LM-
I had mailed Jesse about Lowry's warning about Huckabee, citing his so-called irreconciliable flaws, and noting that Lowry's National Review has endorsed Romney. What, Romney has no irreconciliable flaws? What a joke. Like I told Doc, I've said it before and I'll say it 'til next November, whoever gets the Democratic nomination, and whoever gets the Republican nomination, if the Democrats can't pound them into the dirt, then the Democrats don't deserve to win a Presidential election ever.
In which case, both parties go up in smoke, and politics becomes a free-for-all the likes of which we have not seen since Reconstruction.
There's probably not enough popcorn in America for that one.
LM, marvelous post and great assessment. I'd only add (having had something of a ringside seat) that the GOP's romance with the fundie horde started all the way back about 1977 -- they couldn't elect Reagan without them, and that was the first election in which the religious right found its muscle.
So the shtupping you describe is actually a gangbang that's been going on for upwards of three decades, not just one. It took a long, long time for Boomer fundies to give up their dream of marrying the handsome prince and taking over the world -- but the more practical Gen X is taking over, and they're asking hard questions about what in the hell they're getting for the screwing.
The answer, of course, is nothing -- which is why Gen X is disengaging from the GOP and its battles. Honey, if he hasn't married you by now, he ain't gonna. Ever.
And the Millennials don't even want to talk about this shit at all. They find it embarrassing and hateful, and have no use for Bush and his minions at all. They're working on a whole new strategy, one that moves back to the communities and states and brings the world to Jesus one soul at a time.
Mrs R:
"... moves back to the communities and the states ..."
That sounds awfully close to Ron Paul's line.
And I seem to remember that "local solution" meme was the Reagan Administration's favorite justification for cutting social programs.
Just rememberin'.
OT - LM, you've seen this, I assume:
http://www.latimes.com/business/...ack=2&
cset=true
Cherish: it's simply the fact. A lot of the GOP's power base, including but not limited to the religious right, is assuming they're going to lose big next year.
Given that assumption, they're already pulling back their money and organizers to the counties and states, so they'll have a strong infrastructure in place if the Dems really fuck it up in time for 2012.
You don't have to be Ron Paul to figure out that this is smart politics. But your remark about "local solutions" is a bit of a leap -- I'm talking about political organization, not policy.
i love that movie too LM. the idea of viewing it as a part of a trilogy is interesting.
netflix here i come!
i've been telling people that the ad where huckabee sincerely and with a straight face delivers the joke lines from the chuck norris website show that he can lie, and look like he really means it. of course, that's required for anyone who wants to make their living selling god juice.
"A lot of the GOP's power base, including but not limited to the religious right, is assuming they're going to lose big next year." - Mrs Robinson
Wish I could say that for some of my coworkers, who still think GWB's some sort of misunderstood genius and HRC's the living embodiment of Evil.
Beautiful post, and spot-on citation. May I also recommend the original book versions of both A Place in the Sun (An American Tragedy) and Elmer Gantry? Things that are lost in the films (can't help it - it's the difference of medium) also speak volumes about today: the wide differential in wealth, the vain dream of breeching class barriors, and in the case of Gantry, the dream of the breakdown of the separation of Church and State. Gantry is a dead-on inspection of the very kind of desire for a Christian America we find today. Reading the book now seems much more timely than when I read it for the first time in the '60's. For added irony, try watching still another film classic, Inherit the Wind. Watching that film in today's world is almost unbearable, given what we are now again going through in our schools.
Mrs. R:
"your remark about "local solutions" is a bit of a leap -- I'm talking about political organization, not policy."
Ah, yes, I see where I misunderstood.
Best wishes to you.
Elmer Gantry and Inherit the Wind are two of my all time favorites. Gantry really freaked me out the first time I saw it. Sheriff Andy, a bad guy? The casting made it even more startling and effective. Patricia Neal was wonderful. What great character actors were in both movies.
cebm:
Ah, you;re thinking of the equally prescient, and disturbing “A Face In The Crowd” with Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau.
That's from the even rougher trilogy from the middle of the decade—Face In The Crowd, Some Came Running, and of course, the toxic, brilliant Sweet Smell Of Success.
Ha Ha! I can hear Krauthammer now, grumbling to himself in a darkened corner of his study - "Why that dirty little pederast - if I could only get up out of this chair - why I'd..."
Theodore Dreiser based An American Tragedy on a 1906 murder trial of the type that were (and still are) grist for the tabloid mill.
JRE vs. HuckaBee! What a cage match.
