaningful stimulus plan? Does anyone think that Reid will force them into a real filibuster?

jay: “We’ll see whether Obama’s bringing the realists inside the tent discredits the nativist mouth-breathers.” Sully had a great post about that the other day.
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Obama is intent on co-opting the realist right for the Democratic party in foreign affairs. It’s as shrewd a strategy as it is politically lethal. And exactly what I expected. With any luck, it will prompt eventually a reform on the right in response. Buh-bye, Kristol and Kagan? I fear the GOP will need another electoral drubbing before it gets that message.

When you have had a tremendously successful formula for winning elections since WWII, you don’t need to generate ideas or strategy to support your cause, you just follow the tactics of the campaign.
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Those tactics where/are to lie and smear the other candidate, instill fear in the electorate and label people.
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Those tactics have been successful. Until the last election.
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Like a football coach who has a successful running team, he’ll call the same play over and over until the other team stops them.
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Obama stopped the Republicans. The only problem is they have a 60 year game plan with only one play. Along with a really poor track record on governing the country.

Does anyone out there think that they won’t try to obstruct a meaningful stimulus plan?
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I don’t think they will have the votes to obstruct.
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Does anyone think that Reid will force them into a real filibuster?
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Yes, I do think Reid will manage the Senate very differently. I continue to hold with my theory that Reid did not try very hard to stop the Republicans from taking ownership of unpopular positions in the last congressional session.

Along with a really poor track record on governing the country.
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Part of that one play in the playbook was blaming the part of the government they did not control for their failures. No can do, no more.

wvng, if you’re a realist than you are not a member of the true believer cult that the RW has become. You become an outcast (i.e., Christopher Buckley, Kathleen Parker).
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I’d love an operational definition of who/what a member of the a realistic right is?

wvng-
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Yeah, that’s my point and may be the strategy. The risk is that it rehabilitates the brand, and, as KT has predicted, opens up the possibility of Republican governors reconstructing the party.

Jayackroyd, they will continue to flog that dead horse as the party of personal non-responsibility.
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You know McCain seemed so incredulous that the winning tactics weren’t working in the 2008 election, particularly when those same tactics worked very effectively against him in 2000.

@wvng – being in South Carolina (Our Motto: Still too big for an insane asylum, but looking into ceding a couple of counties to North Carolina!) I have been subjected to Sanford’s nitwitocracy for some time. When I saw his name being spouted as a possible VP candidate, I thought there was no way they’d pick someone that stupid. That they went with someone stupider surprised me, but I guess I was still right.
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Remember, one of our Senators is Jim DeMint a.k.a. Jim Demented, who’s only kept from being the craziest right winger in the Senate by the presence of Tom “Lesbians are Skulking in Our Women’s Restrooms” Coburn.

jay: “I continue to hold with my theory that Reid did not try very hard to stop the Republicans from taking ownership of unpopular positions in the last congressional session.” No, he did not, but he utterly failed to force the media frame that the repugs were obstructing legislation that would help the American people, versus the headlines we actually saw: “Sissy Dems cave to weak republicans again.”
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I hope you are right that Reid will prove a stronger leader now. I’m sure we have a strong leader in the WH.
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And I so hope KT gets to cover a filibuster.

jay: “I continue to hold with my theory that Reid did not try very hard to stop the Republicans from taking ownership of unpopular positions in the last congressional session.” No, he did not, but he utterly failed to force the media frame that the repugs were obstructing legislation that would help the American people, versus the headlines we actually saw: “Sissy Dems cave to weak republicans again.”
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I hope you are right that Reid will prove a stronger leader now. I’m sure we have a strong leader in the WH.
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And I so hope KT gets to cover a filibuster.

“Does anyone out there think that they won’t try to obstruct a meaningful stimulus plan? Does anyone think that Reid will force them into a real filibuster?”
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No more excuses. Not saying that is what you are saying but it is long past time to expect results.
2006 didn’t produce nearly enough, for many reasons given. Enough.

wvng – here’s the Politico article by Sanford I was referring to: “What’s next for the GOP?”
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15980.html
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Andy – I’ll stand corrected on your comment at #6
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Mr Nice Guy – how about Snowe, Collins, Lugar. And then there’s all the pundits who have been presently surprised (because, of course, they didn’t actually listen to Obama during the campaign) who have had good things to say about the people he’s assembling. Sullivan even quotes Mona Charen as being positive. It’s also true, though, that pundits who were too positive early on got thrown out, so that sort of takes them out of the pool.

“pleasantly” surprised, as well as “presently” surprised

I think Reid is more effective in the caucus than it looks from the outside. His ineffectual demeanor is a ruse.

