The right is annihilating itself.

via Digby:

“…It’s keeping people alive….These are real lives at stake…”

The day I see a Nixon speechwriter express concern and compassion for the little people is the day we have an African American as president-elect. Oh wait…

“…Anyone? Anyone?…”

…and documenting the atrocities.

It’ll be quite interesting to compare media coverage of the Obama administration with their mollycoddling of dubya and their hatred of all things Clinton.

Junior High School Theory

…There was a girl in my junior high school who, for no rational or explicable reason, was targeted as a ‘very evil person’ to be tormented and bullied. The stories about her were outrageous, silly, and unbelievable – none based in truth, but everyone repeated them anyway, and this was sufficient to put her on the bottom rung of the pecking order for 2-3 years and to encourage incessant bullying of her. What was done to her was horrific, and I sometimes wonder what long-term effect it may have had on her and how she got through it.

There was no rhyme or reason to it – it was just a narrative that was written, and everyone simply swallowed it and piled on. This is how I see what has happened to Hillary Clinton for several decades now. And my fear about her taking SoS is that I really don’t think it’s going to stop – ever. The narrative has been written for quite some time on her and it is pretty much set in stone. People love to hate her…

Go. Read this. All of it:

Covering new presidents: the media’s double standard

…a corporate jet in every garage.

Brett Penrose continues his commentary on our current economic triumphs.

Congress will look after the corporate CEOs, it’s their workers who will end up suffering.

…coming from my television set this morning.

I’m wondering if I should call my cable provider to complain.

“…You can take from the word regret what you will…”

Why is this putz blathering away on national television?

Hillary Clinton Still Doesn’t Understand the Boys’ Club Senate Game.

…See, Senator [Clinton], you’re doing it all wrong.  What you need to do is go out and campaign hard for a Republican, and then get yourself convicted of at least seven felonies.

THEN the Senate will be nice to you.

And the old media will put you on their Sunday talk shows. Our useless media understands the game. And enables it.

There’s a bit of complaining going on.

Get over it. Obama is going to be president. And, as an extra added bonus, the republican isn’t.

I supported another candidate in the primary. In fact, I worked my tail off for that other candidate leading up to the February 5th primary.

A friend and colleague, he an enthusiastic supporter of Obama, asked me around that time, “With your opposition to the war, how could you support Hillary?” I mumbled something about pragmatism. What I really should have said is, “We should both be supporting Dennis Kucinich, going by our ideology. But we’ve already determined what each of us is, now we’re just haggling over the price.”

That being said, I’m thoroughly pleased that Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States. Note to our incompetent media: this won’t actually happen until January 20, 2009, so quit whining that he needs to do something this very instant about the current economic mess. Uh, dubya occupies the space until that day. You enabled him. It’s the world you helped create, so live in it like the rest of us.

I believe I was circumspect if I offered criticism of Barack Obama and/or his campaign during the primary process. What made me hesitant about getting on the bandwagon was the tenor of some of his “true believers”. Finally, I had to decide to let that go, given my constant mantra reaching back all the way into 2007, “candidates and campaigns are not responsible for, nor can they control their amateur fans.”

I had to let it go. It was difficult. Right after Hillary conceded we started getting fundraising calls from the Obama campaign. I’d calmly reply, “Call me back when Hillary is the vice-presidential nominee” then I’d hang up. I was always going to vote for the Democratic party nominee (pace Joe Lieberman, as if that was ever a possibility). There were other state and local campaigns to work on, too. I could expend my energy there. I wasn’t going to put a damn bumper sticker on my car, and I wasn’t going to put a yard sign in my yard, let alone join the “true believers” in phone banking. My spouse expressed the same sentiments.

The bumper sticker thing was easy, up until the last weeks before the election, because the local Democratic Party headquarters didn’t get its order in for over two months. They did finally get here. They’re still on my vehicle – triumphalism in the face of “the cult of the lost cause” is a good thing. The “hesitancy” over the yard sign went pretty quickly.

My spouse hates working the phones. In fact, when asked to do so for Hillary during the primaries she refused. Point blank. I hate working the phones. I hate going door to door.

In the final two months of the campaign we found ourselves at the local Obama campaign field office working the phones. My spouse became the volunteer supervisor for the GOTV phone bank. I worked the phones. I even went door to door, for God’s sake.

Why?

We’re Democrats. That’s what Democrats do. That, and the ugly alternative, four more years of the same, was too much of a horrific possibility to ponder.

One night as I was working the phones I pointed out to our Obama Campaign field organizer the irony of me, an Alaskan by birth, wearing my University of Arizona hoodie, making phone calls for Obama. He chuckled and replied, “You forgot to add that you supported Hillary in the primaries.”

Indeed I did.

In 1992, Patrick Buchanan mourned that the Conservative Revolution was over and that George Bush was its gravedigger. If he was right, all I can say is that Republicans refused to climb into the grave. Those zombies got a helluva lot of votes and sucked the life out of much of this country in the ensuing fifteen years or so.

With satisfaction and relief, then, I’ve seen the earth patted down on quite a few Republican political graves–earlier this month and two years ago. Ted Stevens’ departure was particularly gratifying.

