Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Sunday, October 13, 2013

"The Cruzification of the GOP"









On this lovely autumn Sunday morning, as our neighborhood readies itself for the annual Columbus Day parade (passing right by my home here in historic Boston's North End), I offer some sobering thoughts on the recklessness of the GOP, not by a liberal, but by one of their own.  

I'll also note that the apocalyptic TeaPublicans are so far gone that not one of them will bother to read Douthat, since anyone who is critical of them is considered part of the "enemedia," or as that unfortunate woman from Alaska loves to call it, "the lamestream media."

When 70% of the country is against what they've done and what they're doing, it is their habit to hunker down and become more obstinate and blind to their kamikaze tactics.



Conservative New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, on the Crazy TeaPublicans:



"They told me," Martin Sheen's Willard says to Marlon Brando's Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now," at the end of a long journey up the river, "that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound."

His baldness bathed in gold, his body pooled in shadow, Kurtz murmurs: "Are my methods unsound?" 

And Willard — filthy, hollow-eyed, stunned by what he’s seen — replies:

"I don't see any method at all, sir."

This is basically how reasonable people should feel about the recent conduct of the House Republicans.

[skip]


"...we shouldn't overstate the gravity of what’s been happening in Washington. There are many policies in American history, pursued in good faith by liberals or conservatives, that have been more damaging to the country than the Republican decision to shut down the government this month, and many gambits that have reaped bigger political disasters than most House Republicans are likely to face as a result.

But there is still something well-nigh-unprecedented about how Republicans have conducted themselves of late. It’s not the scale of their mistake, or the kind of damage that it’s caused, but the fact that their strategy was such self-evident folly, so transparently devoid of any method whatsoever."


And this from Dana Milbank:


Skeptics warned from the start that it was a suicide mission for Republicans to shut down the federal government in a long-shot attempt to defund Obamacare. Now that such dire predictions have come to pass, the lawmakers who engineered the shutdown are getting the conflagration — and the martyrdom — they sought. 

 Call it the Cruzifiction of the GOP.



And finally, another one of their own, Jennifer Rubin, illustrates their bat-shyte craziness, which the bat-shyte crazies will also ignore (it's what they do best--ignore reality and march off the cliff in lock step):


RUBIN:  There has been, to put it mildly, some mass self-delusion going on in right-wing circles. Here’s how to tell if you are suffering from the ill-effects of the echo chamber: 

1. You think Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has it nailed when he tells the Value Voters Summit that the Dems are “feeling the heat” in the shutdown fight. 

2. You think the problem is Ken Cuccinelli isn’t conservative enough. 

3. You think if only the shutdown went on longer the GOP would win this fight.





cartoon by John Branch

14 comments:

Infidel753 said...

When 70% of the country is against what they've done and what they're doing

Well, of course those are "skewed polls" whipped up by the evil media -- yes, they're back to that again, just like in October 2012.

And no doubt Douthat, Milbank, and Rubin will soon be denounced by RedState and Hot Air commenters as RINOs, "squishes", Marxists, Kenyans, etc. Teabaggerdom is gripped by the zeal of Jonestown and Masada -- everyone is out of step except themselves.

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Keep up the insanity Teddy Boy!

The House of Representatives must keep "standing strong" in its fight to defund Obamacare, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Friday during a speech at the Values Voter Summit.

"Listen, in my view nobody knows what the House of Representatives is going to do in this Obamacare fight right now," Cruz said. "In my view it's to keep doing what it's been doing which is standing strong. And that is the model for every other fight. We need no other Washington solutions we need to go back to the American people."

The comments come a day after senior House Republicans met with President Barack Obama to discuss a short-term government funding deal. No deal resulted from that meeting. Cruz, along with Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) were the major backers of an effort to fund the government only if Obamacare was defunded. Lee spoke earlier at the Values Voter Summit and Paul spoke right after Cruz.


Leo T. Lyon said...

Ted Cruz is destroying the GOP. What was it that some pundit once said? When your political enemy is drowning, throw him a f**king anvil?

That's why CNN and MSNBC aired Cruz speech at Value Voters Summit and Fox only bits of it. Fox was doing damaage control and CNN and MSNBC threw Cruz an anvil. Heh.

Les Carpenter said...

Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert 2016.

Now their is the far right Dream Team.

It just doesn't get much more loony than these two.

These guys just make shit up as they go. And, unfortunately there are many who swallow it.

Les Carpenter said...

This is interesting. My comment that was on topic and critical of Cruz doesn't get posted yet the crap from Anon does.

Les Carpenter said...

Moderation was on.

I have no time for immature games.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Sorry. I was out watching the parade and forgot to turn on comment moderation, so I had to delouse the place when I got back.

RN, I couldn't find the comment you mentioned, it wasn't mistakenly sent to spam, I checked there; so I don't know what happened to it.

Try again?

I have to keep comment moderation on because that lunatic is still loose.

(O)CT(O)PUS said...