Millions of American heads exploding as both candidates pull no punches.
It will be great. And yeah, JRE will win.
Both contests.
.
.
This is a minor thing, since the movie analogy is just a metaphor supporting what I think is a spot-on analysis.
If I'm understanding the plot accurately, demi-scion George has been wooing co-worker "Al" but loses interest when he meets upscale Angela. In trying to dump Al he loses both and himself. Via your analogy, Al is the fundies, Angela is the business elite, and George is the Republicans? Cuz in the real world George was always conning Al and delivering to Angela. School prayer, disappearing Roe v Wade, state-sponsored religion, those were all possible any time since '84, most recently 2000-06 with the Republican majority in Congress. Instead apparently a lot of post offices were renamed and obligatory pork distributed.
Fundamentalism is now a wedge issue in the conservative elites (and would-be elites, which is where the right-blogosphere comes in), and politics is becoming a wedge issue among the fundies, where the powerful ones want Giuliani or Romney for business as usual while the rubes flock to Huckabee as possibly doomed but bearing recognizable Christian principles, including the one of helping the poor, unusually rare in a national Christian politician.
This election could turn out to be the one where the leadership of the Rs (I am so tired of typing that word) is decided. In the fight between the fundies and the business elites, the latter are weakened by the ongoing corruption investigations (financial and sexual), loss of Lott, and collapse of the K Street strategy. Are they strong enough to keep the party in their hands when they're relying on the fundies to get their vote out? Will losing the election weaken the party hierarchy? If the elites do continue to hold the reins, will the fundies finally decide to splinter into a party they can control from the ground up?
I've always felt that if the Republicans really made clear what they stand for, the electorial picture would be very different. Huckabee is saying everything they've been saying for years; only they worry he really means it.
Hmm. Where to begin.
The "George Eastman" character--I wonder how that played in Rochester, NY.
The GOP has the stink of defeat about them, and they know it, and the internecine warfare we're seeing is the direct result of the decision to destroy Rockefeller in 1964. They don't like what they bought, and they're trying to return it 44 years later.
I wonder if Sully realizes he just channelled the Communists: "the worse, the better."
I for one plan a rouseing hour or tow of told you so's with my few conservative aqutances. I have for years been harping on hte theocrats as the biggest threat to democracy out there.
Say this for Sully: Bad as he is, he's not bat-shit insane. I realize that smacks of damning with faint praise, but there ya go.
The coming Rethuglican Crack-Up should be most amusing to witness. There's some pretty grotesque Egos on display with their Presidential candidates, particularly those of them who have blast furnaces for tempers (Ghouliani, St. McCain) and are little used to even polite disagreements, let alone criticism.
As for Fuckabee, what can you say that isn't patently bleeding obvious? If he manages to snatch the nomination and loses Big-time, that should be a nice repudiation of the Fundies' nasty little agenda, and on a scale that'll be impossible for the country to ignore...Not that that'll shut them up in the least, I daresay...
The religious right got their +1 on the Supreme Court, but after all the work they put in for all those years they still won't get that second vote to put them over the top. Alito for O'Conner was quite a coup for them but to have a Federalist Society member take over a Breyer, Stevens, Ginsburg or Souter seat would've been the major prize.
Looks like Stevens has hung on long enough to poke them in the eye.
The recent revival of A Place in the Sun on TCM has been good to see, another hint that whoever programs them has a pretty good ear for the times. In trying to check out the name of the defendent in the original murder case (Chester Gillette; no refuge for the filmmakers there!) I ran up on an interesting page about some of the other legalities surrounding the incident. Among other things, seems Dreiser and Sternberg/Paramount got into it about the content of JvS's 1931 version of An American Tragedy.
All About Eve was also 1950. With that movie, Sunset Blvd, The Third Man, Adam's Rib, Born Yesterday, Harvey, The Asphalt Jungle, Broken Arrow, and The Men among the Oscar-eligible, it has to be one of the better years for Hollywood studio pictures.
LM, the implosion is part and parcel of what Digby and Atrios are talking about when they say: Watchit, every crime will be laid at the feet of the Dems.
If you were Rove, you'd know the worse the implosion, the louder the howling monkeys, and the more the Dems are going to take it in the face in the name of putting this all behind us. I bet this is Karl's favorite Christmas present.
redoubt wrote: I wonder if Sully realizes he just channelled the Communists: "the worse, the better."
That also sounds like what Ralph Nader was preaching in 2000.
I don't buy it. In the end the Sully's and Ace's of the GOP will vote for the (R) just because it can't be worse than the alternative.
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