The conservative ideology of late relies much on the myths of dysfunctional government and the Democrats’ role in same. In How Dysfunction Helps the GOP, Thomas Frank explains well how they hope these myths help with their plan. With 60 in the Senate now, they’ll be working hard to turn these myths to reality.
This is the perverse incentive that is slowly remaking the GOP into the Snafu Party. And in those commercials and those proclamations we should also discern a warning: That even if Democrats manage to set up a solid health-care program, conservatives will do their best, once they have regained power, to drop it down the same chute they did the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
h/t: Jerry.
12 Responses to How the myths help the GOP.
Help Daniel
The problem isn’t the GOP, it’s conservative, and business group-allied Democrats. The GOP wouldn’t stand a chance if the Democrats could stick to an effective progressive agenda.
Why would the Democrats stick to a progressive agenda? Many of them were elected by non-progressive constituencies.
“Why would the Democrats stick to a progressive agenda? Many of them were elected by non-progressive constituencies.”
Yeah, you see that polling that says 50% of REPUBLICANS back offering a public national healthcare plan to everyone?
Not a single Democrat has an excuse to be chickenshit on health care, unless they like that HMO money they’re getting that much.
Zaid, will you please read the links, or at least the complete piece? While health care and how the GOP may screw it up is mentioned in the piece, it’s about how the GOP counts and and plots for government failures to maintain their ideology.
We know you dislike most of the Democrats – read you loud and clear on that.
But surely you can see that the Republicans are worse… surely you can see that.
“We know you dislike most of the Democrats – read you loud and clear on that.
But surely you can see that the Republicans are worse… surely you can see that.”
Oh wow, to see the world in black and white partisan hackery…
Being partisan takes courage. You have to commit to a political philosophy.
“Partisan” is just issue advocacy at the wholesale level. Yeah, sometimes we get stuck with a Lieberman or a bankruptcy bill, but even UGA has it’s Jim Harricks to deal with.
Nationally, the Democrats are in charge now. They can no longer blame the GOP for their failings. If they don’t deliver, they deserve everything they get.
Being partisan does take courage — but not being blindly partisan to a party.
Not really true that everything is on the Democrats’ hands now. Many agency heads are still W appointees, previous programs still have to be paid for or won’t be deauthorized for a few years, and plus even if you even if they enact new programs or change directions on existing policies that still doesn’t mean they will be readily obvious.
And you can’t blame everything on George Bush as an anomaly. He was a puppet. The guys pulling the strings were long-time Republicans. Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Poindexter, and a hundred others. They knew exactly what they were doing and it’s the same thing they always do; they loot the treasury, they go to war to satisfy their own egos, and they cultivate fear to keep themselves in power as long as possible. If it is blind partisanship to oppose that, then I’ll claim the label too.
As far as I know, Obama bombed a funeral yesterday, and has defended indefinite detention and even a doctrine the ACLU has called worse “preventive” detention.
Had it up to here with the “it’s OK if Democrats do it” mindless idiot gang. Bush is out of office (thank God), can’t blame things on him anymore.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/03/AR2009070302309.html?hpid=topnews
Not happening, Obama. You might have high quality government health care, so you might not think the rest of us should too, but..
Your premise is mistaken. There is plenty of internal criticism from within both major parties. I think that most partisans have just decided that it is more effective to pursue their issue goals from within the stronger position of a major party.
We can all pursue specific issues, but when it comes to politics, eventually we have to choose between candidates, and unless you run for something yourself you are never going to find a candidate who reflects your beliefs perfectly. We all have to make compromises if we are going to be politically involved. From there, it is not much of a leap to believe that ‘Democrat’ is better than ‘Republican’ (for example), which is all that Catherine was saying.