The Voice of the GOP

These old white guys say some pretty irksome things, and I’ll admit they get under my skin occasionally. Can’t imagine why though. What a sorry bunch. Are there really that many people who are proud they aren’t citizens of the world?

KT – re make him an unlikely standard bearer for the party’s future: Isn’t it time for us to start guessing who will be the Republican candidate in 2012?

They don’t have a message that anyone wants to hear right now so it isn’t that surprising that they don’t have a messenger.
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I was really sick of seeing the Cheney’s and Newt on TV all the time and hearing about Rush at least once a day, but now I think it’s a good thing. As long as these are the main voices of the party the party will be lost.

So if Page is accurate, and she is hardly the only one to report this, the sum and total of the republican “strategy” for coming back is Democratic failure.
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Talk about America Haters.

I just had a perfectly wonderful post get eaten.
The bottom line though is that we would benefit from having a credible opposition to Obama’s economic agenda but that the Republican’s religious fervor over failed strategies makes that impossible.

So the dominant faces of the Republican Party are all men, all white, all conservative and all old enough to join AARP, ranging in age from 58 (Limbaugh) to 72 (McCain).

Well, that actually IS the Republican Party, and has been my entire life. The party of mean-spirited, angry, racist old white men who revel in their willful ignorance, and a few estrogen-soaked gold-digging bimbos at their elbow.
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Yet they dominate the political discourse and are granted national media platforms completely out of proportion to their numbers, or the strength of their (cough) ideas.
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There may be some decent cloth-coat Republicans left somewhere in the US of A, but they haven’t been seen around Washington for almost two decades.

Where is the world is Sarah in all this. Oh. No where, yet she seems to draw large crowds and none of the others really do. So who are the people coming to see her or is it all a myth that she has a lot of support?
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She was on the top ticket less then a year ago and she is still giving english speaking challenged interviews to anyone who is willing to ignore that every word is a struggle when she attempts to string it together with other words.

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Well, that actually IS the Republican Party, and has been my entire life. The party of mean-spirited, angry, racist old white men who revel in their willful ignorance, and a few estrogen-soaked gold-digging bimbos at their elbow.
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You just wait. Their “get offa my lawn” youth outreach program is going to start reaping dividends any day now.
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The good ole days.
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Proof the GOP is not a party of old white guys.
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Republicans maintained support among seniors, conservatives and frequent churchgoers
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See, it’s not all bad news.

You just wait. Their “get offa my lawn” youth outreach program is going to start reaping dividends any day now.

Like this?

[...] Time’s “Swampland Blog,” Karen Tumulty tells us who the “voice of the GOP” happens to be.  Clue:  It’s [...]

Haha James, I saw that a few days ago.

Awesome, in all the wrong ways.
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Charles Krauthammer:

What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.
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A few years ago, I was on a radio show with a well-known political reporter who lamented the loss of a pristine past in which the whole country could agree on what the facts were, even if they disagreed on how to interpret and act upon them. All that was gone now. The country had become so fractured we couldn’t even agree on what reality was. What she meant was that the day in which the front page of The New York Times was given scriptural authority everywhere was gone, shattered by the rise of Fox News.

There are no shared facts. And he is proud. The Enlightenment was overrated.

When will Time magazine be posting the video of David Letterman hoping that Alex Rodriguez rapes 14-year-old Willow Palin, the daughter of Sarah Palin? When Karen Tumulty and Jay Newton-Small stop laughing at Letterman’s “joke”? http:www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/06/023767.php

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Also, when will Time magazine post Playboy magazine’s list of the 10 Women it wants to “Hate F@c*” (i.e., rape)? When Karen Tumulty and Jay Newton-Small stop laughing? BTW, the 10 women Playboy wants most to rape are Michelle Malkin, Megyn Kelly, Mary Katharine Ham, Amanda Carpenter, Elisabeth Hasselback, Dana Perino, Laura Ingraham, Pamela Geller, Michelle Bachman and Peggy Noonan. http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/01/moron-of-the-day/

Sorry, I messed up the link of David Letterman hoping that Alex Rodriguez rapes 14-year-old Willow Palin, the daughter of Sarah Palin. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/06/023767.php

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BTW, when can we expect Letterman to hope on his show that Obama’s two daughters are raped by Alex Rodriguez? When Time magazine posts the video of Letterman hoping that 14-year-old Willow Palin gets raped by Alex Rodriguez, to wit: never?

JJ, the real problem is that both the NYT and Fox have let the public down. Fox is proudly biased but has a logo stating that the network is “Fair and Balanced”. NYT the “Paper of Record” published Judith Miller, a stenographer, who cheerlead the Iraq War. The Times recently reported that 1 in 7 released Gitmo detainees “returned to terrorist activities. The story had to be changed to reflect the probability that a 6 year stay in Gitmo may have actually created terrorists. In both cases the Times got spun.
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Which is worst, being biased towards Conservative views (Fox) or getting repeatedly spun by Conservatives (NYT)? We cannot trust the initial stories that the MSM produces, even when it comes from “Liberal” sources like the NYT..

textee: is david letterman the voice of the democratic party? not sure the connection you are making here.

KT, don’t chase the “shiny object”. It obviously has nothing to do with a story about how lost the GOP is. He had nothing to post on the subject so he’s distracting from it.
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GOP 101, if you don’t have anything to say, say anything.

KT– You are either with them or you’re with the libruls. You gotta choose a side. Letterman has chosen his. You biased, unamerican, Nixon-oppressing, elite, New Class radical, you.

I’m not sure how significant the “who speaks for the GOP” part of this survey is. Had someone asked this question about Democrats in June 2005 (or June 2003) the inability to identify a specific voice for the Democrats would have been as bad, if not worse.
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far more problemattic for the GOP is “what people though of” when they heard ‘Republican’.

1. Unfavorable 25%

2. Conservative 16%

3. Favorable 7%

4. No direction 6%

5. Cater to the rich 6%

6. George W. Bush 4%

7. Close-minded/Not open to new ideas 3%

8. Cater to big business 3%

9. Poor economic conditions 3%

10. Pro-military/Pro-war 2%

Oh my, isn’t it a surprise to see Karen Tumulty promulgating more lies about Republicans and creating stereotypes of the entire party as one of “old white guys”. Is that your feigned attempt to give credit to the new Democrat spokesperson, Sotomayor? Our latina woman who is so dead certain that her latina-ness makes her a better judge of all things created by God? But you fail to recognize the racists remarks that she makes and those of your Democrat Party. The Party of radical neo-racists of 2009. If you are not one of them, then you are simply anti-progressivism. If you are anti New Deal II Obama-politics, a blended world of socialist community activism you are lumped into a group of people they like to THINK are stupid and mis-aligned.
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Give me a break Karen. Spread you neo-liberal garbage on the dung-heap of far left liberal extremists sites like Daily Kos and Huffington Post. They scream for new voices such as yours, in the eclectic gay new world where everything goes. When will Time recognize your liberal bias and give you the boot?
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As Time continues to sag deeper and deeper into the pit of long dead and past great magazines and newspapers, one day we shall reflect on its demise. It is because of reporters, well opinionators, such as Karen Tumulty that we no longer have a Time magazine at all.

KT: The “Voice of the GOP” is actually VERY diverse. This old white guy. That old white guy. The other old white guy. Michael Steele (snark). Ann Coulter (possibly a younger white guy).

What lies is Karen promulgating? Specifically. Site your sources instead of name calling.

“Ann Coulter (possibly a younger white guy).”
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That’s not very accurate. Coulter isn’t younger.

Was there anyone who we could say spoke for the democratic party after the 2004 elections. Many folks then said that there was going to be an era of permanent republican majority and look what happened in the next four years.
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All that is going to take the republicans to make a comeback and a standard bearer to emerge, is a few scandals here and there from the democratic party, a massive failure in either Afghanistan, health care bill or the economy and a few million voters to change their mind. In due time, democrats and possibly obama’s approval ratings will go down, republicans ratings will go up and someone from the republican party will seize the opportunity and become the face of republican party.

PNNTO: I’ll concede that one. Bathing in the blood of virgins makes it’s skin look younger.

rusty’s living in Krauthammer’s alternate “new” reality.

What rusty said. Accept the thinking of the Party, Karen. If the Con-intern said it, it’s Approved Doctrine. If you don’t see this, Joe the Plumber will come after you a beat you with his plunger.

It’s unfair to expect the public to know who the voice of the republican party is when they don’t know themselves.

“There’s a lot of time and nothing wrong with the Republican Party that health care reform or the cap-and-trade (energy plan) or something like that blowing up wouldn’t help fix,” Cook says.

Why should the majority trust you to be in charge when your only real plan appears to be to sit and wait for your opposition to screw up?

pluk (#22) makes a very good point. these wilderness phases tend to run in very short cycles.

queencersei: Luckily for the democrats, there isn’t much “sitting and waiting” in the republican camp. They’ve decided that if the democrats don’t screw up, they’ll do it for them and then blame the democrats. They’re like a child that broke a vase and then stands among the broken pieces and says “It wasn’t ME!”.

I personally think that the GOP should employ Patricia Arquette from Medium or a ouiji board as its spokesperson, seeing as all they ever do is channel Ronald Reagan.

“these wilderness phases tend to run in very short cycles”
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That’s true-my Whig friends and I were just saying that.
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The difference that should keep the republicans from dismissing this as “just a cycle” is that the demographics are horrible for them and likely to get worse.
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Just look at their public face on the supreme court nomination. It will gain them nothing and time will tell what the cost will be.
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If BHO moves on immigration that will bring more of the same.

PNNTO – Agreed completely . . . the GOP has alienated all of the largest and fastest-growing voting blocks, and that list says it all: white men, over 50. What percentage of the ACTUAL population is white men over 50? 10%? Less?

I agree with PNNTO and vastwastelander. The rapidly shifting demographics offer little hope for the republicans and the redrawing of congressional districts after the 2010 census is only going to make the republicans’ uphill battle steeper. I do not disagree with “these wilderness phases tend to run in very short cycles”, but if the map continues to change at anywhere near the pace it has been, will it even matter?

queencersei Says:
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 10:38 am
“What lies is Karen promulgating? Specifically. Site your sources instead of name calling.”
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Not to be a spelling or grammer nazi, but shouldn’t it be “what lie is Karen promulgating”?
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With that said, the very article that she cites for this specific thread. Lumping all republican / conservative leaning individuals as “old white guys” is stereotypic. It would be the same if I called the entire democrat party as nothing but old hippies from the 1960′s, with a smathering of black muslim racists and latina women who are self grandizing. Would you claim that to be an accurate description of the democrat party today?

Rusty: So if KT linked to a poll showing that 58% percent of American’s can’t locate Europe on a map, would KT be promulgating the lie that Europe is not located on any map?

Rusty, blog rule number 1: When you try to correct someone else’s spelling/grammar, you will make a spelling/grammar mistake.
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GRAMMAR, not GRAMMER.
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Ouch.

rusty,
To be honest, I’m with you, if we’re solely talking identity politics. Each party has groups that traditionally vote with their party; in this model, the problem with the GOP is the “old, white man” bloc is shrinking, and the hippie, black man, and latina woman blocs are growing.
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That said, you also illustrate another GOP problem: rather than understanding the demographics, you try to paint them as caricatures, add misleading “facts” or outright lies, and dismiss them entirely.
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Case in point (1): “Black muslim racist.” Only one of those characteristics can be even partially proven; the rest are open to opinions, and the majority of the country seems to disagree with them.
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(2): “Latina women who are self [ag]grandizing.” Two for three on this one . . . when someone comes at you with demographics, try using criteria that can be measured in some way.
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Therein lies one BIG problem: the “loony libruls” come at the GOP with objective arguments and problems that need solving, and the response is all subjective fears, blame-placing, and buck-passing. I say “the majority of the GOP is made of older white males,” an objective fact, and you say, “yeah, but Obama’s a secret Muslim and Sotomayor’s egomaniac.”
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Not that the GOP doesn’t have it’s share of egomaniacs . . .

Me giving the GOP advice is kind of like Bill Kristol giving advice to the Dems, but here goes …
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(1) Stop reflexively accusing Dems and the president of hating America. Take the Egypt speech. It was anti-American because … it was not anti-muslim? I can’t even tell any more. And spicy mustard? Really?
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(2) Starting making serious arguments. Bone up on climate change. When you can’t tell the difference between “weather” and “climate”, you have nothing useful to bring to the discussion. Address Sotomayor’s record. On the economy, talk about economics, not socialism and fascism and Government Motors. Bring something to the table.
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I think the characterization of the repubs as the party of old white guys is way overdone. As somebody posted above, the number of old white guys can’t account for the 2 term Bush disaster. Most of all, as an old white guy myself, I am highly offended.

