I’m feeling so frustrated: I’m buried in work right now (and hey, Skepticon this weekend!), but after the election, it’s a target rich environment for whiny far right conservatives making excuses for their defeat. And I don’t have time to look at them all, let alone savor the schadenfreude. But here’s one that’s got all the sexist and racist tropes Republicans love, and it was on Christian Men’s Defense Network, a blog that is now playing turtle as people point and laugh at it, so you might also try this link if the cached version is gone.
we should have known how the leftists in the media and the Obama campaign (redundant, I know) intended to define the campaign. Because on radio ads, on TV, and on the web, the Democrats tried to make this election about a single issue:
The right to slut.
Or more precisely, the right to slut without the responsibility of consequences. The famous “gender gap” isn’t really a gap based on gender. The right overwhelmingly wins older and married women. The “gender gap” should more accurately be called the slut vote.
I think he just called all the women who voted for Obama “sluts”. Note also how he casually slid in another excuse: the media is all synonymous with the Obama campaign, never mind that Fox News…screw it, we can just end the sentence like that, FOX NEWS, period. Argument refuted. I could also make the case that none of the other networks are exactly liberal.
But wait, this guy isn’t done. It’s not enough to just blame the election on slutty women, he’s also got to make the racist argument.
Contrary to common belief, the primary reason the Democrats own the black vote has nothing to do with civil rights. The Democrats were only partially supportive of civil rights in the 60′s (with southern Democrats advocating “segregation forever”). Lincoln was a Republican, and Republicans in the House and Senate voted for civil rights legislation in the 60s.
Rather, Democrats have won the black vote because the black community is dominated by illegitimacy, and the Democrats are willing to subsidize and support that illegitimacy (as well as provide access to cheap abortions) so as to take away from sluts the consequences of their actions. Consequently, young black people grow up on the dole and not only never realize there might be something wrong with that, but eventually come to believe that’s the way it should be. The Democrats have won the black vote by first “empowering” single black mothers.
Raise your hands if you think the Republicans will learn from their loss and realize that this is an attitude that needs to be repudiated. I predict that in 2016 these losers will be the core of the Republican base, still, and they’ll do little more than try to cloak the more overt expressions of sexism and racism in yet more dog whistles.
Oh, that wasn’t enough demented thuggery for you? Here’s a bracing and NSFW video if you’ve got 20 minutes to spare.
Want more amusement? See Conor Friedersdorf tear into conservative illusions, all promoted by their favorite pundits…who all led their party into the wilderness with bad information.
In conservative fantasy-land, Richard Nixon was a champion of ideological conservatism, tax cuts are the only way to raise revenue, adding neoconservatives to a foreign-policy team reassures American voters, Benghazi was a winning campaign issue, Clint Eastwood’s convention speech was a brilliant triumph, and Obama’s America is a place where black kids can beat up white kids with impunity. Most conservative pundits know better than this nonsense — not that they speak up against it. They see criticizing their own side as a sign of disloyalty. I see a coalition that has lost all perspective, partly because there’s no cost to broadcasting or publishing inane bullshit. In fact, it’s often very profitable. A lot of cynical people have gotten rich broadcasting and publishing red meat for movement conservative consumption.
On the biggest political story of the year, the conservative media just
got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media. And movement conservatives, who believe the MSM is more biased and less rigorous than their alternatives, have no way to explain how their trusted outlets got it wrong, while the New York Times got it right. Hint: The Times hired the most rigorous forecaster it could find.It ought to be an eye-opening moment.
But I expect that it’ll be quickly forgotten…
1) I couldn’t read more than a few paragraphs without being sick. How do you manage?
2) Who do these idiots think women are having sex with? It’s not lesbian sex, ’cause that doesn’t get you pregnant. Oh, right, women are sluts, men are ALPHA MALES. Woof!
Right wingers have poor self-awareness, not to mention awareness of others, so I really think that what’s going on is that the election has forced them into the realization that, not only do most people NOT see them as noble freedom fighters, they hate and despise them and their views. So much so that even their vicious lies and cheating couldn’t get them elected.
Gotta be a shock.
Here’s my favorite article of all about the election:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/little-to-show-for-cash-flood-by-big-donors.html?hp
and fave quote: “Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, in February. Mr. Adelson, the biggest single donor in political history, supported eight candidates through “super PACs.” All of them lost on Tuesday.”
For Captains of Industry and Masters of the Universe, they sure can’t run a competent campaign.
“Illegitimacy” = “Any action to correct racism against black people that isn’t saying ‘racism is over'”, apparently.
Also, am I still part of the slut vote if I’m engaged to another woman?
Wouldn’t touch that bet no matter what payoff you offered. I’m thinking that there’s only one way the wingnuts won’t be the core, nay, the majority, of the Republican base. And that is if enough Republicans retain enough grasp of reality that the wingnuts just take their ball and form their own party.
