Is it possible that Citizens United is a good thing for moderates?
Roanoke Tea Party members protest President Obama's speech in Roanoke last July, during which he made the infamously taken-out-of-context "You didn't build that!" remark. | Photo by Steve C
On my mind today:
Maybe Citizens United is actually a <em>GOOD</em> thing, insofar as it bleeds the Koch Bros. and Shel Adelson and Bob Murray and other multimillionaire idiots of hundreds of millions of their freely spent dollars, trying vainly and unsuccessfully to buy elections.
Sure, they have to lay off some of their employees after all that money they wasted (it’s a given they’ll blame that on Obama, rather than on their own stupidity). That’s a bad thing for those workers, surely, in the short term. But is it bad for this country in the long term?
So long as there’s a right-wing media that’s not reality based, and Tea Party organizations to flog the crazy and keep the energy level up, it’ll remain possible to trick dumb boobs who have more money than brains into believing the losers they put up for election have a chance/are ahead.
And people like Karl Rove will continue to collect and spend millions upon millions upon millions (like the $11 million he spent on George Allen) on loser candidates like ousted Reps. Allen West of Fla., and Joe Walsh of Illinois and others such as Richard Mourdock of Indiana, Todd Akin of Missouri and Josh Mandel of Ohio.
In other words, is it possible voters’ REACTION to right-wing crazy will get moderates and progressives further election-wise than the moderates and progressives could get themselves, if the RW didn’t exist?
In that case we ought to begin fielding a new crop of RW candidates right now, for the 2014 and 2016 elections. I’m taking nominations right now.
There’s a bit more coming about this at 1:30 p.m., in Your daily Letter to the Columnist.
November 12, 2012 - 11:25 AM
Based on what they’ve come up with in the last 2 elections, I doubt they have anyone who can beat Hillary in 4 years. And if they can’t scrape the TP off their shoes, it won’t matter who the candidate is. The TP “message” has been rejected.
Does anyone know how many TP candidates lost this time, and how many won?
You would think that the “Captains of industry” would not be so dumb and wasteful. Gerrymandering accomplishes most of their job for them in the House and any fool can see the money wasted should matter to them. Look at Donald Trump, he went from a mildly eccentric and arrogant wealthy icon to an imbecile with money in no time at all. Adelson was front and center when he should have been laying low or funding orphanages to gain sympathy. “Papa John” is going to sell way less pizza and hurt the people he depends on to sell them. They just all seem greedy, stupid, petty and small. And here we thought it was only Jerry Jones!
And speaking of the photo, notice how that whole We Built That thing just disappeared? Seems to me suzie and a few others predicted that would be the moment Obama threw away the election.
The fact is, in a truly “fair” election, Republicans and the tea party would not control the House of Representatives, or any branch of the federal government. The only reason Republicans now hold a 55% to 45% majority in the House is because of the way state legislatures gerrymandered the districts in 2010. Read the link.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-r-stone/why-did-the-republicans-w_b_2110673.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=111212&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief
The biggest lie perpetrated by Romney and the Republicans and the outside groups sponsored by the Koch Bros. and the oil/coal barons was that Obama was killing energy policy and keeping us subservient to foreign oil. If we weould just let them have free rein with no regulations, we would solve all our energy issues. Well, lets see what the IEA says about that.
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/u-pass-saudi-arabia-energy-production-iea-says-170907660.html
Debbie @ 2 – I am not sure about all the numbers of teabaggers that lost their races, but here is some information on how the House of Representatives looks:
House TP caucus:
Of the 61 members on that list of teabaggers:
35 come from just 8 states: TX, LA, GA, MS, TN, SC, FL, NC
2 from IN and MO
1 from MI, IA, IL
None from New England, PA, OH, WA, OR, WI
If these states secede, we can celebrate the loss of the lunatic fringe of the republican party…
Some teabaggers that lost their seats, Richard Mourdock losing his seat in the Senate(Indiana), Joe Walsh lost his seat (Illinois), Rep. Mia Love lost her House seat (Utah); crazy as a loon and ideologically “pure” Rep. Allen West of Florida lost his seat (he has not conceded yet), and Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri lost his seat. There may be others as the final races are called…
“The biggest lie perpetrated by Romney and the Republicans and the outside groups sponsored by the Koch Bros. and the oil/coal barons was that Obama was killing energy policy and keeping us subservient to foreign oil. If we weould just let them have free rein with no regulations, we would solve all our energy issues.”
dave,
I think it’s actually hard to characterize the biggest lie. Those and the other examples of misinformation were so many, and so varied, and they were even posted here by so many RWers like Leon, Suzie, terps, Michael Howdyshell, pammala, LC, Chuck, mikeO, Frank, Pistol Pete, matt, Sharon N and others. It was astounding.
The comforting part is that it backfired on the RWers. Recall, it wasn’t that many months ago they considered Obama the easiest incumbent president to beat, EVER. Everybody KNEW (in their minds) that he was by far the worst president in history, and none of them could imagine a 3-million vote majority of electorate voting for him. The very notion that Obama would win 332 electoral votes was absurd. It could not happen — in their minds. It was totally out of the question.
