The distinction between the Tea Party movement and the official G.O.P. is real, and we ignore it at our peril. While Washington is fixated on the natterings of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michael Steele and the presumed 2012 Republican presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, these and the other leaders of the Party of No are anathema or irrelevant to most Tea Partiers. Indeed, McConnell, Romney and company may prove largely irrelevant to the overall political dynamic taking hold in America right now. The old G.O.P. guard has no discernible national constituency beyond the scattered, often impotent remnants of aging country club Republicanism. The passion on the right has migrated almost entirely to the Tea Party’s counterconservatism.
The leaders embraced by the new grass roots right are a different slate entirely: Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin. Simple math dictates that none of this trio can be elected president. As George F. Will recently pointed out, Palin will not even be the G.O.P. nominee “unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states” (as it did in Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Waterloo). But these leaders do have a consistent ideology, and that ideology plays to the lock-and-load nutcases out there, not just to the peaceable (if riled up) populist conservatives also attracted to Tea Partyism. This ideology is far more troubling than the boilerplate corporate conservatism and knee-jerk obstructionism of the anti-Obama G.O.P. Congressional minority.
(I highly recommend that you read the entire article by clicking the title of this post.)
I actually covered some of what Frank Rich writes about the Teabagger movement in my post from January 29th. However he now has the added information provided by the goings on at the Nashville convention and CPAC to flesh out his contention that the group may resort to domestic terrorism to get their voices heard and failing that might even be preparing for an all out civil war.
Personally I don't fear a civil war from these people, but domestic terrorism does not seem a bridge too far for some of these incredibly angry individuals. And if that happens I expect the government to throw Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin into prison for inciting violence against their country.
Showing posts with label Frank Rich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Rich. Show all posts
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Columnist Frank Rich examines Massachusetts upset and sends White House a dire message.
It was not a referendum on Barack Obama, who in every poll remains one of the most popular politicians in America. It was not a rejection of universal health care, which Massachusetts mandated (with Scott Brown’s State Senate vote) in 2006. It was not a harbinger of a resurgent G.O.P., whose numbers remain in the toilet. Brown had the good sense not to identify himself as a Republican in either his campaign advertising or his victory speech.
And yet Tuesday’s special election was a dire omen for this White House. If the administration sticks to this trajectory, all bets are off for the political future of a president who rode into office blessed with more high hopes, good will and serious promise than any in modern memory. It’s time for him to stop deluding himself. Yes, last week’s political obituaries were ludicrously premature. Obama’s 50-ish percent first-anniversary approval rating matches not just Carter’s but Reagan’s. (Bushes 41 and 43 both skyrocketed in Year One.) Still, minor adjustments can’t right what’s wrong.
Obama’s plight has been unchanged for months. Neither in action nor in message is he in front of the anger roiling a country where high unemployment remains unchecked and spiraling foreclosures are demolishing the bedrock American dream of home ownership. The president is no longer seen as a savior but as a captive of the interests who ginned up the mess and still profit, hugely, from it.
In last weekend’s Washington Post/ABC News poll, 42 percent of Americans chose the economy as the country’s most pressing concern. Only 5 percent picked terrorism, and 2 percent Afghanistan. Obama’s highest approval ratings are now on foreign policy and national security issues — despite the relentless hammering from the Cheney right — but voters don’t care.
Does health care matter? Not as much as you’d think after this yearlong crusade. In the Post/ABC poll, the issue was second-tier — at 24 percent. Obama has blundered, not by positioning himself too far to the left but by landing nowhere — frittering away his political capital by being too vague, too slow and too deferential to Congress. The smartest thing said as the Massachusetts returns came in Tuesday night was by Howard Fineman on MSNBC: “Obama took all his winnings and turned them over to Max Baucus.”
Frank Rich expresses the same concerns, and shares the same observations, that I hear from my liberal friends constantly.
We voted for transformational President, and Obama often seems to timid, or careful, to fully embrace his destiny. But if he doesn't, just like Frank Rich points out, there may well be yet another stunning upset in 2012.
(You can read the rest of Frank Rich's eye opening article by clickiing the title.)
