Popdose: Pop Politico: “A Big Tent Built on Resentment”
eric
· 1 year ago
Good analysis. I think it'll be much more than a battle about associations. There will be a thorough vetting of Obama's voting record, too. Things that Barrack alone has to take responsibility for and can't distance himself from.
And then there's the continuing question of whether people want a government that has ever-increasing control over their lives -- what kind of cars you can drive, what temperature you are allowed to set your thermostat, what kind of gub'ment health care you'll be allowed to receive, even what kind of frakking light bulbs you are allowed to use for illumination as you write bigger tax checks to that same gub'ment.
JonCummings
· 1 year ago
What a tired. lazy bunch of sterotypical big-government boogymen you offer up, Eric. Government-run health care! Hybrid cars! Efficient light bulbs! Horrors!!!!!!!! They're the kind of Neanderthal scare tactics that might have worked in a nation that hadn't just witnessed the disastrous results of your style of government over the past eight years, but at this point voting to continue Republican priorities just seems laughable to most Americans.
Better stick to the terrorist-by-association tactics--they're your only hope. Not that they'll likely work, either.
DwDunphy
· 1 year ago
Oh, I don't know about that. Although it outwardly appears that Jeremiah Wright had little to no effect on Obama's run, he is still mentioned daily whenever there's news analysis to be had. That he still is tangentially linked, although Obama finally had to sever his ties due to Wright's more recent outrages, shows that it's still a problem to be dealt with and that Joe Average is still so easily bamboozled.
"Black men conspiring! Barack is a sleeper agent for The Panthers!" We want to think we're beyond such stupidity in the general voting populace, but damn. Watch 'em pull those strings and make the fear-mongers dance.
Dan
· 1 year ago
Can't tell us what lightbulbs we can use, but they can look at our phone records without our knowledge and without penalty. But, hey we can still use incandescent!
1Py_Korry1
· 1 year ago
The Right is going to have a tough time campaigning for "Freedom" Writ Large when their actions running the government speak otherwise.
But I do like the fact that you said "Frakking." As a HUGE BSG fan, your use of that word makes me very happy.
JonCummings
· 1 year ago
There's no doubt the Republicans--at least the right-wing 527s--will spend the entire summer and autumn trying to morph Obama into Wright and Ayers. Fortunately, these issues have already been out there and Obama has already addressed them specifically, so if Obama can continue emphasizing his own themes of bridge-building and inclusion (which subliminally reject the images of Wright and Ayers) then it's doubtful that more showings of "God damn America" will change a lot of minds.
I've been watching the "American Experience" doc on George H.W. Bush and have been struck by the dichotomy between him and Reagan (and also between 41 and 43). Reagan ran to the center in '80 with a need to take the edge off his image as a right-wing nut and attract what became the "Reagan Democrats," but then conducted a pretty conservative presidency (at least until Iran-Contra). G.H.W. Bush, on the other hand, had to run to the right to fight the "wimp factor," but once he slimed the landscape and won the election he governed as a moderate, blowing off the right to the point where many of them defected to Perot in '92.
This doc portrays a G.H.W. Bush who must have been living a nightmare the last seven years, watching his son screw up one foreign-policy situation after another that H.W. himself might have handled with much more tact, grace and competence. Of course, I've never forgiven H.W. for Willie Horton and never will--that one campaign tactic established the entire GOP slime machine that's been operating to this day--but I'm hoping that someday Brent Scowcroft or somebody will come out with a book detailing how embarrassed and ashamed H.W. has felt during this decade.
1Py_Korry1
· 1 year ago
H.W. Bush was, at heart, a center-right politician. Right wingers knew it, and there wasn't a lot H.W. Bush could do to convince them otherwise. Even Lee Atwater -- who was behind the Willie Horton ad -- had a tough time combating "The Wimp Factor" that Bush had somehow come to be associated with. Compared to Reagan, H.W. had more "tough guy" entries on his C.V. than "The Gipper." He was a baseball player in college, he was in air combat during WWII, and he ran CIA. I was no fan of him politically, but it seemed that he was unfairly painted a wimp by Newsweek when the charges of wimpiness could easily been leveled at Reagan -- who only served domestically during WWII.
Reagan's 1980 campaign had to be centrist for the most part because he had to attract not only disaffected Dems who were more socially conservative, but he had to keep the centrists in his own party happy. He already had the Goldwater supporters in his camp (and had since 1964), but to fill out his "big tent," he really needed to soften those radical edges for the prime time audience.
All Comments
And then there's the continuing question of whether people want a government that has ever-increasing control over their lives -- what kind of cars you can drive, what temperature you are allowed to set your thermostat, what kind of gub'ment health care you'll be allowed to receive, even what kind of frakking light bulbs you are allowed to use for illumination as you write bigger tax checks to that same gub'ment.
Better stick to the terrorist-by-association tactics--they're your only hope. Not that they'll likely work, either.
"Black men conspiring! Barack is a sleeper agent for The Panthers!" We want to think we're beyond such stupidity in the general voting populace, but damn. Watch 'em pull those strings and make the fear-mongers dance.
But I do like the fact that you said "Frakking." As a HUGE BSG fan, your use of that word makes me very happy.
I've been watching the "American Experience" doc on George H.W. Bush and have been struck by the dichotomy between him and Reagan (and also between 41 and 43). Reagan ran to the center in '80 with a need to take the edge off his image as a right-wing nut and attract what became the "Reagan Democrats," but then conducted a pretty conservative presidency (at least until Iran-Contra). G.H.W. Bush, on the other hand, had to run to the right to fight the "wimp factor," but once he slimed the landscape and won the election he governed as a moderate, blowing off the right to the point where many of them defected to Perot in '92.
This doc portrays a G.H.W. Bush who must have been living a nightmare the last seven years, watching his son screw up one foreign-policy situation after another that H.W. himself might have handled with much more tact, grace and competence. Of course, I've never forgiven H.W. for Willie Horton and never will--that one campaign tactic established the entire GOP slime machine that's been operating to this day--but I'm hoping that someday Brent Scowcroft or somebody will come out with a book detailing how embarrassed and ashamed H.W. has felt during this decade.
Reagan's 1980 campaign had to be centrist for the most part because he had to attract not only disaffected Dems who were more socially conservative, but he had to keep the centrists in his own party happy. He already had the Goldwater supporters in his camp (and had since 1964), but to fill out his "big tent," he really needed to soften those radical edges for the prime time audience.