I’d love an operational definition of who/what a member of the a realistic right is?
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That’s not hard.
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The first group are people who do honestly believe in smaller government, less intrusion, and less use of government intervention, especially command and control mechanisms. When they do support intervention (pollution, education), the prefer market mechanisms to be used. They tend to be isolationist rather than internationalist, and do not believe in a muscular military. Call them the libertarian wing for lack of a better name. Think Douthat. Note that there are many dirty effin’ hippies who fit pretty well into this group.
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Then there are the ones who have actually done most of the ruling from the right–the plutocrats. They believe in large government that supports large oligopolistic corporations. They believe capital holders should be taxed at lower rates, and also subsidized in particular industries. The believe in an internationalist foreign posture, with a strong military force, backing up realistic diplomacy that is largely engaged in creating reliable client states. Those reliable client states are needed to supply raw material to the large oligopolistic corporations that they believe are the centerpiece of society. As I said, call them the plutocrats.
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Neither group cares particularly much about social issues.
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Think Bush I.

No, he did not, but he utterly failed to force the media frame that the repugs were obstructing legislation that would help the American people, versus the headlines we actually saw: “Sissy Dems cave to weak republicans again.”
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Perhaps.
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58 seats. Maybe 59. Might be Reid/Schumer’s rejoinder.
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Calling the democrats names didn’t change the fact that the republicans bore the responsibility for monumentally bad,and unpopular, policy.
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My problem with the strategy was that it’s morally repugnant. I think my posts along that line are lost in the vanished TPM archives, or I’d link. They refused to do all they could to end the occupation for political reasons.

kathy: “And then there’s all the pundits who have been presently surprised (because, of course, they didn’t actually listen to Obama during the campaign) who have had good things to say about the people he’s assembling.” It is really astonishing, isn’t it! Obama was extremely clear and consistent about pretty much everything (FISA not so much), but his political and media opponents kept projecting positions onto him that didn’t exist. Remember the key Clinton aide (don’t remember who remarked, after losing the primary, that he/she finally listened to Obama speak and boy he was good.

Jayackroyd: That’s a very well reasoned operational definition. I have a frame of reference.
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How many of either of those types hold elective office in Congress or Governorships? How many of those types are in party leadership positions? How many of them are nationally recognized?
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After reading Sanford’s op-ed…go for it big guy…keep margnalizing your party. Demographyically and geographically your base will get smaller and smaller.

The other Klein on swingers: Nate Silver’s list of likely swing Senators is useful, but a bit too blunt. When trying to figure out whether a Senator will swing, you have to ask "on what?"

That’s not hard.
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U can identify them by the smallness of their group at republican cocktail parties.

“58 seats. Maybe 59. Might be Reid/Schumer’s rejoinder.” Perhaps 60, 61 if he had.

wvng – here’s sullivan after saying that Charen expected Huey Newton
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Charen:
If the economic team is centrist, the foreign policy team (and I pinch myself as I say this) leans a little to the right. Did you notice that in introducing his choices, the president-elect used the term “defeat our enemies”? … And that, along with the other appointments, is enough to keep some of us smiling at a time when we were expecting to be in deep anguish.
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Sullivan:
Did Charen not hear Obama promise to defeat our enemies in the debates? Did she never read his iconic Iraq speech where he said he wasn’t against war, just dumb wars? Or were her ears and eyes clogged with partisanship?

U can identify them by the smallness of their group at republican cocktail parties And everyone else is hurling cocktail weenies at them. Otherwise they might just be a rapture cluster.

How many of either of those types hold elective office in Congress or Governorships?
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Ahnold. Bloomberg. Romney, no longer in office. KT’s point when this came up earlier was that the governors were probably the likely source for the rehabilitation of the party. The trouble is that these people really don’t care about the social issues, and will have a hard time mollifying the increasingly hard right on social issues base.
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Also, people simulate being Know-Nothings, so you can’t be sure. But with primary threats from their right, they may have a hard time admitting reality.
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You know, they also don’t really believe a lot of the garbage they spout. The shocking thing about Palin is that she may actually believe in the social issues. This has to be a terrifying prospect for the RNC, (hence the trashing of Palin continues to this day.) I don’t believe, for example, that Huckabee’s daughter practiced abstinence. And I don’t believe that if either Jenna or not Jenna would have carried an unwanted pregnancy to term.
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On teh gai, it is even more clear that the elected officials on the Hill don’t care, at all.
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How many of those types are in party leadership positions? How many of them are nationally recognized?
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That’s the question. The senate is a disaster for the Republicans. And you saw how they ended up with McCain, because he didn’t suck as bad as the other presidentials. KT has remarked that parties have been decimated and rebuilt before. But I see real problems, at least through 2010.
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Not least among these problems is the low expectations bar Bush has created for Obama, and the slew of clearly positive things he can do right upon taking office. One of the problems Clinton had was that things weren’t that bad when he took office. The recession was ending, the fiscal status wasn’t that bad and there wasn’t any foreign affairs crisis.