And yet Tuesday’s special election was a dire omen for this White House. If the administration sticks to this trajectory, all bets are off for the political future of a president who rode into office blessed with more high hopes, good will and serious promise than any in modern memory. It’s time for him to stop deluding himself. Yes, last week’s political obituaries were ludicrously premature. Obama’s 50-ish percent first-anniversary approval rating matches not just Carter’s but Reagan’s. (Bushes 41 and 43 both skyrocketed in Year One.) Still, minor adjustments can’t right what’s wrong.
Obama’s plight has been unchanged for months. Neither in action nor in message is he in front of the anger roiling a country where high unemployment remains unchecked and spiraling foreclosures are demolishing the bedrock American dream of home ownership. The president is no longer seen as a savior but as a captive of the interests who ginned up the mess and still profit, hugely, from it.
In last weekend’s Washington Post/ABC News poll, 42 percent of Americans chose the economy as the country’s most pressing concern. Only 5 percent picked terrorism, and 2 percent Afghanistan. Obama’s highest approval ratings are now on foreign policy and national security issues — despite the relentless hammering from the Cheney right — but voters don’t care.
Does health care matter? Not as much as you’d think after this yearlong crusade. In the Post/ABC poll, the issue was second-tier — at 24 percent. Obama has blundered, not by positioning himself too far to the left but by landing nowhere — frittering away his political capital by being too vague, too slow and too deferential to Congress. The smartest thing said as the Massachusetts returns came in Tuesday night was by Howard Fineman on MSNBC: “Obama took all his winnings and turned them over to Max Baucus.”
Frank Rich expresses the same concerns, and shares the same observations, that I hear from my liberal friends constantly.
We voted for transformational President, and Obama often seems to timid, or careful, to fully embrace his destiny. But if he doesn't, just like Frank Rich points out, there may well be yet another stunning upset in 2012.
(You can read the rest of Frank Rich's eye opening article by clickiing the title.)
Sunday, January 17, 2010
The Trouble with Teabaggers.
The New York Times has this great Frank Rich op-ed which is a must read. (To read the entire article just click the title.)
On Jan. 9 The Washington Post ran a front-page article headlined “Frustrations With Steele Leaving G.O.P. in a Bind,” reporting, among other embarrassments, that the party had spent $90 million during Steele’s brief reign while raising just $84 million. Enter “Game Change,” right in the nick of time for Steele to pull off his own cunning game change. On Jan. 10 he stormed “Fox News Sunday” and “Meet the Press” to demand Reid’s head. There has been hardly a mention of Steele’s sins since. He can laugh all the way to the bank.
His behavior is not anomalous. Steele is representative of a fascinating but little noted development on the right: the rise of buckrakers who are exploiting the party’s anarchic confusion and divisions to cash in for their own private gain. In this cause, Steele is emulating no one if not Sarah Palin, whose hunger for celebrity and money outstrips even his own. As many suspected at the time, her 2008 campaign wardrobe, like the doomed campaign itself, was just a preview of coming attractions: she would surely dump the bother of serving as Alaska’s besieged governor for a lucrative star turn on Fox News. Last week she made it official.
Both Steele and Palin claim to be devotees of the tea party movement. “I’m a tea partier, I’m a town-haller, I’m a grass-roots-er” is how Steele put it in a recent radio interview, wet-kissing a market he hopes will buy his book. Palin has far more grandiose ambitions. She recently signed on as a speaker for the first Tea Party Convention, scheduled next month in Nashville — even though she had turned down a speaking invitation from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, the traditional meet-and-greet for the right. The conservative conference doesn’t pay. The Tea Party Convention does. A blogger at Nashville Scene reported that Palin’s price for the event was $120,000.
The entire Tea Party Convention is a profit-seeking affair charging $560 a ticket — plus the cost of a room at the Opryland Hotel. Among the convention’s eight listed sponsors is Tea Party Emporium, which gives as its contact address 444 Madison Avenue in New York, also home to the high-fashion brand Burberry. This emporium’s Web site offers a bejeweled tea bag at $89.99 for those furious at “a government hell bent on the largest redistribution of wealth in history.” This is almost as shameless as Glenn Beck, whose own tea party profiteering has included hawking gold coins merchandised by a sponsor of his radio show.
