Don't You Just Love Satire?

You Betcha! Also!

There’s still a long way to go before next year’s midterms, and a whole three years until the 2012 election. In addition, Congress is getting a much better approval rating now than they were in August when the Republicans had a free month to shit on the Democrat’s Health Care plans.

Once Health Care is out of the way in December (maybe early 2010?), the time between the next election in November will be enough for a strong jobs package and more stronger financial & banking regulation, tapping straight into the populist majority opinion and putting the Republicans in an even more awkward position. To kick off 2010, one of the best things the Republicans can do to hurt their numbers is to filibuster the Health Care Bill. This is certainly a case of the threat being far more ominous than the actual event. Doesn’t Machiavelli warn that once one goes to the extent of their power they no longer have it? A filibuster of health care legislation would be an admission that the GOP has no more options in its arsenal of opposition. The bill would still become law of course, as did Civil Rights following Strom Thurman’s 24+ hour long filibuster, but the Republicans would be seen as the obstructionists they truly are, without any alternative plan of their own, and wasting the people’s time & business, while the Democrats would be seen as fighting for the American people. The advantage goes to the Democrats if there is a GOP filibuster of Health Care Reform, which is arguably the most important domestic legislation since Social Security. And it will be seen live on C-Span.

In a Republican Party hoping to energize a rebound in 2010, having failed to stop Health Care Reform, Climate Control legislation, declining unemployment and possibly a few extra civil rights legislation like DADT & DOMA, it’ll be an uphill battle to even position themselves as competitive by November. Course this is where Palin comes in and why the teabaggers are so galvanized. Palin now represents her Party’s future — and the greatest danger it faces. Her intimate bond with the Republican grassroots has made her the indispensable woman, even if she provokes a visceral sense of revulsion from many independents and moderates. Other Republican frontrunners like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty have a debilitating problem to face in any race for the presidency: they are now viewed as inauthentic candidates by the movement — cardboard men in suits who are only pantomiming appeals to cultural resentment.

Max Blumenthal summarizes it up perfectly in his essay on “How Sarah Palin Made Herself Indispensable While Destroying the Republican Party“:

[In addition, primary candidates will have an even harder time criticizing her to make their case.] Palin is so well positioned as the darling of the movement that any criticism of her would be experienced by believers as a personal attack on them. In this way, their identification with her through the politics of personal fear is complete. Any Republican primary challenger assailing Palin will be seen as victimizing her, as channeling the attacks of the liberal elites, and possibly as having a secret liberal agenda. On the other hand, to embrace her is to risk losing the great American center.

For the 2010 mid-term elections, Palin’s endorsement is already a coveted commodity — as Mark Kirk’s desperate bid to secure it demonstrates. The more she is attacked, the more the Republican base adores her. As she sets out on her book tour, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune only propel her forward. Her influence on a party largely devoid of leadership is expanding. If she doesn’t prove to be the Party’s future queen, she may have positioned herself to be its future king-maker — and potentially its destroyer.

Go, Sarah, Go! You betcha! Also!

What the Fox!?

“The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it is not ideological… what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party.”

“Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again… when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition.”

“[Fox is] widely viewed as a part of the Republican Party: take their talking points and put them on the air, take their opposition research and put it on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news organization like CNN is.”

Well, there you go. That’s the extent of the comments from the White House. Where does Anita Dunn say that the White House is planning to take Fox News off the air? Was it when she said that the President will go on the network again because he likes to engage with ideological opponents?

Can you find anywhere in Anita Dunn’s comments where she talked about how the white house was paying liberal editorial writers to write favorable opinion pieces about White House policy positions, like how the Bush White House paid Armstrong Williams and others to trump up his No-Child Left Behind education bill?

Where in Anita Dunn’s comments does she talk about about how the White House was paying fake news reporters and gay escorts to ask soft ball questions during daily White House Briefings and Press Conferences, like how the Bush White house paid Jeff Gannon, employed by the “just-for-Jeff-Gannon’s-credentials” fake virtual news agency Talon news, which of course no longer exists.

And does anyone remember a Bush Press Secretary named Tony Snow? Has that name been erased from everyone’s memory over there at Fox News? Well, aside from the fact Tony Snow has since passed away from cancer and how forgetting his name would fall in line with Fox New’s ideological stance on health care, because obviously Tony Snow didn’t pull himself up by his own bootstraps enough, Tony Snow was the host of “Fox News Sunday” and substitute fill-in for Bill O’Reilly’s radio show before the Bush White House snapped him up to be the White House Press Secretary in April 2006. Just curious, did anyone hear Anita Dunn mention when the White House would be hiring liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow to be Obama’s new White House Press Secretary?

