Somewhere in my archives, I say that the neoconservatives will come back to the Democratic Party they left in the early seventies if Rand Paul wins the Republican nomination. Turns out, that’s true about Donald Trump, too.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I said the same thing yesterday, albeit not with the reference to Rand Paul. Where else are they going to go at this point? There’s been a few salvos across the bow about Mitt RMoney, but the base ain’t interested in that .001%er. The Donald’s already dissed RMoney anyway.
I still speculate that the PTB will coalesce behind Clinton and do what it takes to get her into the White House. Why not? She’s their poodle anyway. From the perspective of the mega-wealthy, they don’t give a stuff about abortion or gay marriage or other wedge issues. They just want their financial needs met, and HRC is their gal.
Any projection/prediction that begins with “if Rand Paul is the GOP nominee” is already wrong. Paul was never going to be the nominee – the only open question was how would he do in the primaries compared to how his daddy did. I went with closer to ’08 than ’12, but it was a lucky guess; no better than flipping a coin.
The fact that neo-cons are comfortable with Hilary is, um, not a good sign for Hilary.
The reporting (see here and here) on Hilary’s enormous personal wealth from Wall St. has been devastating for my view of her, and I fear will be devastating in a contest against Trump. I can’t say I’ve followed the actual campaign very closely, but the message I’m hearing from Hilary is “No, We Can’t.” That, and “I’ll be a smart establishment manager, business as usual.”
I’m no doubt highly biased against her positioning (and her substance) already, but I find the argument here (Glennzilla) compelling. Perhaps because a disreputable part of me can’t help wondering if a Trump presidency would at least get the Dems to pull their heads out of their asses and stop the ritual sucking down of establishment cash and consequent “centrist” horseshit. Of course that’s wishful thinking…
Some thinking may go: If we can’t have hope, we might take spite.
‘Every four years, some Democrat who’s been a lifelong friend of labor runs for president. And every four years, that Democrat gets thrown over by national labor bosses in favor of some party lifer with his signature on a half-dozen job-exporting free-trade agreements.”
Don’t we finally get it?
I agree. And the Wall Street ties are being discussed, whereas I don’t think the neocon issue is, perhaps because Sanders hasn’t been talking about foreign policy.
But if Hillary were running in the general, any Republican candidate would hammer her on well-known foreign policy issues, whether fairly or not.
I’m not sure why Bernie has avoided foreign policy. Hillary is knowledgeable and experienced in that area, but she’s also vulnerable when you look at her actual views and connections — and that’s where the neocon issue fits in.
Is Sanders really not interested in foreign policy? I doubt that. Does he know little about it? I doubt that too. But coming head to head with Hillary on foreign policy, no doubt things would take on a very negative tone, and he doesn’t want to go there.
And maybe it’s a cost/benefit judgment, in that most American voters are not particularly interested in foreign policy and have only the crudest understanding of the issues, if that. But it’s just that crude understanding that will be exploited mercilessly by any Republican candidate.
So, coming back to the cost/benefit idea, if Bernie doesn’t think it’s worth fighting Hillary on foreign policy, he wouldn’t be able to avoid it in the general; and that’s good, because I believe that against the Republican, he’d be in a much better position than Hillary on foreign policy, just as he would be on the Wall Street issue.
I was enjoying the highbrow references to Oedipus Wrecks that the Brookings Institute Fellow was serving up, but then I got to this, and I felt that acid wash in my stomach again, and couldn’t quite take the rest of his commentary as seriously:
“Then there was the Obama hatred, a racially tinged derangement syndrome that made any charge plausible and any opposition justified. Has the president done a poor job in many respects? Have his foreign policies, in particular, contributed to the fraying of the liberal world order that the United States created after World War II? Yes, and for these failures he has deserved criticism and principled opposition. “
Has the President done a poor job? I guess you should tell that to the Big Three in Detroit whose workers still have jobs, and the rest of those ten percent unemployed in 2008 who also seem to have jobs. Oh, and how about that roll back from almost complete economic collapse? Let’s forget about that too. Wow! France, the reluctant fair weather friend in Bush Iraq-scepade joined in against IS. That Obama sure is a failure!
” and the rest of those ten percent unemployed in 2008 who also seem to have jobs”
Oh, really? Maybe if they were under 30.
No thanks. Fuck off neos. I’d prefer a new american century to a Chinese, but you dont have a god damn clue how to go about it.
Bullseye, although I would change the end of the column to the Democratic nominee.
Big tent.. shudder
If ideological purity is what you want in the Democratic Party, just state that explicitly.
Screw Kagan and his whole misbegotten clan with 287 chainsaws.
Screw the neocons, screw Robert Kagan, screw the Washington Post.
Actually fuck them all with a rusty chain saw dipped battery acid. And then dump them in a dairy field of cow manure where they can blend into their natural element.