Let’s face facts. Democracy is a messy business, and competing stakeholders do not always get everything they want. Ours is a system of government designed to accommodate change – sometimes radical change – in an orderly and prescribed manner. We have elections; we have a balance of power shared between three branches of government; and we have a Constitutional amendment process.

Although these structures are ensconced in Law, there are also unwritten rules, customs, courtesies and traditions that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a relatively civilized procedure – as taught by Thomas Jefferson in his Manual of Parliamentary Practice.

Pending bills originate in the House, move to Senate, are signed into law by the President, and, if highly controversial, adjudged constitutional by the SCOTUS. ObamaCare has passed all three benchmarks.

Frankly, the current impasse and government shutdown is NOT ABOUT OBAMACARE, or the Keystone Pipeline, or abortion, or contraception, or ANY partisan issue. The impasse represents a despoliation of democracy.

Do we approach governance as prescribed by Law in accordance with the Constitution - and in the time-honored traditions of parliamentary procedure - or do we conduct our affairs by ultimatum, by blackmail, by deception and demagoguery, by defamation and vilification, by fear mongering, by extortion and hostage taking?

What is currently at stake is how we conduct our civic affairs. Do we honor our democratic structures and traditions, or do we conduct public business through insurrection?

All presidents have a statutory obligation to preserve and protect the constitution, as do all office holders in Congress. Here is what the Constitution states:

The validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned [Amendment 14, Section 4].

Do you see any language stating that such debt is subject to negotiation? Blackmail? Extortion? Or hostage taking?

If this or any president capitulates, our traditions of governance will be dealt a mortal wound; and the nation will suffer a slow and painful decline. Citizens of all persuasions share a solemn obligation to pass these traditions to future generations.

As far as I am concerned, the GOP is no longer a partner in participatory democracy. As Hannah Arendt states: “A disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.”

Les Carpenter said...

Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert 2016. The perfect Dream Ticket for the far right reactionary loonies.

These guys (and others like them) just make shit u as they go.

Unfortunaly too many fall for their BS.

Les Carpenter said...

Shaw, that loony will be on the loose forever. It is a seriously unbalanced person who apparently is not helped by meds.

Obviously it watches your site closely and wastes no time when it realizes you've turned moderation off to pounce.

My suggestion, make comment moderation permanent.

We Hope For Bitter Things and We Live In An Ashcan said...


"Half-wit, half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, flanked by Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, led a Tea Party crowd of protesters this morning in storming the World War II Memorial, tossing barricades aside, and then marching to the White House to protest the closing of memorials and national parks during the government shutdown.

Addressing the crowd, Half-Wit Palin and Cruazyt Cruz both implied that the Obama administration was playing a cheap political game by spending money to erect barriers to keep veterans from attending the nation’s war memorials.

It should be noted that neither Cruz nor Lee have ever served in the military. The three current defacto leaders of the Tea Party also forgot to mention that it is their own party’s obstruction and disinformation over the Affordable Care Act that led to the current shutdown in the first place leading to the closure of memorials and national parks. But introducing facts to these cranks and kooks won't deter them from their CRUZade to destroy America and blame it on Obama."

Lib Custer said...

Lib Custer said...

Tuesday’s White Blouse press conference was PERIPATETIC!

As were the Guests from the White Blouse press corpse. As of this moment, not a single trough or clanging inquiry about Obama Cairns was mentored!

Hey Gerkins in the loft and the trite, but especially in the loft! Maybe you should have asked about Obama Cairn and the Shitdown!

That White Blouse Press Corpse is chevron. I don´t know how they can cook themselves in the microwave in the morning.

Reporters should do (they're) job wallaby if they don't want to be barbecued as the scrooges they are.

These pupils make me want to grow up.

Or were they on strut hoarders not to bask?

George X. said...



Rush Limbaugh recently said that, if he were President Barack Obummer, he would not want to fake a slinky convulsive such as flummoxed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin because she craves a frightening massage, and that anyone that ruins her should fart her —

Fart her?

Look, I think it's grating that she became a multi-mollusk by parading her UN-MOORED Teen-age pregnant dachshound around and acting as if that schtupped what a greasy parent she was.

Lemons to cannonade and all that.

But FART? Seriously, when SNL doesn't have to cringe a single worm in an interstate to get laughs, that's not fart, buddy.
God blunt her and her frangipan.

And I'm sure she'll be good for as many lungs as Michele Mermann when she runs down her leg in AZ.

Fart her?

Because she is an absent buffalo?


She has no crustaceans anymore.

Anyone claiming that libraries are scarred from her because she is trolling the tooth is divisional.

I was scarred because she was that clammy in being prescient, and is one of the biggest crayons to ever fibulate the political screen.

ANYTIME the Repositories want to ruin Sarah Palin, I am all frontal.

Fart her? We beget her to ruminate..!

Les Carpenter said...

Or as Ayn Rand would likely say were she alive, are we to be governed by reason or brute force and beasts.

Her answer and all thinking individuals would of course be reason.