There may be no more obvious a “tell” that gives away the racist underpinnings of a modern republican blowhard than when they try to make the claim that “hey, we can’t be racist cause Lincoln was a republican”… without having the slightest understanding that the Republican party of Lincoln’s day was actually quite liberal (the party owes its origins to abolitionists, for crying out loud), and Lincoln himself was more liberal than most. Were he alive today, Lincoln wouldn’t recognize the modern republican party.
But then again, intelligence and an understanding of history are not exactly widely held traits of today’s republican party.
Jesus Christ, can we drop this argument, Repubs? Lincoln has nothing to do with the modern party (besides the fact that he was far far FAR from perfect).
Although, I guess I agree with the overall argument against the “gender gap”. I mean, look at me– such a slutty slut slut slut and I totes voted for Obama so I can get my slut pills. It’s not like I’m in a married, monogamous relationship with a new daughter and my birth control is paid for through my private health insurance or anything. And my mom! My mom voted for Obama too, but I can’t figure out why, considering that she’s a post-menapausal white lady. Maybe she was nostalgic for the heady days of total slutitude and unwanted pregnancies.
Fingers crossed that after much navel-gazing, they decide that they weren’t conservative enough in 2012, and that 2016 brings a True Conservative™ candidate, who will obviously Energize the Base™ and bring them votes they missed out on last time. Because obviously that’s where they are missing votes.
One can hope.
He also forgets to mention that those “southern democrats” from the 60’s eventually just became republicans, because the democratic party was changing and becoming more and more socially liberal and they wanted no part of “racial equality”. So they found a nice home in the Republican party, which in the south was becoming more and more dominated by white evangelicals with similar views on equality.
It also ignores that Lincoln was still really fucking racist, just not enough so to justify the enslavement of black people.
No, the christofascist party isn’t going to learn. They never have yet. If anything they will go more extreme next time.
Who says what the Tea Party/Theothuglicans are doing isn’t working anyway.
They wrecked the country for a generation during the Bush Catastrophe. And still:
1. This election was very close. Obama barely won the popular vote, lost most of the states, and squeaked by in some key ones.
2. The GOP has most of the governorships and controls the house.
3. They won 48% of the vote with Romney, a cold, uncaring ultra rich nonxian cultist who stood for nothing, an empty suit. I gave up even trying to figure out what he would do as president. He seemed to take every position and its opposite on everything.
Romney was a poor candidate, just better than the idiots like Perry, Bachmann, or Satanorum, who were simply too dumb to run.
It appears that the Republicans fell into the almost always fatal trap of believing their own propaganda.
Yeah, because no other politician has ever attempted to define the issues of a campaign. Its so highly unusual and immoral that none of them do it.
[facepalm]
Listing to Shelly Dankert,s rant now. My, my, don’t some people get upset when they don’t get their way.
Quote “you helped Obama win, you assholes”
Actually Shelly, I think one of the reasons Obama won because right caters to so many people like you. Honestly, had I been undecided, spending a few minutes with your you tube videos would have been more than enough to sway me away from the Republicans.
She was right about one thing though: I think she nailed it when she called herself a bitch.
Forget about a civil war between moderate Republicans and christofascist Tea Partiers,
It happened long ago.
The moderates lost big time and are all but extinct. Not going to happen.
The fundies call people like us The Reality Based Community. It’s meant to be a huge insult.
For people who make up their own version of reality as they go along, raped women can’t get pregnant, the earth is 6,000 years old, Obama is a Kenyan born Moslem, global warming isn’t happening, jesus loves us and hates you, etc., it is simply impossible to learn.
You can’t collect facts and draw real conclusions, when your “facts” are just whatever you want to make up.
What I want to know is how the ‘most married women voted for Romney’ is worked out. Was it based on polls before the election? Exit polls at the election? And since the voting is from what I am led to believe secret, then it can’t be from the voting itself.
And if it is from polls, then are those polls where the women concerned are asked where their family or husbands can’t hear them?
Bend over. Insert hand up arse.
(Removing head from arse first is optional.)
Fox News calling itself “news” is like China calling itself a “people’s republic.”
Rutee –
It also ignores that Lincoln was still really fucking racist, just not enough so to justify the enslavement of black people.
Well yeah… there’s that too…
Remember how they all quickly left the Democrats? Seems suspicious, doesn’t it? I wonder which party they identify with now. They’re probably undecided voters. Er, no, that won’t play very well…. They moved to communist countries and started taking our jobs. Yeah. That’ll work.
That’s just what the history books say, and if it’s one racist Republican to another, what they say to themselves. But we all know that was a lie invented by the liberal media.
In a 16-minute segment, Rachel Maddow lists the gains, and the awfulness narrowly avoided, by re-electing President Obama.
Who won what in the house and Senate is also listed in a succinct and impressive way.
Ditto for demographics and issues. Polls, accurate and not, are summarized.
Still, I think the most interesting part of the video begins at about 12:53 when Rachel tries to bring Republican’s out of their bubble and into reality.
She lists the facts Republican’s should now acknowledge. Good try, Rachel. Don’t hold your breath.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#49736294
“… real math from the real world came barreling out of the dark at them [at Republicans] last night, and they hid from it, they could not believe it….”