Last week a prominent right-wing blogger, Erick Erickson of RedState.com, finally figured out that the Tea Party Convention “smells scammy,” likening it to one of those Nigerian e-mails promising untold millions. Such rumbling about the movement’s being co-opted by hucksters may explain why Palin used her first paid appearance at Fox last Tuesday to tell Bill O’Reilly that she would recycle her own tea party profits in political contributions. But Erickson had it right: the tea party movement is being exploited — and not just by marketers, lobbyists, political consultants and corporate interests but by the Republican Party, as exemplified by Palin and Steele, its most prominent leaders.
One of the reasons that I have ridiculed this group so often is because they are simply too ill informed and easily manipulated to be taken seriously. I do realize that there are people genuinely hurting in this group, but if they believe their problems will be solved by allowing themselves to be led by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin then it is very hard to have compassion for them.
They remind me of those people who sell all of their belongings and wait out in the desert for a UFO to take them out into space. It is almost Darwinian, in that they are so completely disenfranchised they cannot get organized well enough to create the viable third party they seem to desire.
As long as they are looking toward Fox News, an organization ALL about squeezing the most profit out of its viewers, for their salvation they are doomed to a life of being herded from one political rally or anti- government cause to the next, until they are too old and too poor to continue. And then Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin will simply take their blood money and walk off into the sunset.
(By the way I received a link to this article six different times. I would like to thank each of you for bringing it to my attention.)
On Jan. 9 The Washington Post ran a front-page article headlined “Frustrations With Steele Leaving G.O.P. in a Bind,” reporting, among other embarrassments, that the party had spent $90 million during Steele’s brief reign while raising just $84 million. Enter “Game Change,” right in the nick of time for Steele to pull off his own cunning game change. On Jan. 10 he stormed “Fox News Sunday” and “Meet the Press” to demand Reid’s head. There has been hardly a mention of Steele’s sins since. He can laugh all the way to the bank.
His behavior is not anomalous. Steele is representative of a fascinating but little noted development on the right: the rise of buckrakers who are exploiting the party’s anarchic confusion and divisions to cash in for their own private gain. In this cause, Steele is emulating no one if not Sarah Palin, whose hunger for celebrity and money outstrips even his own. As many suspected at the time, her 2008 campaign wardrobe, like the doomed campaign itself, was just a preview of coming attractions: she would surely dump the bother of serving as Alaska’s besieged governor for a lucrative star turn on Fox News. Last week she made it official.
Both Steele and Palin claim to be devotees of the tea party movement. “I’m a tea partier, I’m a town-haller, I’m a grass-roots-er” is how Steele put it in a recent radio interview, wet-kissing a market he hopes will buy his book. Palin has far more grandiose ambitions. She recently signed on as a speaker for the first Tea Party Convention, scheduled next month in Nashville — even though she had turned down a speaking invitation from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, the traditional meet-and-greet for the right. The conservative conference doesn’t pay. The Tea Party Convention does. A blogger at Nashville Scene reported that Palin’s price for the event was $120,000.
The entire Tea Party Convention is a profit-seeking affair charging $560 a ticket — plus the cost of a room at the Opryland Hotel. Among the convention’s eight listed sponsors is Tea Party Emporium, which gives as its contact address 444 Madison Avenue in New York, also home to the high-fashion brand Burberry. This emporium’s Web site offers a bejeweled tea bag at $89.99 for those furious at “a government hell bent on the largest redistribution of wealth in history.” This is almost as shameless as Glenn Beck, whose own tea party profiteering has included hawking gold coins merchandised by a sponsor of his radio show.
Last week a prominent right-wing blogger, Erick Erickson of RedState.com, finally figured out that the Tea Party Convention “smells scammy,” likening it to one of those Nigerian e-mails promising untold millions. Such rumbling about the movement’s being co-opted by hucksters may explain why Palin used her first paid appearance at Fox last Tuesday to tell Bill O’Reilly that she would recycle her own tea party profits in political contributions. But Erickson had it right: the tea party movement is being exploited — and not just by marketers, lobbyists, political consultants and corporate interests but by the Republican Party, as exemplified by Palin and Steele, its most prominent leaders.
One of the reasons that I have ridiculed this group so often is because they are simply too ill informed and easily manipulated to be taken seriously. I do realize that there are people genuinely hurting in this group, but if they believe their problems will be solved by allowing themselves to be led by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin then it is very hard to have compassion for them.