The Republicans have had many opportunities through history to NOT be the party of old White Guys but they consistently decide that they’d rather take advantage of the racism of their base rather than reach out to broaden their appeal.
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Certainly their current reaction to the Sotomator nomination represents just such a crossroads. It’s too bad. As I said tried to indicate upthread, I don’t have anything against Republicans, it’s their policies I object to.

formerlyjames: But you’re a more liberal older white guy as I am. Tolerant, compassionate, intelligent, caring, able to put yourself in others’ shoes and see their viewpoint…I just made myself cry.

David Frum knows something about the demographic bind the Republican party is in:

http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=811ad787-56c4-4a60-9ac1-147ce7996308

Frum on hazards of putting all your chips on the Joe the Plumber vote:

http://www.newmajority.com/ShowDavidsPrintArticle.aspx?ID=a936b215-91e5-4ba5-9c05-871d874aeabf

And then there’s the issue that the Joe the Plumbers out there are too angry to care about functional government (and Frum places some blame on his own intellectual predecessors for that):

http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=323a5b32-2405-4365-af87-49a36232ca63

It’s so typical. When confronted with the question ‘Who speaks for the GOP?’ the right-wingers respond with flurries of whining and insults.
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Hey righties, how about just answering the question? And please try keep your lists short (if you list too many ‘leaders’ you prove the point that there aren’t any).

Toche’, somepeople. And why I try to never put down someone else’s grammar. I stand corrected and apologize to queen for pointing out her mistake as well.
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To vast et al. It just seems to me that of late everyone wants to lump in all of the republican party as that of “old white men”. When in fact I believe the party has become much more diverse, Michael Steele as just one example of many in the past few years.
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I found this “stereotype” article that also reflects what I said about the Dems.
http://media.www.dailytoreador.com/media/storage/paper870/news/2006/01/26/Opinion/Democrat.Stereotypes.Ignorant.Inaccurate-1505125.shtml
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It just seems that for the democrats to remain in power they have to somehow bastardize the republicans. I am however becoming more libertarian as each day passes because it seems those who are within that group hold more of my values, the top one being fiscal responsiblility and limited government.
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I also believe that we have really over-used the terms white, racist and other such words to describe good and decent people who hold the welfare of everyone in this nation at heart, and do not want to see any ills fall onto anyone, and hopefully the American dream is afforded to anyone who wants to work hard to acheive it.
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The current democrats that I see on this very site, and I include Karen as one of the main characters who snidely remark and “report” about the opposition as such, are diabolical in their tactics. They know what they are doing and are proud of it, and will destroy anything and everything in sight in order to push through their progressive agendas. Karen does few, if any, reports favorably of Republicans or conservatives in general. She is representative of the liberal-progressive agenda in the main stream media. It is no longer reporting, it is professing the liberal agenda at all cost. Now that the separation of powers is out of balance, in the past we could count on the media to be un-biased. That is not true today at all. This is how a facist becomes all powerful and we see much more damaging results from the inequities of the current situation.

formerlyjames – I hear ya, and as a young(ish) white guy, I need to prepare for the inevitable.
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And the 2 term Bush disaster does bring up a good point, though: as much as Bush, Cheney, and Rove were disasterous for the country, Bush DID do a good job at being demographically representative. Besides Powell and Condi, his take on Latino issues was above average for the GOP, and he didn’t come off as overtly anti-Mexican. In other words, he tried . . . and provided a decent model for the GOP to move forward on race/ gender issues (understanding, of course, that they ARE still the GOP).
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The problem now is that the Republicans aren’t even trying anymore . . . rather than trying to win back some voting blocs, they’re saying “screw it! Limbaugh speaks for all of us!”
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In other words, I don’t expect them to turn into Bobby Kennedy overnight, but they should avoid calling our black president and latina Justice-to-be “racists.”

Art Pepper, that analogy is too deep for rusty.

Speaking of grammar, how about not saying “Democrat party“, Rusty?

I will ALWAYS refer to democrats as such, including their UN-democratic party, JJ. That is a pet-peeve of mine.
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DemoCRAT Party. The party of RAT INFESTATION
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Ha

JJ: I don’t normally agree with Frum, but his post in your 3rd link says pretty much what I was trying to express in my comment #43. (Except for this obligatory dig at “green jobs.”)

Fun thread. Anybody who thinks the republicans are on their way back into power, raise your claw and stomp your cloven hoof.

Here is the link to the actual poll, for those that care.
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http://www.gallup.com/poll/120806/Limbaugh-Gingrich-Cheney-Seen-Speaking-GOP.aspx
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Scrolling down to the Who speaks for the Democratic Party I see that Ball o’ Fire Harry Reid scores lower than Speaker Pelosi, Secretary Clinton and Vice President Biden.

It’s interesting that Rush was in the number one spot. You don’t have to follow politics to hear his blow hardiness everyday (or Hannity’s, Beck’s, O’Reilly’s). The republican party has backed itself into a corner by relying on these messengers and not challenging them when they lie. That illustrates that in the minds of the GOP having reach is more imporant then whom you are reaching and the message being delivered. They need to wrangle the reins back.

I think it is unfair to expect someone to be the “Voice of the GOP”. After all, I don’t know if Obama is really the “Voice of the Democratic Party.” As far as being the party of “Old White Men”, with the exception of Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic leadership is just as Old, just as White and just as male as the Republicans.

The problem for the Republicans is they do not have any new ideas. They seem stuck in the 1980s. Until they come up with some new ideas, it does not matter who their “voice” is.

And times can change quickly. In June 2004, how many of us had ever heard of Barack Hussein Obama?

Pnnto: Thanks for the link. If a republican can’t name a person who speaks for their own party, who do they listen to? Where are they getting their direction from? Who do they look to for leadership? I know who leads my party. I know who I listen to. I can’t say I’m always happy with the decisions that are being made, but I don’t feel as if I’m adrift in a storm tossed ocean with land nowhere in sight. I look at the republican party and see schizophrenics. They don’t know who or what they want or how to get to their destination. They’re refugees wandering aimlessly.

rustybegone…if this is the level of discourse and intelligence you are capable of…

“DemoCRAT Party. The party of RAT INFESTATION”

…and you are representative of Republicrats…then your party is truly lost!

Please take your incoherent and offensive blatherings elsewhere…there are some here who actually want to argue the issues and not just insult the other posters here!

for the Republicans is they do not have any new ideas.
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If a Republican had a new idea would he still be a Republican.
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The problem as I see it is that having started with an idea that seemed plausable in the Eighties concerning competitition and markets and efficiency, instead of testing that idea and checking where it made sense and where it didn’t, they instead proclaimed it as an article of faith, and now that it’s slammed against the wall of reality they refuse to consider that perhaps they’ve failed to correctly identify the problem that their solutions are supposed to solve.

But that’s not even the GOP’s major problem. Their women (Michelle Bachman), blacks (Michael Steele) and Hispanics (Alberto Gonzales) are just as unhinged and incompetent at governing as the old white dudes. It’s the entire Party’s basic ideology (dogma, really), “governing philosophy”, and politics that makes it wholly unserious. If you got rid of all of the crazy, old, white men, you’d be left with just-as-crazy Republican women and minorities.
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There is simply nothing that commends the GOP as a responsible governing entity. Nothing.

Newt offers an ad for Will Bunch’s Tear Down This Myth
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/10/740625/-Newt-Gingrich-Calls-Reagan-Concept-Intellectual-Nonsense-and-Stunningly-Dangerous

Just my two cents, but I think where the GOP has gone off the rails has been in not following its own core beliefs. They talk on and on about fiscal responsibility. But whenever they have the wheel that ideal goes right out the window. Less government? Sure! Unless it comes to a persons private life. Then they want to legislate away, to regulate their own narrow set of moral ideology. They can talk all they want about being inclusive. But when someone disagrees, ala Colin Powell they are branded a traitor, a RINO and shown the door. Not a good way to bring in new voters, much less keep the ones you have.

Check out Rick Perlstein’s take at this recent event:
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http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=286728-3&showVid=true&clipStart=2090.06&clipStop=2745.03
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He’s got it exactly right. Right on the mark when he says that “the incentives are so misaligned” (at about 44:30) for a Republican leader to be successful at capturing the base, being successful with the rest of the movement (people with the insitutions and SSS), and capturing a popular majority at the same time. (Perlstein didn’t say institutions and $$$, but that’s my reading. Mike Huckabee was popular with the base, but the institution and $$$ people hated him.)

If a republican can’t name a person who speaks for their own party, who do they listen to? Where are they getting their direction from? Who do they look to for leadership? I know who leads my party. I know who I listen to.
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sacredh there reminded me of something. Republicans tend to be a lot more top-down in their organization. We see that in the primaries.
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So I think not having a solid leader is more of a problem for them than it is for Democrats, who tend to go their own way.

I think McCain makes a dandy “standard bearer for the party’s future.” The Grim Reaper himself, because he has some gravitas, couldn’t do a better job.

the Democratic leadership is just as Old, just as White and just as male as the Republicans.
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I’m not sure I agree with that. If you take away Jindal and Palin, like Obama and Hillary, what have you got? Snowe? Steele? Brewer? I think you could name many more top, minority Democrats off the top of your head than you can Republican.
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Not to mention the fact that the recognizable leaders are mostly not in office.

queencersei,
You’re actually describing a wider misunderstanding about what left vs right actually means. As you point out, if it were about fiscal responsibility we wouldn’t have Raytheon and Haliburton feeding off the Federal teat and if it were about “Freedom” the Republicans would be absolutely at the Vanguard in favor of gay Marriage.
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To me, the dichotomy I see is between Cooperation/Love and Sex vs Competition/Hate and War.
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That is why I like top refer to the Republican base (not the “fiscal Conservatives”) as the Hate-R-Us crowd. It’s an easy shorthand for a whole package of attitudes.

“Just my two cents, but I think where the GOP has gone off the rails has been in not following its own core beliefs. They talk on and on about fiscal responsibility. But whenever they have the wheel that ideal goes right out the window.”
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That’s because those aren’t their beliefs, they’re the branding campaign.

Just my two cents, but I think where the GOP has gone off the rails has been in not following its own core beliefs.
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They are just lying. They have no core principles beyond cronyism. They care nothing about the country or the people who live here. They are intentionally doing all they can to make things worse, in order to blame Obama.

“If a republican can’t name a person who speaks for their own party, who do they listen to? Where are they getting their direction from?”
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Glenn Beck! Bill O’Reilly! Most if not all of the Fox contributors, with a few token liberal big mouths! Eric Canter! (a young WHITE GUY) John Boehner! (middle aged WHITE GUY) Condelezza Rice (a BLACK WOMAN) Thomas Sowell! (old BLACK GUY) and here are a host of other black REPUBLICANS now and in recent history.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_American_Republicans
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Imagine, Martin Luther King Sr was a Republican. I didn’t even know that one, amazing.

Imagine, Martin Luther King Sr was a Republican.
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ROTFLMAO
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Rusty, do you even know what a Dixiecrat was? Google “Pitchfork Ben Tillman” and “Strom Thurmond”.

“In June 2004, how many of us had ever heard of Barack Hussein Obama?”
That’s a very telling point about the differences between the democratic and republican parties. Democrats are much more likely to go for something new that goes against the conventional wisdom and breaks new ground. The republicans are too set in their ways to take the leap. Change appeals to us. Democrats can envision a different tomorrow while the republicans cling to the past. Gay rights, women’s rights, racial/ethnic diversity, pro-choice and inclusion of those who don’t believe in a god…which party does that make you think of? If you don’t embrace the people that hold differnet viewpoints and backgrounds, why would they embrace you? You have to offer something before you get something in return.

Fascinating:

Rusty topok the opportunity to remind us that the Republican identity as the ‘white’ party is (as history goes) a recent development.
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From Wikipedia:
In October 1960, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested at a
peaceful sit-in in Atlanta, Robert Kennedy telephoned the judge and helped secure King’s release. Although King, Sr. had previously opposed Kennedy because he was a Catholic,[citation needed] he expressed his appreciation for these calls and switched his support to Kennedy. At this time, King, Sr. had been a lifelong registered Republican, and had endorsed Republican Richard Nixon. King, Jr. made no endorsement,
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King Sr. played a notable role in the nomination of Jimmy Carter as the Democratic candidate for President in the 1976 election.[...]. With King’s support, Carter continued to build a coalition of black and white voters and win the nomination. King Sr. delivered the invocation at the 1976 and 1980 Democratic National Conventions.
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We can recall that before the battle over the Voting Rights act and school desegregation, Republicans had the advantage of being the “Party of Lincoln” But by the time Nixon was campaigning under a “Law and Order” platform, the reversal was complete.

40 years ago the republican party wasn’t the party it is today either. The republican party of the 60′s would be just as horrified at the thought that a Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, Dick Cheney or Joe the Plumber represented the future of their party as we are today. This isn’t even apples and oranges. It’s cardboard boxes and orbital mechanics.

Ah, the selective use of facts taken out-of-context. The lone remaining weapon of what used to be the Republican party.
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Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye . . .

