House of Eratosthenes

Oh, my. And to think of all the opinions I’ve been reading and hearing about the Republicans losing because their tent isn’t big enough. Not that I ever put much stock in it. The Republican party has been met with the challenge, every two years actually, of separating out the alienation of bad ideas from the alienation of the people who hold them, and also the alienation of the ethnic groups of which some are a member. For many cycles now it has appeared to me that this has been a concern in theory more than in practice, since all the examples to be offered that there was work remaining to be done has consisted entirely of: Someone said something idiotic that could by some others be interpreted some certain way. But from all I’ve seen this year, they succeeded in this sloppy and challenging separation business better this last time, than all other elections previous. I mean really, who’d they alienate in 2012? Specifically.

Are we really at the point where you’re a misogynist sexist discriminating pig if you just don’t want to buy Sandra Fluke her birth control? On the other hand, “Obama! Fuck white people and Romney” is somewhat alienating in its own right.

No, I can see how & why Republicans lost the election, and it’s like the big elephant in the room, it’s obvious and nobody wants to talk about it: People who vote to re-elect Obama are still people, and people have it hard-wired into their circuitry to put the hatey-hate on other people. They get a charge out of handing other people their walking papers and pointing toward an exit sign. If they have to spend some of their money to do it, without any money coming in to replace it, they’ll still do it…they’ll do it until the fridge and cupboards are bare, and the furniture is being repossessed. They’ll do it until they reach some level of poverty — then they’ll stop — I’d thought we were there. This was not correct, evidently we still have a ways to go.

Electable? And I see the same thing here. The two white Christian guys who said something knuckle-headed about pregnancy from rape…nobody whose opinion counts for anything at all, from what I can tell, has even raised the question about what these guys were asked, and why. Both big losers. Well, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, if the objective is to keep narrow-minded, bigoted people out of Congress, I’m not seeing anyone bothering to check back and make sure we have any good results to offer there. So the enthusiasm for this is not for the goal, it must be for the journey. It is, quite plain and simply, a whole lot of fun to stick it to the man. That pig-headed, white Christian man who said something dumb…lots of people are voting for that reason and for none other. So there you go again: Tell someone he sucks, kick him out of something, and waltz around feeling smug and self-righteous. For a lot of our fellow citizens, that’s all voting is. Uh, budget? What’s that?

My question remains unanswered. I don’t think it’s going to get answered.

And I don’t think the Republicans have any post-mortem to conduct here, I don’t think they have anything to learn that’s really worth learning. That seems an easy call to make. Everyone who says they do, to the last man, I think would insist that whatever corrective strategies would be implemented as a result of that should be inclusive and positive, and I agree. My point is that with that restriction in place, you would end up paring your corrective action plan down to nothing. It isn’t that kind of energy. These aren’t people chafing at having been shunned or tossed out of anything. These are people who want to do the shunning.

Republicans’ best bet is to recycle exactly the same messages in 2016. Oh, that and if someone wants to bring up a question about pregnancy caused by rape, it might be helpful to ponder how & why such a question is being asked. It might make a good deal of sense to refuse to answer it because it’s off-topic. That’s allowed, isn’t it? I hear democrats doing it all the time, when the question isn’t even off-topic. This one was, or should have been, since I never did hear of a proposal prohibiting abortion even when a woman has been raped…not even sure you can put such a proposal on the table right now.

Ann Coulter says, don’t blame Romney. There are some good reasons to agree with her on this. Romney did a fine job, especially in that “high altitude” debate, and I think Republicans across the nation got a much better performance out of his team than they could ever have expected. And that goes for Paul Ryan as well. Still, it must be said, we were warned. The pattern is holding up: When the candidate’s credentials as an establishment GOP dude, glitter more brightly than his credentials as a common-sense constitutional-scholar “government is the problem not the solution” guy…he gets knocked in the dirt. If we’re looking for something to keep in mind in 2016, I suggest that might be it.

Well said. You nailed what’s been keeping me up at night since the election — we, as a nation, have apparently decided that “f*ck ’em” qualifies as both a political philosophy and an exercise of civic virtue. We on the right have been noting for years that Democratic politics is little more than politicized resentment; we’re going to see the proof of that for four more years (at least).

