The Right is splintering into McCain and Palin camps. C’est une hoot.
Faux News, a wholly owned subsidiary of the upper echelon of the Republican Party, is leading the charge against Palin.
Even I think the “she’s so dumb she doesn’t know Africa is a continent” story is farfetched. The larger point is that the string-pullers want to make Sarah Palin the scapegoat. They are swift-boating their own.
The puppets are not having it. Erick Erickson of Redstate announces Operation Leper:
We’re tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others. Michelle Malkin has the details.
We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you’ll see us go to war against those candidates.
It is our expressed intention to make these few people political lepers.
They’ll just have to be stuck at CBS with Katie’s failed ratings.
I think the whispering campaign is being facilitated from higher up than the McCain campaign, but that’s a hunch. I’m not exactly a GOP insider. Certainly most of the whispering is coming from the McCain campaign, but if higher-ups didn’t want Palin to be the scapegoat, you know Faux wouldn’t be repeating the whispers.
My sense of things is that most of the Right blogosphere is siding with Palin, not McCain. But there is disintegration among rightie bloggers, too. For example, there has been some sort of falling out between Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs and Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugged. I don’t quite understand what’s going on with this, but there it is.
I may not be a GOP insider, but I do know that the talking points memo that went out from On High to the GOP minions yesterday had these two bullet points:
- Warn Democrats that they’d better not pursue a culture war.
- Warn Democrats that they’d better not push for card check.
I know this because every representative Republican bobblehead on cable news yesterday brought up these two points. And I believe these are points that otherwise would not have been on anyone’s mind yesterday, especially card check. If you haven’t heard about card check, go here for an explanation.
Regarding culture wars, I wonder if the GOP realizes that the anti-reproductive rights movement could be turning into more of a liability than an asset. The alliance with the so-called “pro life” crowd certainly didn’t help the GOP Tuesday. I’m guessing there are closed-door discussions going on right now about whether to cut the cord, so to speak, with the Fetus People. If the FPs are dumped, they will be dumped slowly and gently and gradually so that nobody, including them, notices.
However, my first prediction for 2012 is that by then abortion as a national issue will have quietly been forgotten. It might not survive to 2010, in fact. It will still have potency in some states, of course, but it will be kept local. Unfortunately, fighting same-sex marriage will be ramped up to take abortion’s place as the “central front” of the culture wars.
More interesting fallout:
Take a look at the “McCain Belt” — places where McCain did better than Bush did in 2004.
The map linked above inspires dumb hillbilly jokes, and as a hillbilly-American myself, I know a lot of ’em. But I will refrain. For now.
This will not surprise you — the “Impeach Obama” campaign already is underway.
True hillbilly story:
Two friends of mine were putting up Obama signs in the public right-of-way in a neighboring coal town. McCain signs were already there. One hillbilly saw them, and confronted them, telling them they couldn’t put signs there because it was private property (it wasn’t) and because they weren’t local.
One of my friends, being a natural born wienie, started to take the signs down, but the other, made of stouter stuff, argued back. In the middle of this, hillbilly number two, complete with a shaved head and full cammo, noticed the ruckus and hurried down the hill to join in. Keep in mind, this is Tennessee, where they recently arrested those skinhead would-be assassins?
Hillbilly number two said, “PUT IT BACK! I haven’t got a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out. I don’t care if the man is purple, I’m voting for him, so you put that sign back!”
Meanwhile, Hillbilly One, not to be defeated, called the mayor on his cellphone. The mayor appeared, and Hillbilly One pled his case but the mayor insisted my friends had every legal right to put those signs up. Finally, in disgust he said, “Mayor, I’m ashamed of you.” And the mayor said, “I’m ashamed of you.”
So yeah, the Republicans took Appalachia, but even here the cause is not as lost as it might appear. We will run them out even here.
Scapegoating or not,it is pretty clear that Palin isn’t an intellectual heavyweight. I believe McCain’s choice of Palin for a running mate was the number one reason McCain lost. It showed he wasn’t sincere in his claim to due the best for America…Palin was all about political pandering…and people saw that it was more of the same.
