Jon Ralston is the best political reporter in Nevada, and he’s pretty alarmed about what he’s seeing both there and in the country. I think he’s on to something when he takes issue with Sharron Angle’s latest press release.
“Sharron Angle produced one of the most successful single quarters of fundraising in the nation’s history for a U.S. Senate campaign. This is a testament to the hatred of Harry Reid, the nation’s disapproval of President Obama, and the unprecedented grass-roots support for Sharron Angle. Harry Reid is losing this race, he knows it, and he is just going to get more desperate over the final three weeks.”
— Angle spokesman Jarrod Agen after reporting GOP Senate nominee had raised $14 million in the third quarter
It’s noteworthy that support for Sharron Angle was mentioned third, while ‘hate’ was mentioned first. Conservatives from all over the country are galvanized by a hatred of Harry Reid. It doesn’t seem very rational. I can tell you that as a Democrat I am not very pleased with Reid’s performance as Majority Leader. I try to cut him some slack most of the time, but it’s not like we come from the same wing of the Democratic Party. When I think of a prototypical Democrat, I don’t think pro-life Mormon. If Reid were not part of the leadership, he’d probably have a voting record more like Ben Nelson than Byron Dorgan. He’s not a liberal, although he does a decent (not great) job of representing their interests in a diverse caucus.
He’s not a liberal, but he’s become the kewpie doll of liberalism for 161,358 conservatives who have sent Sharron Angle donations (averaging $90). Obviously, Reid is suffering because he’s responsible for pushing Obama’s agenda through Congress. Yet, that agenda hasn’t been liberal if judged by historical standards. His health care bill was very similar to what the right-wing Heritage Foundation proposed as an alternative to HillaryCare. Obama’s bills have been crafted in the only they could be crafted in the face of uniform Republican opposition. Legislation can be no more liberal than what Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and at least one Republican senator will sign off on. This stubborn fact helps explain why liberals are grumpy. With such big Democratic majorities, we’re reluctant to accept that this is the best we can do. We’re also a little miffed that our watered down agenda is deemed worthy of seething hatred. The cost of protecting you from the insurance corporations is to give them millions of new customers. And then we’re called socialists and Marxists. And make no mistake, this astounding hatred isn’t just aimed at Harry Reid. It’s aimed at all of us. We didn’t get Gitmo closed, or prosecute anyone for torture, or repeal DOMA, or enact ENDA, or end DODT. We haven’t been able to pass energy or immigration reform, and some of our most cherished nominees have not been confirmed. So much of our agenda has been stymied or diluted, and yet we’re the subject of blistering rhetoric and terrific anger.
What we all have to consider is what it would mean for those that hate us this passionately to actually accrue power in Washington.
Here is what I consider: A lot of the Tea Partiers and the Rabid-Racist-Obama-Haters are military retirees. As am I. But while I am disappointed with the administration’s and the Congress’ performance, I early voted (in Ohio) for a straight Democrat ticket. The thought of wacky-off-the-deep-end office holders is too unpalatable.
Getting back to all those right-wing military retirees that are voting for the whackos, I can see a TeapubliKKKan congress voting to balance the budget on the backs of Social Security recipients and military retirees by drastically cutting those payments.
I’m assuming by your screen name that you’re a Navy person…me, too! What did you do in the Navy?
I was an Electronics Technician. 21 years.
I retired as an ETCS.
And you?
A leader of the “Them” tribe is always going to get the best effort of the “Us” tribe when they’re vulnerable to attack, always. Which faction of the Them tribe that they belong to is irrelevant – they’re Them. Progressives don’t differentiate between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives and foreign policy conservatives – they’re all Them.
When Bush said that you’re either with us or against us he was merely speaking what all conservatives believe – if a Republican breaks with GOP orthodoxy on two or more issues then they are no longer “Us” – they’re “Them” and treated accordingly. It’s a very small step from there to calling Harry Reid a liberal – from their POV he is a liberal, much the same way that to someone in Philly a Phoenix resident is on the West Coast.
