One of the clearest demonstrations of the contradiction came during the Republican National Convention in 2012, when the party gave one night of speeches over to the theme, “We did build that,” a deliberate misinterpretation of something the president had said. Speaker after speaker spoke of how they pulled themselves up and built their success without interference from “government.” By the end of the night, the bootstraps has been pulled up so hard and so long that they must’ve extended from Tampa halfway through Alabama. But there was a curious thing about these speeches. A great many of them began with, “When my Dad got out of the Army…” There was the guy who built his business who never mentioned the small-business loans he’d obtained. There was Chris Christie, railing against the dead hand of big government while nearly sobbing over how important the GI Bill had been to his Dad. There was Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma who, against all history and logic, explained how her state had been built only through the sweat of Oklahomans. It was a night of organized bullshit so epic that it stands alone in my memory. It should have been all anybody talked about for a month. It should have defined the Republican party for a generation. Hell, if it weren’t for the New Deal, Ronald Reagan’s father would have been the town drunk. Government wasn’t The Problem then. Instead, it passed without conspicuous notice.
Howard Dean (remember him) in 200FUCKING3:
What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic party leadership is supporting the president’s unilateral attack on Iraq.
What I want to know is why are Democratic party leaders supporting tax cuts. The question is not how big the tax cut should be, the question should be can we afford a tax cut at all with the largest deficit in the history of this country.
What I want to know is why we’re fighting in Congress about the Patient’s Bill of Rights when the Democratic party ought to be standing up for health care for every single American man, woman, and child in this country.
What I want to know is why our folks are voting for the president’s No Child Left Behind bill that leaves every child behind, every teacher behind, every school board behind, and every property tax payer behind.
Christ, that speech. That was our chance, wasn’t it? Our chance to turn this fucking country around. He could give that speech tomorrow and but that there’s a Democrat in the White House, nothing’s goddamn changed.
Why? Take your goddamn pick, Howard. I think some of them are scared and some of them are greedy and some of them are listening to every professional fuckwit on the Sunday shows talk about how mean they all are these days, what with wanting to CURE DISEASES and TEACH PEOPLE TO READ, and some of them just can’t be arsed because it’s hard, Mom, and we just want to sleep in.
Some of them are up the ass of BP or the telecom industry, some of them are in hock to the Russian mob, some of them know there are photographs out there of that thing with the goat, some of them need to keep paying off that hooker, and some of them are that hooker.
Some of them are really stupid, too, and let’s not ever discount that.
A.