The Republicans’ only glimmer of good news: When Stevens – the longest-serving Republican in Senate history – conceded his Alaska race to Democrat Mark Begich on Wednesday, he spared them the unpleasant task of having to expel him from their caucus.

I stirred that tidbit into the schadenfreude stew that’s been simmering on my back burner for weeks now. While Republican pols fret about how their party can survive, I’m eavesdropping and gathering more morsels for my stew. The traditionalists and the modernizers fight about who’s to blame for their worst back-to-back elections since 1930 and 1932. The traditionalists figure they need to give Americans even more of what we’re already pissed off about. David Brooks describes the ones who’ve dug in their heels:

To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the most prominent voices in the Traditionalist camp, but there is also the alliance of Old Guard institutions. For example, a group of Traditionalists met in Virginia last weekend to plot strategy, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. According to reports, the attendees were pleased that the election wiped out some of the party’s remaining moderates. “There’s a sense that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are freer of wobbly-kneed Republicans than they were before the election,” the writer R. Emmett Tyrrell told a reporter.

Others would like to puncture that self-congratulation, noting that the Limbaughs and Hannitys, for example, are a big part of the problem:

I try not to listen to talk radio, but sometimes it’s just there and, almost always, it seems like it’s there merely to drive me insane. I want to call in and wait my turn in the queue with 200 other angry people, most of whom I don’t think can even spell queue. Then I take a deep breath and remember that talk radio is slowly ruining the Republican Party.

Members of the energized right are spending time yelling at the top of their lungs about any number of perceived assaults on their values while politically motivated individuals on the left are utilizing new-media tools at a rate that should be alarming to conservatives. Others have expounded on the advantage liberal activists have gained from embracing the Web, including in fundraising and GOTV efforts, but few have noticed how a reliance on talk radio has provided diminishing returns for Republicans seeking elected office.

Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota, worries that the party will go the way of the Whigs if they keep listening to those who rail against gays, immigrants, and welfare queens:

“We cannot be a majority governing party when we essentially cannot compete in the Northeast, we are losing our ability to compete in Great Lakes States, we cannot compete on the West Coast, we are increasingly in danger of competing in the Mid-Atlantic States, and the Democrats are now winning some of the Western States,” he said. “That is not a formula for being a majority governing party in this nation.”

“And similarly we cannot compete, and prevail, as a majority governing party if we have a significant deficit, as we do, with women, where we have a large deficit with Hispanics, where we have a large deficit with African-American voters, where we have a large deficit with people of modest incomes and modest financial circumstances,” he said. “Those are not factors that make up a formula for success going forward.”

Kathleen Parker favors the modernizers. Smiling wryly at conservatives who blame her for criticizing McCain and therefore contributing to his loss, she notes that:

Columns will survive or not as the market dictates, but the blistering response to a dozen or so fellow turncoats reveals something deeply wrong with the conservative movement, such as it is. Or was.

“Or was.” What a yummy tidbit.

In similarly childish behavior, those disappointed by Obama’s election are slapping the heretics who expressed doubts about the McCain/Palin ticket. It’s their fault that Obama won.

Good thinking. And turning on the kitchen light creates a roach problem.

Who would have thought I wanted roaches in my schadenfreude stew, but they add just the frisson it needs.

So what should Republicans do? According to  Parker, they should deprive evangelicals of their influence:

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I’m bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Hmm. Much as I despise the influence of the wingnuts on public policy, I have to say that Kathleen Parker is ignoring the gorilla in the voting booth. Charles Krauthammer, representing the unapologetically fascist wing of the party,  edges right up next to the truth but backs away from nailing it. He recognizes that the economy is what did McCain in, but he insists that McCain’s loss is not the Republican candidate’s fault. Krauthammer points out that McCain was ahead until Lehman Brothers went bust on September 15th. Ever the party loyalist, he concludes:

At the same time, the economy had suffered nine consecutive months of job losses. Considering the carnage to both capital and labor (which covers just about everybody), even a Ronald Reagan could not have survived. The fact that John McCain got 46 percent of the electorate when 75 percent said the country was going in the wrong direction is quite remarkable.

But even Krauthammer recognizes that the game is up:

Which is not to say that Obama did not run a brilliant general election campaign. He did. In its tactically perfect minimalism, it was as well conceived and well executed as the electrifying, highflying, magic carpet ride of his primary victory. By the time of his Denver convention, Obama understood that he had to dispense with the magic and make himself kitchen-table real, accessible and, above all, reassuring. He did that. And when the economic tsunami hit, he understood that all he had to do was get out
of the way. He did that too.

With him we get a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin. (I say this admiringly.) With these qualities, Obama will now bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.

Krauthammer almost acknowledges the obvious: It’s the economy, stupid. It’s the GOP insistence on deregulation and on shoveling more and more of the money into the hands of the superrich. That’s the nasty little habit that none of these Republican “thinkers” notice as their cardinal sin.

Who knows whether the Republicans will glue themselves back together thirty years from now? I hope not, but I’m not going to worry about it. I’m living for today–while the stew is piping hot. Here. Have a taste.

“I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say things are not going well for the Republicans. Two years ago they controlled both the White House and the Congress. Soon they’ll be controlling both the Coke machine and the fry station.”

—Stephen Colbert