Calling the current GOP primary “carnival-like,” Daley said the party had a chance to right itself after Palin’s “blatant lack of competence and preparedness” became apparent and contributed to the collapse of the McCain campaign.
“What’s critical is that substantive, serious Republican leaders either wouldn’t or couldn’t declare, before or after the election: ‘This is not what our party stands for. We can and must do better,’” Daley wrote.
“Once McCain put Palin on the ticket, Republican ‘grown-ups,’ who presumably knew better, had to bite their tongues. But after the election, when they were free to speak their minds, they either remained quiet or abetted the dumbing-down of the party,” he continued. “They stood by as Donald Trump and others noisily pushed claims that Obama was born in Kenya. And they gladly rode the Tea Party tiger to sweeping victories in 2010 and 2014.”
I hate to defend Sarah Palin, but I’m defending Sarah Palin. I hate to defend Donald Trump, but I’m defending Donald Trump. And I hate to defend Republican voters, but I’m defending Republican voters. Neither of them did anything but vote for their own best interests. Their own best interests were racist, dumb, petty and loud, but I’m not gonna sit here and say they don’t have a right to those interests. If that’s what they want, they get to vote for it. That gets to be what power looks like for them. THIS IS HOW IT WAS DESIGNED TO WORK. You can’t bitch that the system that got you rich is now making somebody else rich, assholes.
Sarah Palin did not make the GOP stupid. Donald Trump is not making the GOP stupid. GOP primary voters are making the GOP stupid, because stupid is what the GOP wants.
And to be honest, I don’t like the carping that once upon a time Republicans were good, principled representatives of the people. That hasn’t been true for at least six decades. (Don’t throw Lincoln and Eisenhower at me. Those people might as well have been aliens from another planet for all that they’d be able to relate to either party today.) Longing for a time when the serious and sensible Republicans were in charge is just longing for a time when Republicans hid their racism and murderous economic policy with adept use of the English language.
Oooh, Ronald Reagan would never make it through a GOP primary today? Well, isn’t that sad. Saint Ronnie would never have said gay marriage is like man-on-dog! He would have just let gay people die, quietly, by the tens of thousands, because he said nothing about the disease ravaging them. At least his silence was articulate, right?
Sarah PALIN made the GOP stupid? George W. Bush stuck our entire national dick in a bees’ nest, killed thousands of American soldiers, destabilized the entire Middle East, and none of his advisors have come up with a coherent reason why. It’s been 14 fucking years and they’re still flailing around. I don’t care how many countries girlfriend can see from her house or how silly she sounds in interviews. Exactly nobody is dead because of her.
And let’s not forget, Sarah Palin did not put herself on the GOP ticket. That decision was made by John McCain, a man whose honor is so sacred to the Republicans that they’re about to elect a guy who called him a loser.
According to Daley the Republican’s have become captives to candidates like Trump, who is thriving in a system that is built upon “opportunistic soundbites above seriousness, preparedness and intellectual heft.”
One: Captives. They are powerless in the face of their complete and total ability to not elect Trump if Trump is not what they want. Pity their weakness. They can’t help it!
Two: Seriousness and preparedness. Like that of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Feith and Wolfowitz.
Three: Heaven forfend we lack the intellectual heft of the GOP of yore. Take it away, Jesse Helms:
All year, Peterson reported, “Helms campaign literature sounded a drumbeat of warnings about black voter-registration drives. . . . On election eve, he accused Hunt of being supported by ‘homosexuals, the labor union bosses and the crooks’ and said he feared a large ‘bloc vote.’ What did he mean? ‘The black vote,’ Helms said.” He won, 52 percent to 48 percent.
In 1990, locked in a tight race with an African American Democrat, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, Helms aired a final-week TV ad that showed a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter, while an announcer said, “You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.” Once again, he pulled through.
That is not a history to be sanitized.
(That’s DAVID FUCKING BRODER.)
The House majority leader, Representative Dick Armey of Texas, set off a dispute on Capitol Hill today when he referred to Representative Barney Frank, one of several openly homosexual members of Congress, as “Barney Fag.”
Mr. Armey said later that he had simply mispronounced Mr. Frank’s name.
At his 100th birthday party Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican leader, paid tribute to Mr. Thurmond, saying the nation ”wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years” had he won the presidency in 1948. The racially charged political firestorm over the next two weeks forced Mr. Lott to resign his leadership post.
When asked about the recount and how it is affecting him personally, Coleman said he starts every day with a prayer and that he knows “God wants me to serve.” Coleman did later temper those rather immodest remarks by adding that he is not indispensable and that others can serve as well.
Boy, the pre-Palin days were a paradise of learning and ideas. If only the dumb snowbilly bitch hadn’t screwed it all up for everybody.
Schmucks.
A.
Even Eisenhower wasn’t the principled moderate many today believe – he was a strong supporter of putting god on our money and the Pledge as well as backing a Constitutional amendment to allow (read: mandate) prayer in public schools.
Also, there was that whole overthrowing-of-democratic-governments-and-installing-murderous-dictatorships-by-unleashing-the-CIA thing.
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Great word usage A! I’d like to see what else you’ve written
Thank you for this. One of my university students once told me that all professional women she knew would get sweaty and red in the face when Palin came up, including me. But you are absolutley right about this and I applaud you. Thanks for enlightening me.