After two years of listening to bloviating politicians and clueless tea partiers proclaim themselves as fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks, here is a checklist on how to find the preening peacock under the hawk’s clothing:
A few prominent deficit peacocks are noted below:
So there is one final characteristic of a deficit peacock….a lot of hot air.
A couple of long takes on the roots of the tea party and the myths that animate the movement:
Christine O’Donnell is the gift that keeps on giving. I am still puzzled by how she became a media personality. It is probably the result of having an attractive visage that spouts outrageous stuff (click here for an entertaining and disturbing compendium). She does not seem to have any career accomplishments that would justify make her the latest loopy darling of the tea party. Her employment the last few years was being a professional (losing) candidate in Delaware with recent mortgage troubles.
She is also the latest sanctimonious politician who does not live up to the morals she repeatedly and vehmently insists that she espouses. A decade ago she went on Bill Maher’s show to give an extended performance on the need for morals and truth in public life and how “telling the truth is always the right thing to do.” This applied even if the Nazis were at the door hunting for Jews because “God would provide a way to do the right thing righteously.”
Pity that the O’Donnell moral code does not seem to apply to her, or perhaps there is a “resume exception” to moral absolutes.
As a quick overview, she appears to have
Sounds like she needs to get back on Hannity to whitewash these claims or perhaps claim in Palinesque fashion that catching her lying infringes on her first amendment rights. As Ben Adler notes with some amusement, it may be time for right wing blowhards like Rush Limbaugh whose attacked Barack Obama and Elena Kagan as elitists because they (legitimately) attended Ivy League schools to attack her for being an out of touch coastal cosmopolitan. Its a shame that this unaccomplished insecure fibber has a punchers chance of becoming the United States Senator from Delaware.
How did it come to this? Health care reform hands by a slender thread based on the results of the Senate special election in Massachusetts to replace the Senator most associated with health care reform. The election is a toss up with much of the energy in favor of Republican Scott Brown who could take down gaffe prone State Attorney General Martha Coakley.
Martha Coakley actively sought the Senate nomination after Ted Kennedy died, but having taken the nomination ran a curiously passive campaign. This gave the opening to Scott Brown to define himself in positive terms and harness the resentment building up towards a self-entitled establishment politician. Republicans winning statewide is not unknown in Massachusetts. Deval Patrick’s election as governor in 2006, ended 16 years of Republican control of the office. But since then, elected Republicans in Massachusetts have been fairly non-existent.
Health Care reform is the other 800 lb gorilla in the room. Even though broad majorities of public opinion and a majority of the House and Senate support the public option (See link), the procedural rules of the Senate have ensured that it will not pass. The resulting compromise pleases neither the left nor the right. The question is whether the left will hold their noses and support this bill hoping to fix it down the road, just like the racial disparities in the original Social Security Act were corrected later. Unhappiness at the existing bill likely drives some of the support for Brown.
Brown is an odd candidate for teabagger support. As a New England Republican he is a liberal by the standards of the national Republican rump. The right wing which spurned a similar Republican in NY-23 (See link for previous posts) has embraced the opportunity to hand Barack Obama (as Senator DeMint of South Carolina put it) his Waterloo. Given that he seems to back the universal health care plan in Massachusetts signed into law by Mitt Romney in 2006, his opposition to the national bill is somewhat puzzling and seems based on electoral calculations.
As Andrew Sullivan notes, Democrats have to essentially hold their noses and vote for the rather unimpressive Coakley if they do not want the best chance for health care reform in a generation to slip through their fingers. See Jonathan Chait’s review of the Democrats options in such an eventuality. Another option the Democrats have is to force an up down vote on some of the more popular parts of the bill like prohibiting the use of pre-existing conditions to avoid issuing insurance policies, regulating the percentage of premiums that must be used for health care, etc. Given the Republican strategy of filibustering everything, even items that later pass unanimously, it could give the Democrats talking points to carry into the fall against the party of No.
The biggest impact of a Brown win would be psychological. Even though the number of Republican Congressmen retiring is still much higher than the number of retiring Democrats, the main stream media has already embraced the theme of Democrats abandoning a sinking ship. A Brown win will raise that meme to a crescendo and by further depressing Democratic turnout in November 2010 could make it a self fulfilling prophecy.
However, I am still not sold on Republican embrace of the tea baggers as a long term viable strategy. Even though Brown has had some of these tendencies in in the past (like questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s birth) he has generally projected a moderate image in his campaign. This was the strategy embraced by the successful Republican gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey. The fire and brimstone true believers who pejoratively refer to Republican moderates as RINOs (Republicans in name only) have had a hard time winning outside the deep south. Add to that the continuing Republican problem attracting minority voters.
Ultimately the Democratic Party brought this on themselves. The foot dragging on the bill, corrupt bargains with grasping Senators that had incredibly bad optics combined with the incredible incompetence of the Massachusetts Democrats have brought about the previously unthinkable possibility of Ted Kennedy’s successor being a Republican. It further confirms this blogger’s belief in the ability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Noticed a link to this animated film by Mark Fiore on Juan Cole’s site. Cole also links to a report by Drudge noting a claim by Fiore that this video spawned death threats. The video seems to hit some of the hyperbolic rhetoric (See previous blog) spot on. Enjoy….
Our beloved tea-baggers (aka Republicans, Fox News Anchors and other mostly white folk still upset about the result of the 2008 elections) had another gathering in Washington to protest the horrors that would happen if health care access was expanded to people who do not have it (even with this flawed bill) and to make yet another brilliant comparison on how health care equates to the holocaust. I must have missed all the midnight round-ups that seem to occur in the rest of the Western World that has universal health care. And these are the same patriots fighting tyranny who remained silent when the previous administration asserted a right to detain American citizens indefinitely without trial, to wiretap phones without warrants and claimed that they could choose what laws and constitutional provisions they wanted to follow. My rant done, I will let Jon Stewart continue his usual brilliant skewering of the hyperbolic nonsense that has enthralled the Republican base.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
Highway to Health – Last Tea Party Protest of the Year | ||||
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The Washington Independent has an interesting read on the emerging right-wing narrative to explain away the embarassing loss in NY-23, particularly amusing since they had convinced themselves that the win was in the bag.