Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/743d91b8-d...#axzz43GZoUrIc

But just in case Sebby doesn't click through.

'Yet, as Robert Kagan, a neoconservative intellectual, argues in a powerful column in The Washington Post, Mr Trump is also “the GOP’s Frankenstein monster”. He is, says Mr Kagan, the monstrous result of the party’s “wild obstructionism”, its demonisation of political institutions, its flirtation with bigotry and its “racially tinged derangement syndrome” over President Barack Obama. He continues: “We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past seven-and-a-half years”.

Mr Kagan is right, but does not go far enough. This is not about the last seven-and-a-half years. These attitudes were to be seen in the 1990s, with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Indeed, they go back all the way to the party’s opportunistic response to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Alas, they have become worse, not better, with time.
Why has this happened? The answer is that this is how a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aims of slashing taxes and shrinking the state, obtained the footsoldiers and voters it required. This, then, is “pluto-populism”: the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism. Mr Trump embodies this union. But he has done so by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment, to which his financially dependent rivals remain wedded. That gives him an apparently insuperable advantage. Mr Trump is no conservative, elite conservatives complain. Precisely. That is also true of the party’s base.'

TM

I don't know why the Trumpkins must be labeled exclusively protectionists or bigots. These things aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, they often go together, both in terms of groups aligning and individuals holding both mindsets.

Of course he's right that GOP policies have created a class of deluded people who think Obama is an illegitimate President. And most of these people harbor at least some bigoted views. But this author is really lazy, even for a short opinion piece, in dismissing out of hand the argument Trump has grabbed a ton of his voters by appealing to concerns regarding wage stagnation and lack of jobs for lower skilled labor.

He stumbles into a bigger and better point at the end of the piece. Trump is succeeding because, unlike all the other GOP candidates, he's addressing the GOP voters (and Dems crossing over to him) as populists rather than conservatives. Conservatism is on life support. The GOP base, including the tea partiers, loves programs like SS and Medicare. They're not free market sorts, but convenient socialists. The programs that provide for them are great. Those that provide for "others," including things like food stamps and Obamacare, are terrible.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Punch "Summers," "Rubin," and "Greenspan," in any order, into Google.

I'm actually familiar with all of them without having to Google them. But otherwise that would be a helpful hint, inasmuch as I might have used Bing, Yahoo! Search, Yandev, Duck Duck Go or some other search engine which would not have opened my eyes to the material on the web which one can find through Google.

And you took my comment in an unintended direction. I'm not blaming him for the GOP Congress's blunders. That's not his fault at all. I just detest the guy because his guidance helped to create the mess we're in today, and now, at this late date, unlike Rubin and Greenspan, who've refrained from getting involved, that fat fuck still can't shut his mouth.

It is clear that you detest the guy, and likely other people who are fat and who thus disappoint you, but setting his physique aside, I'm not sure why, since "the mess we're in today" seems to owe much more to many other people, some of whom were almost certainly fat too.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Not Bob

I think that we can safely put the Democrats down as the party that caused the Civil War. The Mexican War was viewed at the time as driven by a desire to add slave states to the Union to strengthen and spread slavery. Who pushed it? Democrats like Stephen Douglas. Who opposed it? Whigs like Abraham Lincoln (and Winfield Scott, who nonetheless followed orders from his civilian bosses as a good general does, and kicked the ass of the Napoleon of the Americas).

The party allowed itself to become the vessel of slaveholders and pushed pro-slavery policies even when non-southern Democrats like Pierce and Buchanan were President. It is the shame that stains the party that it was the party of -anti-black racism until, maybe (if you are a generous soul), FDR. And was more realistically the party of anti-black racism until LBJ.

People who talk about the Democratic party as the party of racism and the Republican Party as the party of Lincoln (like these legacies are connected to the current parties somehow) are the same as those guys at the gym who, after a series of shirts v. skins pickup games, insist that skins won every game, even though by the time 5 or 6 runs are over, all of the guys who started off as "shirts" finished as "skins."*

TM

*I have a few of these people in my facebook feed. It's like interacting with our favorite brick.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I don't know why the Trumpkins must be labeled exclusively protectionists or bigots. These things aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, they often go together, both in terms of groups aligning and individuals holding both mindsets.

Of course he's right that GOP policies have created a class of deluded people who think Obama is an illegitimate President. And most of these people harbor at least some bigoted views. But this author is really lazy, even for a short opinion piece, in dismissing out of hand the argument Trump has grabbed a ton of his voters by appealing to concerns regarding wage stagnation and lack of jobs for lower skilled labor.

He stumbles into a bigger and better point at the end of the piece. Trump is succeeding because, unlike all the other GOP candidates, he's addressing the GOP voters (and Dems crossing over to him) as populists rather than conservatives. Conservatism is on life support. The GOP base, including the tea partiers, loves programs like SS and Medicare. They're not free market sorts, but convenient socialists. The programs that provide for them are great. Those that provide for "others," including things like food stamps and Obamacare, are terrible.