Must be a slow news week. Such a shame that there’s nothing else going to to report on, just some polls in a dying magazine.

rusty should also be aware of MLK Jr’s feelings about GOP hero Barry Goldwater.
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When conservative Arizona Senator Barry M. Goldwater ran for president in 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., expressed his opposition, explaining, “I feel that the prospect of Senator Goldwater being president of the United States so threatens the health, morality and survival of our nation that I can not in good conscience fail to take a stand against what he represents” (King, 16 July 1964). Goldwater lost the election to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide, winning majorities only in his native Arizona and five states of the Deep South.
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In 1952, Goldwater was elected to the Senate on a pledge to fight communism. Reelected in 1958, Goldwater opposed social welfare programs and continued to criticize the Supreme Court on their school integration stance. He voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. King said of Goldwater’s voting record, “while not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the racists” (King,16 July 1964). King feared that Goldwater’s position that “civil rights must be left, by and large to the states” meant “leaving it to the Wallaces and the Barnetts” (King, “The Presidential Nomination”). Electing Goldwater, King said, would plunge the country into a “dark night of social disruption” (King, 21 September 1964).
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In the month before the election, King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference launched a nationwide “get out the vote” drive. Although King called the campaign “bipartisan,” he wrote, “The principles of states’ rights advocated by Mr. Goldwater diminish us and would deny to Negro and white alike, many of the privileges and opportunities of living in American society” (King, 9 October 1964). When Johnson defeated Goldwater, King declared, “the American people made a choice… to build a great society, rather than to wallow in the past” (King, “A Choice and a Promise”).
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http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/goldwater_barry_m_1909_1998/

“I’m excited that a Hispanic woman is in this position,” Steele said on May 29. He added that instead of “slammin’ and rammin’” on Sotomayor, Republicans should make a “cogent, articulate argument” against her on purely substantive grounds.
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Twelve days later, Steele seems to have changed his mind.
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In an interview with CNN’s Campbell Brown on Tuesday, the Republican Party leader insisted that white males would not be granted even-handed jurisprudence under a Court with Obama’s nominee.
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“God help you if you’re a white male,” said Steele. “If you’re seeking justice, this may not be the bench you want to go before.”
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Got that? On May 29, Steele saw no value in attacking the Supreme Court nominee with racial politics. On June 9, Steele wants white men to think that Sotomayor is incapable of treating them fairly in a court of law.

.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_06/018558.php

I hate to leave when things are heating up a little, but it’s that whole “Go to work and put food on the table thing”.

“Imagine, Martin Luther King Sr was a Republican. I didn’t even know that one, amazing.”
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Rusty, what are you smoking?
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Are you still trying to peddle that old overused Southern Strategy revisionism. Of course he was a Republican at one time.
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BTW, I hate to put it this way, Rusty, but riddle me this:
.
What do you think Martin Luther King would think of you now?
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If you can answer that one honestly*, then I will take my hat off to you!
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*I am, of course, going to seperate out the Southern Strategy coded meaning of ‘honest’ which means specifically this:
Willing to voice racist opinion

Rusty and others,
Here’s my basic question for you, I guess: if you had to pick 5 of the following 10 Republicans from history to lead your party, who would you pick?

Ronald Reagan
Richard Nixon
Herbert Hoover
Dick Cheney
Dwight Eisenhower
Rush Limbaugh
Abe Lincoln
Newt Gingrich
Teddy Roosevelt
Michael Steele

Vast, you left Jesus off your list. He is, of course, a Republican and comes in at #3 behind Reagan and Limbaugh.

sacredh-.
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It’s more fundamental than that. There was an article, a long time ago, in a journal of American politics I read. It said that the way the Democratic party works is that if you can deliver voting blocs, you have a role in the party. In the republican party, you work your way up, paying your dues and being rewarded when it’s “your turn.” Not just talking president here, but leader of local republican groups leads to attending the national convention, or a seat in the statehouse.
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For presidents it’s even more stark, what Bushes and Doles and Nixons.
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However, one of the things Rove may have done, by switching to a bloc delivery model among the lunatic fringe is shatter the party. The taking turn thing works fine in a party that serves corporate America and the folks at the local country club (the latter are being fooled, but never mind). It doesn’t work at all well with single issue voters on social and racial issues. You can’t buy these people off by talking about lower taxes. This is both fracturing the party, and forcing them into more crazy talk, try to make sure the fringe stays afraid of the Democratic alternative.
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They’d be absolutely dead if the media started covering the crazy talk like journalists (David Leonhardt does that today in the NYT, btw). it will be interesting to see just how many naked lies and how much fearmongering BS it will take before the producers and editors realize they’re treating the Rustys of this world as if they were in touch with reality.

Of course I would have to go with “good ol’ honest Abe” first. But, Reagan for the most part had the majority of Republican values and ideals at heart, especially his limited government ideas. He was a big spender however and goes against fiscal responsibility, but his taxation policies were spot on.
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Eisenhower for what he was dealt from the aftermath of 20 years of Democrat Presidents, I think he set the stage to follow for the modern era republicans, at least the non-progressive republicans.
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And somepeople. You should begin praying now to your devil prince, Satan, the CEO of the Democrat Party, that Jesus does not come within your lifetime. Jesus will not favor either party at this time. What you will see is a “totalitarian” ruler, when Christ retuns to the earth. Your scheming days will truly be over then. There will be one mass exodus of Democrats banished to hell at that time. Karen T, are you taking the lead on that one????HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
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Are we talking about the same guy?
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…………Jesus will not favor either party at this time.
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when Christ returns to the earth………..There will be one mass exodus of Democrats banished to hell at that time.
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rusty, you do realize that if both parties are in disfavor, Republicans are going to the same place as Democrats.
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As an aside, given your …HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, are you still actively seeing patients? Are you receiving the care that you obviously need?

Who speaks for the Democrat party? The pagans? The atheists? The Marxists? The socialists? The tree huggers? The earth worshippers? The flag burners? The draft dodgers? The race baiters? The race hustlers? The feminists (hahahahaha!) The fundamentalist homosexualists? Jeremiah “U.S. of KKK” Wright? William Ayers? So-called “Judge” Sotomayor? Jon so-called “Stewart” Leibowitz? Michelle “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country” Obama? Time magazine? I can’t wait for USA Today to release the results of that poll. They do plan on releasing that poll tomorrow, right?

Testee, I at least hope someone was holding your hair while you were throwing up at 3:18.
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It’s funny when wingnuts get so frustrated that they vomit up all the garbage that has been rammed down their throats for years.
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BTW, the Cheney’s are upset that you included “draft dodger” and “homosexualists” in your regurgitation.

And Rusty, as any good Christian should know, it’s you that should be praying for me.
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“And Lord bless Somepeoplelikeit, let him see the error of his ways and fall into a carnal relationship with a Brazilian beach volley ball player named Paola.”

It is so appropriate that I am going to see Will Bunch talk tonight about his book Tear Down This Myth, which details all the ways in which the saint Ronald Reagan of contemporary conservative projection bears little resemblance to the tax-hiking, deficit-running, government expanding, cutting and running, and appeasing reality of Reagan’s political career.

“the Cheney’s are upset that you included “draft dodger” and “homosexualists” in your regurgitation.”
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And Rove is unhappy about the “atheists”. And Norm Coleman with you mentioning “flag burners”.
And of course the whole of the republican party takes issue with “race baiters” stuff.

You should begin praying now to your devil prince, Satan, the CEO of the Democrat Party, that Jesus does not come within your lifetime. Jesus will not favor either party at this time. What you will see is a “totalitarian” ruler, when Christ retuns to the earth. Your scheming days will truly be over then. There will be one mass exodus of Democrats banished to hell at that time.
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See, that’s probably the best reason to engage rusty, is to get him to produce gems like this.
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My friends wouldn’t believe me if I tried to describe this to them.

textee, try to keep up the Gallup poll did ask who spoke for for the Democratic Party. The results: Barack Obama 58%, Nancy Pelosi 11%, Joe Biden 3%.
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PNNTO provided the link at post # 6 above. Click on the link and read the results.
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Oh by the way an angry White guy just fired shots at the Holocaust Museum in DC.

http://www.vawatchdog.org/09/nf09/nfapr09/nf042509-3.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano met with the American Legion on Friday to apologize for a right-wing extremism report written by her agency, and the veterans group walked away from the meeting mollified.
Napolitano blamed one of her agency’s analysts for prematurely sending out the intelligence assessment to law enforcement, according to Craig Roberts, an American Legion member who attended the meeting. The report says veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan could be susceptible to right-wing recruiters or commit lone acts of violence
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Boy was SHE off base…..
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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/james_von_brunn_a_profile.php?ref=fpblg
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Von Brunn, apparently a World War II vet, has a long history of white supremacist writing. His book, “Kill The Best Gentiles,” embraces Adolf Hitler’s view that Jews concocted World War I as part of a scheme to stab Germany in the back — a myth the Nazis used to justify the Holocaust.

You should begin praying now to your devil prince, Satan, the CEO of the Democrat Party, that Jesus does not come within your lifetime. Jesus will not favor either party at this time. What you will see is a “totalitarian” ruler, when Christ retuns to the earth. Your scheming days will truly be over then. There will be one mass exodus of Democrats banished to hell at that time.
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Wow. Just wow.
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On the one hand, I don’t want to be banished to hell. On the other, I don’t want to be stuck here with a bunch of Republicans, run by their version of Jesus. Yikes. Talk about a lose-lose . . .
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Luckily, we’re more likely to see a single payer insurance system than see Christ’s return . . .

The problem with the Republicans is the marriage of social conservatives and fiscal conservatives who are libertarians. The social conservatives don’t care about fiscal policy. The fiscal conservatives don’t care about abortion or gay marriage. Furthermore, the social conservative agenda runs directly counter to the libertarian wing. Banning abortion is more governmental interference in people’s lives not less.

Reagan kept the facade of this marriage with a cheery face, but sooner or later it was going to break down. Ironically, it was electorial success which sped up the dissolution. The Republicans of today are much like the Democrats in the 70s, too many factions fighting for their own space. The Democrats wised up after being in the Presidential wilderness until the election of Bill Clinton.

The Republicans used to be the big tent party, allowing pro-choicers to speak at their conventions, while the Democrats shut out pro-lifers like Bob Casey, Sr. Now it is the Democrats who have cast a big tent by allowing conservative Democrats to have their say (who would have thought of a Democrat being elected to Congress from Mississippi!)

The other fundamental problem that is never discussed by our vaunted political analysts in the establishment noooze: the Republican Party of the last decade or so has been made up of a completely unsustainable coalition with contradictory goals and philosophies: traditional (small government) economic conservatives vs. (big military and corporate welfare) warmongering neoconservatives vs. (government-in-your-bedroom) evangelicals vs. (leave-me-alone) libertarians. It’s a wonder it held together for so long.

Interesting cross-post, fhmadvocat.

Shepherdwong,

Do great minds think alike? LOL Anyway you state it much more elegantly than I could.

Well, considering it now, Rusty, since you so artfully dodged the basic truth of the answer to the question I presented to you at 2:26, I present you with yet another conundrum neither you, nor spob, nor textee can dodge:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/10/museum.shooting/index.html
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Chalk up yet another one for Napolitano and her terrorism report.
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I think as far as talk about Satan is concerned, Rusty, you are the bigger sinner than BHO.
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After all, we all know where your sentiments lie…

fhmadvocat, shepardwong:
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There was a glue that held all those fractious factions together. I’ll leave it to you to determine what that glue was…

Wow! Trolls in mid-season form today.
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Rusty, you are so pathetic. You can’t even get dispensationalism right. How ’bout if you and me and Satan talk it over when we both get to Hell?

The problem with the Republicans is the marriage of social conservatives and fiscal conservatives who are libertarians.
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No it is not. The problem is that they were lying the whole time about their actual views. As long as they didn’t control either the presidency or one of the houses, they could blame policies that violated those principles on the Democrats. Once they held all three offices, they flouted them all.
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They were lying. It’s that simple.

Fifty – Whatever that glue was, they seem to have spent too much time sniffing it . . .

vastwastelander – if heaven is full of people like rusty I’ll gladly take hell.

What percentage of Democrats enjoyed seeing David Letterman tell his audience of the joy Letterman would have in seeing Alex Rodriguez rape 14-year-old Willow Palin while Willow sat next to her mother Sarah Palin during a New York Yankees game at Yankee Stadium? Given the fact that at least 98% of Democrats are feminists, I suspect that way fewer than 2% of Democrats have any objection to Letterman expressing his desire to see Alex Rodriguez rape 14-year-old Willow Palin while attending a New York Yankees game.

Textee – Did Letterman say “rape” or “Willow Palin?” No? Then shut up.

“There was a glue that held all those fractious factions together. I’ll leave it to you to determine what that glue was…”
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The history supports the idea that it can mostly be explained here, especially in the aftermath of the collective shock and fear of 9/11.

textee, do you really think that if you scream “David Letterman” loud enough, nobody will hear “James Van Brunn”?
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Teen sex jokes are trashy. Murder is a crime.

