Let Us Not Be Nuts
Garrison Keillor waxes nostalgic at Salon. I don't get that excited dreaming about the good old days, but he does stick a pretty good paragraph into the middle of it:
It looks like the Republican Party has made up its mind, the Tea Party is their new identity, Rush and Glenn are their spokesmen. The Grand Old Party needs a new acronym, there is nothing grand or venerable about the new face of conservatism, off its meds.
Slowly, slowly, the simple fact dawns on the electorate that the Democrats have passed a moderate Republican healthcare reform. That's what it is. The frenzy on the right is pure fear of stepping out of line with the Republican politburo and getting shipped to Siberia. This lockstep mentality is rare in American history. Here is a grand old party frozen, suspended, mesmerized, in thrall to a gaggle of showboats and radio entertainers and small mobs of fist-shakers standing staunch for unreality, and no Republican elected official dares say, "Let us not be nuts." There will be books written about this in years to come, and they will not be kind to the likes of Rep. Boehner and Sen. McConnell. The old America is fading
It looks like the Republican Party has made up its mind, the Tea Party is their new identity, Rush and Glenn are their spokesmen. The Grand Old Party needs a new acronym, there is nothing grand or venerable about the new face of conservatism, off its meds.
posted by JimK at 10:15 AM
18 Comments:
one of the New York papers recently ran a piece on the president of a Tea Party chapter in an Idaho county, portraying her as a dangerous nut
Dave Letterman had her on his show the other night
while he did argue with some of her points, at the conclusion of the interview he called the liberal media reporting on the Tea Party movement ignorant stereotyping
true dat
ARE YOU SAYING JIM IS IGNORANT?
Those who believe the liberal media these days are ignorant. Ignorant of the truth and facts. Ignorant of the fact that the liberal media doesn't report the truth and the facts.
Ignorant of that fact.
true dat
despite the hiring by the government of about 50,000 census workers and a rebound from a snowy February that closed much of the Eastern seaboard for large swaths of days, unemployment in March remained at a dismal 9.7%
despite passing the health care reform that he said everyone would love, Obama's approval rating remains under 50% in all polls released this week and reported on the recap by realclearpolitics.com
looks like smooth sailing for a Tea Party triumph in November
did anyone catch Sarah Palin's new show profiling American heroes last night?
she's the new Ronald Reagan
Last week, President Obama signed historic health care reform legislation into law -- but his legislative success doesn't seem to have helped his image with the American public.
The latest CBS News Poll, conducted between March 29 and April 1, found Americans unhappier than ever with Mr. Obama's handling of health care - and still worried about the state of the economy.
President Obama's overall job approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 44 percent, down five points from late March, just before the health bill's passage in the House of Representatives. It's down 24 points since his all-time high last April. Forty-one percent of those polled said they disapproved of the president's performance.
More results from this CBS News Poll will be released in Friday's broadcast of the Evening News with Katie Couric, which airs at 6:30 p.m. Eastern.
When it comes to health care, the President's approval rating is even lower -- and is also a new all-time low. Only 34 percent approved.
Americans are still worried about the economy, with 84 percent telling CBS they thought it was still in bad condition.
I think the real nuts are Democrat members of Congress:
"(April 1) -- At first, people suspected it might have been an April Fools joke, but the following story is not, despite all hopes to the contrary, an April Fools' Day prank.
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the proposed relocation of naval personnel to the island of Guam, Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson expressed his concern for the stability of the tiny U.S. territory -- not its political stability or its economic stability, but its basic, physical stability.
"My fear that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize," the Georgia Democrat said, making a tipping motion with his hands.
"We don't anticipate that," Adm. Robert Willard responded.
Guam, like many islands, is attached to the sea floor, and thus unlikely to tip over under normal stresses."
During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, Obama talked a lot about how he wanted to break out of the Washington mold of "who's up and who's down." The concept was that the President should focus on getting in place sound policies for the nation; his gamble is that if he does that, and then explains it well, and mobilizes his supporters, then the larger electorate will be wise enough to respond accordingly. Were he to do otherwise, he would be president for the sake of being president, not president for the sake of helping the country.
This is why the media's constant drumbeat that "this is President Obama's economy now" is rather silly. If, as I believe is the case, the previous administration and other no-regulation types ran the country's economy into a very deep ditch, which was on the precipice of a very steep cliff, then this is still Bush's (and, to be fair, Robert Rubin's) economy, and will be for quite some time. Obama kept us from falling off the cliff, and the ditch is so deep that it will take a long time to climb out. In general, he is doing the things we need to do to climb out and, just as importantly, to keep from driving into the ditch again (as Franklin Roosevelt's policies did for the last 2/3 of the 20th Century).
Glenn Beck's historical revisionism notwithstanding, Roosevelt's New Deal saved American Capitalism and American Democracy. No people, except the blind followers of Hooverism, though in April of 1934 that the economy was Roosevelt's economy. And they were right.