The Maddow “poem” for Republicans:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/08/15009529-evolution-is-a-thing
Ohio really did go to the president last night.
And he really did win.
And he really was born in Hawaii.
And he really is -legitimately- President of the United States.
Again.
And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month.
And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence
That cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.
And the polls were not skewed to over-sample Democrats.
And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election
To make conservatives feel bad.
He was doing math.
And climate change is real.
And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.
And evolution is a thing.
And Benghazi was an attack on us.
It was not a scandal by us.
And no one is taking away anyone’s guns.
And taxes haven’t gone up.
And the deficit is dropping, actually.
And Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction.
And the moon landing was real.
And FEMA isn’t building concentration camps.
And UN election observers aren’t taking over Texas.
And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry
And the financial services industry
Are not the same thing as communism.
“Conservativism cannot fail, it can only be failed.” – Internet Wisdom.
They are already saying that Mitt Romney wasn’t a “True Conservative”. And they’re talking about going farther right for the next election (2014). Because the American People didn’t reject them hard enough.
Friesdorf’s concise description of the GOP problem didn’t make it into your excerpts, but its so nice it bears repeating:
“A self-imposed information disadvantage.”
Last night I watched about five minutes of Fox News, just to get a flavor of their take on the election. Sean Hannity was interviewing Liz Cheney.
Cheney said that she was hearing lots of people say the Republicans should move to the middle, or at least a little further left. “That’s the last thing we should do,” she pronounced.
Hannity explained Romney’s loss by blaming the whole thing on media sources other than Fox News. “They let the American people down.” Apparently, everybody but Fox let us down by not dwelling on Obama’s responsibility for Fast and Furious, on Benghazi, and generally on how awful the President is.
I also watched an interview with an anti-abortion group in which the spokesperson said Romney did not win because he did not go all out on the anti-abortion platform.
There is, my friends, no hope for the Republican Party.
For anyone who may still need it, here is a debunking of the Fast and Furious supposed conspiracy to subject Americans to new gun laws:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/debunking-the-fast-furious-gun-control-conspiracy/
And here is a four-star General debunking the Benghazi cover-up. On Fox News, Hannity said the General was lying for the Whitehouse.
Well, I’m an older married woman and –even though I don’t accept the characterization of the issue — I still support the right of “sluts” to slut without what this writer considers to be the draconian consequences because I am not their mommy and I don’t want government to be their mommy either.
Conservative Republicans often seem to work off of what I call the “My Country – My Home” viewpoint, wherein you apply the constitutional laws of a country as if you were a homeowner or parent setting down the morals and duties in your own home. In My Country = My Home, democracy rests on two simple principles: 1,) freedom comes from God and thus we must obey the Author of our freedom and 2.) majority rules.
This can be restated as, “My House, My Rules.” Now everything is simplified, and difficult problems can be tackled using the same common sense heuristics you use in a familiar context. The unemployed are like the lazy brother-in-law who needs to be told to get off the couch and get a job. Illegal immigrants are like home invaders who need to be shown the door, if not the end of a rifle. Gays and atheists and other minorities are guests, tolerated only as long as they submit to the host’s stated preferences while under the host’s roof. “And if you don’t like it, you can leave.”
And as for the daughter? Well, Missy, if you think you can go out slutting and bring home a baby for grandma and grandpa to raise you got another think coming. You made your bed, you lie in it. Tough love. You can give that baby to be adopted by a real family or you can take responsibility for lying in the gutter with the little bastard.
They already know what a hard-but-fair parent would say and do. They have a role-model in a God who “allows” people to go to Hell because that’s what they chose when they chose to sin and go against the authority and will of the Parent.
Oh, good, you fixed the blockquoting, I was rather confused at first.
And, nope not the least bit surprised about any of that.
I had to explain to my mother recently that just because one has a majority, it doesn’t mean you get to trample the minorities rights.
Fixed. R-Money and Lynin’ were “WTF are these idiots?” in a considerable amount of the world’s press. And the impression I have is the same was mostly true for most country’s governments.
With one notable exception…
I read in the dead-tree edition of the IHT this morning the atmosphere in the Israeli PM’s office is (quoting) “funeral”.
Awesome. And I mean that, in its original sense.
They sit in their megachurches, look around in satisfaction, and think “We are America; we are the future; we are the true voice of the people.”
Wrong.
A peculiarly mormon take on the election is being posted over and over again on Facebook. It’s a photo of the droopy-jowled and very creepy looking Thomas S. Monson, President of LD$ Inc., and Prophet/Seer/Revelator of the mormon church. The tagline they are posting with this photo is, “My President didn’t change last night.”
wow, nice for these whiny men to show exactly how the GOP lost by depending on them.
“And UN election observers aren’t taking over Texas.”
Damn there goes our last hope.
rhb in Texas
The best thing about Romney’s nomination is that it’s delayed the inevitable discrediting of the Republican far-right by another four years.
