The Party of Winston Smith
If Arlen Specter's defection from the GOP is a strong signal that the Republican Party needs to retool its strategy for the future, then beginning by attacking Specter as a leftist then just 24 hours later using a five year-old campaign ad featuring George W. Bush's endorsement in order to paint him as one of the bad Republicans (or am I being tautological?) is not a good way to go about it.
The Republican Party has been the Party of Personal Reprisals for so many years now hardly anyone alive remembers when they were anything else. It's become a matter of accepted policy: When it suits them, even a sainted cardboard cutout cowboy like George W. Bush will be used less as a sacred cow and more like Mrs. O'Leary's cow.
It's cowardly and craven, to say the least, that they would (sniff) use our dearly departed Dear Decidin' Leader for nefarious purposes in order to smear one of their own. The poor man is now in no position to defend himself aside from Karl Rove's funhouse mirror reflection of recent history from the pages of the Wall St. Journal. Using Bush in this way would've been unthinkable before the 2006 midterms but this was when the backlash started against a man to whom the Congress gave everything he ever wanted and more in some cases even in the 11th hour of his Diebold-manufactured administration.
It's obvious that the Republican Party will never change. Some Republicans retire, die, get voted out, switch parties. But they and the voters keep refilling their rank ranks with more of their own. They can trot out Ken Mehlman and Michael Steele to get jiggy wid it but the ineluctable fact remains: The GOP will never change. It is not the party of Steele but the Party of Rush. The Party of David Duke. The Party of Karl Rove. The Party of Dick Cheney. The not-so-secret Party of Joe Lieberman. The Party of Reagan. The Party of Israel. The Party of Corporations. The Revisionist Party of the Reformed Winston Smith who, in the end, learned to love Big Brother again and didn't turn on him for political expediency.
posted by jurassicpork @ Thursday, April 30, 2009
6 comments
6 Comments:
Speaking of Winston (very clever), I've got to say that your coverage of the Specter spectacle is first rate. I think of him as some sort of existential hero from the dark side. I'm not referring to the Republican Party, no there's a darker side. That point of origin consists of incredibly bright and capable people who end up in the service of great deceptions. Regardless of what one thinks of the magic bullet theory, the Warren Commission enterprise was an exercise in deception to keep people quiet. Specter was a key part of that. There are other examples like trashing Anita Hill, that loophole to fire U.S. Attorneys, and so forth.
Then one day, in a moment of pure truth, he switches parties. He's converted to pure self disclosure and simply says it like it is - 'I can't win a Republican primary in my state.' So IT'S ALL ABOUT HIM and his desire to remain a U.S. Senator.
I find that commendable. We're surrounded by lies, some major lies that he's created, and nobody will simply tell the truth.
But Arlen, the existential hero, stops us in our tracks - it's me, all about me; as it was so it shall be. What a guy!
Thanks, Mike. But I think William Rivers Pitt's and Glenn Greenwald's coverage is far better researched and thought out. Until I get internet access on the 7th, I won't be able to go in depth on issues as in the old days.
But, you're right. It's something to be said when an old dog like Specter comes right out and says, "It doesn't matter to me which party I belong to. As long as the voters keep me in."
Specter wouldn't bat an eyelash if he hadda join the Communist Party to stay in power.
Pitt and Greenwald were thinking along similar lines as I was when they said that Specter's vote on shit won't matter a damn. The media keeps advancing this fabrication that the Democrats can't do shit unless they have that magic 60th seat.
For one thing, the party's more fractured than the GOP for different reasons. Secondly, Obama's trying to take steps to take away power from a minority party of 40 so they aren't such a roadblock to progressive legislation. I just don't see Specter using his past as a Republican to wheedle votes out of a GOP that's grown to despise him. Not that we should need more than 60 votes to pass anything.
Let's not call the Repubelickins the Nazi Party, let's call them the "Nasty" Party, because that's what's at their core -- nastiness.
And for once, I hope a piece of Rethug campaign propaganda works! This message is so true, so true. It uses the Chimperor's words, and Specter's own, to hang him. Putting aside the irony of the R's using their preznitial Golden Boy as a weapon, I hope they'll be beaming this ad into Democratic telephones. Because it might help knock off the fauxDem Specter in a primary and put a real Dem up against whatever Club for Growth pug the 'Pukes have in 2010.
That said, you think this bit is going to get heard more times as a new and blog item than it will be as a phone message? Does anybody actually listen to that shit when they pick up the phone or turn on the answering machine and hear a non-stop pre-recorded voice? There must be a stupidity/functionality matrix at work. I reckon anybody whose personal time is meaningless enough to sit through this is probably too clueless to actually remember to vote.
From what I've been reading in the b'sphere, Bukko, Pat Toomey is still going to give Speccter a run for his money.
Might as well have an overt corporate fascist in office in Pa. then. If enough Keystoners are that fucking stupid to let it come down to a general election choice between a Republican and a Club Us Over the Head Like a Baby Seal for Growth bastard, then there's another little slice of America that deserves what it's going to get. If that happens, one more nail that America drove into its own coffin. F@ck the country -- it's toast.
Of course, I spew my bile while ignoring the fact that there are millions of decent, right-thinking people in Pa. It's not their fault that they're given two bad choices, like Bush v. Kerry. I expect there will be honourable, REAL Democrats running in the 2010 primary, and there will be Greens and other alternative candidates on the ballot. But they will be thwarted by "qualification" battles just to get listed on the voting papers in this great American "democracy" and swamped by the bleat and repeat advertisements that drown out intelligent thought in the inert masses who don't think that deeply unless they're phoning in votes for "American Idolatry." (Does the show charge voters to do that in the U.S.? It's like 55 cents a call for the Aussie version of the show -- what a racket! A talent show turned into a profit centre...)
Well, I'm raving. It's Saturday morning, Mrs. Bukko is still asleep and the caffeine from the excellent Italian-made espresso machine is just kicking in. I'm looking forward to seeing a German flick about the Baader-Meinhof gang that's going to screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival next week. They were terrorist fucks, but they were motivated by many of the same frustrations that I feel -- a pompous, materialistic society, a corrupt power structure, a world enmeshed in meaningless war (not meaningless to the people being killed, though) and they wanted to do something to shake it up.
I don't even want to bother with that. I reckon I can't do anything to bring Big Change. It's going to take a system fail before anything happens in that regard. I'll stick to trying to help in small ways to make peoples' lives better, whether it's getting a team of people together to properly roll the old bloke who got rolled over by a runaway car (parking brake left off) TWICE and has multiple broken ribs, fractures in both legs, a broken arm... Whether it's rolling him over to get him on the bedpan so he can have a good shit, or whether it's helping out a blogger who's in bad times.
My hardcore Republican mom's sending a birthday cheque, if she can get it together in her creeping dementia to actually write it and walk it to the mailbox. If it's as little as she said it might be, I might just endorse it to you. Bonus points! It will be denominated in American money!
She's getting irrationally stingy in her dotage, especially as she sees her net worth decline on account of IGNORING my advice about how she needed to dump her bank stocks last October. If she comes across with a number in the three figures rather than four... Well, it's not that I'm not grateful, and I don't want to seem arrogant. But for that amount, it would be less of a needless bother for me to deal with it than pass it on to someone to whom it would have more meaning. Not promising anything, JP, but we shall see.
Well, Bukko, you were quite generous last month and I wouldn't ask you for another favor. But if you want to do that, I'd be nothing but grateful, especially as I'm only working 12 hours a week and on one day.
If you want to twist the knife on your conservative Mum you can tell her it went for a worthy cause- A foul-mouthed liberal blogger.
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