Implosion
 

I thought I would enjoy the implosion of the Republican Party more. Watching these two assholes go at each other hasn't been as much fun as I thought it would be.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...ts-loose-trump

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

No. Republicans deserve the party they've got. They created it. Republican candidates are the ones who are anti-science. Republican candidates are the ones who blow racist, sexist dog whistles to get their small-minded base out in force to pull that lever. The party has a long history of manipulating uninformed morons on the right to keep themselves in office. Rove really woke them up, McCain (who pretends he's a conservative statesman) brought us all the pain that is Palin, Bush made Bachmann possible, etc., etc. etc. Fox News helped push the "anything is true if you say it enough" approach so that the exchange you mention between the brain dead Trump supporter and Cruz yesterday was possible.

The gerrymandering that makes Ted Cruz possible (and his Tea Party idiot supporters are just as fucking stupid as Trump's) sure wasn't a problem when it worked for Cruz. But it enabled him to torpedo any attempts of any governing actually occurring. It's Cruz who spouts that "no compromise on anything" bullshit. Cruz holding shit up just because he can is why you guys are in the position you're in. The purging of voter rolls and new bullshit voter ID laws is what is keeping these Tea Party assholes in Congress. Your entire strategy of governing the last 8 years has been: Don't. Then blame Obama. You guys deserve the party you currently have. Own it.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Spot on.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Re: Implosion
 

It's more fatiguing than fun. Sometimes, completely dispiriting. But it's o.k. Odetta will sooth your troubled soul. Hit or Miss. Yup, it was used in a Southern Comfort ad. I enjoyed that ad. But I enjoy the song more. Your Daily Dose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVNeozIH2SQ

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Carly Fiorina did for Cruz what she did for HP, but faster.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Josh Faust had a great comment this morning, that Cruz came to grips with reality faster than Bernie Sanders.

Think about it.

Take a bow for the new revolution.
 

I suspect that we'll see some snippets of Senator Cruz's cri de coeur in upcoming commercials. Maybe not the "venereal diseases as Vietnam" line, but it's easy to picture a commercial running almost constantly from August thru late October on Fox News and ESPN in the Rust Belt with this gem:

"Donald will betray his supporters on every issue. If you care about immigration, Donald is laughing at you. And he's telling the moneyed elites he doesn't believe what he's saying. He's not going to build a wall."

Re: Take a bow for the new revolution.
 

mr. Trump, tear down this wall!

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

TM is right, the GOP owns Trump. But I think you're making a secondary point here, with which I agree (with caveats).

I listened to Cruz confront that trash yesterday and it was dispiriting. That a large sector of the support for a person who may be the next President is of such character is really horrible.

But the useless idiots are not the sole reason for Trump's success. There are a lot of affluent, educated people voting for Trump. And it's not like the GOP is alone in lying to or courting the vote of "low information" people. The Democrats have been lying to dumb voters forever. The Democrats promise more free stuff to the most uninformed of their rabble in the same way the GOP promises it'll "bring yurrr jobs back" to the dimmest of theirs. It's been a race to the bottom on both sides for years, so you can't seriously suggest the GOP has suddenly degraded itself. (And that's not even entertaining the stupid social wedge issues the parties use to divide people... Let's put aside that clownish bullshit, and the rubes on both sides who buy into it, for now.)

In terms of street level politics and quality of voters, the parties have been supported in equally significant part by craven imbeciles for a long time. (Those affluent Trump voters I described a few sentences ago? Tax voters. Republicans in self-interest only. If Hillary promised lower taxes, they'd vote for her. That's the GOP in a nutshell: An educated, self-interested minority matched with layers of the quasi-informed, on down to the absolutely deluded and hopelessly uninformed.)

It may sound like false equivalence because the Democratic candidates tend to be much more informed and honest than GOP candidates. And that is something for which they deserve credit, and the lack of which the GOP should be deeply ashamed (including Cruz, who is as full of shit as Trump). But if you analyze voters, it's craven, deluded masses making up a lot of both parties at the polls.*

So I share your revulsion for Trumpkins. Really, I do. But please - let's not pretend the GOP was in a good place before Trump. Let's drop the fiction it wasn't what TM called it in his reply. You have perhaps a unique reason to despair in this election, but if you didn't see a reason to do so in previous elections, I really don't know what GOP you were watching. And if one doesn't despair more generally - if he thinks the Democratic Party has a better hope for correcting the problems facing the country - he's mad. If you look at the competing policy platforms, it's just differing arrangements of deck chairs on the Titanic... jockeying for the seats closest to the lifeboats.

Neither has a serious fucking clue or solution. So honestly, who gives a fuck who gets elected? I don't. I could pull either lever and feel just about the same.

______________
*And let's not start trashing Bernie as the "everything for free" candidate. The everything for free candidate, as understood by the lowest of Democratic voters, is Whoever is Running on the D Ticket. Bernie's at least standing for some novel options. To discredit him for trying to chart a truly new course among the litter of tired retread ideas offered by all of these candidates is defeatism dressed as "wise" pragmatism.

Re: Take a bow for the new revolution.
 

You clearly do not watch Fox News. They have been in the tank for Trump for months. They even allowed him on yesterday morning and did not in any way question his Lee Harvey Oswald conspiracy theorizing. Conservatives no longer watch Fox News or read Drudge.

Today is the first morning since I was of voting age that I woke up not a Republican. I actually now feel much less animosity for the GOP than I have felt in years.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

This is a false dichotomy.

Re: Cut the Bullshit
 

Ah, Sebby, the Rs are the ones who give out stuff without worrying about paying for it. The Ds have been the party of fiscal responsibility since at least Carter. Consistently. Without exception.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I am so sick of this "everything for free," "both sides appeal to the lowest common denominator," "social issues are just distractions," "it doesn't matter who gets elected," bullshit.

I was going to write a whole response, but it's a waste of time. Those that are reading your post shaking their head in disbelief (most everyone here) of how full of shit you are on almost everything you say don't need me to parse out the arguments showing that. And those who believe almost anything you wrote (i.e., just you) are too delusional to have a legitimate conversation with anyway.

So, cheers!

TM

Re: Take a bow for the new revolution.
 

This is why I don't fear Trump. All this talk of him being a fascist, a tyrant? Whatever. First, it's hysteria. But second, if you think he'll take freedoms from you that you've not already lost, you haven't been paying much attention.

Snowden? NSA? A more and more centrally managed economy? Government by policy wonks who are wrong more than right? An engineered series of soft economic landings, sold to an incurious public with manipulated data, inevitably driving us toward a two tiered society where the top 20% does exceptionally well and everyone else is fucked? A govt corrupted by regulatory capture run for the corporations by the corporations?

The status quo preservation mechanisms in place right now may benefit most of us, but if you think this is a truly free society, you're as fucked in the head as those wailing Trumpkins at his rallies.