“They were lying. It’s that simple.”
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I’m actually persuaded that there is a range of mendacity to be found in the party, even among leadership. In other words, I think there are some Republicans who are so stupid, crazy or otherwise indoctrinated and deluded by “conservative” political rhetoric, they actually believe their own bullsh*t.

53_3

Clearly each side of the Republican factions intended to use each other to advance their respective agendas. As Jayackroyd noted, this was easy as long as they were out of power and did not control congress and the presidency. . . . . .

However, Republican politicians can see when an issue is a loser and the Reagan administration mostly paid lip service to the anti-abortion community (I believe Reagan even sign a law liberalizing abortion in California when he was governor) and we have seen it recently when religious advocates within the Bush administration passed them off as “crazies”.

The idea was to keep the anti-abortionist hungry, angry at the Democrats, even though on many issues, many of these anti-choicers were closer to the Democratic perspective.

Know Your Rights!
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vastwastelander Says:
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Textee – Did Letterman say “rape” or “Willow Palin?” No? Then shut up.

-

vastwastelander:

Letterman: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game. During the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

-

Sarah Palin had one “daughter” “at the Yankee game”. That daughter’s name? Willow Palin. Willow Palin’s age? 14. Willow Palin “was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez? Rape.

-

Pull your head out of your fourth point of contact, you fool.

The Voice Of The GOP?
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http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf

textee, a crazy White supremacist who has the wingnut belief that President Obama is not legitimate because of the wingnut birth certificate nonsense fired his rifle inside the Holocaust Museum in DC.
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A traitorous wingnut GOP Representative from Illinois, Mark Kirk, admitted that he told the Chinese Government not to trust the US Government’s budgetary numbers. Why is the press not calling this idiot out?
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http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/rep-mark-kirk-r-il-i-told-china-not-to-believe-us-budget-numbers.php?ref=fpb
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In the wake of the Tiller murder, I am more concerned about angry White guys on the loose than a comedian’s comments.
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Given the fact that the GOP supported the Bush administration’s outing of a CIA agent, I am more concerned about a Republican traitor still having a seat in the House of Representatives.
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I’ll let the free market decide if Letterman was over the line.

Against my better judgment, I will wade into this appalling thread briefly…
Lets be very clear about something, there are overwhelming racial differences that do indeed set various groups apart in their mannerisms, behaviors, values, and ideals. These differences do not constitute deficiencies in any particular group, but they do exist. A little bit of lucid racial stereotyping is not only healthy, it is unavoidable. These observations are based not on prejudices (although this is not always the case), but on environmental experiences. We reach conclusions based on our dealings with people. This is not racism.
“…but they should avoid calling our black president and latina Justice-to-be ‘racists.’”
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While it is apparently in fashion to label white males as racists, any depiction in the reverse is immediately condemned as race-baiting pandering to the bigoted base of the GOP. Well, is it not pandering for the Democrats to consistently label the ‘old, white male’ dominated GOP as racists? Do any of you honestly think that latinos, blacks, asians, etc, etc bear any less of these racial divides than do whites? The Democratic Party picks up the minority vote by rhetorically rejecting the white race, while in practices its leadership is ironically overwhelmingly white.
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Neither side rejects race-baiting, they merely pander to different ethnic make-ups in their accusations. And in this day and age, only one of those ways is politically correct, that of assaulting ‘white males.’

of the joy Letterman would have in seeing Alex Rodriguez rape 14-year-old Willow Palin while Willow sat next to her mother Sarah Palin during a New York Yankees game at Yankee Stadium?
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So a tacky joke utilizing a euphemism for “made pregnant” suddenly turns into a rape fantasy at the hands of a right-wing nutjob.
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Why is it that the self-identified prudes are the ones with the most twisted imaginations?

“Do any of you honestly think that latinos, blacks, asians, etc, etc bear any less of these racial divides than do whites?”
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If you believe that there is any equivalency, functionally, historically, socially or psychologically, between white and minority racism in America, the you are functionally insane. That must be the “neo” part.

only one of those ways is politically correct, that of assaulting ‘white males.’
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Unfortunately you have it exactly backwards. Racism is racism no matter who’s acting against whom but the solution isn’t and never was to pretend that it’s inadmisable to even broach the subject. But apparently it’s white males who are claiming the exclusive right to determine what anyone else as allowed to say. And that’s polical correctness run amok.
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“The Democratic Party picks up the minority vote by rhetorically rejecting the white race”
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Ummm, what?
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What’s a stronger card to play in polite society? “You are a racist” or “I can’t believe he accused me of racism”?
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Which one gets played more? And by whom?

Paul Dirks Says:
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 4:45 pm
of the joy Letterman would have in seeing Alex Rodriguez rape 14-year-old Willow Palin while Willow sat next to her mother Sarah Palin during a New York Yankees game at Yankee Stadium?
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So a tacky joke utilizing a euphemism for “made pregnant” suddenly turns into a rape fantasy at the hands of a right-wing nutjob.

-

Not surprising that the President of the North American Man Boy Love Association, one Paul Dirks, is posting at Time’s Swampland. Letterman enjoying the thought of 33 year-old Alex Rodriguez “knocking up” 14 year-old Willow Palin is “a tacky joke utilizing a euphemism for ‘made pregnant’”? If NAMBLA President Paul Dirks were on the U.S. Supreme Court, he would join Ginsburg, Breyer, Stevens, Kennedy and the unrepentant racist Sotomayor in thinking that such an act would be the “fundamental constitutional right” of the 33 year-old and the 14 year-old.

S-Wong,
~
Come now–you simply can’t impose that PC-tinged world view on us. It’s, it’s … unbearable. I mean, really, rumor has it the indians exterminated, the blacks lynched, the Japanese put in camps, all had racist tendencies themselves. Given such obvious relativism, given the irrelevancy of POWER to such a discussion, your comment is just, well, “appalling.”

After the rape fantasies come the gay child-molestation fantasies.
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That textee is one sick puppy……

Shepherd-
“…If you believe that there is any equivalency, functionally, historically, socially or psychologically, between white and minority racism in America, the you are functionally insane.”
Classic side-step from the admission that everyone is racist to an extent. Minorities are no exception. Racism is racism no matter from where it is derived…
Paul-
“But apparently it’s white males who are claiming the exclusive right to determine what anyone else as allowed to say.”
So, the claim that someone who happens to be Latino is a ‘racist’ is manipulated into the accuser being racist. Is that what you mean by dictating the terms?

“Given such obvious relativism, given the irrelevancy of POWER to such a discussion, your comment is just, well, ‘appalling.’”
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What can I say, once a dirty hippie, always a dirty hippie.

No, it’s manipulated into the accuser being a liar. The liar’s own racial attitudes are irrelevant.

“…everyone is racist to an extent. Minorities are no exception. Racism is racism no matter from where it is derived…”
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Then the intelligent reaction to it, since it is both intrinsic and ubiquitous, would be “so what”. The only thing that matters is it’s manifestation and how to mitigate it. And on the scale of gross social manifestation, racism against whites still falls into the “so what” category, relative to the manifestations of racism against minorities. Check back with me in 30-40 years when the circumstances may have changed.

textee – Perhaps Letterman was insinuating that another daughter, such as town bicycle Bristol, was impregnated? Could be? Maybe? Possibly? Oh, and while we’re at it, was Bristol Palin, a minor at the time, “raped” by Levi? And if so, why was Sarah so happy about Bristol marrying her rapist?
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In all seriousness, Letterman’s joke was tacky, crude, and frankly not funny. However, he is a comedian (I suppose), and sometimes jokes are misinterpreted.
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Just ask Michael J. Fox about noted “comedian” Rush Limbaugh’s knee-slappers . . . oh, Rush isn’t a comedian, you say? His shtick is supposed to be serious???

Ta-Nehisi:
~
“Conservatism, with its belief in institutions, traditions, and the past, will seemingly always privilege (perhaps inadvertently) the powerful over the powerless. Institutions, traditions and the past belong to those with power. Privileging them, privileges their agents.”
~
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/06/something_to_think_about.php

The Democratic Party picks up the minority vote by rhetorically rejecting the white race
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Okay, see, that (for me) falls into the category of a borderline racist statement. Not because you’re insulting minorities, but because it sounds like it came off of StormFront.
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There is no “rejection of the white race.” That’s not how we won in 2006 and 2008. There is no plan, rhetorical or otherwise, to disenfranchise whites.

the President of the North American Man Boy Love Association, one Paul Dirks
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How did this end up being a fall-back tactic for wingnuts, accusing people of NAMBLA membership? I know rusty’s done it a few times, too.

Cliff, I’d say the democratic party’s greater capacity to sympathize with the underdog, as opposed to the aristocracy, naturally attracts minorities of all persuasions. Big tent vs. the primordial hole in the ground the nutters are left to. Funny, how many of the regular libs who post here are white blokes? I don’t feel rejected. Nor my family or most of my mates in the states, nor are we voting to ease our conscience, out of some displaced guilt (another conservative fantasy).
~
It seems that only a certain demographic of whites (we saw them at McCain’s rallies this past year) feel disenfranchised. Assorted reactionaries and racists and other dead enders clinging to a ’50s vision of the US. As Shep says above, they’ll be begging for affirmative action in 20 yrs. or so.

………The Democratic Party picks up the minority vote by rhetorically rejecting the white race, while in practices its leadership is ironically overwhelmingly white.
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Republicans are confused about way African-Americans vote for Democrats over Republicans. Democratic party members often win by default because of the direct behavior of the GOP. When a contender for the RNC job include a person who sent out Limbaugh’s “Barack the Magic Negro” song on a CD, that contender is either insensitive, too stupid to be the head of the RNC, or a racist. Another RNC candidate belonged to a Whites only Country Club and could easily fit into a racially biased stereotype.
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Often, the Democratic Party member wins in the African-American community is because the tone put out by the Republican candidate is one of condescension. Blacks do not want to be associated with said Republicans. We know where we are not wanted.
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Textee, rusty, and spob would all be rejected by the African-American community if they were GOP candidates. But, those three individuals represent the core member of the GOP.
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Yelling about Al Sharpton, who got about 1% of the African-American vote in NYC when he ran for President gains nothing for the GOP. Telling an easily refuted lie that Martin Luther King Jr was a Republican, when MLK Jr railed against Barry Goldwater makes the GOP look foolish. In fact, it ceates an image that the GOP thinks that the Black community is stupid enough to fall for such deception.
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The more GOP sponsored ads suggesting that MLK Jr was a Republican played on Black radio, the more African-American votes the GOP loses. the GOP became a joke.
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Barry Goldwater drove Black support for the GOP down to 6%. As long as Goldwater is a hero, the more the GOP can be expected to be dismissed by the African-American community. Reagan began his campaign in Philadelphia, MS amid tones of States Rights. When Conservatives talk of states Rights today, history brings up unpleasant images for African-American voters.
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The Republican Party, through the Southern Strategy and the inept techniques used in campaigning in the Black community, gets what it deserves. Blacks think of the GOP with the same degree of seriousness that the GOP thinks of Blacks, very little.
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Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is the GOP point man on the Judicial committee reviewing Judge Sotomayor. Sessions called the NAACP “un-American”. sessions was know for targeting Black civil rights workers for voter fraud. Why should Sessions be trusted in the upcoming Supreme Court hearings?
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Until the GOP looks inward for why the party fails to appeal to African-Americans, it will remain a majority White party. In most cases it’s the people presenting the message. They do not appear to be one of us. For all the pounding that Hillary Clinton took, the majority of African-American Democratic Party voters were ready to support Hillary if she were the victor.
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Just to certify that I’m not just harping on one ethnic group in the GOP, let me say that Michael Steele is incompetent. To any African-American voter who is voting because of Steele’s pseudo Hip-Hop, back hat wearing stereotypical fantasy, please cast your vote for the GOP. Politically Steele is taken as seriously as Al Sharpton. Steele will generate as many African-American votes for the GOP as Al Sharpton got for himself in NYC.

jcapan – and of course, it’s more complicated than that – I have no doubt that there are elements of exploitation of the disenfranchised.
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But yeah, immigration reform =|= rejection of the white race. Affirmative action =|= rejection of the white race.
Inheritance tax =|= rejection of the white race.

“Cliff, I’d say the democratic party’s greater capacity to sympathize with the underdog, as opposed to the aristocracy, naturally attracts minorities of all persuasions.”
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This paragraph from Nicholas Kristoff describes the motivation difference as well as any:

One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust.

Cliff Says:
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 5:41 pm
“the President of the North American Man Boy Love Association, one Paul Dirks”
.
“How did this end up being a fall-back tactic for wingnuts, accusing people of NAMBLA membership?”