I give up. You're just repeating yourself. I'm not interested in doing so anymore.

TM

[Not Bob]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

People who talk about the Democratic party as the party of racism and the Republican Party as the party of Lincoln (like these legacies are connected to the current parties somehow) are the same as those guys at the gym who, after a series of shirts v. skins pickup games, insist that skins won every game, even though by the time 5 or 6 runs are over, all of the guys who started off as "shirts" finished as "skins."*

TM

*I have a few of these people in my facebook feed. It's like interacting with our favorite brick.

Dude, I am a proud Democrat. And I agree that the GOP stopped being the party of Lincoln starting with the Compromise of 1877. I was just responding to GGG's assertion that the Whigs were the ones who led the country into the Civil War.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

People who talk about the Democratic party as the party of racism and the Republican Party as the party of Lincoln (like these legacies are connected to the current parties somehow) are the same as those guys at the gym who, after a series of shirts v. skins pickup games, insist that skins won every game, even though by the time 5 or 6 runs are over, all of the guys who started off as "shirts" finished as "skins."*

TM

*I have a few of these people in my facebook feed. It's like interacting with our favorite brick.

2. All those white southerners didn't leave the Democratic party, after the Civil Rights Act and in response to the GOP's southern strategy, because they found its legacy of racism so intolerable.

This is where Penske would post a picture of Robert Byrd, of course.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Not Bob

Dude, I am a proud Democrat. And I agree that the GOP stopped being the party of Lincoln starting with the Compromise of 1877. I was just responding to GGG's assertion that the Whigs were the ones who led the country into the Civil War.

Should have worded this more carefully. I wasn't suggesting that's what you thought (especially given your post). I was using your post as a way to mention my totally awesome analogy.

TM

[Not Bob]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Should have worded this more carefully. I wasn't suggesting that's what you thought (especially given your post). I was using your post as a way to mention my totally awesome analogy.

TM

And a splendidly awesome analogy it was, too. Even to this slow, short white guy with no range who is at least self-aware in pick-up games on those rare occasions that he plays.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Not Bob

Dude, I am a proud Democrat. And I agree that the GOP stopped being the party of Lincoln starting with the Compromise of 1877. I was just responding to GGG's assertion that the Whigs were the ones who led the country into the Civil War.

And it was a good historical point.

The CNN history of presidential runs had an interesting take on the point in the Nixon/Kennedy race where Kennedy called Coretta when MLK was in jail during the campaign. Nixon apparently tried to get Ike to intervene to get him out, but didn't make the call to Coretta. They view that as a turning point for the Dems. But there were like 20 of those turning points between FDR's solid south and LBJ's civil rights act.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I think it goes back even farther. The Whigs of this country, that is, the protectors of moneyed privilege, have always needed an alliance with the know-nothings, the angry, hateful lynch mob, to win elections. This goes back to Millard Fillmore and the traitors who brought us the civil war.

Which is what's funny about the supposed discussions about having Romney or Ryan or someone run as a third party candidate if Trump is the nominee to deny Hillary an electoral majority so the House gets to decide.

Um, yeah, Romney's going to win all kinds of states without the Trump vote. Uh huh.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

Which is what's funny about the supposed discussions about having Romney or Ryan or someone run as a third party candidate if Trump is the nominee to deny Hillary an electoral majority so the House gets to decide.

Um, yeah, Romney's going to win all kinds of states without the Trump vote. Uh huh.

The more interesting news is how many Whigs have migrated to the Democratic Party.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I give up. You're just repeating yourself. I'm not interested in doing so anymore.

TM

Sebastian always wins. And the country loses.

Daily Dose of Funk #4 is from none other than Funkadelic (the psychedelic funk side of the George Clinton Parliament-Funkadelic funk dynasty), from 1973's Cosmic Slop. Sampled by Tribe Called Quest in "Ham 'N' Eggs" from their first album, "Nappy Dugout" has an infectious, propulsive groove and is slang for a vagina, so what's not to like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S-3ukL4KPA

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

Sebastian always wins. And the country loses.

Daily Dose of Funk #4 is from none other than Funkadelic (the psychedelic funk side of the George Clinton Parliament-Funkadelic funk dynasty), from 1973's Cosmic Slop. Sampled by Tribe Called Quest in "Ham 'N' Eggs" from their first album, "Nappy Dugout" has an infectious, propulsive groove and is slang for a vagina, so what's not to like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S-3ukL4KPA

One of the Brides of Funkenstein is a good friend of mine.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

One of the Brides of Funkenstein is a good friend of mine.

Wow. That would have been a cool gig.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

Wow. That would have been a cool gig.

Being my friend? Indeed it is! But you know that already.


Because Penske told you what you're missing!

ZING!!!!!