Most frighteningly, this attitude seems to have infected the right as well. I’ve been reading that Romney polled 3-5 million less votes than John frickin’ McCain, a.k.a. George W. Bush part II, a.k.a. the guy who probably didn’t have a realistic chance to be elected dogcatcher in 2008. How the hell is that even possible, given, you know, the utter collapse of the American economy, unless lots of folks on the right politicized their resentment by staying home?

The total number of Romney votes last Tuesday is the total number of actual adults in America today.
- Severian | 11/08/2012 @ 07:24
Yeah, I just read that within the last twenty minutes or so, something like 57 million for Romney as opposed to 60 million for Mac. I was shocked.

Time to stop blaming Sarah Palin for anything…
- mkfreeberg | 11/08/2012 @ 07:28
“57 million for Romney as opposed to 60 million for Mac”

Asshole Ron Paul supporters, who must be so very proud of themselves for staying home and letting Barry win.

Doubt me? Went to a fairly large Tea Party, with national leaders and some local politicians(who won BTW), back in April and there was a BUNCH of ‘em, spouting off about how they weren’t going to compromise their principles and vote for Romney.

Hear ‘em on the radio, (still) see their signs up ALL over…on blogs…the libertarian fuckwads.

Congratulation dipshits.
- tim | 11/08/2012 @ 08:06
Yup. Dipshits indeed. At least their principles remain pure and unsullied…. and, in a way, augmented, as they’re going to be so much more right in fully socialist America. As I said, the number of Romney votes = the number of actual adults in America.

If we’re ever going to be competitive again, we need to steal that trick the liberals have — you know, the one where they get to make a big noise about principle X, and then vote to re-elect a guy who spent all four years explicitly doing Not-X, but somehow still get to feel all righteous and principled and stuff about it. Admittedly I live near a college, so the dumbassery is quite a bit more concentrated, but I seriously saw signs like “vote for peace; vote Obama” and “vote change; Obama 2012.” You know, because voting to re-elect a fucking incumbent is somehow a vote for “change,” just like a vote for a guy who not only continued, but expanded, the evil Boooooosh! policies in Afghanistan is a vote for peace.

Since Paultards apparently can’t grasp that the choices aren’t between Libertarianism and Liberalism but between Socialism and Not-Socialism, we need to somehow convince them that a vote against socialism is just as valid a virtue fix as a vote for legal pot.
- Severian | 11/08/2012 @ 08:24
It would have been smart of the Republican establishment to have made an attempt to bring the Ron Paul/Tea Party folks into the convention and even into the campaign. It was stupid to refuse to seat the Ron Paul delegates. Would it have killed them to have had Sarah Palin or Ron Paul speak at the convention? Could they have made an effort to show exactly what the Party stands for? (Maybe that would be hard, since we talk a lot about small businesses then spend time sucking up to corporations.) Could we have talked about how on line universities are changing the face of education and how businesses should be hiring folks with training from those instead of conventional universities? How about talking about the long history of the Democratic party as racists? Why do we never ever pin the Dems down on trash talking?

I was thinking today about the benefits of plain speaking versus political correctness. I think folks are tired of having to use all these mushy sounding terms to avoid being “offensive”. Could we just once have someone say “You claim it’s racist to talk about all the people on food stamps. Most of the people on food stamps are white. How is it racist to talk about white people? Is it racist to vote for a Presidential candidate because he is from your race?” and I could go on and on in that vein. The Bain attacks could have been deflected by talking about Pelosi’s financial success by using government contacts. We could have really connected the dots on the green energy cronyism. We could have hammered home how no one in the housing collapse has been prosecuted under Obama’s watch. Would have been good to educate people on robo-signing and how folks with a paid off mortgage have had their houses foreclosed on? How about pointing out that Obama wasn’t behaving like a President?

Mainly, I think we need a way to educate people, somehow getting around the MSM. Have you seen any of the “Men that Built America” series on the History Channel? It’s about the Robber Baron era and pretty good stuff. Most people in this country are clueless about our history. What they tend to get is the revisionist stuff, about the Founding Fathers being racist or how minorities played a bigger role in everything than the majority. The Ken Burns documentaries have been pretty well received. Obama:2016 did well at the box office. We can’t make a case for what we believe in, if we haven’t managed to explain exactly what it is that we DO believe in.
- teripittman | 11/08/2012 @ 11:18

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“[expletive] White People”Thursday, November 8th, 2012

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Thursday, November 8th, 2012