Done with Palin and the Tea Party

[PanzerJaeger]

I cannot believe it. These morons probably just cost Republicans the Senate.

In the past I have defended and even supported the Tea Party and its public face Sarah Palin. Sure they are the 'rough edge' of the conservative movement, people who align more with Glen Beck than William Kristol. Hell, they probably don't even know who Irving Kristol was, much less William F. Buckley, Jr. But their small government, small tax rate message worked well on a macropolitical level and their enthusiasm and populist appeal could be leveraged into greater turnout for Republicans.

However, apparently this beast cannot be controlled, and is perfectly willing to cut off its nose to spite its face. For the sake of ideological purity, the Tea Partiers have probably squandered the best chance conservatives have of curtailing the mess that has become the Obama Administration. Sure Mike Castle wasn't 100% Right on the issues, but these Tea Party people don't seem to understand how important majorities are. They come with committee chairmanships - they real source of congressional power. Without majorities, greater Republican numbers in Congress mean nothing.

This is not the way Ronald Reagan would have handled things. He wasn't as politically dense. Intellectual conservatives need to stand up and take back control of the party before 2012. Sarah Palin's Facebook page is a funny foil to the Left, but she cannot be the face of the Republican party.

[Lemur]

A very similar thought, well-expressed:

Republicans Reap The Whirlwind

The conservative movement has spent the last 20 months sowing hysteria about President Obama's agenda. The most respectable Republicans call the president a socialist, a radical, a threat to freedom. The less respectable Republicans, many of them highly influential, call him an alien, a sympathizer of radical Islam, a conscious enemy of the United States who is trying to wreck the economy. Obama is a dangerous figure, he cannot be compromised with, and the fight against him is a twilight struggle to save the last vestiges of the Republic.

And so it has been amusing to watch Republicans as they desperately attempted to persuade Republican voters in Delaware to support moderate Mike Castle over Christine O'Donnell. The political logic is obvious: Castle would have been a near shoo-in to win, while O'Donnell is a near shoo-in to lose. [...]

Republican voters have luxuriated in the belief that they represent the true majority of the American people. Obama may have won by fooling the voters, or possibly by stealing the election with Acorn, but the enduring majority of the public is staunchly conservative. Indeed, Republicans only lost because they strayed from the true faith.

Now, most elite Republicans understand that the red meat fed to the base isn't exactly right. It's useful to scare the daylights out of the activists, but writers for the Standard and the Journal editorial page understand that "freedom," as most people understand the term, is not really at risk. They understand as well that politics is a little more complicated than "if Republicans stay true to conservatism, they cannot lose."

But the conservative base is not in on the joke. And so Republican elites found themselves with just a few frantic days to undo the toxic and intoxicating effects of 20 months of relentless propaganda. Vote for the man who compromised with evil! The true conservative can't always win! They couldn't do it.

[tibilicus]

You shouldn't give your voters the right to elect your candidates for elections. You should learn from the UK, make the process highly centralised so that only party insiders can get to the top of the party. If your lucky you can be parachuted into a safe seat and before you know it, your in the cabinet.

In all seriousness though the way I see it, the GOP has a problem on its hands. There's a big difference in what the GOP members and would-be GOP voters want. Actually, there's even a division between what some GOP hard-liners want and what more moderate GOP members. The main problem then is that the party lacks a set unified and collective plan of action or policy. I get that the US system of politics is more fractured and that unlike most other political systems a central party theme is given a lot less significance due to geography, political structure and so on so forth. Even though this is the case, the Republican Party really needs to find its feet. The previous theme was compassionate conservatism but since 2008, it seems there has been no theme other than anti-Obama. It isn't even so much of a problem that the Tea Party ideals are bad ones, it's just the ideas are presented by those who tend to be branded as intellectually light weight and incompetent.

The US Republican party needs to take a long look at itself then and either make the message more moderate and appealing to the masses or get themselves some new public figures. In regards to Palin, I don't believe she has the intellectual capacity or political skills to bring the party back to the White House in 2012. No matter how much prep she gets. the fact remains, she's pretty thick. As far as I'm aware she's about as far away from being a Washington insider as one could be, has little knowledge of how Washington politics would work and would be even worse in handling politics on an international scale. To be honest a member of a student debating society could probably debate her under the table and if she runs for president (apparently increasingly likely) and wins the nomination, the debates leading up to any election would provide classic comedy material.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I'm happy with the more conservative bent of many of these candidates. I believe that we need to have a more clearly "conservative" party in U.S. politics. A number of these nominations do this. Will conservative nominees be less likely to win in "liberal" states? Probably so. However, electing a "liberal" GOPer would make any real difference in the long run anyway -- the vote would still be cast on the "wrong" side of the issue.