They remind me of those people who sell all of their belongings and wait out in the desert for a UFO to take them out into space. It is almost Darwinian, in that they are so completely disenfranchised they cannot get organized well enough to create the viable third party they seem to desire.
As long as they are looking toward Fox News, an organization ALL about squeezing the most profit out of its viewers, for their salvation they are doomed to a life of being herded from one political rally or anti- government cause to the next, until they are too old and too poor to continue. And then Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin will simply take their blood money and walk off into the sunset.
(By the way I received a link to this article six different times. I would like to thank each of you for bringing it to my attention.)
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Do the recent events in New York demonstrate a problem with the Obama brand or that the GOP has devolved into a circular firing squad?
This from New York Times columnist Frank Rich:
The governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia were once billed as the marquee events of Election Day 2009 — a referendum on the Obama presidency and a possible Republican “comeback.” But preposterous as it sounds, the real action migrated to New York’s 23rd, a rural Congressional district abutting Canada. That this pastoral setting could become a G.O.P. killing field, attracting an all-star cast of combatants led by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, William Kristol and Newt Gingrich, is a premise out of a Depression-era screwball comedy. But such farces have become the norm for the conservative movement — whether the participants are dressing up in full “tea party” drag or not.
The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom has what Palin once called the “actual responsibilities” of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true.
Rich identifies the strange, yet undeniable, influence of Sarah Palin on the GOP.
Then came the big enchilada: a Hoffman endorsement from Palin on her Facebook page. Such is Palin’s clout that Steve Forbes, Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor (and presidential aspirant), promptly fell over one another in their Pavlovian rush to second her motion.
My very good friend, and fellow blogger, Shannyn Moore recently came under some attack on this blog and others, for saying that Palin was still a political force and should not be ignored. She is of course correct, and we are seeing more evidence to back that up on a weekly basis. Refusing to acknowledge that something is happening will NOT make it go away.
Some of you (though it seems most are in fact trolls) have expressed frustration that I seem hesitant to bring Palin down. However if you have been visiting for awhile you know that the work is happening in places other than on this blog. Yes I am still playing a role, but it has been decided that the proper venue for the coup de grace is not IM.
If you have been watching our friend Levi you may already have noticed that all eyes are now on him, but what is happening in other places? Just like when I received all of those scathing media attacks, and all of that wing bat attention, what was quietly going on in other places? The Palin-bots have many eyes but they cannot see everything at once, now can they?
When you see a magician on stage and he rolls up his sleeve to draw your attention to one of his hands, it is the other hand that will suddenly astound you. Keep that in mind.
And what happened in New York may, at first, seem like a victory for Sarah and her crazy ass co-conspirators, but is it? To read the rest of Frank Rich's amazing article just click the title.
The governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia were once billed as the marquee events of Election Day 2009 — a referendum on the Obama presidency and a possible Republican “comeback.” But preposterous as it sounds, the real action migrated to New York’s 23rd, a rural Congressional district abutting Canada. That this pastoral setting could become a G.O.P. killing field, attracting an all-star cast of combatants led by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, William Kristol and Newt Gingrich, is a premise out of a Depression-era screwball comedy. But such farces have become the norm for the conservative movement — whether the participants are dressing up in full “tea party” drag or not.
The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom has what Palin once called the “actual responsibilities” of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true.
Rich identifies the strange, yet undeniable, influence of Sarah Palin on the GOP.
Then came the big enchilada: a Hoffman endorsement from Palin on her Facebook page. Such is Palin’s clout that Steve Forbes, Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor (and presidential aspirant), promptly fell over one another in their Pavlovian rush to second her motion.
My very good friend, and fellow blogger, Shannyn Moore recently came under some attack on this blog and others, for saying that Palin was still a political force and should not be ignored. She is of course correct, and we are seeing more evidence to back that up on a weekly basis. Refusing to acknowledge that something is happening will NOT make it go away.
Some of you (though it seems most are in fact trolls) have expressed frustration that I seem hesitant to bring Palin down. However if you have been visiting for awhile you know that the work is happening in places other than on this blog. Yes I am still playing a role, but it has been decided that the proper venue for the coup de grace is not IM.
If you have been watching our friend Levi you may already have noticed that all eyes are now on him, but what is happening in other places? Just like when I received all of those scathing media attacks, and all of that wing bat attention, what was quietly going on in other places? The Palin-bots have many eyes but they cannot see everything at once, now can they?