I don’t agree that we make no distinction between fiscal and social conservatives. We tend to solidify against social conservatives that say outrageous things (think Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann) and not against people like Mike Castle or Olympia Snowe. Of course, the GOP has so few pro-choice members left that it is kind of hard to find someone who isn’t a social conservative. But people who don’t use that rhetoric, like Dick Lugar, don’t inspire any opposition. Liberals weren’t motivated to beat Arnold. I don’t see us going crazy to try to beat McConnell.
I think we feed off their extremists, and they aren’t the fiscal conservatives.
I don’t see us going crazy to try to beat McConnell.
When do we ever go full-bore after their leaders like they do ours? Who was going to get excited by Mongiardo? Best as I could tell, he was a Ben Nelson clone. How many people, besides DWT, C&L and Digby, are going full-bore after Orange Julius? Hell, the DCCC can’t be bothered to give Coussoule any help. Frankly, we need to take over the party structure.
The key there is “vulnerable” – McConnell isn’t vulnerable, but when DeLay became vulnerable we did indeed go ape trying to get that scalp, and we did indeed get that scalp.
On differentiating between conservatives, you actually prove the point – you see them all as social conservatives since few of them take a Pro Choice position, but social conservatism is much more than abortion. Likewise, Harry Reid doesn’t take a position that the government that governs least governs best, so to Republicans he’s a liberal.
Of course Republicans don’t take that position either. It’s all just a con.
McConnell was vulnerable. What did he win by? And how do you make someone vulnerable unless you challenge them? Obama won the district that Paul Ryan represents, yet the DCCC won’t do shit there. Why?
That’s because there are no economic leftists with political clout or media presences. We saw that in the healthcare debates, the tax debates, and every other discussion that involves economic basics. We can’t even get a majority together to restore TWO PERCENT more in taxes for the very top income recipients. There’s no left there.
So pretty much all we get are tired attack ads over relatively trivial gotchas, and essentially no discussion of real issues that will determine whether we survive as a functional society. The few exceptions, like Kucinich, are treated like fools and pariahs by their own party and by “liberals/leftists” in general. So all that’s left is the boutique issues that won’t matter a tinker’s dam once we’ve landed in Mad Max land.
of course they hate us, which is why the President’s posturing of putting out the hand to these mofos has been maddening. they don’t disagree with his policy issues; they HATE HIS VERY BEING.
HIS VERY BEING.
HIS VERY EXISTENCE.
and the MSM plays along that there’s something other than flat out HATRED going on here.
they do hate him. But they hate all of us. They hate liberals. They hate Democrats. They hate all of our constituencies, from racial and religious minorities, to federal and state employees. They just hate.
And always have. What else is new? And I hate them. Which is why all the “bipartisanship” crap is so insane.
It’s a public pose! Why is that so hard for people to understand? If Obama really cared about bipartisanship so much, he would have vetoed the health care bill for not being bipartisan. He instead signed it into law with much pomp and ceremony. That tells you all you need to know about what he thinks of bipartisanship.
Booman keeps saying over and over that we can only enact legislation as progressive as Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman will allow. Those two like the idea of bipartisanship. So does the public. So Obama panders to those desires by saying he wants bipartisanship too. But it’s all just talk. Stop paying attention to what he says and look at what he does.
I do look at what he does. Like basically endorsing the odious Paul Ryan for reelection.
so right! the Party of Fear.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The primary fact of American life over the past 40 years is the fact that almost all of the income growth has gone to the folks at the very top of the spectrum. This process has been aided and abetted by Republican policies. By rights, we should be on the verge of a leftist revolution. The right can’t possibly go to the electorate and say, “please vote for us so that you can be poorer and billionaires can be richer.” The only argument they can make is an emotional one. “Vote for us because otherwise scary brown people will kill us all”, or “Vote for us because the essential character of the country is at stake.” Once you have been convinced that the election is about such existential issues, there is no room for compromise. Hence the hatred.
from a june 2009 post of mine, “not just obama”, that examined fright-wing attitudes towards liberals in their own words:
Deep in their hearts, Conservatives are basically royalists. Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush, Bush) are legitimate. Democratic presidents (Clinton, Obama) are not. There is room for only one ruling house, and they are it.