I’m old enough to remember 1964, when the Repubs nominated “True Conservative” Barry Goldwater. The party, at that time, had fallen deeply under the influence of the John Birch Society. The resultant shellacking forced the party to move toward the center (Richard Nixon!) and the Birch Society has never regained its influence, almost 60 years later. I think, or would at least like to think, that something like that would have happened this year if they’d nominated someone like Perry or Bachmann.
More input from mormons — this is from ldsfreedomforum:
They have somebody even worse than Mitt Romney waiting in the wings?
The republicans seem to be in a similar place to where Labour was in 80s Britain, except they are too far to the right and Labour were seen as being too far to the left.
All I can say is I hope there is no Tony Blair type person that comes along and makes the Republicans electable.
Funny how some of the wingnuts forget that the passing the Civil Rights Act was the pet cause of Democratic Party master of power play politics. And he did that knowing that he was blowing up his party. And that many of the Democrats who opposed the Civil Rights Act migrated to the Republican Party. Any of the sixties era moderates like Nelson Rockefeller have long since been forced out by now.
Also, Abraham Lincoln was not out to end slavery. While he may have disliked the institution, he was willing to keep it in place as long as the Union would keep. This was not good enough for the slave owners who wanted slavery to spread to the territories that were going to become states. That wanted a slave owning majority in Congress. What Lincoln was proposing would shrink the base of power in the US.
Their grasp of history is as strong as their grasp of reality.
So, Lynna, those humble men of god are claiming that god changed his plans because of them.
What Dems didn’t win: the House of Representatives.
Mother Jones link.
A little satire,… anyone????
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/11/republicans-consider-welcoming-people-who-believe-in-math-and-science.html?mbid=nl_Borowitz%20%2848%29
In reference to comment #34, Janine writes:
Really, Janine, I don’t know what your problem is. Those men are so pure, and are such good examples of mormon Penishood holders (Priesthood holders) that they are little gods in training. They are god.
One begins to understand the mindset behind the mormon brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, that killed a mother and her infant for supposedly holding back the godlike goals of a mormon man. (See Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer.)
More satire from the New Yorker. This is from George Saunders:
More from George Saunders:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2012/10/i-was-ayn-rands-lover.html
It has been about a decade since I read Under The Banner Of Heaven.
Don’t most of the mainstream mormons disown the jack mormons like the Lafferty brothers?
@ 34 Lynna, OM
The Pew Forum has a breakdown of voters by religion. It seems that one out of five Mormons voted for Obama, which seems a little odd. This is the same percentage that voted for Bush in 2004.
Lynna @ 41:
Sounds about right. I’m picturing a potential ‘Randian’ affair as consist of a session of mutual ‘self-abuse’, since it would be ostensibly ‘un-Randian’ to actually please another person.
The New York Times has a breakdown of voters by sex, race, and marriage status. Married women favored Romney 53% to 46%. Not exactly “overwhelming.”
@15 and @25 – you made the mistake of wondering how a conservative pundit’s claim could be true when you should’ve asked whether it was true. Always ask that first.
hawkerhurricane #22
People voted for a liberal (well, a centerist) because his opponent wasn’t conservative enough?
a jack mormon is usually a less observant mormon (who usually drinks coffee/beer/doesn’t go to church every week) rather than an extreme fundamentalist offshoot (like the lafferty brothers).
It is hard to know what most mormons really think of this stuff without actually being in the church. It is so hard to separate out the real opinion from the bullshit PR words that the salt lake city office puts into their mouths. I do know that the social hierarchy of the church is fucking complicated (how many generations of ancestors are mormon vs converts, people with money vs not, how many of your kids went on missions or became eagle scouts vs not, what family your daughter marries into, how many kids a couple has, if a woman works or not, going to BYU vs some other school, grinding your own wheat, etc etc) and its a big game of everyone looking down their noses at someone else. Im sure weird fundie mormons look down on mainstream mormons and vice versa.
There you go with that liberal “thinking” stuff again.
Don’t “think”. Just BELIEVE.
not forgotten; explained away. The current Dolchstoßlegende is that Rmoney won the popular vote, so Obama didn’t really win. Also, someone somewhere claimed to have voted for Obama 4 times, and a New Black Panther dude was threateningly opening doors at a polling station, and look at this county-by-county election map, it’s all red! Therefore, election fraud and voter intimidation.
Also, the end of the world is near, so the frequency of natural disasters will increase; says so in the bible. Global Warming is just a lie the communist nazis are spreading to hide the Truth
Does it really count as a dog whistle when the bigotry is already blaring at the volume of a bullhorn?
no, they think not enough conservatives showed up to the polls because they were too unhappy with romney. they think they’re the “silent majority”, and that all it would take to win is to sufficiently “energize the base” to actually show up and vote
And really, in a country where less than half the eligible voters actually vote, you can project all sorts of crap onto the non-voting populace (however, increased voter turnout usually results in democratic wins)
Interesting, since conservatives and their pet pundits seem to always brag about how ‘energized’ and dedicated to voting their base is.
