The GOP deserves credit for somehow keeping together its disparate interests enough to pull together victories at the ballot box over the past quarter century or so. Basically, near as I can figure, you have the paleo-conservatives: sort of those Buckley/Goldwater types who were socially fairly moderate, economically conservative, and tended toward isolationist foreign policy. You have the neo-cons: foreign policy adventurists with no particular domestic agenda – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and those types. And, you have the social conservatives – Bible thumpers of various stripes.
For the moment anyway, the center is not holding in this particular coalition, as John McCain is finding out. And even among the factions there are factions. To wit:
It seems that McCain’s “proud” acceptance of the endorsement of John “The-Catholic-Church-Is-The-Great-Whore” Hagee has upset Bill “Hollywood-Is-Controlled-By-Secular-Jews-Who-Hate-Christianity” Donohue. It’s the ultimate rightwing cage-match, the battle of the bigots, fighting for the soul of the Republican Party.
Given Tim Russert’s vigorous efforts to make sure Obama not only denounced but also rejected the support of the hateful Farrakhan, he damn well better be willing to pin straight-talkin’, mavericky John McCain to the wall on this Hagee matter given Hagee’s hateful statements with respect to Catholicism.
And, when you get down to it, it’s not surprising that various religious institutions might be difficult to unify under one banner. There was a reason for the schisms in the first place. And they weren’t idle schisms. In many cases, they were bleeding, dying, history-shaking schisms.
It’s too bad that the extreme groups on both sides of politics — both left and right — aren’t ignored in favor of the more reasonable middle groups who are often left out of the process because they don’t yell and scream.
Maybe it is time to figure out how to compromise so that we figure out the best way to run the government.
Just as the crazies on the left don’t represent most Democrats, the same is true for the Republicans.
Chris makes a good point…and the problem here seems to be that we have too many safe gerrymandered districts. This has the effect, in far too many cases, of making the primaries critical, since the gerrymandered districts mean that the general election will rarely be competitive. And extremists on both sides are the people far too often elected by the 20-30% of primary voters who turn out.
This is difficult to fix. Districts have to have the same number of people in them, otherwise you violate the one-man, one-vote principle. This means you have to have periodic redistricting. Ideally it should be done by some nonpartisan group, but there isn’t a universally accepted, tested, method of doing this.
The winner-take-all electoral system is also a problem. If a state tends 60-40 Rep-Dem, the winner gets 100% of the electors if he wins 51% of the vote. Meaning that a candidate has no reason to stake out positions that will garner him the *most* votes; he only needs positions that will garner him 51%.
This is easy enough to fix; you just need states to proportionally assign electors. Unfortunately, only two states do this.
The characterization of Goldwater Republicans as “socially fairly moderate” is the result their efforts to back-date present-day “libertarian” accommodation to social mores they aren’t going to change anyway and would cost votes. Yes, Goldwater himself became an irascible public defender of abortion rights and critic of Moral Majority types late in life, but that doesn’t mean he took his end of party with him, by any means (most notably Reagan himself). But somehow it’s always about “principle” with those guys, even when they’ve just performed a Jim Rockford 180º in plain sight of everybody.
We might also note the sort of help the GOP had over that quarter-century–from the likes of Tim Russert–in creating a right-wing religious fundamentalist/evangelical surge that didn’t actually exist (or not doctrinally, though, perhaps, as a trendy self-applied label when the pollster called), or in obfuscating its actual decline over the past twenty years, let alone ignoring the anti-other bias found naturally in most religious affiliation. A fine example being the way the moral argument of the anti-abortion movement was never challenged on contraception, which would have split it down the middle. Convenient, too, as this neatly covered the Dixiecrat to Republican migration that really occurred over civil, not Divine rights.
Tim Russert is part of the right wing conspiracy? Former chief of staff to Mario Cuomo Tim Russert? THAT Tim Russert?
Man, you guys TURN on a man right quick! All for one not all that tough question for Obama?
Did you see SNL last night? Second week in a row with a Hillary/ Obama skit where Hillary gets all the tough questions from Russert.
It was actually halfway funny. For SNL.
Not wasting my time with any of the debates thus far, I couldn’t tell how much truth there was to the meme that Hillary is being picked on by the likes of Russert.