A milksop like Harry Reid does make an odd target. Nancy Pelosi is a much better wingnut villain. She’s a woman AND she’s a “San Francisco liberal,” so making Pelosi the target of the Two Minutes’ Hate allows them sound the sexism, squishy liberal and homophobia dog-whistles all at the same time.
That’s probably why I see “Fire Pelosi” stickers on cars here in Florida — on the opposite side of the country from Pelosi’s actual district.
It is an interesting phenomenon how they obsess on a relatively inoffensive woman, not a flaming liberal, much less lefty by any means. Of course much of it is simply her position and her success as a leader, but they were after her even before all that. I think you’re right on about the trifecta of sexism, homophobia, and “liberal” bashing.
In the meantime they’re relatively silent on folks like Kucinich, Sanders, and to some extent even Grayson and Stark. Kind of shows what a made-up soap opera it all is.
The analogy’s clear enough, but for those who, when they hear the word “royalist”, remember the English Civil War (1642-1651), it’s actually the other way around. Today’s Tea Party is the equivalent of the radical Parliamentarians, and the Democrats are like the royalists. This is not even an analogy, it’s a direct historical continuity. The radical parliamentarians were Puritans, Protestant extremists, revolutionaries, millennialists, biblical fundamentalists. They were paranoid of the Antichrist, which in their case was believed to be the Pope, and the “Papists” (Catholics) they did not even regard as Christians; in more recent times it was the Communists, now succeeded by the Muslims, groups so evil that the same rules do not even apply to them and you do not negotiate with them any more than you would negotiate with Satan himself.
The royalists, equivalent to the Democrats, were more liberal in religion, considered by the Puritans to be elitists, out of touch, dissolute snobs, and special Puritan hatred was always reserved for a leading female figure on the royalist side — in those days the attractive (Catholic) Queen Henrietta Maria. (Now the attractive Catholic Nancy Pelosi.) Of course most, not all, but most of the artists, poets, of the time were royalists.
These antitheses were far more important than any economic and class distinctions, as there were nobles and commoners, rich and poor, in abundance on both sides, just as with the GOP and Dems today.
The United States is the one country in the world where the Puritans and the religiously similar Scotch-Irish made the formative cultural contribution. Oh wait, there is another one — Northern Ireland.
Omnia similia claudicunt, Prisciane…
De gustibus non disputandum, amice.
OK, here is Queen Henrietta Maria — in her early 20s, mind you:
http://image18.webshots.com/18/0/78/69/2267078690094285158iMPvxV_fs.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henrietta_Maria.jpg
And here is Nancy Pelosi — in her late 60s:
http://vivirlatino.com/i/2008/10/nancy-pelosi.jpg
http://s1.hubimg.com/u/2505268_f520.jpg
Sorry that first Henrietta Maria didn’t work. Try this.
http://entertainment.webshots.com/photo/2267078690094285158iMPvxV
Oh, one other thing I almost forgot. The royalists were internationalists, one of their heroes was Hugo Grotius who was — what a coincidence — the founder of international law. They believed in world peace through negotiation. You already see this with James I. The radical parliamentarians believed in the Bible as the only law that can unite the world, so the only kind of internationalism that made sense to them was a sort of international protestant league waging a permanent crusade, both missionary (hearts and minds) or military, on the rest of the world.
Thanks for the diary. This is going to be my next topic in my college newspaper. I just read one of the most disgusting right-wing screeds to be published the other day, talking about how conservatism is on the rise in places like Europe, and called the Tea Party “center-right.” I debated whether or not I should respond, but I think what I’d rather do is write my own column about what inspires the right wingers.
Why, a progressive revolution, that’s what! Who could ever have imagined that the contradictions could get this heightened?
Confronted with the evidence of their own eyes, people will finally turn Left in droves. There is no alternative.
Nach Boehner, uns!
What left? Seriously. They’re going to rise up for a public option? A 2 percent tax hike for billionaires? A bunch of ancient smelly men disputing Trotsky vs Lenin?
What will these revolutionaries find to rally around?
Dennis Kucinich’s cabinet-level Department of Peace, of course. Hemp. And giant puppets.