It would have been politically easier for Obama if the country had fallen off the cliff before he took office, as it did in the early 1930s. Then there would be absolutely no ambiguity as to whose lousy economy it was.
The mid-term elections will be a real test of Obama's faith in most American voters being adults. I hope, for the country's sake, that his faith is justified.
despite the fact that liberals are always accusing the Tea Party of being violent and dangerous, the only recent arrect for political violence was of a guy that fired a bullet into a Republican's front window
also, Dems have yet to produce any evidence of their dubious claim that Tea Party protestors were shouting racial epithets on the day of voting for the health care bill
the American people are on to the tricks of the Dems
It didn't take long for critics from both sides of the drilling argument to jump all over President Obama's plan to expand offshore oil and gas exploration along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin urged Republican senators not to "take the bait" and said the president was simply trying to shift focus away from new environmental regulations and the revival of costly global warming legislation in the Senate.
"Instead of 'drill baby drill,' " she said, echoing her battle cry as a 2008 vice presidential candidate, "the more you look at this, the more you realize, it's 'stall, baby, stall.'" Writing in the National Review Online, Palin scoffed at Obama's announcement that he would "consider" development off the Atlantic coast and study areas in the Arctic. "I've seen plenty of such studies. What we need is action," she said.
The Sierra Club was disappointed in Obama's drilling initiative for entirely different reasons.
"The oil industry already has access to drilling on millions of acres of America's public lands and water," Michael Brune, head of the non-profit environmental group, said in a statement. "We don't need to hand over our last protected pristine coastal areas just so oil companies can break more profit records. . . . One oil spill is all it takes to destroy a coastal tourism economy and the jobs that depend on it." Brune, who wants Obama to take more steps toward clean energy, argued that "dirty, expensive offshore drilling" would not lower gas prices or establish the nation's energy independence.
On Tuesday, Obama said his administration would approve more drilling leases off the mid-Atlantic and southern coastline and in the Gulf of Mexico.
That Sarah Palin! She was FOR drill baby drill BEFORE she was AGAINST it, just like she was FOR being Governor of Alaska before she QUIT.
gee, what a clever remark....
Check out the latest unemployment figures. The bikini graph perfectly illustrates the downfall of Bush's last year in office and the remarkable recovery Obama's policies have effected.
US job growth in March 2010 was the best it has been in three years!
three years ago, Bush had been President for six and a half years
compare the average unemployment rate during Bush's presidency to that of Obama's
government spending may have some effect on employment but it pales in comparison to the effectiveness of cutting taxes, especially marginal ones
every country in the world was hit by the recession at the same time
most have pulled out of it
those who chose a Keynesian response, including our Obama-led nation, are lagging
how can our corporations compete against Chinese ones when we have a corporate tax rate 15% higher than that Communist country?
Obama needs to go Clintonian or go home
"compare the average unemployment rate during Bush's presidency to that of Obama's"
that's a good idea, TYGAI
the average unemployment rate for the 15 months of Barry's term is 9.4%
the average unemployment rate for the 8 years of Dub's term was 5.2%
maybe that's unfair
Barry's only had a year
the first year of Dub, however, had an unemployment rate of 4.7%, despite the economic impact of the 9/11 attacks which shut down our travel industry for months and the anthrax scare that also dampened the economy
most economists agree that Dub's tax cuts coming into office brought us out of the recession we were in during the last year of the Clinton presidency
that's interesting
Bush succeeded where Obama has failed
in 15 years, Barry will be a cautionary chapter in history books
compare the average unemployment rate during Bush's presidency to that of Obama's
Sure, and then we can pretend both presidencies started with equal economic and employment conditions in the nation and around the world!!
You seem to have no problem comparing averages of apples to oranges. No wonder you confuse weather change with climate change! Duh!
We'll wait 6.5 more years and then we'll compare Bush's trashing of the economy to Obama's rebuilding of it so we can once again confirm that when we have Democratic leaders in charge of our government, America experiences higher economic growth than when we have Republican leaders in charge.
"...For the forty years from 1961 to 2000, the president was from the Democratic Party half of the time and from the Republican Party for the rest. Each side had four presidents in those 40 years. During the administrations of the four Democrats, real GDP expanded 4.1% per annum, 1.2 percentage points faster than the average growth during Republican administrations of 2.9% per annum..."
"...Under the [George W.] Bush Administration, real GDP grew at an average annual rate of 2.5%..."
that's funny, inane
John Kennedy and Bill Clinton followed policies that are currently considered Republican
Kennedy cut capital gains tax
Clinton ended welfare, at the direction of his superior, Newt Gingrich
LBJ created a mess with his Great Society and Jimmy Carter had a triple misery index
based on history, Bush would have cut taxes and ended the recession long ago
by the luck of the draw, the economy went bad right before the election and Dems exaggerated, then imposed a Keynesian approach that hasn't helped
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