Perhaps 60, 61 if he had.
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I think not. Can you describe how you think this would have worked?
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Take your time. I’m AFK for a couple of hours now.

jay: “The senate is a disaster for the Republicans. And you saw how they ended up with McCain, because he didn’t suck as bad as the other presidentials.” It was remarkable, wasn’t it. Their debates were a festival of RW talking points, remarkably substance free. That was the best they had, and they had nuthin.

jay, perhaps if there had been footage of Saxby or Coleman reading the phonebook to prevent passage of SCHIP or Ledbetter . . . but other than them I got nothing in terms of more seats flipped. But I’m also not sure that the Reid strategy of strength thru public weakness (Glenn Greenwald was particularly adept at predicting the successive “Dems Cave Again” headlines) was particularly helpful in producing the electoral result.
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I see no way the dems could have been harmed by forcing the repugs into corners that required them to be explicit about their beliefs and positions. Just as I see no downside to the continuing Palin extravaganza, which is exposing the truth about the repug base more publicly than we have seen before.

wvng

I’ve written this before, but hey, I’ve written a lot of stuff before. After the 2006 elections, Schumer said that he expected the Republicans to cave on Iraq by late summer. He said that, in IMO, because doing otherwise was political suicide for so many senators up in 08, and ftm, 10.
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When they didn’t, I really think they decided to let them twist slowly, slowly in the wind with this position. And with their other positions. You can say they should have done more to highlight the Republican opposition, but, like I said, 58.
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58.
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58 is good. Speaking of positions, Josh has a question: “I’m listening to one-time DC celeb Fred Thompson on Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox talking about the virtues of economic retrenchment as opposed to fiscal stimulus as a way to deal with the faltering US economy. I’m hearing this here and there from a few Republicans. But I’m curious how much this is coalescing into an opposition position.”
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Thoughts?

Speaking of the crazies:
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Pastor Rick Warren has a reputation for being far more stable and grounded than religious right leaders and TV preachers like Pat Robertson, but it’s worth remembering that he’s not exactly a moderate.
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Last night, on Fox News, Sean Hannity insisted that United States needs to "take out" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Warren said he agreed. Hannity asked, "Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?" Warren responded, "Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped…. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers."
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Duss and Benen take this silliness apart quite neatly.

wvng
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Are you saying they are advocating another Great Depression?

jay. Not sure what they are advocating, but it is rather striking, as Josh noted, that a fair number on the right seem to be sticking to their standard economic talking points, points that would, in the current situation, lead to a worse economic outcome than we are already facing. At this point I have no idea what they actually believe. But we have certainly watched them do a lot of crazy things based on ideology over the last 8 years.

jay. josh continues on the neo-hooverite theme (pasted in entirety below). Given the RW’s behavior over the past few years, there is little I would put past them in pursuit of power:
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Maybe So 12.04.08 — 6:38PM By Josh Marshall
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A new caucus of pro-Depression 2.0 Republicans? Ed Kilgore looks at the possibility.
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Check out Ed’s post, and his reference to another of Stoller’s. There’s an interesting and I think important question here as to whether neo-Hooeverite Republicans are pushing Hooverite policies for strictly economic reasons (creditors can do well in a deflationary economy), moral reasons (need a good hard recession to re-teach the poor moral values) or just because they’re economic illiterates who just don’t feel right echoing the calls of centrist and liberal economists. I think both Ed and Stoller are both on solid ground, with respect to the moral and economic rationales, respectively, though I think many of the folks I see on Cavuto’s show fall squarely in the third category. Late Update: This too, from TPM Reader JF …
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I tend to believe there is a simpler explanation for the Neo-Hooverite positioning: Given the new demographic realities of the country, Obama’s presidency must be a failure if Republicans are to ever emerge from the political wilderness. The more they obstruct, the more Obama and Congessional Democrats will be forced to water down economic policy. And a watered-down policy just won’t cut it at this moment in history. This is sabotage, pure and simple. If the poor and the middle class have to suffer in order for Republicans to have something to run against in 2010, so be it.

I think, in fact, that they will try to make things as bad as possible, on reflection.
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One of the basic assumptions that drives media coverage is the assumption that politicians are ultimately concerned about the public good–that the reason Bush is jamming things through the EPA to permit companies to do things like tear the tops off mountains, mine coal, and put the residue into streambeds is because he thinks, somehow, that it’s good for the country.
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There’s a point where it becomes clear that this not at all about what is good for the country. I think it’s entirely reasonable to think that they will purposely do all they can to make people miserable in order to secure better electoral prospects.
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(I should note that I believe a similar calculus entered into Reid’s unwillingness to fight strongly against Republican opposition to ending the occupation.)

jay, we are on precisely the same page. The last few years have convinced me that the repuglican party (its current national iteration anyway) cares only about political power, and helping the friends who help them get and maintain power. I honestly don’t think country ever enters into their equation. And it horrifies me.
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Which is why it is so essential that Reid puts them into a position where what they are is crystal clear. I don’t care what happens behind the scenes in the caucus. I care about the public optics that shape public perceptions.
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Maddow and Rosa Brooks just had a nice segment on the GOP spinning. Rosa made a point that Obama needs to create space where the few reasonable senate republicans can be comfortable voting with the Dems. I’m sure he is working for that. I’m sure his team is working for that. I really hopes he succeeds. Because we got problems:
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Ex Treasury Secretary O’Neill said: “We’re headed for the wall at lightning speed. And every day that we don’t deal with that set of problems is another day closer to absolutely vaporizing our economy.
Not to overstate the problem.“