When you see a magician on stage and he rolls up his sleeve to draw your attention to one of his hands, it is the other hand that will suddenly astound you. Keep that in mind.
And what happened in New York may, at first, seem like a victory for Sarah and her crazy ass co-conspirators, but is it? To read the rest of Frank Rich's amazing article just click the title.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Frank Rich's take on Sarah Palin is well worth the read.
No less than 71 percent of Republicans said they would vote for her for president. That overwhelming majority isn’t just the “base” of the Republican Party that liberals and conservatives alike tend to ghettoize as a rump backwater minority. It is the party, or pretty much what remains of it in the Barack Obama era.
That’s why Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops.
Were Palin actually to secure the 2012 nomination, the result would be a fiasco for the G.O.P. akin to Goldwater 1964, as the most relentless conservative Palin critic, David Frum, has predicted. Or would it? No one thought Richard Nixon — a far less personable commodity than Palin — would come back either after his sour-grapes “last press conference” of 1962. But Democratic divisions and failures gave him his opportunity in 1968. With unemployment approaching 10 percent and a seemingly bottomless war in Afghanistan, you never know, as Palin likes to say, what doors might open.
It’s more likely that she will never get anywhere near the White House, and not just because of her own limitations. The Palinist “real America” is demographically doomed to keep shrinking. But the emotion it represents is disproportionately powerful for its numbers. It’s an anger that Palin enjoyed stoking during her “palling around with terrorists” crusade against Obama on the campaign trail. It’s an anger that’s curdled into self-martyrdom since Inauguration Day.
As a critic of Palin I have received more than a small portion of this anger and I choose to wear it as badge of honor, because it is not about attacking a woman who I disagree with politically, it is about stripping away the facade that Sarah hides behind and allowing the world to see who, and what, she really is.
She is NOT the humble hockey mom that she tries so hard to portray herself as. Instead she is a narcissistic, amoral, psychopath who will do ANYTHING to gain, and cling to, power.
She is dangerous because she attracts the most damaged and marginalized supporters in the country. These are America's version of the Taliban.
They would gladly throw themselves off of a cliff to further the ambitions of their queen, and it only takes the most perfunctory reading of some of the comments posted at a pro-Palin site to quickly convince anyone that my assessment is chillingly accurate.
So as gratifying as it is to see Palin step away from Alaska's helm, I know that she still represents a real danger to the rest of the country. And there is still much work to do.
That’s why Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops.
Were Palin actually to secure the 2012 nomination, the result would be a fiasco for the G.O.P. akin to Goldwater 1964, as the most relentless conservative Palin critic, David Frum, has predicted. Or would it? No one thought Richard Nixon — a far less personable commodity than Palin — would come back either after his sour-grapes “last press conference” of 1962. But Democratic divisions and failures gave him his opportunity in 1968. With unemployment approaching 10 percent and a seemingly bottomless war in Afghanistan, you never know, as Palin likes to say, what doors might open.
It’s more likely that she will never get anywhere near the White House, and not just because of her own limitations. The Palinist “real America” is demographically doomed to keep shrinking. But the emotion it represents is disproportionately powerful for its numbers. It’s an anger that Palin enjoyed stoking during her “palling around with terrorists” crusade against Obama on the campaign trail. It’s an anger that’s curdled into self-martyrdom since Inauguration Day.
As a critic of Palin I have received more than a small portion of this anger and I choose to wear it as badge of honor, because it is not about attacking a woman who I disagree with politically, it is about stripping away the facade that Sarah hides behind and allowing the world to see who, and what, she really is.
She is NOT the humble hockey mom that she tries so hard to portray herself as. Instead she is a narcissistic, amoral, psychopath who will do ANYTHING to gain, and cling to, power.
She is dangerous because she attracts the most damaged and marginalized supporters in the country. These are America's version of the Taliban.
They would gladly throw themselves off of a cliff to further the ambitions of their queen, and it only takes the most perfunctory reading of some of the comments posted at a pro-Palin site to quickly convince anyone that my assessment is chillingly accurate.
So as gratifying as it is to see Palin step away from Alaska's helm, I know that she still represents a real danger to the rest of the country. And there is still much work to do.
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