-

Easy answer. It’s not a “tactic”, though. It’s merely quoting leftists (in this case, NAMBLA President Paul Dirks) who call David Letterman’s fantasy of seeing a 14 year-old girl (i.e., Willow Palin) getting “knocked up” (Letterman’s words) by a 33 year-old male (i.e., Alex Rodriguez) “a tacky joke utilizing a euphemism for ‘made pregnant’”. Normal people don’t call it “a tacky joke utilizing a euphemism for ‘made pregnant’”. We call it rape.

Cliff, agreed that it’s more complicated. Thus my “greater capacity”–when it comes to delivery, the dem party is rarely a model of success. But we speak the right language, the less alienating language. At times, however, it’s “compassionate liberalism,” a variation on W’s words vs. actions.
~
Unfortunately, this debate between the nutters and us clouds the most harmful divide of all–class. Whites make up a clear majority of those in poverty in the US. But as long as they’re fighting phantoms (and worshipping their oppressors as realistic role models) nothing will change.
~
IMO, the dem party is still fundamentally about serving the elite interests, not the working class of all colors.

“Unfortunately, this debate between the nutters and us clouds the most harmful divide of all–class.”
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Which adequately sums up the entire purpose of the conservative movement.

IMO, the dem party is still fundamentally about serving the elite interests, not the working class of all colors.
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Agreed, and I wish it weren’t the case.

It’s not a “tactic”, though. It’s merely quoting leftists (in this case, NAMBLA President Paul Dirks)
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NR86, even though I disagree with you, thank you for not being like textee.

I hate to see myself as a “glass-half-full” kind of guy but, the point is, there are still at least some liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party – and others who are beholden to liberal constituents – while there are no liberals in the Republican Party. None, Nadda, Zilch.

“Which adequately sums up the entire purpose of the conservative movement.”
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And, I might add, one of the fundamental roles of a compliant media. They’re thrilled to serve up 1000s of stories about ID politics. Hillary’s gender, Obama’s skin color, someday a prominent gay pol’s orientation–but John Edwards or Howard Dean’s populism, god forbid.
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I always think of that scene in Tammany Hall in Gangs of NY, where Boss Tweed pulls the strings of division. Amy & Joe offer up diff variations–religious divisions, us vs. them writ large (the global others).

textee, at least it wasn’t a joke about foul balls. If it had been a cricket match the opportunities for tasteless innuendo increase exponentially. Ahh the sound of leather on willow…..

“I always think of that scene in Tammany Hall in Gangs of NY, where Boss Tweed pulls the strings of division.”
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I always think of Fight Club.

Jcapan says:
“…rumor has it the indians exterminated, the blacks lynched, the Japanese put in camps, all had racist tendencies themselves.”
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So let me get this straight, this intrinsically historical argument suggests that minorities in America be given a free pass on racism because of past transgressions, while whites (who have never suffered an ounce of injustice in the history of the world?) have no fathomable justification for racial prejudices?
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Ok, so, what about me. An Italian-American whose family emigrated to the US in the 1930s. My family wasn’t present during occupation of the New World. My family was not present during slavery. My family was being treated like sh*t at the same time as the Japanese were being rounded up in camps. But I’m still just a stupid white boy, so its ok to spew racial trash on me and my family?
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Why shouldn’t my family be indignant at the preferential treatment that society now bestows upon other minorities in the area of free speech, allowing them to say what they will in the name of past injustices. Italian Americans, who suffered horrendous treatment by the Anglo American society between the 1880s and 1930s, are now lumped in with ‘whites’ and thus must be repentant for Anglo sins of the past that we not only had nothing to do with, but were also targets of as well….

“But I’m still just a stupid white boy, so its ok to spew racial trash on me and my family?”
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I can’t speak to the former (I don’t know for sure what color you are) but no one here has advocated that it’s OK to spew racial trash at all. You have no idea how ironic your sense of having suffered as a white, Italian-American sounds when compared to the suffering of the true victims of racial prejudice in this society, past and present, do you? I guess it really does all start with self-awareness.

Shepherd-
How dare you!
“You have no idea how ironic your sense of having suffered as a white, Italian-American sounds when compared to the suffering of the true victims of racial prejudice in this society”
I am utterly disgusted and offended with your belittlement of the suffering of the Italian immigrants to this country. But i do thank you for proving my point, that our memory of injustice is selective, and that only a select few minorities will be elevated to the status deserving of special treatment. What a joke you are…

I just wasted four minutes. Part of me wants to appeal to the High Sheriffs, but I believe in free discourse. At the same time, please don’t feed the trolls. They do not believe in free discourse.

What special treatment?
You don’t seem to have any compunction about whining whatever people are supposedly getting away with. Ergo, they aren’t getting away with it.

Listen to yourselves. Your arguments earlier were you really don’t care about whites screaming racism because of relativism. Minorities who have been historically mistreated by the US have more reason to be bitter according to you. But when I bring up the history of Italian American mistreatment, you all belittle it and say that doesn’t count.
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So let me get this straight, 50 years of oppression of Italians doesn’t fit into your mold. But, a few years of Japanese encampments makes the list of transgressions?
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I was never, by the way, whining about the treatment of Italians. I was finding it interesting that Italians are now lumped in with the ‘white oppressor’ group, yet my family experienced the same treatment at the hands of the American institutionalism. But of course, you simply picked what you wanted out of my statement rather than actually read what I said.

Any of you ever hear of the Boston Brahmins? Probably not, since this wouldn’t fit into your narrow world-view that only non-whites have been subject to American discrimination.
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Irish? Italian? Catholic? Any of this ringing a bell with you?

I’m torn which has been a weaker – neo’s defense of waterboarding or neo’s defense of poor 4th (5th? I can never keep these straight) generation Italian Americans.
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What a good day for neo to make the case for oppressed white Americans. I look forward to the defense of the CIA memos being released on Friday.
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After observing neo for a week now the difference between neo and rusty (or spob) is simply vocabulary.

The fact that Barack Obama had to get Secret Service protection earlier than any other Presidential candidate in history reminds us that hatred based on skin color is alive and well in the US.
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One benefit of White skin color, is that one can find it easier to fit into the US mold for success. We see Italians (and Catholics) on the Supreme Court. In 2009, a Latina nomineee for SCOTUS is still a historic event.
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People with non-white skin hues still face pressures that some lighter skinned individuals may not understand.
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We are aware of stories of unarmed African-Americans and African immigrants who died at the hands of police officials. We are aware of stories of undercover African-American police officers who were shot by White police officers. We realize that if Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice had the verbal skills of GW Bush, they would have been dismissed as buffoons. There is a difference.
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You relate 50 years. We see your call and raise you 350 years. What bias are you experiencing today because of your Italian heritage??

Paul-

3rd generation. And I haven’t once verbalized that I have been discriminated against on account of my heritage, but my grandfather is alive and well and he would open such a can of verbal judo on you that would send you spinning back to the viscous puddle of vulgarity from whence you came.

RMRD-

I never insinuated that the suffering my grandfather endured was worse or even equal to that of the black community over a period of hundreds of years. However, I was pointing out that it is not simply non-whites who endured bigotry and oppression. And I was responding to jcapan who had included the war camps of Japanese-Americans which lasted several years. I was noting to him that there were groups of whites (Irish, Italian, Catholics) that endured far greater humiliation and subjugation than that of the Japanese.

neo – “verbal judo”?
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I trust he is better than you and your, um, poppycock.–
“I was noting to him that there were groups of whites (Irish, Italian, Catholics) that endured far greater humiliation and subjugation than that of the Japanese.”
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Please go to your history professor and kick them in the shins. They failed you. Miserably.
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You are better suited to dorm room bull sessions.

neo, you’re right: no one should suffer oppression, at all, let alone because of their ethnicity. That said, are you _seriously_ proposing that the treatment of Italians – a likable bunch; I love their food and culture – over the last 50 years somehow equates to, say, what Native Americans have had to deal with – and still _are_ dealing with – over the last few centuries?
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Further, I agree, somewhat, when you say that all people are inherently racists – we’re leery of anything “different” – but the way in which we _act_ on those impulses makes all the difference. Using our Native American forbears, again, as an example, those folks welcomed the Pilgrims and helped them survive the rugged North American winters. And how did we repay them? Broken treaties. Infected blankets and meat. Rum. Wholesale, government-sponsored slaughter. Reservations. If the Indians had acted like “white” people, they’d have slaughtered or enslaved every last Pilgrim off the boat.

Mr. Nice Guy-

My statement was not in reference to the last 50 years, but to the period ranging from the 1880s to the 1930s. I appreciate your civility, but again I was not equating the treatment of my grandparents and great-grandparents to that of slavery or the near abolition of the American Indian. My post was in reference to several misguided bloggers here who appear to be under the impression that only blacks, Indians, and other non-whites suffered oppression at the hands of the US which is a patently selective understanding of American history.
…
Paul-
Ah, yes indeed my history teachers, as did yours, failed us miserably in that they only taught the Holocaust and slavery and failed to recognize the endless waves of oppression aimed at nearly every new group of Americans. What was your implication about the failure of history teachers? That they misled me in my KNOWLEDGE that the Italian immigrants were treated like dirt as they built the east coast of America? No, I learned that not from any WASP teacher, but from my family, who lived through it, endured it, yet doesn’t use it as an excuse for the current vicissitudes of life…

Neorationalist, your grandfather did go through trials and tribulations for which I am sorry. However when White Conservatives tell their stories to ethnic minorities it does tend to fall flat. there is a benefit to a lighter skin color that persists even today.
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When we hear Chief Justice say that the best way to stop discrimination is to end discrimination, we find the comment just plain stupid. The best way to end poverty is for people to stop being poor. The best way to end world hunger is for people to eat something. It is a dodge.
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(Hunger and poverty comments lifted from posts that appeared on the Oliver Willis website).
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@Neo, Do yourself a favor and try to overcome your profound ignorance. Read Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community (Hardcover) by David Neiwert

The poignant story of a Japanese American community torn apart by racism and WWII internment Strawberry Days tells the vivid and moving tale of the creation and destruction of a Japanese immigrant community. Before World War II, Bellevue, the now-booming ‘edge city’ on the outskirts of Seattle, was a prosperous farm town renowned for its strawberries. Many of its farmers were recent Japanese immigrants who, despite being rejected by white society, were able to make a living cultivating the rich soil. Yet the lives they created for themselves through years of hard work vanished almost instantly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. David Neiwert combines compelling storytelling with firsthand interviews and newly uncovered documents to weave together the history of this community and the racist schemes that prevented the immigrants from reclaiming their land after the war. Ultimately, Strawberry Days represents more than one community’s story, reminding us that bigotry’s roots are deeply ingrained in the very fiber of American society.

Paul-

Perhaps you should read the following. It may help you excavate yourself from the trenches of PC crap that you’ve clearly fallen into…
http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2009-05/Immigration.html
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http://www.osia.org/public/commission/only_a_movie.asp
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http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/Catholic/2003/06/Catholic-Bashing-Americas-Last-Acceptable-Prejudice.aspx
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http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jaeh/27.3/lizzi.html

I could provide more, if you are so inclined to broaden your WASP dominated education…

Wow, I go teach for a few hours and come back to a thread that keeps on giving.
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“Shepherd-How dare you!”
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Wow, clutch pearls much?
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OK, here goes, my last comment (given Jay’s firm scolding)–my own family’s situation, almost entirely German, my dad’s a 2nd gen immigrant, grew up speaking only Kraut (during WWII mind you, not a pleasant experience).
~
But here’s the rub–what this 3rd gen immigrant learned, like, at birth–any discrimination against us is a thing of the distant past. It never once occurred to me that I was an other, not once in my entire life, not even when I hung out with my German speaking Grossmama in public. We’re part of the power structure now, of a piece with the the WASPy in-crowd. That lesson seems to be lost on you, N-R. Asians (model minority mythos notw/standing), Latinos, blacks (non whites) are still actively being oppressed. Maybe if you knew more of them intimately, if you saw how they’re treated in subtle ways every day of their lives, you’d come to a fuller awareness. But I’m sure it can’t compare to somebody saying, hey, is your family in the mob?
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You seem to be under some delusion that we’re unaware of the cycles of the immigrant experience, that one more assimilated wave shat on the newbies off the boat. Each day you’re digging a deeper rhetorical ditch, to the pt. where Jay’s accusation (trollery) seems the only valid interpretation.
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As you clutch that necklace of faux outrage, consider some psych 101–why is what you’re reading here causing you so much anger, scorn, reaction in general. Why do you find it so threatening. It’s akin to a homophobe’s stance. I find engaging with you essentially amusing. Not simply b/c of your obvious intellectual limits, but b/c I’m that certain in my own convictions. Only the ideologically insecure would go to a blog where the vast majority find his views to be absurd and vent his victimization, N-R. Or, like the closeted gay bloke, are you sniffing around the gay bars b/c, and you’re welcome to come in buddy, deep down you may just think we’re onto something here, something tantalizing that’s been forbidden in the narrow parameters of your life so far. Think about it.