You are right, skeptifem. I used the term “jack mormon” incorrectly. I should keep “Seldom Seem” Smith(The Monkey-Wrench Gang) in mind as an example of a “jack mormon”.
only before the election. after the election,
we’ve always been at war with Eastasiathe candidate was obviously too lackluster and not conservative enough to turn out the conservative vote.pssst, don’t let them in on the fact that they don’t have a majority anymore. Hell who am I trying to kid you could be screaming that fact down a bullhorn at them and they still wouldn’t get it. Just like Dick Morris trying to explain that fact to Bill O’Reilly last night and Bill denying it.
If the Republicans don’t learn from this loss then the tide of demographics will sweep them into the dustbin of history. 2012 was their high water mark. Their last and best chance. With an energized base, weak economy, massive anonymous funding advantages and the 2010 gerrymandering edge. And with all that they still lost. Even with gerrymandering their share of the House dropped. (This was also why it was so critical for we progressives to make sure the Republicans lost this year)
By 2020, Florida will be blue and Texas purple. That combined with California and the densely populated blue Northeast means that an unchanged Republican Party is finished as a national force forever.
So let them cling to their withering base and let them die. When Texas goes blue it will then be safe for New York to flip green (or whatever color a new Progressive Party chooses to take).
Not only was the Grand Old Party of Lincoln the party of abolitionists but at the turn of the 20th Century, they were feminists supporting universal suffrage.
The rich old White guys who have controlled the party in the last many decades are completely out of touch. They glommed onto the race strategy in the 60s, called the Southern Strategy, to win Nixon the White House and they’ve just kept at it. In more recent years they’ve glommed onto the fundamentalist’s culture war, which fit nicely with with the race strategy, anti-crime strategy, and their persistent anti-tax, anti-government message.
I wouldn’t say they are doomed, yet, but they are really misreading the results of this election. Their deeply rooted racism is making them talk a lot about fixing their Hispanic image problem, but they are completely missing the fact that women defeated them. According to one story I read last night, 54% of the voters in this election were women. Obama beat Romney by 11 points among women voters. If they keep bashing women, fixing the Hispanic problem will do them no good.
Thanks for these links, PZ. I don’t know how you have the stomach to put them together, but looking at alternate realities can be absolutely fascinating. Especially boggled that apparently what the “Christian Men” need a “Defense Network” to protect them from is people with melanin and single women who are “having it all”, especially if that includes sex.
Married women favored Romney this year only because the economy was strong. They ultimately decided that the need for jobs for themselves their husbands and their children outweighed what concerns they had for their reproductive autonomy. And only just barely. Married women did not switch to Romney until after he cleaved centrist in the first debate. Before that they were soft Obama voters.
If the economy is strong it won’t even be close. They will swing blue.
Erm, make that “economy was weak”
I wasn this to happen, but it probably won’t. Let’s remember that the GOP only took on the Southern Strategy because it guaranteed them electoral successes. Once they realize that this isn’t working anymore, they’ll invent another strategy (my guess is they’ll go back to ca.2000-level courting of Latino voters; it would require the least amount of change from the party).
The only reason for that not to happen would be if the Southern Strategy has actually backfired on the GOP leadership, in the sense that the GOP might no longer be using the regressive mob to buoy themselves into power; rather, the regressive mod has become uncontrollable and is using the GOP structures for their own goals, and won’t give them back when the GOP leadership tries to shift course
If Lincoln was alive today he would either be a Democrat, or he would be primaried out of the Republican Party by the Tea Party.
fixed
re 62;
If the Republican Party does change strategy to survive and becomes more moderate then that will be a good thing, and functionally will be the same as the current extremist Republican Party being destroyed.
If their new strategy involved staying extreme and trying to deceive the electorate about it, then it is the political duty of progressives to make sure they don’t get away with such lies.
whyever would you think that? we’re talking about the guy who wrote:
a republican party that becomes “moderate” only on those isues that will attract conservative Latino voters is still a raging right-wing nightmare (see: Dubya)
If you would like to sup further on delicious schadenfreude, this link on the odious Breitbart is pretty entertaining:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/06/Tea-Party-Declares-WAR-On-GOP-Establishment
Especially the comments, if you can stomach wading through them. Tea Partyers blaming Ann Coulter, Libertarians blaming Fundies, Fundies blaming Romney…lots of calls for their own “pure” parties. Which would be great for us, but seriously, they’ve got to know that if they jettisoned those “other crazies”, they’d do even worse in the next election, right? Oh well, we can always hope.
Trebuchet
This isn’t entirely true; they just changed their name, now it’s the Tea Party. Both of them at least partially pet projects of the Koch family, too.
Um, no. I’m older, married and a woman. The right has never come within light years of winning me over.
Once a slut, always a slut, it seems. Ah well.
Akin and Mourdock lost. That’s all I have to say about the advisability of the Repubs going more racist and sexist.
Of course, that’s not the only thing he ever wrote. But if Lincoln was born in the forties or fifties (like Mittens), he’d have been born to parents with radically different life experiences than the parents he had, and he himself would have had radically different life experiences. He’d be a different person. Maybe a wingnut. Unlikely to wear a stovepipe hat. Possibly still not a big fan of vampires.