Dummy me. I watched the Faux News piece about Sarah not knowing about the continent of Africa, all the while straining to hear ever more tantalizing bits of her ignorance and infighting within the McCain camp. I was completely oblivious to the back story, that hey, this is Faux News and Why Are They Saying This?
I still don’t get the card check thing (I looked it up). They’re speaking against people unionizing?
It’ll be interesting to see how Sarah fights back. I suspect she’s got enough going on in Alaska, with possibly being impeached, certainly being a laughingstock and all. But who knows what will become of the movement she’s figuratively leading.
That fascinating map of increased Republican penetration has got to be scaring the crap out of GOP higher ups. I keep hearing that the GOP has become “a broken regional party based mainly in the South”, and there is the graphic proof. I’m sure there have been people therein who’ve been trying to drop abortion for several decades, and I agree it’s likely to be quietly dumped in the next 2 to 4 years.
The Democrats have a golden opportunity to root their “socialist” social policies in a unabashed presentation of the caring-for-your-fellow-man aspects of the gospels (as well as what’s found in nearly every other spiritual tradition on the planet). The Ds have always had this opportunity, but with hard times and the Republican crackup, the occasion could not be more perfect. The problem is finding the right language to express it. If done right, this will make abortion disappear. If done right, it will unmask how the Republicans have always used divise issues like abortion for their own gain.
I respectfully suggest an automatic banning for anyone trying to hawk hateware in the comments.
As for other business. My favorite “How crazy was she?” story is the one where Palin paraded herself in front of McCain’s aides when she was wearing only a bath towel. That one I believe.
So, yeah, Erickson and Malkin, you go right ahead and embrace Palin, hug her real tight, use her complete emptiness as a flotation device while the GOP Titanic slips beneath the waves. In four years, let’s just see who targets who within your divided and devastated party.
My hope is the GOP will emerge as a law-abiding party of the center-right that can disagree honestly and respectfully with the center-left. (I can dream, can’t I?)
Ah, I see the hateware hawker is already gone. Yay! Clear violation of the “I ain’t yer monkey” rule, imo.
Also — what is the “card check” we’d better not push for?
I’m almost ready to follow President Obama’s call for unity and all, but I do need to take a few minutes first for the age-old pleasure of relishing the confusion of our enemies. I’m not pure-of-heart enough to resist the tawdry pleasure of Faux News dissing Palin, or tales of Randy Shueneman getting canned in the final hours of the campaign.
I’m sorry, Barack. I’ll try to get it out of my system as fast as I can. But can I just have until Monday to laugh out loud as the rats fight over the lifeboats? It’s sooo sweet.
Oh, I SO want Palin to run for 2012. It will be GLORIOUS to see the GOP reduced to pandering to the rednecks in Mooselandia.
Also, WTF card check? What does that have to do with anything?
So, can we expect the media to now engage in gossip mongering?
Palin is famous which qualifies her for celebrity status – famous for being famous – and that’s about all she needs to be media fodder. In the meantime, Iraq, Wall Street, global meltdown, people losing jobs and homes, Afghanistan…?
Sooner or later they will get tired of pointing fingers and realize McCain won’t be running next time. Palin is far out there on too many issues. She will not be able to win. They will need to find someone else.
The current Republican leadership minus the ones that have recently jumped off are going to go into a huddle and figure out that it isn’t what they are selling, but that they aren’t selling it hard enough. They haven’t got a clue that America is done with the the culture war, but like Bush and Iraq – reality doesn’t have any bearing on making a decision.
This is interesting. I agree with Maha, FAUX does nothing without having meetings and deciding on how to report a story (They report, They decide). I am frankly surprised that they would take this position, Palin is the darling of the low information “joe the plumber” gang, Rush loves her, Hannity loves her, I am a little surprised. I would bet the answer is in the ratings. I have however really enjoyed listen to hate radio and scanning the wing-nut blogs, these thugs don’t handle losing very well. I love it!!!!!!!
Sorry to go OT, but WOO HOOOO! My hometown of Omaha is going blue!