Tib is quite correct though. If the party loathes candidates coming out of primaries, then it needs to return the nominaton to the proverbial "smoke filled room" -- or accept the verdict of the voters they themselves empowered with the decision power.

[Fragony]

Cums in handy heh http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/1114...en_fappen.html

[Skullheadhq]

This is not the way Ronald Reagan would have handled things.

No, he raised taxes.

Cums in handy heh http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/1114...en_fappen.html

@Frag Ik denk dat ik me op haar ga aftrekken, gewoon, als straf ;)

[Fragony]

Ze is wel een balletje heren-enkel waard, +1 voor opgekropte geilheid van vokomen mesjogge griffomutsjes prrrrr

heer

[Skullheadhq]

Ze is wel een balletje heren-enkel waard, +1 voor opgekropte geilheid van vokomen mesjogge griffomutsjes prrrrr

heer

Als iedereen haar raad zou opvolgen zou misdaad exponentieel toenemen.
But enough for dutch...for now

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

A very similar thought, well-expressed:

Republicans Reap The Whirlwind

The conservative movement has spent the last 20 months sowing hysteria about President Obama's agenda. The most respectable Republicans call the president a socialist, a radical, a threat to freedom. The less respectable Republicans, many of them highly influential, call him an alien, a sympathizer of radical Islam, a conscious enemy of the United States who is trying to wreck the economy. Obama is a dangerous figure, he cannot be compromised with, and the fight against him is a twilight struggle to save the last vestiges of the Republic.

And so it has been amusing to watch Republicans as they desperately attempted to persuade Republican voters in Delaware to support moderate Mike Castle over Christine O'Donnell. The political logic is obvious: Castle would have been a near shoo-in to win, while O'Donnell is a near shoo-in to lose. [...]

Republican voters have luxuriated in the belief that they represent the true majority of the American people. Obama may have won by fooling the voters, or possibly by stealing the election with Acorn, but the enduring majority of the public is staunchly conservative. Indeed, Republicans only lost because they strayed from the true faith.

Now, most elite Republicans understand that the red meat fed to the base isn't exactly right. It's useful to scare the daylights out of the activists, but writers for the Standard and the Journal editorial page understand that "freedom," as most people understand the term, is not really at risk. They understand as well that politics is a little more complicated than "if Republicans stay true to conservatism, they cannot lose."

But the conservative base is not in on the joke. And so Republican elites found themselves with just a few frantic days to undo the toxic and intoxicating effects of 20 months of relentless propaganda. Vote for the man who compromised with evil! The true conservative can't always win! They couldn't do it.

Well Obama is a Scoialist, and you guys need to get over it.

[InsaneApache]

If it's wrong to masturbate yourself, is it ok to get someone else to do it for you?

Just askin' like.

Enquiring minds and all that.....

[Fragony]

Who cares she's probably a beast with all that accumulating sexual frustration. I want to be a fly on the wall when christian chicks accidently misplace their showerhead, that guilty look as she slowly builds up the desecration of her holiness oh god oh jezus

[Louis VI the Fat]

Palin served a limited specific electoral purpose, based on specific demographic and strategic considerations in the political constellation of fall 2008.

I am still quite baffled that both she herself and a fairly large base of the GOP electorate do not understand the purpose she was supposed to fulfill*. She is not, and was never meant to be, a serious candidate.
You are not meant to walk out of a cinema and believe the force is real. Similarly, you are not meant to walk out of tense elections and believe that all that stuff was real either.


*Palin still doesn't understand. She is aware she was used as a poster girl, with a specific text. The exact purpose of it all still eludes her. What Palin in her book describes as 'They (the GOP campaign) used me. They forced me to act a specific way. I was not allowed to speak freely, but was forced to stick to a specific script'.
Well duh.
Amazing that somewhere in the chemistry between her and her audience both the actress and the audience became convinced it was all real, leaving the director and scriptwriter puzzled and bemused.

If it's wrong to masturbate yourself, is it ok to get someone else to do it for you?

Just askin' like.

Enquiring minds and all that.....