On the other hand, if you translate the personal qualities – the ones people like, at least – that Lincoln apparently had to a person today – wit, intelligence, skepticism, and, especially, empathy — they do seem pretty incompatible with today’s Republican party.
Perhaps we could frame the discussion in terms of an ‘Enlightenment Quotient’ (EQ). You could measure a person’s absolute Enlightenment Score (ES) by figuring out how prejudiced they are against (various categories of) ‘the other’, and what treatment they think is justified toward ‘the other’. And then, to obtain EQ, you divide by the average ES for their culture and time period — and multiply by 100 for particular reason. So the average person in any culture has an EQ of 100. Lincoln’s ES might be much lower than the average modern American. But his EQ might be high — let’s say 120. Since the average Republican has an EQ in the low 50s, Lincoln’s EQ puts him several standard deviations away from the average Republican, so the probability of him being a modern Republican is virtually nil… at least based on all this data that I just made up.
It’s good enough for me, at least for answering all important questions like, what would some dead guy think if he were alive today.
horrabin @68
That site is priceless. Here is one of my favourite comments talking about Tod Akin and his handling of the rape issue.
I mean can you be anymore clueless. This shit is good, really really good.
Or they are questions that allow the candidate to define his or her candidacy, his or her humanity, and his or her commitment to human rights.
So, yeah, for a teabagger, that would be a trap.
Ohhh yeah, the hits just keep on a coming.
From the depths of Tea Party racism.
I was thinking time-travel; because obviously a newborn with Abe’s DNA (and even with Abe’s in utero experiences) born some 100 years after the original wouldn’t ever become thatAbe Lincoln (see also: Cyteen :-p)
How about this little gem, commenting on possible supreme court nominations. Who knew Marx was such a big influence of supreme court ideology. I didn’t.
The next four years will be among the most interesting in American political history. After a close brush with the disaster that a Romney presidency would have been, and with the GOP is total disarray due to their loss, things are going to get interesting. To say the least.
Either the GOP will repudiate the tea party, or the tea party will get a death grip on the GOP and expel all the moderates and centrists. It seems inescapable that at least one third party will rise from this bonfire of the vanities, like a phoenix, but whether that party will fly the flag of fiscal conservatism and social progressivism, or be the Tea Party under its real name I can’t predict.
Whatever group ends up wearing the mantle of the tea party will be prone to fissioning yet further, much like many religious denominations have splintered over the most minute points of doctrine and dogma.
At the same time, I hope the Democrats get their shit together, give up that loopy idea that you can’t call a spade a spade because it isn’t nice and encourage the party as a whole to be more like Chris Kluwe, who calls a spade a spade, but without lowering himself to the dreadful depths of tea party vileness.
Free stuff voters are to blame dontcha know.
With that in depth review of America’s economy how will we ever survive.
two more? Who’s the current “Marxist” he appointed?
*cough*
exploitation by US companies and murder by criminals with USAmerican guns?
Crazy World is indeed crazier that we thought, as PZ has let us know with the links in his post.
To add to the stew of Crazy, I offer this comment, which was posted on Free Republic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2956850/posts
Oh, yeah, that’s right. President Obama is an “unqualified charlatan.” Sheesh. It used to puzzle me that right-winger blogs, Fox News, etc. harped on the fact that Obama uses a teleprompter most of the time. I finally caught on when a Republican explained to me that “Obama is dumb and lazy. He reads the words others write for him.” Uh, what about the quick wit he displays on talk show appearances? What about ….. but, nevermind, they’ll never believe anything based on reality. I was also informed that Trump wanted Obama’s transcripts because that would prove to everyone once and for all that Obama was too stupid to get into Harvard without affirmative action. I guess Harvard colleagues chose Obama to lead the Harvard Law Review the better to fool us into thinking that he’s intelligent.
Note that the entire free press got together and deceived us. Sarah Palin was right! (I notice that Palin now calls the media “corrupt” instead of lamestream. “The corrupt media…”)
All hail demography the power of changing conditions and politics. The biggest problem with conservative “thinking” is the inability to look at the state of things as they are and not how they want them or how they use to think they were.
they can not make new decisions in the face of changing conditions they are bound to the unchanging past as they imagine it.
those that were birchers in the past still think the same they just do not identify as such any more.
uncle frogy
re: ‘Republicans can’t be racist because Lincoln freed the slaves’ — as pointed out on “Yo, Is This Racist”, if the last thing your party did that you can be proud of was 150 years ago, maybe you should rethink your affiliation.
Bill OhReally explained it perfectly: “we” are now a minority in our own country!! And those non-whites just want…things. And Obama is going to give them…stuff.
Luckily, the people funding the GOP don’t want anything at all from government.
@ 79 RFW wrote:
Or things will continue as they are, with the GOP floundering from issue to issue, continuing their obstructionist ways, led by John (“we will not give an inch”) Boehner. After all, half the country supports them.
Inescapable? It seems unlikely in the extreme to me.
In comment #30 I mentioned the mormon oddity of posting photos of their current Prophet/Seer/Revelator with the caption “My President didn’t change tonight.”
