Quote:
Don't Touch That!
Distancing Strategies in Political Risk Management by Bill Clinton, forward by Sister Souljah
That's the incredible thing here. It's not like some internet leftists goaded the right into taking up Bundy as the new Tea Party Idol. They did it themselves! Willingly!
I think there's alot to be said about the libertarian right and the "why do these neo confederates keep ending up on my Christmas card list?" phenomenon but that aside, I think the actual, somewhat interesting thing in this is how exposed the GOP is letting themselves get. I'll quote something in a moment, but this gets to the heart of the "Glenn Beck is showing more political acumen then the Republican Party" meme floating around here too.
Anyway, quote Joe Scarborough:
Quote:
“There’s nothing conservative about this man,” Scarborough said. “This is where nihilism about the federal government gets you in trouble every time.”
“This has happened before. It happened when conservatives raced blindly to put their arms around George Zimmerman, a man who gets in all these troubles. They basically pick their friends based on who their ‘enemies’ are. In this case, a lot of people in conservative media have raced to this guy’s defense. They must be feeling very exposed this morning.”
In the grand scheme, this is like, one bad day amongst many kinda like it for the GOP, where yet again one another of their folk heros turns out to be some racist creep.
When I was coming of age, say 10-15 years ago, the GOP was this super highly organized political death machine, like a totally robust, top to bottom machine with really tight discipline that absolutely crushed the Democrats in most of these battles. It was the Democrats that had some vague associated clownshow acts, like Ward Churchill or something, which the GOP and their allied media would uncover and then flog them for weeks on end, and it's not like any actual Democrat knew or had any idea who these people were, but Democrats would twist and turn and do everything to disavow everything and the GOP would just sit on the sidelines veritably laughing their asses off at how they made the Democrats squirm day after day.
Now? Now, it's like, it's the GOP in the same position, but it's completely self inflicted. It's not like the actual Democratic Party is any good at this, they have to be brought along by the leftist internet community.
But the GOP, maaaaaan, I mean, Scarborough is 100% accurate, why is the collective party machinery, from a top tier Presidential candidate like Rand Paul all the way down to Hannity and Senator Heller, are taking their political lots with like George Zimmerman and some dude who is blatantly violating the law for decades? Once upon a time there were adults in the room to control the John Birch Society from taking over and setting the terms. And now it's just almost criminal how risky and exposed the GOP is making themselves.
It's kind of astounding because this is still the party of big business and lots of elites are still sailing on the Good Ship GOP, there's still billions of hard earned dollars being funneled into the GOP from powerful people, and it's criminal how ****ed up and terrible the whole party is becoming.
Like they were one itchy trigger finger on some fringe lunatics from having like,
really bad PR problems on their hands. For what, exactly?
And I don't mean to be glib about violent idiots and how they manifest as some dumb political problem but it's true. The GOP honestly just branded themselves on this guy. I mean it's crystal clear no one bothered vetting this freakshow in the slightest way before racing to join him in his battle against Obama's BLM Gestapo, but just on first blush, this dude was such a clear red flag Glenn Beck stayed clear. But not like, Fox News, Hannity, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, whatever really bothered to slow down at all. I'm just a little shocked, although I'm not sure why, but I'm a little shocked powerful, rich people who donate their hard earned money and time to the GOP, want to see it successful, want to see it win, sit around and tolerate their leadership sticking their stamp of approval on a posse of complete looney tunes pointing automatic weapons at bureaucrats led by a scofflaw thumbing his nose at the law for two decades.
I mean for all the GOPers and their followers preemptively celebrating their upcoming likely big victories in November, like a bunch of leaders on your side in the party and in the media machine went out to the Las Vegas desert, took all your chips, and put them on some racist crazy people heavily armed and pointing their guns at some BLM flackeys on national TV and bet they won't do it, all so like, I have no idea, Rand Paul and Sean Hannity can continue long-conning America's angry white brigades. Was that risk worth it? We saw today how that's easily going to burn you in the end, but I mean that whole cast of characters from Paul to Hannity to Heller will recover, but as I said, they got lucky the worst thing Bundy ended up doing (I mean besides like violently threatening people) was say mean things about black people. It's not hard to envision much worse outcomes where these kinds of plays just absolutely sink the party for a cycle or two.
Just criminally negligent political brand management, you couldn't possibly have found a more obvious cartoon clown show character to get behind, and the GOP not only didn't run away, they ran fast toward him.
Last edited by DVaut1; 04-24-2014 at 08:54 PM.