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2835&u_sid=10480262
Not that Obama needs another electoral vote, but c’mon, this is Nebraska. It’s symbolic!
It is a new day so today I change my name from KingGeorgeTheTenth to PresidentObamaTheFirst. I was in the car for a pretty long time today and because I’m a masochist i listened to the right wing people. It struck me that they all wanted to blame McCain for being too liberal or a centeralist. They kept on saying that if conservatives would hold on to “conservative” values they would win elections… I’m fascinated by this because they appear to stand for ignorance to me.
In regards to that fascinating clip from Faux News, I happen to think Carl Crawford is actually a decent journalist. Who are we to really know if Sarah Palin knows elementary geography? It speaks so well to the flaws within the way we elect these presidents. During the campaign I kept on asking myself if candidate X would be a competent White House tour guide… Obama and Biden both (I think) probably give a White House tour, McCain I would concede would be able to give one too. Sarah Palin does not seem to know enough basic American History to give a tour of the White House.
The so-called “card check” bill refers to The Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to join a union when a majority of them sign authorization cards. Currently, a private ballot is used at the workplace. Obama, of course, supports the bill as it would make it much easier for workers to unionize.
I believe you are grossly misunderstanding the abortion issue: this is a conflict between two competing metaphysical positions, they aren’t directly reconcilable so the way forward requires new stories. This isn’t happening because the pro-fetus lobby is under the influence of too much cognitive dissonance from inside their current story to be able to do so, and the pro-mother lobby (which it seems you belong to) believe their position will magically replace the opposing position as the result of (and here I’m uncertain) something like faith in progress?
I’m sorry, but this one isn’t like civil rights, which was compatible with a broad swathe of metaphysical positions and therefore took root easily, the abortion issue is non-trivial, it requires brokering between the two camps. I know that as a partisan, this is probably not part of your battle, but as a philosopher it is certainly part of mine.
Best wishes!
Chris — I am pro mother and pro fetus. This is not a conflict between two equally extreme and opposing points of view. It is a conflict between ideological extremists (the so-called “right to life” movement) and everyone else. And “everyone else” represents a spectrum of ideas and opinions. Ultimately I think the nation could accept, for example, gestational limits on elective abortion as long as physicians are given broad discretion to determine what is or is not “elective.” What the nation will never accept is a ban on all elective abortions, never mind a ban without exceptions.
That said, my point in this post is that if the GOP has been pumping anti-reproductive rights extremism because it has been a useful “wedge” issue for them that helped them win elections. If the GOP perceives that an extreme anti-abortion position is actually a detriment, as I think it is, they’ll be phasing it out of their platform. This won’t happen all at once, and we may not see much of a change in 2010. But I expect the GOP to be much less supportive of the anti-choice position by 2012.
This has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of anyone’s position. It’s a political calculation — what helps win elections, and what doesn’t.
In the end the legality of abortion is primarily an issue of social and economic class.
The educated and well-off would be the least hurt by an abortion ban because A) they are less likely to have unwanted pregnancies in the first place and B) in the event one occurs, they have many options for dealing with it, including traveling to another state or country for an abortion.
I would be far more sympathetic to the abortion prohibitionists if they showed equal enthusiam for the life, health, and education of those born into deprived circumstances.
Hopefully we are entering a fact based period. There is no reason why we cannot at long last look at embryology and come to a new understand about terminating a pregnancy. The sad fact is that “comfort” in terminating based on the facts of development disappears with a few weeks after the mother knows she’s pregnant.
If a pregnancy has to be terminated, the earlier the better. On this I hope we agree.
Opportunities abound for Palin…
http://blogs.tampabay.com/juice/2008/11/forget-hustlers.html
re: the purge of Sarah. I’d look to who benefits. Remember the “McCain camp’ includes prior Romney operatives for sure, and probably some prior Guilliani operatives as well ….
The GOP always, only concentrates on winning, and so it would certainly be possible that this is all about positioning Romney for 2012 or noun-verb-911 guy.
If your support is weak, taking out potential rivals is particularly essential…..