I just knew you’d all want to see it, so here it is:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CIPc5Oees2A/UJqP83NNkkI/AAAAAAAACEw/bnmS5GOXS0U/s1600/monson2.jpg
It’s an epic case of Jungian projection which seems very common among the Republicans (maybe the majority of them have some mental illness). For example, Romney was claiming that Obama was divisive. Dubbyah won thanks to his crony in Florida who rigged the elections there with an impromptu Jim Crow law: “hanging chads” will not be counted if you live in a predominantly black neighborhood.
Oh, that Karl Rove! Such a card.
That’s right Karl, it was a Democratic ploy to suppress the vote. Greater voter turnout favors Democratic Party candidates. And it was ALEC-written legislation, Republican legislators, Republican Governors, and Republican Secretaries of State that worked to suppress the vote.
That Karl. He must be peddling so hard to stay ahead of the billionaires who want to behead him for wasting their money that he’s cooked his brain.
Link.
it looks to me that the people who are funding the republican party do want things just as much or possibly more than anyone else they are not advocating giving any of there stuff away. What ever they are “selling” the masses of party voters they want plenty from government as well, like no taxes, big military budgets, free or cheap oil leases, monopoly control, no banking nor investment regulation, no pollution regulation at all no government expenses at all that would require them to spend any of their money.
they want plenty
uncle frogy
Oh, look, a poll manipulator that Republicans relied on has actually admitted that he was wrong.
Man the Republicans and Tea Baggers don’t like one another very much do they.
Actually I’m worried about the more deranged rants all over the internet. Unlike them I don’t think there’s going to be a new civil war, but I am pretty much worried that there will be a few famous last stands in which innocent people lose their lives.
*sigh*
yeah, that’s totes a helpful way of looking at it, and not at all stigmatizing people witch actual mental illnesses
Hooray! One last snafu by the Romney team, and it’s a technological fuckup.
Team Romney published a “Victory” website.
Screenshots here: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/11/07/romneys_transition_site.html
So glad to know that President-elect Romney is working closely with his transition team.
madscientist:
Have you ever considered that what you said here could be extremely hurtful towards those with mental illnesses? Just because I don’t like the far Right doesn’t mean I’m going to insinuate that they possibly have a mental illness.
Even Lincoln had a somewhat mixed record with respect to race. He is quoted in the Lincoln-Douglas debates as saying:
“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people…”
This was in Illinois, of course, but racial prejudice has always been widespread in this country, not just a Southern affliction. Lincoln lost to Douglas who was clearly race baiting during the debates. Perhaps Lincoln was just trying to address Douglas’s claim that the “Black” Republicans = Abolitionists but he only emancipated slaves in the rebellious Southern states to thwart Britain from recognizing the Confederacy. He did not emancipate slaves in loyal states.
unclefrogy:
Sorry. That was a sarcasm fail. Situation normal for me.
One does not have to be mentally ill to suffer from projection.
Indeed it could be argued that projection is the default state of the normal human brain, which requires conscious effort to override.
Put Florida in President Obama’s win column. Slate is reporting that Romney has conceded the Florida win to Obama.
Like tomh, I think this unlikely. The Tea Party now appears too well-entrenched to be thrown out; and if the “moderates” and “centrists” are, why would they not join the Democratic Party? It is, after all, pretty much a standard-issue centre-right party. Both David Cameron and Angela Merkel have welcomed Obama’s re-election, and these congratulations by no means appear to have come through gritted teeth.
Lynna@101,
That would also complete Nate Silver’s clean sweep.
Further to my #101, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a significant number of prominent Republican “moderates” switch parties – probably via a period as “independents” – in the coming months.
Sorry, I meant to my #102.
Do you have a source for that? There were certainly some in the British establishment calling for such recognition, but AFAIK, it was never a likely option. Not only would it have been immensely unpopular – public opinion in Britain was overwhelmingly pro-Union even before the Emancipation Proclamation – but the Confederates grossly over-estimated their economic clout. Britain was able to source cotton from Egypt, while it had no alternative to the cheap grain from the North.
This excuse of “conservatives weren’t energized enough to get out and vote for Romney” is laughable when you consider how unenthused liberals are with Obama, yet he still managed to win. It’s even funnier when you remember how Republicans were saying in 2008 that Obama won overwhelmingly because people were just voting against Bush, not for Obama — even though Bush wasn’t even up for election
Naked Bunny with a Whip:
Remember, being a conservative in the United States means that nothing is ever your fault. Ever.
That is, technically speaking, not that unlikely here either, so he’s right, in about a 180 degree way from what he meant.
@KG: That’s about right, from my understanding, as well. The Emancipation Proclamation came well after public opinion was on his side abroad, certainly. It very well could have had a diplomatic component, mind, but if so it wasn’t solely motivated by it, at least.
Nick Gotts #106
While most British workers and middle class were pro-Union, the upper class tended to be pro-Confederate. Although a self-professed abolitionist, Lord Palmerston (Prime Minister during the Civil War period) had an abiding hatred of the United States and hoped the South would win the war, thereby weakening both the US and the Confederacy and enhancing British power.