Oh yes, there is some deep seeded psychological reason that I would want to engage those I disagree with. If I agreed with all of you, why the hell would I keep coming back? Just so we could take turns patting one another on the back and enunciating what utter common ground we all stand on? Where’s the fun in that?
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I’m not outraged by what you say, but I want to paint another picture on these threads so that it is not monopolized by the likes of you and your lackeys. You can attempt to insult me all you want with your crass comments aimed at my intelligence, or lack thereof in your opinion. It doesn’t phase me. I am secure and comfortable in my convictions, proud of my heritage and culture, and profoundly more aware of the world’s realities, not simply this PC American milieu in which you all reside. Live a year in Europe and you’ll have a very different sense of the oh-so-grave injustices of contemporary minorities in the US.

…..Live a year in Europe and you’ll have a very different sense of the oh-so-grave injustices of contemporary minorities in the US.
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My family put it’s blood, sweat and tears into the United States of America. Forgive, me if I use the ideals of the USA, not Europe, as the gold standard. Turning the argument around, your family would not have faced discrimination in the US if it remained in Italy. Obviously, your family came because of the promise of America. Do you use Italy as a guidepost for national behavior?
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I have seen how Gypsies are treated in Romania. It did not make me chance my desire for how America should behave towards minorities one iota.

Yeah, my experience probably can’t compare with collegiate vacations in Europe (as a wealthy white gringo no less), but here in Japan, I’m literally an “other”
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From the CIA Factbook (ethnic groups): Japanese 98.5%, Koreans 0.5%, Chinese 0.4%, other 0.6%
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And in 2005, “an independent investigator for the UN says racism in Japan is deep and profound.”
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4671687.stm
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But you know what, even though I can look FWD to certain Japanese pointing at my child and saying “gaijin” (foreigner) it doesn’t for an instant cloud my perceptions re: the US. As rmrd said:
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“I have seen how Gypsies are treated in Romania. It did not make me chance my desire for how America should behave towards minorities one iota.”
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OK, really my last さよなら

“Oh by the way an angry White guy just fired shots at the Holocaust Museum in DC.”
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I’m assuming that you’re implying that he is a racist conservative. Well, I guess he could be, but clearly not the kind you’re thinking about, since he said he hated neo-cons like Bush and McCain, and is a 9/11 truther (believes the American government was in on 9/11). Thanks for the assumption though, I forgot that anyone who is racist HAS TO BE conservative.
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In other news, Jeremiah Wright notes that he hasn’t spoken to Obama in months, saying “them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me”.
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I’m somewhat perplexed at people thinking that the GOP has permanently lost Latinos, since the party is only one election removed from having 44% of the vote (44/53 split for Bush/Kerry in 2004). I guess to most people one election counts as a trend.

haha JC,

Collegiate vacations, eh?
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How about a year spent living, attending university, and working at an International Relations Office in Milan. All this, sustained by scholarships and grants. I have 9 brothers and sisters and a single-mother, so don’t give me that privileged white boy sh*t…
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Do not presume to know one iota about the hardships I’ve endured or the 18 hours days I’ve dealt with to put myself through college on not one dime from my family. You arrogant know-nothing…

Sembrerebbe che il mondo, pero’ gli Stati Uniti particolarmente, ha perduto il suo buonsenso, di nuovo.

Everybody’s making me feel bad because I’m a big white guy with blue eyes.

neo, but to people like him, all white conservative people are the same. Upper class, racist, etc. My parents both come from lower-class families, and once they grew up clawed their way up the ladder to have successful careers. But no, they MUST have just been GIVEN everything, instead of working for it. To some people, stereotypes ARE acceptable, they just have to be certain ones.

Oh, I’m quite aware, I’ve been putting up with this all day…
All I ask is for some thoughtful sincerity on who constitutes the privileged elite in America, both today and historically. So much as I can surmise their overwhelming response appears to be anyone who can trace their roots to Europe.

And as for the direct subject of KT’s post, I’d just like to quote another commenter on here:
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plukasiak: “Had someone asked this question about Democrats in June 2005 (or June 2003) the inability to identify a specific voice for the Democrats would have been as bad, if not worse”
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I realize it’s the trendy thing to talk about how the Republican Party will soon cease to exist (though often I wish it would, so a party more representative of libertarian-leaning people like me would rise up); all I have to say is, get back to me in 15 or 20 years. I find it hard to believe that some people actually think that in this rigid, two-party system we have that one of them would actually fold.
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And earlier on this I saw someone asked rusty if he could pick 5 leaders from history to lead Republicans today, who would it be. I thought this was interesting so I’ll list mine (no particular order): Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, Ronald Reagan (was so unpopular that he won 49 states in re-election!), Abraham Lincoln, and Charles Sumner.

……………..I’m assuming that you’re implying that he is a racist conservative.
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Nope, I thought he was a White Supremacist nutjob. But thanks for trying to read my mind. In the future I’ll try to differentiate my Angry White Guys. The Holocaust Museum guy is an Angry White Guy who is a White Supremacist murderer. Pat Buchanan is another Angry White guy, but I don’t see Buchanan shooting up a Holocaust museum.
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The guy who shot up the recruiting office in Little Rock is an Angry Black Guy who is a Muslim Supremacist murderer. Reverend Jeremiah Wright is another Angry Black guy, but I don’t see Wright shooting up a recruiting office.
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Buchanan gets a platform to spew his venom on NBC and MSNBC. TV cameras are at Pat’s beck and call.
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Reverend Wright does not get a similar platform to spew his venom.
Jeremiah has to shout and jump up and down to get cameras to come to him. Usually wright just gets print coverage.
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Hope that helped

Okay, during that time in this thread, people were talking about conservatives being racist, angry old white men, so I don’t see how my assumption was a ill-founded. And you referred to him as a “wingnut” which in my experience here means an extreme conservative/republican.

Well, none of you have discussed the domestic terrorist organization Operation Rescue, the terrorist leader Randall Terry and his angry white male followers. Them’s wingnuts too. How about those clinic bombings, assassinations, and Randall’s terror cells around Wichita, South Dakota, Colorado. Should we waterboard Scott Roeder, who knows and tells about imminent violence, the ticking timebomb on another OB/GYN?
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The terrorist Randall Terry gets a platform every time he asks as well. All he has to do is call a press conference, and the mainstream media come a’runnin.
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Under current United States law, set forth in the USA PATRIOT Act, acts of domestic terrorism are those which: "(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended— (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States."

Wingnuts can come from either party. We have Cindy Sheehan. Wingnut.
Reverend Wright. Wingnut. Code Pink. Wingnuts. I think what amazes most of us on the left is that wingnuts on the right actually make it into high public offices. Palin is a wingnut and she was a VP candidate. None of us think all republicans are wingnuts but we just don’t understand how the current republican party promotes their nuts when we disavow ours.

Terrorist leader Randall Terry is throwing a press conference at the National Press Club tomorrow, serving his mainstream journo guests chicken wings and Guiness.
Gawker – Free Hot Wings at Pro-Right Wing Violence Press Conference! – Press Conferences
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sacred, Sheehan and Code Pink, as embarrassing as they are, aren’t going around assassinating their perceived enemies and then giving free beer parties to talk about it in a national forum. Neither Reverend Wright, who I regard as about as nutty as Pat Roberts.
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I’m afraid I’m going to have to call false equivalence on you, my friend. tsk.

What James, do you think that because we few conservatives here may (or may not) be pro-life that we are going to suddenly justify or defend acts of murder, bombings, etc aimed at abortion clinics and their staffs? Nice try…

By the way, James, really was is your point?
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Care to talk about the leftist wingnut terrorist groups such as Earth Liberation Front (the single most active domestic terrorist group in the United States), Earth First!, Animal Liberation Front, or EMETIC?
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They are significantly more active than Operation Rescue, resulting in billions of dollars in sabotage and destruction, against a range of private companies and government facilities.
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Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First!, was on the board of directors of Sierra Club and was convicted in 1996 of terrorism.
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I’m sure most, if not all, of these groups’ members vote Democratic. But, this means nothing to the Democratic Party. Just as Op. Rescue means nothing to the GOP.

To my knowledge, Operation Rescue has not committed terrorist acts, from what I know they just protest. Though if I’m wrong, please cite and correct me, I would be interested to know.
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And I would’ve thought this would’ve run its course through the media by now, but I still hear it on TV and other media, so I’ll emphatically say: the five murders committed by the extreme anti-abortion movement since Roe v. Wade is not representative of conservatism or the pro-life movement as a whole, no more than people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are representative of Islam.

Well, number one, I don’t consider any of you “pro-life” at all. Most conservatives get really giddy and excited about war and the death penalty and don’t much care about the life of the pregnant woman. So I’ll be more precise and refer to you as anti-abortion. Which is fine, you are, of course, entitled to hold that opinion. But let’s be clear what it is. And it *isn’t* being about protecting, respecting, preserving life.
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What Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Fox News do with their national platform is fill the easily influenced and weak minded conservative minds like yours, and the truly deranged conservatives like textee and rusty, with racist hate propaganda and distorted reality, and they have been doing that for 40 years and more.
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So yeah, you conservatives have been justifying and defending torture, murder, assassination, war, and violence in public and in the national media for 8 years, 16 years, 40 years and more. You haven’t made a convincing case for anything else since you have been hanging out here.

“And it *isn’t* being about protecting, respecting, preserving life.
Don’t you sit there from the comfort of your plush little LA couch and tell me why I do something. There is no hypocrisy in supporting the death penalty and opposing abortion; i.e. punishing the guilty, defending the innocent.
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I do not take my opinions from any of the aforementioned characters; I oppose abortion on strict moral grounds, because I acknowledge that life exists with conception, evident in the heartbeat as early as 8 weeks. I find it preposterous to assume that because I do not condone the murder of an unborn child that I would give no consideration to the health of the mother. There are numerous instances when a health exception is not only justifiable, but required.
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I simply advocate for responsibility. If you engage in activity which produces offspring, you must be willing to bear the consequences.

@apolly
<blockquote?the five murders committed by the extreme anti-abortion movement since Roe v. Wade is not representative of conservatism or the pro-life movement as a whole, no more than people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are representative of Islam.
,
Yes, that is exactly my point. Exactly. And Randall Terry, who is giving a free beer party tomorrow at the National Press Club to celebrate Tiller’s death with his loyal press following, and Operation Rescue, along with Army of God, are the leaders of this terrorism. I do not see the leaders in the Republican Party, or the conservative movement, denounce and reject either the assassination or the terrorism. You can readily find information on terrorism committed against clinics at Wikipedia.
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@neo
I don’t know anything about the organizations you cited, and I think you are blowing smoke when you claim they are “significantly more active.” Prove that, please. I don’t support, indeed I denounce and reject, any organization who commits vandalism and/or sabotage for political purposes or for any other purpose. You cannot say that the leaders of those kinds of wacko organizations are affiliated with the Democratic Party, and especially not the way that Randall Terry and his ilk are affiliated and associated with the Republican Party. Remember when the Republicans in Congress and George W Bush passed a midnight law to “save” Terry Schiavo, at Randall Terry’s demand?

Wait, so it’s wrong to be for the execution of convicted murderers and also against abortion? Um, what? Can you really not see the difference there? Also, if we’re going to deconstruct movement titles, then I’ll say I don’t consider pro abortion-rights people pro-choice, by making a blanket statement and lumping them in with people who don’t believe in school choice, more choice in the economy, more choice in where to direct retirement funds (Social Security) and who believe in the Fairness Doctrine. But that wouldn’t be fair, now would it?
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And conservatives have been defending war for 40 years? Wasn’t it a Democrat president who was in charge of the Vietnam escalation, and Nixon who was elected to end that war? And wasn’t it Reagan, who navigated the Cold War without going directly at war with the Soviets, instead relying on diplomacy with Gorbachev?
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By the way, why is it that I am “weak-minded”?

Man, the arrogance of some of you liberal activists is astounding. Get a grip on reality, quit dictating to others why they believe in a certain set of ideals, and start examining your highly warped self…

Wait, so it’s wrong to be for the execution of convicted murderers and also against abortion? Um, what? Can you really not see the difference there? Also, if we’re going to deconstruct movement titles, then I’ll say I don’t consider pro abortion-rights people pro-choice, by making a blanket statement and lumping them in with people who don’t believe in school choice, more choice in the economy, more choice in where to direct retirement funds (Social Security) and who believe in the Fairness Doctrine. But that wouldn’t be fair, now would it?
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And conservatives have been defending war for 40 years? Wasn’t it a Democrat president who was in charge of the Vietnam escalation, and Nixon who was elected to end that war? And wasn’t it Reagan, who navigated the Cold War without going directly at war with the Soviets, instead relying on diplomacy with Gorbachev?
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By the way, why do you think that I am “weak-minded”?

