Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The GOP's Ninotchka Moment



I've exhausted my vocabulary to describe the maniacs in the current GOP who are rubbing their greasy little hands together in anticipation of wrecking America because they can't get their way.  

Harold Meyerson gives voice to what the TeaPublicans are:



"...one year after Stalin’s show trials resulted in the execution of all of the tyrant’s more moderate predecessors in the Soviet leadership. “The last mass trials were a great success,” Ninotchka notes. “There are going to be fewer but better Russians.

Like the Stalinists and the Jacobins, today’s tea party zealots have purified their movement — not by executing but by driving away those Republicans who don’t share their enthusiasm for wrecking their country if they can’t compel the majority to embrace their notions. Today, there are fewer but “better” Republicans — if “better” means adhering to the tea party view that a United States not adhering to tea party values deserves to be brought to a clangorous halt. NBC News-Wall Street Journal polling last week turned up a bare 24 percent of Americans who have a favorable impression of the Republican Party — a share almost as low as the 21 percent who have a favorable impression of the tea party. 

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If anything illustrates just how far today’s Republicans have drifted from their traditional moorings, it’s the dismay with which their longtime business allies have greeted their decisions to close the government and threaten default. 

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Today’s tea party-ized Republicans speak less for Wall Street or Main Street than they do for the seething resentments of white Southern backwaters and their geographically widespread but ideologically uniform ilk. 

Their theory of government, to the extent that they have one, derives from John C. Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification — that states in general and white minorities in particular should have the right to overturn federal law and impede majority rule. Like their predecessors in the Jim Crow South, today’s Republicans favor restricting minority voting rights if that is necessary to ensure victory at the polls."


Source: Politico 

Journalist and author Carl Bernstein said Wednesday that Republican Party leadership is “cancerous” and has put the United States at risk by letting the tea party lead the GOP. “The Republican Party today has become a rabid organization from the top down. 

The leadership is cancerous,” the former Washington Post reporter said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday. Bernstein called the current situation a “terrible moment in our history” and said only segregation politics offers a comparison. 

 [snip]

 “This is a watershed moment in American history, and unless some people, McCain and others, throw out the leadership that appeased this tail that is wagging the Republican dog — the tea party is not just a movement. It has been cowardly embraced by Eric Cantor, by Boehner, who has gone along with this craziness and allowed himself to be the speaker of this party and what it stands for,” Bernstein said.

10 comments:

BB-Idaho said...

We seem to be witnessing a strong
recrudescence of a long-lived
undercurrent
in our history.

Shaw Kenawe said...

More on the TeaPublicans' richly deserved humiliation:

Boehner's failure to corral his members reached a peak on Tuesday when he could not persuade them to go along with a plan to end the shutdown and avert default. The resulting reaction from the media would be enough to make any Republican weep, let alone the already tear-prone speaker.

Politico called Boehner's efforts a "disaster."

The Washington Post described it as a "humiliating failure," and said Boehner and his leadership colleagues had " lost all control of their majority."

"An editorial from the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal board fumed about the GOP strategy, saying that the House caucus "might as well hand the Speaker's gavel to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid" and urging Republicans to give up their fight.

Things were not much better on the morning shows.

"After a shutdown that lasted 16 days, a shutdown led by House Republicans...by the end of today, those Republicans may leave with little to nothing to show for it," NBC's Peter Alexander said.

Shaw Kenawe said...

BB-Idaho,

The nutters are in a particularly unhappy mood today, blaming the "libruls" for repeating what the media are reporting--and the media are unanimous in their disgust over how the minority of a minority has disrupted this country.

I think those who support the ruinous tactics of Cruz & Company do not have the ability to see themselves as promoting chaos and anarchy in order to force the president of the opposition party to accept their policies.

They fervently believe that Mr. Obama should have cooperated with the TeaPublicans in defunding and ultimately destroying the A.C.A., which they believe is "destroying their freedoms."

They're completely oblivious to the fact that what they've engaged in over the past month is the real danger to our Republic.

And good for President Obama and the Democrats for not allowing this unconscionable act of blackmail and extortion.

I've not always been happy with what Mr. Obama has done as president, but I am proud that he refused to give into the hostage takers.

I wonder when these folks will actually see the mess they've made of their party.

And when they do, I'm sure they'll blame Mr. Obama for their destructive behavior.





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

At this time of year, every year, there is a noticeable up tick in bug activity. The biting insects - the mosquitoes, the no-see-ums, and the deer flies - are more frenetic than usual, trying to get in their last bites and licks before the season ends.

As the sun sets on the GOP, I expect trolls will be out in force – spinning and spinning and biting and biting as they try to put a happy face on their inevitable demise.

Buzz, slap! Buzz, slap!

Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch
.

Anonymous said...

The spinning, buzzing, and biting have reached a fever pitch.

Infidel753 said...

They're imploding. The Senate has a deal to end the shutdown and lift the debt ceiling. Boehner's going to let the House vote on it even though it will pass mainly with Democratic votes.

It's unconditional surrender.

Internet teabaggerdom is going apeshit. They're threatening to primary every non-insane Republican in Congress and give us a lovely big passel of Mourdocks and O'Donnells to run against next year.

Popcorn time, I'd say.

The Hard On Conservative said...



Oberon's Hair is even more worsted then you think! The loftiest phantoms have been scrabbling to deliver contention from the dispermy that is the rapier of Oberon's Hair "exuberance".

They must be shanking their Lucy stars that the goober bean shit down clammed along when it doddered. They can rouge and bittern about fat, instead of about a CEREAL tissue such as the complete frisson of Oberon's Hair!

If there have been a few bogs' hares and theories (a normal oculist with brown gnu languid sisterns), they would have been horned out quackly, in a dray or two maxi pads.

But the Moors people try to bruise the excentric verb sites, the munchkins' problems throw up, the more treble they hove, and the mere periorbitals foil to sing up.

And yet the FOOLSCAP who follow Thetan lounges over at the Percussive Rapture blah keep chilling us Concussive nymphs! .

How libel will it beat before we are cold and that this new karma has squat beagles, a priapic foam, weeping sheets, and an aubergine that is perfunctorily licked up?

If it was imposed to be SEW gracious, then why is it that the famous have singed up?

And if the gobblement can't even rut a barrista (which is far simpering than Oberon's Hair itself), are they royally the cones we want to thrust with the nuclear empire heath car cygnet?

Oberon's Hair doesn't wink at all, Imogene, If aphids brought out an iPineal that didn't work as panned, what would you iThink?

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Shaw, your posts - not partisan enough.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Will, have you not noticed the title of my blog? PROGRESSIVE Eruptions?

I've never pretended to be anything but what I am.

So I don't know what you're complaining about.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

We all need a Sister Souljah moment from time to time, Shaw. Consider it.