Wikipedia discusses the issue that brought the U.S. and Britain closest to war:
@Jadehawk #66:
It’s the second clause that would get Lincoln booed off the stage at a GOP debate. Can you imagine a modern Republican candidate even suggesting that he’d be willing to raise corporate taxes to 70% if that’s what it took to reduce unemployment by 2/3? Can you imagine one saying he’d at least be willing to look into reducing both crime and government spending by opening the borders and ending the War on Pot?
The English upper crust’s support of the Confederacy was predominantly conditional. When Egypt’s cotton boomed, the fucks they gave about the confederacy were minimal. And mass popular appeal can’t entirely be ignored; there was a pretty small chance that the Confederacy was going to be recognized by Britain, all-in-all.
Supported, clandestinely? Absolutely. Openly recognized? Not a friggin’ chance.
I mean, we lionize Lincoln, like other ‘great’ presidents far too much, but cynicism is supposed to be tempered by realism.
-That, sadly, is actually very, very true. See http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/feb/24/rick-santorum/rick-santorum-says-over-40-percent-children-are-bo/
-It’s interesting that the author of that quote seems to imply that so-called ‘sluts’ should have the consequences of their actions that they bear be increased in place of the consequences of those actions to both taxpayers and the ‘sluts’ involved being reduced in severity.
Ogvorbis
I started to write the comment at you but stopped when I realized it was really aimed at the ass hole on TV who actually said and I assume believes it. You just reminded me of an unvoiced reaction.
uncle frogy
Rodney Nelson@110,
Thanks for that. There’s a much more detailed account of the Trent affair here. It does modify my view, because it shows that the seizure of Confederate envoys from a British ship outraged even pro-Union opinion in Britain, giving the pro-Confederate forces an opportunity. Once Lincoln backed down over this, and as the British government contemplated an American invasion of Canada, the prospects of war or recognition of the Confederacy faded; and although the article does confirm that the Emancipation Proclamation had some effect, initially this encouraged the idea in Europe that an “offer” of mediation should be made, which was the context in which recognition was by then being considered.
I just had something of a light-bulb moment. “Slut” only loosely refers to sexual behaviour. Deep down, it means “Woman I can’t control.”
When you think about it, it used to mean, “Woman whose sexual behaviour I can’t control.” Now it just means, “Woman who’s too intelligent to be fooled by me.”
Ditto “Bitch” and “Cunt.”
er, yes, that’s what I was going for :-p
I don’t understand this argument; “I’ll do whatever it takes to win” has been the driving force of the GOP since at least Nixon. And also, why does it make sense to talk about a parallel form while disregarding content when we’re talking about a supposed actual person? Isn’t that what it means to say that [person X] would today belong to some specific group? to say that the actual opinions and positions (rather than just their form, regardless of content) they held while alive would fit with that specific group?
Of the mainstream GOP, but not of the Tea Party, who by both word and deed have demonstrated that often they would rather be ideologically “pure” by their standards and lose then to compromise on something and win.
Given that, I’m more interested in the content of Lincoln’s private letters. Anyone know?
For Pete’s sake!!! (whoever Pete is…)
Haven’t you learned by now that there is no lie too vile, and no statement too outrageous, for a Rethuglican to spout? Usually at the top of his/her lungs and as often as possible?
Take for example, Ann Romney, who wants us to believe that she shops for her husbands shirts at Costco. Costco doesn’t sell shirts in three packs, and doesn’t sell embroidered ones. And, according to the manager of my neighborhood Costco, NEVER HAS.
I wish someone had asked her (a) which type of Costco card she carried (and that she show it to us…), and (b) which credit card or cards she used to shop at Costco – Discover, MasterCard, Visa, or what?
The questions to be answered then and there – no opportunity to cheat being allowed.
I bet you’d get some very interesting and telling evasions, if not an out-and-out display of prevarication…
And if she answers anything other than the Costco Amex we know she’s lying :-p
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pet2.htm
Dead Enough: The Reality of the “Lesser Evil”
By Chris Floyd
This little boy was named Naeemullah. He was in his house — maybe playing, maybe sleeping, maybe having a meal — when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32993.htm
Well folks your “lesser evil” won the election.
And now he is back to work.
joed, yes, the “lesser evil” did. And now he is indeed back to work.
And, therefore, there is less evil working there than there would otherwise have been.
(Why do you have a problem with that?)
And what did the candidates you would have voted for (if you could have) do to stop it? Why didn’t they pass laws to halt the strike? Why didn’t they rally their majority of US citizen supporters to have someone prosecuted for war crimes?
Please tell us what your choice of candidates were doing while this was happening.
I asked you before the election what you thought they’d be doing after election day, and as far as I can tell, you didn’t answer. Care to answer this one?
I do recall reading an excerpt from one of his letters from his younger days in which he wrote about riding a barge down the Mississippi with slaves in chains. It clearly bothered him to see that, indicating, if nothing else, that he was capable of seeing slaves as human beings.