Comments on: Gimmicks and the GOP

By: CabinInThe Woods

CabinInThe Woods — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:51:28 +0000

Conservatives: The older we get, the better we were.

In my opinion, the main reason the Repugs are adrift is that “the people” have never really mattered to them. They have “voters” and they have “constituents.” The former is a token term used in pandering; the latter (in their minds) refers to their major donors.

Usually, “the people” kind of take care of themselves, so all the conservatives did was complain that they wanted something from their government that they didn’t really need and didn’t deserve. They could still be ignored (and simultaneously screwed).

Now that “the people” actually need something from their government (much of it reparations), the Repugs are at a loss because they cannot even get to Step 1, which is to acknowledge their existence (aside from their usefulness as fodder).

By: Crazy for Urban Planning

Crazy for Urban Planning — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:54:42 +0000

I sometimes don’t get around to reading this great blog until the end of the week and I have expressed my general confusion about these people in the first essay. While Barbara and the commentators have added meat to the bone, the new information only adds to my confusion. Why are the conservatives so angry? Haven’t their politicians been elected in five of the last eight elections? Is it really just a bunch of small minded people who want to live in a simpler life with no government? It brings up so many questions for me: Do they know how they would drive down the street to work without roads? Would health care improve with no government regulations? How would they ever buy meat or other food products with no safety inspections? Do they think private industries ought to sort out natural disasters such as Hurricanes or volcanoes? Wouldn’t conducting commerce agreements become more difficult with no government to set the rules? I see government as something that does so many things that make people’s lives easier, but these “conservatives” don’t appear to acknowledge that fact.

By: muldoon

muldoon — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 05:43:22 +0000

Wow, loved your post, Maha, and thoroughly enjoy and appreciate the responses to it. No snark. No put downs. Just civilized and mutually respectful discussion. What a breath of fresh air!

My thanks and appreciation to all.

By: maha

maha — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 01:50:17 +0000

I think a Confederate had to own 20 slaves to be exempt. The majority of whites in the South did subsistence farming and didn’t own slaves, but they supported the status quo mostly out of racism.

By: Doug Hughes

Doug Hughes — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 01:12:25 +0000

Farang “90%= of those [confederates] owned no slaves.”

I think you know your history, so you are presuming we don’t. Slaveowners with more than 3 slaves were exempt from the Confederate draft. So they fit right in with those Republicans who never served – the clowns who thought up the Iraq war. That decision – the rich do not have to serve in the war – made the Civil war the rich mans war, the Southern Aristocracy making the poor bleed for their riches & privilege. The Republicans did (under Bush) and are still trying to protect the current aristocracy.

By: erinyes

erinyes — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:46:49 +0000

maha, your photo is too cute for words. (does spell check work in haloscan?)

By: maha

maha — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:40:58 +0000

I remember getting annoyed with the “erudite” Buckley, it seemed his philosophy was that if you used language that sent the masses scurring for a dictonary you were the all-knowing sage.

Buckley was always more about intellectual shtick than insight. I remember watching him on television back in the 1960s, when he often “won” debates with liberals by picking apart their syntax or vocabulary instead of discussing the substance of their arguments.

By: c u n d gulag

c u n d gulag — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:14:07 +0000

maha and joan,
Thank you for the help

By: joanr16

joanr16 — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:19:31 +0000

Must add, I’m pleasantly amazed that Daniel Larison’s spot-on comments are published in something called The American Conservative.

By: joanr16

joanr16 — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:16:53 +0000

I can't really follow farang's comment. For instance, the statement You mean to tell me that the Republican Lincoln was a Democrat???? THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT RUSH LIMBAUGH ALLEGES suggests that the present-day Right is disowning Lincoln, when in fact the opposite is true. What they are claiming is that they're still the same sort of Republicans as Lincoln, which is obviously, laughably untrue. farang starts off by misquoting c u n d gulag, who actually wrote: The conservative movement is nothing more than the extension of the Confederacy. Nothing untrue about that statement. In the 19th Century, the Democrats were the conservatives. Over the last 100 years, they've become increasingly more liberal than the Republicans, who are now, and have been since before the Great Depression, the "conservative movement." Other than that, I get the strong feeling farang's claim to be "a life-long Liberal" should have read "a life-long Libertarian."