You really have your pearl-clutching down, I’ll give you that. Yes, there IS hypocrisy in calling yourself “pro-life” and advocating death and torture. You are anti-abortion. I myself am not in favor of abortion, so I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy into your histrionics about that. I’ll just note that you don’t know what the hell you are talking about with regard to reproductive issues, and you are mindlessly repeating rightwing dogma which you didn’t arrive at by any rational means. But you have every right to hold that opinion, and I have no desire to debate it.

Yet again, blanket statements about how I arrive at my conclusions. I am utterly impressed by your ability to have such insights into the minds of others. You, sir, are simply repeating leftwing dogma. We could go round and round all day like this, the fact is, there really isn’t anything that hasn’t already been said by someone else, so yea, to an extent we all are simply repeating what others have already established before us. That does not detract from the sincerity, however.

Ah yes, so many assumptions in there, like that I support “death and torture” (I don’t outside of the death penalty, and have argued against torture on here before). Why don’t I know what the hell I’m talking about when it comes to reproductive issues? Because I’m against abortion? Brilliant assumption! This is like saying that anyone who disagrees with you is wrong, how close-minded.
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And why do you assume I’m mindlessly repeating right wing dogma and that I’m irrational? Really, that is a serious question, I’d like you to answer that. Do you not think it’s possible for people to independently hold conservative viewpoints? Both of my parents are liberal, but people like you would assume that I get all of my political viewpoints externally so this wouldn’t make sense.
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Really, stop being so close-minded.

I think he’s been ranting to me, actually, apollyon07. Seems I’ve been causing a stir around here lately, upsetting the delicate balance of 40 liberal nutjobs and two or three conservative nutjobs, who are all hysterically aggressive and equally detached from reason.

okay.
1) the term pro-choice is just as silly as pro-life. The issue is who is best able to make a decision about one’s own health care, you and Randall Terry, or a woman, her physician and her significant other.
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2) If you believe in the death penalty for whatever crime, that’s fine. You are entitled. But that’s not really “pro-life” is it?
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3) I can see you don’t know much about the VietNam war. Yes, it was Kennedy and Johnson who escalated what was started by Eisenhower. Yes, Nixon was *elected* to stop the war but he escalated and expanded it.
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4) I can see you don’t know much about the Reagan/Bush years. You are correct that Reagan didn’t go to war with USSR. There were little items such as Nicaragua, Argentina, Grenada, Libya, Panama that kept the Republicans in an excited state during the Reagan/Bush years, to say nothing of financing both sides of the Iraq/Iran war. Okay? And then there was all those terrorism incidents he had to deal with.
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5) I wasn’t referring to you being weak-minded, but to neo. That’s because he thinks he’s making an argument, but lacks facts and relies on wingnut dogma, and refuses to stipulate provable, demonstrable facts, much like the vast wingnut wasteland.

I’ve yet to see any facts come my way from you. Simply opinion, accusation, assumptions, etc etc

@neo,
I think a lot of regular commenters would be happy to debate a conservative here. We do get into an echo chamber on the liberal side because of the lack of intelligent debate from the right. Instead we get textee and rusty. We have had some interesting discussions on stuff we DO disagree on, but I wish a conservative would stick around. People have been getting on your case because you don’t bring facts to the table and don’t make a rational case for your views. Maybe you don’t realize it. Maybe you need more practice. but wingnut talking points without facts and a coherent case just doesn’t fly. Try it, I think you’ll find some interesting debate.
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And, on a side note, today I have discussed three issues. Italian American heritage, domestic terrorism, and abortion.
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I provided several links to excellent articles on the discrimination Italian Catholics faced upon arrival in the US.
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On terrorism, I made one post, noting several prominent radical left organizations, the premise of which could not be disputed by any self-respecting terrorism analyst.
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And on abortion, there is no way to argue facts on an issue with such moral repercussions. It is all based on what you believe to be right or wrong.
….
As for taking my cue from the rightwing talking points, I’m not sure if storyboarding Italian American immigration history is at the top of their agenda. Nor is domestic terrorism. The one of three topics I discussed which aligns with the GOP is on the topic of abortion. And your point is…..?

I am not writing a research paper, here. I am not going to go through the trouble of adding citations to my time.com blogs. Your lack of awareness about certain things I have posted, i.e. Earth Liberation Movement, does not equate to my lack of facts. If you doubt, do some research of your own. But do not accuse me of not including facts simply because what I do present you are not familiar with. Any and all topics I have discussed have been issues that I am familiar with, whether or not I made a list of events, or facts to support my case is irrelevant.

I’ve yet to see any facts come my way from you. Simply opinion, accusation, assumptions, etc etc
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I pointed out that under the PATRIOT act, Operation Rescue qualifies as a terrorist organization, and the GOP and the right has yet to denounce and reject the assassination of Tiller. I noted that the terrorist Randall Terry was throwing a beer party for his loyal press following, and that terrorist supporters on the right have been indoctrinating their followers for a long time and that they have a national platform to do that. Those are the facts I started out with.

1- The way I see the issue is that it isn’t about the woman’s health care, it’s about the child inside her. If a woman’s health is really threatened by her pregnancy, then that’s obviously a different story, but don’t try to say most abortions are carried out due to strictly health reasons.
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2- The term pro-life only refers to one’s position on abortion, not on other issues. As an aside, I myself am somewhat on the fence about the death penalty, mainly because of practicality issues.
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3-Nixon did expand bombing but it was him: who enacted what he called “Vietnamization” (building) up the South’s military so they could take care of themselves, who started withdrawing troops after the Tet Offensive, whose Secy. of State conducted negotiations with the North, , and who signed the Paris Peace Accords. Nixon contributed to the war more than Johnson? Come on now.
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4- Yes, that’s why I said Reagan didn’t go to war directly with the Soviets. Don’t you think that moderate military operations to keep Communism in check were preferably than taking on the Soviets directly? Plus you’re assuming all of those actions were wrong/unjustified.
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5- Sorry about that, that was a misunderstanding. My bad on that one.
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Anyway, I think this is good for the night. See you all tommorrow.

I think several people disputed as false equivalence your contention that the difficulties that your family faced as new immigrants compared with that of the Japanese Americans. Links and new information was offered but the subject wasn’t fully explored.
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It isn’t an acceptable debate technique when your only response to a point is LIBERALS DO IT TOO!!!!!!! That’s a rightwing tactic well used, which is one way I spotted you as a rightwing extremist.
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I agree, it is not yet time to find common ground on abortion. but surely we can denounce the assassination of Tiller and the people who were behind it, no?

I’ve had enough as well for the evening…
James, by your own accord in your post supporting your ‘factual’ basis you say things like “I noted that the terrorist Randall Terry was throwing a beer party for his loyal press following” -OR- “terrorist supporters on the right have been indoctrinating their followers for a long time…”
These are loaded and opinionated words that betray the ideologue within and appear contrary to your argument of any factuality…

james…

In your post expressing your factually sound arguments you say the following:
“noted that the terrorist Randall Terry was throwing a beer party for his loyal press following”
“terrorist supporters on the right have been indoctrinating their followers for a long time”
-And you suggest that Operation Rescue is a terrorist group by the guidelines of the Patriot Act, despite the fact that the organization itself has not carried out any acts “dangerous to human life.” While members of the org. may have committed crimes, no bombings or murders that I am aware of have ever been linked to Op. Rescue.

–These statements of yours betray the ideologue within you and appear to discredit your claim that you base your arguments on fact…

@apolly-
1) you obviously do not know that. It isn’t for you to decide on the basis of stereotypes and assumptions. I hope you have been following Sullivan on this subject. Even if it doesn’t change your mind, it will enlighten you.
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2- which makes it anti-abortion. Why play with words? That’s propaganda.
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The rest, your lack of knowledge of recent history is stunning and embarrassing. I have no desire to revisit the VietNam war or the Reagan years with you. I advise you to read a couple of books before expounding on these subjects.

I certainly denounce the murder of Dr. Tiller. And if, in fact, evidence were to surface indicating that Operation Rescue itself was involved or influenced the murder, than I would also wholeheartedly denounce and reject them…
In the stead of such findings, however, I will support Op. Rescue’s Constitutional right to protest and seek to influence policy, so long as they do not engage in ‘acts dangerous to human life.’

As for the Japanese-American, Italian-American issue, I reject the one article that was provided citing that Japanese lives were ruined as evidence superseding the 4 links I posted documenting the entire generational effect of 50 years of discrimination.

neo,
you are in error. Randall Terry and a number of his followers have bombed abortion clinics and gone to jail for threatening health care workers and vandalizing property. The assassin of Tiller has been linked to Operation Rescue. If Terry and his followers weren’t rightwing whites, they’d be in prison right now, having committed many more terrorist acts over 20 years in the US than anyone now serving time for terrorism. Even today he promotes terrorism against abortion clinics, and does so on national television. There is no denying the fact that the GOP and the Republicans in Congress are aiding and abetting this terrorism.
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I take it you object to what you perceive to be my inflammatory language. Loyal? Well wasn’t CNN following Terry’s every utterance during his Schiavo vigil? CNN just ate that up, excitedly. They hang on his every word here about the Tiller assassination. So yeah, I think that “loyal” is an apt word.

While both groups suffered immensely, I believe wholeheartedly that the overwhelming sources I have read on the subject are in fact accurate in their descriptions of the events between 1880s and 1930s, and the detrimental effects that Italians resultedly endured coupled with my own grandfather’s explicit expression of the social constraints he faced. It would be difficult to qualitatively measure who indeed suffered more, but given the relatively brief period of Japanese subjugation in comparison to that suffered by the Italian immigrants, I find it a difficult point to concede.

It is your contention, then, that Italian immigrants suffered more discrimination than Japanese immigrants? Okay. I can’t see it, but it isn’t a point I’m interested in debating.

neo,
I am sympathetic to the wrongs that your grandfather and other immigrants faced.
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On that note, I’m afraid I must retire, for the long day at work ahead. G’nite. I rather think it ended more civilly than it began. Yes?

James-
I will look up more about Operation Rescue and attempt to convey to you tomorrow or shortly thereafter my findings. If you are indeed correct in your last statement, than I vehemently reject them. I would like to know for sure the extent of their activities…
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In the interim, you may want to go back and review the links I posted so that you may envision the suffering and prejudices that Italians, as recently as my grandfather, endured in America and let you not forget that the downtrodden and oppressed have not always been those darker than I….
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Its been, well, lets say interesting. But I need some sleep. Arrivederci nemico!

Randall Terry is supported, but Reverend Wright has a problem?
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Who on the Left is actively supporting Reverend Wright?
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Conservatives fought against a Homeland Security report that domestic terrorism would increase because it drew attention to wingnut groups targeting Conservatives. The report also addressed Far Left groups targeting Liberals. I did not see a great deal of Liberal opposition to the report.

The report also addressed Far Left groups
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Actually, there were two separate reports. Having thrown such a pity party over an exceeding accurate report now strikes me as being as boneheaded as “OK you’ve covered your a$$” as uttered on 8-6-01.

neorationalist wrote
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…………..I never insinuated that the suffering my grandfather endured was worse or even equal to that of the black community over a period of hundreds of years.
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That is the crux of the issue. A fact of life in the United States has been the benefit of White skin color. The story of your grandfather is enlightening, although we have not heard what specifically happened to him. Subsequent generations of Italians were able to meld into White Society. A small number of Italians even picked up on racism in the US. I remember being in Cleveland years ago and being warned that African-Americans were not welcome in “Little Italy”.
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The differential treatment based on skin color still persists. You state that you have not faced discrimination personally. When you then address an ethnic group that is still experiencing a difference in treatment, your historical references pale in comparison to current events.
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There has been a marked improvement in conditions for African-Americans but disparities persist. When White Conservatives address African-Americans and talk of racial progress, the subconscious response from Blacks is generally, “How do YOU know that there has been progress”? “What personal changes have YOU experienced”? The answer we tend to hear from Conservatives is a diatribe against Affirmative Action.
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Sotomayor got into Princeton and graduated at the top of her class. GW Bush got into Yale, graduated a C-student became Governor of Texas, and President of the United States of America. Both Sotomayor and GW Bush are Affirmative Action babies. Sotomayor struggled with the English language and conquered the challenge. GW Bush never overcame his problems with English, similar to Governor Sarah Palin. The United States is less of the meritocracy society than you tend to believe.
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I had an African-American English teacher in junior high who stressed the importance of communicative skills and mastering the language. I firmly believe that GW Bush and Sarah Palin got a “pass” from voters in the United States despite poor language skills. Barack Obama could not have the speech pattern of GW Bush or Sarah Palin and be considered an intelligent human being in the United states. That is one benefit of White skin color.