Did anyone notice if Anita Dunn mentioned that the White House would be spending millions to organize and facilitate massive protests across the nation in protest of Fox News? Not that Fox News would ever spend millions organizing nation-wide astro-turf tea party protests against paying taxes at a rate still remaining since the last president before Obama passed them into law, which were even at a lower tax rate than what taxes were under Reagan. Except that’s exactly what they did.

Fox News frequently aired segments encouraging viewers to get involved with “tea party” protests across the country on their channel. They provided attendance numbers, protest dates, locations and website URLs. Fox News’s own website had also posted information and publicity material for protests. Fox News hosts repeatedly encouraged viewers to join them at several April 15 protests that they were attending and covering. In addition, Fox News has also aired numerous interviews with protest organizers in the build up to the protests. No, Anita Dunn didn’t mention anything quite at that level, although she did say the White House viewed Fox News as the political arm of the Republican party. Huh.

So, please Fox News cry babies, STFU! You made your bed and now its time to go sleep in it. Trying to call out the White House for calling you what you are, and saying they are fine with that, but nevertheless it is what it is, just drips with hypocrisy. Calling the President Stalin and Chairman Mao is beyond ridiculous, especially since it took the Bush White House “forever” to finally completely blacklist MSNBC according to Fox News hosts during the last 2 years of the Bush presidency.

In defense, Fox News Senior Vice President Michael Clemente struck back at the White House after Dunn’s remark saying, “It’s astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming. It seems self-serving on their part.” Fox went on to define its news hours as 9am-4pm & 6-8pm, of course time slots which exclude Cavuto, O’Reilly, Fox & Friends crew, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, and Sean Hannity from the news category and leave a bunch of people nobody’s ever heard of.

But if the above examples aren’t enough for you then I’ll let Jon Stewart further explore the hypocrisy of Fox News’s inability to call the kettle black. To be fair, Stewart even skewers the White House as well, for not claiming MSNBC is also biased.

The repudiation of mainstream Republican politics in exchange for embracing the fringe is the strategic core of the strategy behind the anti- health care reform, anti-Obama tea parties.  Certain conservative politicians have embraced this rhetoric in an attempt to build up their bona fides, such as Texas Governor Rick Parry who, in a burst of anti-stimulus & anti-government spending speechifyin’, suggested that Texas jsut might secede from the United States. (Country first, let’s not forget.)  Even a political naif could observe that if the Republcian Party refuted the lunatic fringe tea-baggers, a Frankenstein monster out of their control would be created and unleashed, laying waste to the relevancy of the GOP.

And here we are, jsut a little over two months later, and that Grankenstein monster has rared its ugly.  After a long, hot summer that consisted of angry shouting at each other, the tea-baggers feel emboldened and now not only believe they represent the majority (even though more Americans believe in UFOs than oppose a public option for health care) but that they are also the “last, true” defenders of the Constitution.  According to a recent report from Politico, the tea-baggers- who have self-identified themselves as a “mob” on Twitter and in similar mediums, ignoring the connotations of ‘mob politics’- are drafting insurgent candidates to confront incumbent GOP Congressmen and Senators.  Somehow, although Republicans in Congress are decidedly lockstep and have increasingly drifted further and further to the right in the past two decades, some are just not mobbish and neanderthal enough to be supported by the tea-baggers in a primary.  A few of these GOP Congressmen are having to fend off inter-party challengers for the first time, protecting themselves in what would otherwise be “safe” gerrymandered district seats.

And my only reaction to this is: GREAT!  Other than a Presidential run by Sarah Palin, nothing can expedite the demise of the Republican Party as a relevant policial player than a bunch of ‘mob’-affiliated candidates making the case that they are worthy of Capitol Hill.  These tea-baggers may actively be trying to formualte themselves as the current version of the angry, anti-Irish immigrant “Know Nothing Party” from the nineteenth century (even proudly referring to Glenn Beck as ‘their’ idiot), but the fact remains that the Know Nothing Party had a political lifespan all of two years.  The tea-bagers should be lucky if their political relevancy lasts much beyond the 2010 election cycle.