Still wrong. The voice of Satan working in your head.

However, I think it is not wrong to masturbate if the goods are then used for insemination.

Which makes me think: ever since the invention of fridges, it has been possible to store sperm for decades. Which can then be inseminated. This process is far more likely to create a pregnancy than a blind shot in the dark.
Which means that a man's entire sex life ought to be limited to one masturbation in a sperm bank. All other sexual acts are a sin, because they do not serve procreation.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Who cares she's probably a beast with all that accumulating sexual frustration. I want to be a fly on the wall when christian chicks accidently misplace their showerhead, that guilty look as she slowly builds up the desecration of her holiness oh god oh jezus

You need to write porn books. I'm turned on now...

[Ronin]

In the past I have defended and even supported the Tea Party and its public face Sarah Palin. Sure they are the 'rough edge' of the conservative movement, people who align more with Glen Beck than William Kristol. Hell, they probably don't even know who Irving Kristol was, much less William F. Buckley, Jr. But their small government, small tax rate message worked well on a macropolitical level and their enthusiasm and populist appeal could be leveraged into greater turnout for Republicans.

I don´t think that is what is REALLY at the bottom of the tea party.
more like "there's a 'darkie' in the white house and we can´t handle it".

useful idiots they were indeed for the GOP, but the republican party overplayed it's hand and put too much emphasys on them, forgetting that they are...well...idiots and wouldn´t necessarily do the right thing with all that political clout.

[Beskar]

Well Obama is a Scoialist, and you guys need to get over it.

David Cameron could be Karl Marx then, if Obama is a Socialist.

Though more seriously, the Tea Party should actually do their own political party.

[rory_20_uk]

Who cares she's probably a beast with all that accumulating sexual frustration. I want to be a fly on the wall when christian chicks accidently misplace their showerhead, that guilty look as she slowly builds up the desecration of her holiness oh god oh jezus

Flies have poor vision and poor hearing.

However, I think it is not wrong to masturbate if the goods are then used for insemination.

Which makes me think: ever since the invention of fridges, it has been possible to store sperm for decades. Which can then be inseminated. This process is far more likely to create a pregnancy than a blind shot in the dark.
Which means that a man's entire sex life ought to be limited to one masturbation in a sperm bank. All other sexual acts are a sin, because they do not serve procreation.

Not a fridge. A liquid Nitrogen Freezer.

Most sexual acts are a sin as there are few days in the menstrul cycle when women can get pregnant.
And let's not forget all sex after the menopause is also a sin, as is sex when knowing one has primary or secondary infertility.

[Furunculus]

I don´t think that is what is REALLY at the bottom of the tea party.
more like "there's a 'darkie' in the white house and we can´t handle it".

useful idiots they were indeed for the GOP, but the republican party overplayed it's hand and put too much emphasys on them, forgetting that they are...well...idiots and wouldn´t necessarily do the right thing with all that political clout.

i have a lot of sympathy for the view expressed here:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/to...the-tea-party/

Official Washington is in near meltdown over Christine O’Donnell’s victory in the Delaware Republican primary. Senior Republicans are apoplectic that they will (in their view) fail to gain the Delaware seat and therefore cannot win control of the Senate (which was a long shot in any case).

There’s a glut of commentary and assumptions about the Tea Party and much of it is wrong. Here are some common mistakes:

1. The Tea Party will fade away. Christine O’Donnell’s victory confirms that it is a major electoral force. Many of those involved have not voted before. The movement is growing, not shrinking.

2. It will damage the Republican party. If the Republican party can harness its power, the electoral benefits could be huge. So far, the party hierarchy is being condescending and dismissive. But even if this continues, Republicans will benefit in November from the energy and excitement that the Tea Party is generating.

3. The Tea Party is racist. This charge is based on little more than a few signs that have appeared at some rallies (How many offensive signs are there an anti-war rallies? Many more than you can see at a Tea Party event) and some overheated statements by individuals. It’s essentially a Left-wing smear against the movement and it has failed.

4. Tea Party nominees are too extreme and will be defeated by Democrats in November. In isolated cases – including O’Donnell’s – this might be true. But Democrats are delusional is they think that a split on the right will save them in the mid-terms. For every Democrat who survives in this way, three or four will be swept away. And look at the polls in places like Kentucky and Florida where Rand Paul and Marco Rubio – until recently branded as unelectable – look like they’re on course for comfortable victories.