Speaking of Napolitano, terrorism, and crazy white guys:
http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2009/06/11/is-the-media-soft-on-white-male-terrorism/
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Here’s a poll on GOPers about their own party:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/10/republican.party.poll/index.html
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On the issue of the various immegrant groups that came to the US, virtually all have endured discrimination in one form or another before they became mainstream.
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What separates all(*1) of them from Black Americans is the fact that there is a visible difference – a sort of a natural ‘star of David’ that has dogged the Black community since it’s inception.
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No terrorist organizations of any note had as their aim the political suppression of any minority in the US, with the exception of Black Americans. The difference is quite large, and the Black American experience truly should be looked upon more like the victims of the Holocaust.
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I’m not suggestion anything other than the idea that these facts should be recognized: First, the worlds oldest and largest terrorist orgainization(*2), the KKK, is alone responsible for 200,000 to 2,000,000 deaths here in the US over its 172(*3)-year history. Add to this the uncounted number (estimates are from 2,000,000 to 10,000,000) who died on the slaver ships, and the magnitude is every bit the same, except slower.
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This is what makes GOP conduct so heinous, at least to me.
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*1
I leave out the Japanese and Chinese, who suffered severly here in the northwest, even greater and sometimes violent discrimination. We did have a concentration camp for the Japanese here in WWII.
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*2
Al Queda his killed at the most, maybe 20,000 to 30,000 in its’ short history. The KKK, while not what it was even 40 to 50 years ago, is still responsible for 10 to 15 deaths a year. Many GOP politicians (including some of the more famous) were members of the CCC, which is the mouthpiece of the KKK. For more info, see http://www.splcenter.org and their intelligence reports. Type ‘CCC’ at the search and ye will find what ye seeks.
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*3
The KKK was only formally founded during the Civil War. It had it’s roots in the vigilante groups that were formed toward the end of the slave revolts in 1837.

James, LA: I wasn’t comparing the violent RW wingnuts to our non-violent wingnuts. I was comparing the non-violent wingnuts on each side. My point was that the republicans elect their non-violent nut cases to public office (Palin, Bachman). I think you misinterpreted my post. I do consider Operation Rescue and Randal Terry to be domestic terrorists.

Pat Buchanan gets to be defined as a distinguished political analyst. Glenn Beck gets shows on CNN-HNN and Fox. The intellectual limitations of Glenn Beck are obvious. Buchanan can write a column entitled “Thank Whitey” for bringing Blacks to the US in slavery and still be employed. Beck can ask a duly elected Congressmen who happens to be Muslim if the Congressman is loyal to the US and be welcomed to another network with open arms.
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The line-up of cable news anchors is all-White all night with the exception of Roland Martin doing pinch hitting act for Campbell Brown when Brown was pregnant. The bright boys of Wall Street and the auto industry who led us into the financial abyss were majority White. Their replacements are majority White. Yet White males are discriminated against.
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When I see Al Sharpton on my TV as frequently as I see Pat Buchanan, then I’ll know true change has come. When Jeremiah Wright gets a show to express his cockeyed views in the same manner as Glenn Beck, again I’ll know true change has come. I’ll also know that I won’t be watching the shows that present Buchanan, Beck, Sharpton or Wright. But, at least there will be a level playing field.

rmrd: The big difference is that those of us on the left aren’t interested in following or supporting our fringe elements. I hope we never get to the point where the Sheehans, Sharptons and Wrights have the large followings that Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity command. I don’t deny for one second that we have a fringe element. I do deny that that they have widespread support. Having one party out there that has lost it’s collective mind is one party too many. If the democrats ever become as bizarre as the republican party and consider Wright or Sheenan as distinguised analysts, then I’ll leave the party and become an independent or end my involvement in politics altogether. If leveling the playing field means that we have to stoop to the level of the republican party, then I can’t see us as being a party worth supporting. The demographic trending looks to be all in our favor. I can’t see a logical reason for us to want to change that. Let the republicans dwindle in appeal. Their embrace of the fringe isn’t helping them at all. They’ve become a regional party because of their actions.

53_3…
I have to delve into this statement. You listed a series of figures concerning the brutality of the KKK and their historically pervasive significance. You then immediately follow with this statement:
“This is what makes GOP conduct so heinous, at least to me”
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Is this an insinuation that the GOP and KKK are synonymous? If so that is one hell of a blatantly bold assumption. I hope that direct connection was not your intended purpose. I simply would like clarification on that point…
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Thanks.

sacred-
If you truly believe that the GOP is on an irreversible decline, in apparent contradiction to the two-party system that we have, what will be the end result? A one-party Democratic dominated system of government? Will another party take the place of the GOP? Will it not be in opposition to the Democratic Party? Would it not, out of balanced necessity, be conservative in nature? If so, wouldn’t it naturally consume the GOP base as well, and thus become simply another version of the GOP? I am hesitant to buy into this farce about the extinction of the Republican Party, or at the very least, its general principles and political platform.

neo: I don’t believe the decline is irreversible. I just don’t believe they’ve hit bottom yet. They’re going to have to decide which path they’re going to pursue. The current path is a dead end. The influence of the more extreme elements of the evangelical base is a losing proposition. The influence of the Limbaugh/Hannity/Palin/Beck crowd has little appeal outside of that segment. If they can tame that bunch and return to the fiscally conservative, small government, personal freedom without government interference roots that they once championed they are going to broaden their appeal dramatically. They have been saying one thing and yet pursuing another goal. The pro torture stance they’ve adopted is a killer. Whether waterboarding, beatings, forced nudity and humiliation is considered by the base to be torture or not is irrelevant. It’s considered by the majority of the people to be torture and spin isn’t going to change that. The future of the republican party is up to the republicans. The changing demographics is something they either have to accomodate in their platforms or face a long exile from majority status as a consequence. The people aren’t going to change for them. They have to change to reflect the changing attitudes of the people.

You will probably call this negative politics, and you may do so if you wish, but if you do, it will fit in real nice with the negative politics in the drivel that you publish and call it journalism. Some of the GOP names that you mention are old stalwarts with proud traditions, and have handled themselves with honor through trying times. The time for your Messiah is still ahead and you know nothing about the man, which is of course exactly what he wants of you because you may just stumble on the truth and bring the whole card house down once you get to know him.

Ike Jackson, could you translate your post? Who are the honorable old GOP stalwarts? Is your Messiah reference blasphemy against Jesus Christ? What specifically in Ms. Tumulty’s article do you find objectionable? The poll results?

Lots of people have recently been saying that in order to win again, the GOP needs to be more moderate. Did they not run John McCain last election? There’s no way in hell that you can say that McCain was the less moderate of the two last election with a straight face. People can certainly chalk up 2008′s result to a multitude of other factors, but not to running a non-moderate candidate.

“I simply would like clarification on that point…”
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Absolutely not. The GOP was never directly involved. If anything, the dissenting Democratic politicians in the 1800′s and early 1900′s had closer ties to the KKK than the GOP had. One thing that is true, provided limitations are recognized, is that the GOP is the Party of Lincoln.
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The collusion I point at is what you would find if you went to http://www.splcenter.org. The Dixiecrats, defeated in the Civil Rights battles of the ’60s, turned to the Republican party, and they, together with the existing dissenting GOPers, crafted Southern Strategy – the use of racial hatred for policial gain.
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The Democratic party has it’s racial skeletons in the closet, but mostly after Civil Rights up until a couple years ago, were mired in a complacent ‘take it for granted’ attitude toward the Black electorate, which showed it’s power in this last election.
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On the other hand, the GOP following the defeat of Dixiecrats in the ’60s have been the prime mover and, in my opinion, are directly responsible for extending the racial divide in this country far beyond it’s normal shelf life.
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Over the last 30 to 40 years, a lot of mainstream misconceptions about the Black community have been maintained and even mainstreamed into the consciousness of “white” Americans.

apollyon07:
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I disagree. John McCain was a moderate, but in order to garner the primary win he needed, he skewed far, far right, and picked up Sarah Palin in the process.
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McCain took a chance picking her, and I don’t honestly think there was proper vetting, given her and her family’s connections to some of the most extreme groups in the country, the AIP.
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He tried to have it both wasy, and I will say, that I believe, as an individual that he was moderate, but by no means was there anything moderate about the McCain/Palin ticket.

To elaborate a little more on neo’s comments:
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I think maybe I leapt over a lot of history in making the statment I made. When I described the GOP’s conduct as ‘heinous’, I was referring to the GOP’s use of Southern Strategy.

apollyon07, McCain was a flawed candidate for the times. McCain’s lack of appeal does not mean that the GOP will gain voters by going hard right.

Another elaboration:
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I disagree. John McCain was a moderate, but in order to garner the primary win he needed, he skewed far, far right, and picked up Sarah Palin in the process.
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I should have stated that he remained fairly far right during the campaign following his nomiation as GOP candidate, then picked up Sarah Palin.
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Apologies. I sometimes don’t proof as well as I should. Sometimes what makes sense in the continuity of thnigs appears to others as a rather long leap!

53_3…

Fair enough, I appreciate the expansion on your thoughts. And I will say, largely, I agree with your assessment. It is strikingly revealing that by and large the majority of the white population that does in fact harbor racial prejudices are members of the GOP. While they constitute a minute minority of the party, they are still a vocal faction. That is something that disturbs me immensely and I have no qualms with acknowledging this phenomenon…

“McCain’s lack of appeal does not mean that the GOP will gain voters by going hard right.”
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I agree, and point to the November elections as incontrovertable proof of this.
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Obama would have had no chance whatsoever had Amreicans, as a whole, percieved the ideologies of the far right viable.

An earlier post asked if Von Brunn was considered a Republican. Here is a partial view from John Chait
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11.06.2009
Was James Von Brunn a Right-Winger?
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Ben Smith, noting that James Von Brunn might potentially have considered targeting The Weekly Standard, writes:
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The suggestion that the Standard may have been a target complicates any view of the racist shooter in contemporary left-right terms. Von Brunn’s white supremacist roots put him under the rubric of a “right-wing extremist,” but the substance of his views — which included everything from believing that President Bush may have been in on the September 11 attacks to denying that President Obama is an American citizen — are too far on the fringe to fit into conventional political classification.
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I’m not sure what he’s talking about here. First, the “conventional political classification” is a rubric that accounts for extremists on the far right or left who abhor Democrats or Republicans. Ralph Nader has a lot of bad things to say about the Democratic Party, but that doesn’t make him hard to classify on the left-right spectrum.
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Second, a certain strand of conservative thought is comfortable with most of the tenets of Republican doctrine with the exception of free trade and, especially, Jews, Israel, and neoconservative influence. Pat Buchanan is the emblem of this brand of conservatism. Buchanan is generally a Republican partisan except for Jewish/Israeli/Middle Eastern issues where he takes strong exception. Von Brunn is pretty clearly a violent and more extreme adherent of Buchanan’s basic worldview. That he would detest a neoconservative institution like the Standard isn’t “complicating” or surprising at all.
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Third, it’s somewhat apparent from Von Brunn’s writing that he did identify with the Republican Party on some basic partisan questions. He cheered conservatives for getting Dan Rather fired, believed Sarah Palin was unfairly hounded by the media, and so on. Indeed, if there’s anything surprising and disturbing about Von Brunn’s beliefs, it’s that he identifies more closely with the Republican Party than I would have thought a radical white supremacist would. This may be a sign that the GOP has become more appealing to radical right-wingers than it once was, but it could also be an anomaly.
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–Jonathan Chait
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http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/06/11/was-james-von-brunn-a-right-winger.aspx

“While they constitute a minute minority of the party, they are still a vocal faction.”
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I think that the 22,000,000 or so dittoheads belong in this category, as do some of the followers of Hannity, O’Reilly, Buchannon, and others who have used such tactics in the past and do so today.
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I think that upwards of 30% of all “white” Americans carry some sort of misconception about the Black community. It shouldn’t be, but having watched GOP conduct over the last 30 to 40 years, I will lay the blame in their lap, almost exclusively, for the current vitality of the racial divide. Had those 30 to 40 years been spent in real dialogue, the GOP would have discovered this simple fact:
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About 40 to maybe even 50 percent of those in the Black community are conservative.
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However, even though they are, very, very few are willing to cast a vote for the GOP, and it is a telling fact that is nearly continually glossed over.

Well to be fair, 53_3, it is most certain that an equally proportionate rate of black Americans have ‘misconceptions’ about the white community. Its an unfair and unsubstantiated claim that blacks are more misunderstood than whites. Now, of course, we must also differentiate between ‘misconceptions’ and actual discrimination. Obviously, white America cannot claim contemporary institutionalized discrimination.

Oh my oh my, friend rmrd, you have not read my comment properly. Just read it in regular English. I did not say that I find anything or part of the article objectionable. What I said was that the whole article [which includes the poll] is drivel that is passed off as journalism. But I shall do even better just for you and submit some revised Posts in my Blog and it will Pingback through here in the next hour. OK

Oh my oh my, friend rmrd, you have not read my comment properly. Just read it in regular English. I did not say that I find anything or part of the article objectionable. What I said was that the whole article [which includes the poll] is drivel that is passed off as journalism. But I shall do even better just for you and submit some revised Posts in my Blog and it will Pingback through here in the next hour. OK?

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