It’s obvious what happened. The public saw through the RWers’ smokescreen. They got tired of the lies — about energy, the ACA, Dodd Frank, the birth certificate, welfare reform, Medicare, taxes, spending, unemployment, the economy. That list barely scratches the surface. Those were everywhere, all over the place, all the time. The REWers even lied to themselves about Romney’s poll numbers, which is an actual hallmark of insanity.
And they backfired big on Romney. The nonstop, breathtaking lies turned voters off to Mitt.
Boo hoo! They have only themselves to blame.
Are you happy, RWers? You shot yourself in the foot. I was happy to provide one of many forums for you to do that, btw!
In my opinion, the RWers all believed their own lies and hype. When words like, Romney was “shell shocked”, or RW republican pundits not only seemed stunned, they articulated their “utter surprise” when the President won…they were drinking the Kool aid non stop.
Karl Rove was almost catatonic before bolting off the Faux News stage when Ohio was called for the President. The RW blogs which I peruse to find the new meme being pushed by the parrots, were absolutely filled with surprised and outraged RWers suspecting they had been lied to…they appear to be absolutely clueless to things called knowable truths and FACTS…
Re: Comment by Shrillary — November 12, 2012 @ 3:19 pm
Yup.
That or like old Rants & raves (w/ lies) are absolutely certain that the election was lost via voter fraud.
No way do they ever acknowledge or admit a fault or wrong or being wrong; they never concede that there may be some good in others’ position; they never leave room for alternatives; they never accept any blame for their own failure or the part that they contribute to such failure.
See my comment #12 @ http://tinyurl.com/bxmgesz for a comparison of these personalities and principles, if not there authoritarian values — not that those are also excluded by such comparison.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, pleased me more than Rove’s meltdown as Fox called it for Obama.
Don, I don’t believe Rove will be one of those again earning big bucks to steer a candidate through an election. He blew it big time, which is why he melted down. He knew he was done. He will stay done and you can be damned sure some Democrat or Progressive or Liberal will stick a fork in him to let the air out if he tries again. He’s a nasty little twerp who deserves all the bad things that are going to happen to him for the rest of his life.
Should have been Dan, not Don. Sorry about that Dan.
What I don’t understand about the GOP and how they responded to the polls consistently pointing towards Obama’s reelection is how long they expected to maintain the facade? It’s well and good in September or August or October to claim that the MSM polls were flawed, or biased, or whatever towards Obama, but when the needle still wasn’t moving by 11/1 – how did they plan on proceding?
It sounds as though Romney and Rove and the rest were devastated and blindsided by a result that they had seen coming for months. Fooling the masses is one thing, but the story reads as though they succeeded in fooling themselves.
Based on what they’ve come up with in the last 2 elections, I doubt they have anyone who can beat Hillary in 4 years. And if they can’t scrape the TP off their shoes, it won’t matter who the candidate is. The TP “message” has been rejected.
In the last two presidential elections, the most liberal of the candidates were backed by the GOP establishment, and we saw what happened. In 2010, the Tea Party landed the GOP 63 House seats.
I predicted leftwing dimwits would get it exactly wrong as they do after every election.
#14 “I predicted leftwing dimwits would get it exactly wrong as they do after every election.”
You also predicted that Romney would win in a landslide. How did that work out for you?
The greatest irony that I’ve seen overlooked is the fact that all of that money (around $6 billion) was pumped directly into our economy… in an election the GOP tried to make about the crappy economy.
Dear Dinosaurs:
How are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me that our economy sucks when you’re spending millions of dollars per day to tell me that? Oh, you poor things! You completely pissed away a couple of billion dollars to pat yourself on the back and delude yourselves of certain victory. In the process of spreading a message of dread, fear and economic ruin, you gave the economy a sizable injection of moolah, too. Who was the Watcher that missed that juxtaposition? Anyone who questioned your logic or direction was labelled a brainwashed liberal insurgent and dismissed, even within your own party. How’d that work out for you, dunderheads? Here’s a hint: the next time someone says, “Hey, that idea is alright, but you’re forgetting about b and c,” maybe you ought to listen and even [gasp] consider b and c, huh?
Remember the term “fuzzy math”? That’s what got you here today. The road to the White House is a simple line equation: You’re a and the presidency is d. You have to go through b and c to get to d. You tried to go straight to d. Only geniuses are capable of doing that. As evidenced by that nightmarish, self-deluded debacle of a campaign, you, ladies and gentlemen, are certainly no geniuses. As a matter of fact, the more of you that manage to get together, the faster the collective IQ seems to drop.
Somebody, please get this message to the heads of the party as quickly as possible. It’s not manna from heaven or a pillar of fire, but it just might get you to the promised land. Just remember: that same land is already occupied and you can’t just eradicate the indigenous population like you used to; it’s a more enlightened world now, whether you like it or not. The other option is to keep wandering the wilderness.
Sincerely,
b and c