5. The Tea Party is part of the Republican party. It’s not. Tea partiers are conservatives but they have little interest in simply achieving a Republican Congress. Its ambitions are much bigger than that.

6. The Tea Party cannot elect a President. Until very recently, this seemed like a given. It now seems there is every chance that a Tea Party candidate – Sarah Palin? – can win the GOP nomination in 2012. And with the state the country’s in and the sinking popularity of President Barack Obama, theres every possibility that whoever the Republicans nominate will win.

7. The Tea Party can be told what to do. Republican leaders are finding out that this is simply not the case.

8. The Tea Party is full of loonies who believe masturbation is evil and dinosaur bones are fake. We’ll see a lot of citations of the “nutty” (K.Rove) opinions of Tea partiers – especially, for the next few days at least, by O’Donnell. But the broader Tea Party has little concern about social issues. It is primarily a low-tax, small-government movement.

9. The rise of the Tea Party shows that America is disintegrating. That’s certainly what you might think if you read all the liberal commentary about the Tea Party. But all this really illustrates is how the American elites have failed to grasp what is happening.

10. The Tea Party is an angry reaction to Obama’s 2008 victory, which was a true realignment of US politics. There was no political realignment in 2008. Obama won because he was anti-Bush and the country was in the mood for a complete change. It was not a mandate for increasing the national debt and growing government. While the Tea Party opposes Obama and all he stands for, it is not especially focussed on him personally. In fact, Congress – Democrats and Republicans – seems more unpopular than Obama among Tea partiers.

to write them off as a bunch of nutball racists is lazy and flawed.

[Fragony]

Flies have poor vision and poor hearing.

But they got exceptional smell. There is a lot about flies we don't understand, it still baffles me how they manage to land upside down on the ceiling for example.

[rory_20_uk]

Flies do that using small hooks on their feet. Far more interesting are ghekos that use Wan der Waals forces to do a similar trick.

[Beskar]

But they got exceptional smell. There is a lot about flies we don't understand, it still baffles me how they manage to land upside down on the ceiling for example.

How so? The hairs on their legs stick to the surface and keep them there, like spiders.

[Fragony]

How so? The hairs on their legs stick to the surface and keep them there, like spiders.

Yes but how do they get upside down, a salto mid-air? I feel it's important to ask such questions.

[Beskar]

Yes but how do they get upside down, a salto mid-air? I feel it's important to ask such questions.

They do a backwards somersault. They go to the ceiling, put their forward feet out to grab the ceiling, then use the momentum to pulls its body towards it, and thus land.

[gaelic cowboy]

Flies do that using small hooks on their feet. Far more interesting are ghekos that use Wan der Waals forces to do a similar trick.

Agreed were only beginning to realise the potential of trying to mimic the Gecko the engineerning applications of Wan der Waals forces are waaaay more interesting than debating with silly Tea Baggers

[Louis VI the Fat]

They do a backwards somersault. They go to the ceiling, put their forward feet out to grab the ceiling, then use the momentum to pulls its body towards it, and thus land.

Yeah, that's how I do it too when I parkour my way up a tall building. Which I do daily. I haven't had a use for elevators for years.

[Fragony]

They do a backwards somersault. They go to the ceiling, put their forward feet out to grab the ceiling, then use the momentum to pulls its body towards it, and thus land.

Whatever. Why would you try such a thing in the first place hmmm? What design would allow such stunting? Isn't like a fly thinks YES WE CAN. And does it. Truly mysterious creatures.

[Beskar]

Yeah, that's how I do it too when I parkour my way up a tall building. Which I do daily. I haven't had a use for elevators for years.

I never knew you was Alain Robert

[Lemur]

Funniest comment I have seen:

The Tea Partiers were created by Republicans.

They devolved.

They rebelled.

They look and feel like Republicans.

There are many copies.

And they have a plan. (Maybe)

[gaelic cowboy]

Funniest comment I have seen:

The Tea Partiers were created by Republicans.

They devolved.

They rebelled.

They look and feel like Republicans.

There are many copies.

And they have a plan. (Maybe)

Sarah Palin in a "Red Dress" I suppose it could work plus they already believe in a "One True God"

[Gregoshi]

You need to write porn books. I'm turned on now...

Too bad you can't do anything about it. See your previous post for details.

[Fragony]

Sarah Palin in a "Red Dress"

If that means the same as it does here, should have some change I can believe in somwhere. Palin = gilf