I know you aren’t going to take Media Matters as a persuasive source, but here is a piece by Media Matters that might provide you with a bit of illumination as to why Russert’s previous service to Mario Cuomo, decades ago, I presume, isn’t enough to keep him in the good graces of “the left.” Russert’s been awful for a long time.
Personally, I think he’s becoming a caricature of himself.
You libs are so thin skinned.
Look, I have no love of Russert. And I lived in Buffalo for a number of years.
I think that he’s a big part of the problem. The problem being former Democrat operatives who are now MSM talking heads (Mathews, Stephanopolis, Russert, Williams, etc.)
While those questions were not substantive, what the hell do you want at a debate? The format lends itself to gotcha, not wonkery.
Yeah, if we populated the mainsteam media outlets with nothing but former Republican operatives, a golden age of journalistic objectivity would bloom.
Everytime I wonder if people could really, seriously be subjecting themselves to such blatant self-propagandization, I get a reminder every Sunday morning when the cars pull into the church across the street.
Yes, yes they can.
“Wankery not wonkery” perfectly describes our television punditocracy.
As far as liberals being think skinned, it is to laugh! If I had a nickel for every time I heard whining about the liberal media, I could probably make nuclear material out of Judith Miller’s aluminum tubes.
If it weren’t for the liberal media the Iraqi war would have been successful.My own brother told me that.And I was also told that if I hadn’t gone to college I would be able to see that. And I said matter-of factly, ‘That’s probably right’ But that was 2 years ago and we haven’t discussed it since.At least we root for the same sports teams.For my part, I blame it all on Fox news and AM RW radio.We’re all just pawns.
No, I don’t expect Republicans to become pundits.
I expect… journalists to be… journalists?
If Meet the Press, Hardball, NBC Nightly News, This Week, etc. etc. were hosted by people with NO former involvement in the political process, I would be quite happy.
One of my political dreams is to actually see a debate, instead of the misnamed (and indifferently moderated) symposiums that we are subjected to.
“RESOLVED: Hillary Clinton should be the Presidential Nominee of the Democratic Party.”
Speaking pro: Hillary Clinton
Speaking con: Barack Obama
Then do it again in a week, with the roles reversed.
That’s the question that needs to be answered – why not address it directly?
[And, of course, do the same thing for presidential debates.]
as an avid reader of history/ history channel cable junkie; and mental packrat of obscure useless historical trivia( hey- i might be on jeopardy- and i’m hell-on keys when it comes to that satellite trivia -bar drinking game)
some of what chuck the nut says has a few kernels of truth.
secular jews in hollywood- might be payback for the inquisition?
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mel+brooks+%22the+inquisition%22&search_type=
and it is a historical fact that US corporations helped fund the nazis before and up until WW2- henry ford was a rabid anti-semite.
the Vatican was complicit with the Nazis, and Mussolini- pope whats his name?
and
pope benedict was in the hitler youth ( bad luck)
and if you are really curious- the nazis spirited billions in gold to swiss banks, which found their way into the vaults of the federal reserve bank of new york, and bank of america, and other US banks-which the jewish victims of ww2 tried to have repatriated to their rightful accoutnt, or owners.
google : swiss gold or nazi gold or jewish gold
it was in the new york times, as well, within the past few years.
so even in the most outrageous rantings of religious fanatics, there is often a nugget or fact, on which their lunatic conspiracies are based. John McCain is sounding nuttier by the day. kooks with nukes.
the Vatican was complicit with the Nazis, and Mussolini- pope whats his name?
In 1929, a concordat with the Vatican was signed, the Lateran treaties, by which the Italian state was at last recognised by the Roman Catholic Church, and the independence of Vatican City was recognised by the Italian state. In 1927, Mussolini was baptised by a Roman Catholic priest in order to take away certain Catholic opposition, who were still very critical of a regime which had taken away papal property and virtually blackmailed the Vatican. However, Mussolini was never known to be a practicing Catholic. Since 1927, and more even after 1929, Mussolini, with his anti-Communist doctrines, convinced many Catholics to actively support him. In the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno, Pope Pius XI attacked the Fascist regime for its policy against the Catholic Action and certain tendencies to overrule Catholic education morals.
The Catholic Church WAS NOT “complicit” with Mussolini. At most, they made the best of a bad situation.
David, if you can support even half the crap you wrote with wikipedia references, I will send you a check for $100.