Conservative leaders and pundits are suddenly teeming to address the elephant in the room, the Birthers. For months, there was scant Media coverage of the Obama denialist phenomenon, save bits in the Washinton Independent and the papers in Chicago and Honolulu. Now there are major articles almost every day. (For samples of the stories, see the Obama Conspiracy Theories Media page.)
From the liberal side the articles ridicule the birther movement. Conservatives not only ridicule the birther movement, but they say that the birthers are hurting the Republican party. It’s not only the birthers that are hurting the Republicans. The Conservative fringe has driven out moderates and literate folk, leaving not much more than stupid old southern white guys (according to the Daily KOS birther poll). Republicans in the last election, by running the likes of Sarah Palin (fundamentalist, unqualified) and stooping to the worst kinds of propaganda and mud slinging, already set the tone for the fringe ascendency: the Birthers, the Tea Parties and the Citizen Grand Juries. This is what happens when Rush Limbaugh becomes leader.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_shenemans_sketchpad/
Thats a pretty funny cartoon. What’s most funny is it’s making more fun of Obama than the Birther.
As for Limbaugh, it is interesting how people on the other side of the fence can not stand a person that 95% of the time accurately points out the flaws in their party or leaders of their party. I leave 5% for his getting carried away moments, but he quickly gets back on subject. It’s those brief moments his haters point him out for and make judgment on him. I could only pray the President was right half that much. So bring on the Rush Haters, tell me what Olbermann has taught you.
Ive only listened to Rush twice but I can say from what I heard it’s the other way around (95% nonsense that made me angry, 5% semi reasonable conservative ideas).
Last time I heard him, he spent most of his time ranting about how Obama was a socialist and wanted to take his money away.
“Thats a pretty funny cartoon. What’s most funny is it’s making more fun of Obama than the Birther. ”
How bizarre you see it that way. Of course, the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll control question told us birthers are dumb.
truth proves it, birthers are dumb.
“So bring on the Rush Haters, tell me what Olbermann has taught you.”
So disliking Rush Limbaugh means that one has to listen to Keith Olbermann? I wish I had gotten the memo, because I decided that Rush Limbaugh was a fool seventeen years ago, before Keith Olbermann was even heard of.
(Incidentally, I decided that Limbaugh was a fool when I was a moderate conservative.)
I’d argue that this has been going on for much longer than the last election. This has been building up arguably since Reagan courted the fundamentalist and evangelical vote, and certainly since Newt Gingrich became House Speaker in 1994.
In fact, 1994 was the watershed year for me. It was the year that I started drifting away from conservatism, and Newt Gingrich was the main instigator of it. I saw that the Republicans were going to destroy themselves by chasing after the fringe elements of conservatism. Gingrich seemed to be perfectly happy bring on anyone—militia nuts, far-right fundamentalists, creationists, anti-abortion extremists, etc.—as long as he could climb the greasy pole. It’s no accident that the egregious ex-Senator Rick Santorum was one of the people ushered in during the Gingrich Revolution.
I could see this too in the deterioration of the National Review from a fairly sober magazine of political analysis into a crank’s letterbox of complaints and conspiracies surrounding the Clinton Administration. I think their current lineup of ‘thinkers’ shows exactly the thing I mean. Take Jonah Goldberg, who is as thorough an idiot as I’ve ever seen. Back in the days before NR’s intellectual implosion, Goldberg wouldn’t have been able to get a job as a gofer at the magazine, let alone become one of its editors. But he was hired as payment for services rendered to the Get Clinton Machine by Lucianne Goldberg. As the intellectual character of conservatism degraded, this gravy train for political pundits started chugging along.
The Bush Presidency was the apotheosis of this trend. As long as we’re giving out patronage to the untalented scions of Republican Party players, why not make one of them president of the United States?
1994 we lose you then this year the idiot Pennsylvania Senator. It seems to me a major problem with the Republican party is they need a faster method of shaving off the dead weight.
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Oh, I thought you were already down to the stupid southern old white men.
“1994 we lose you then this year the idiot Pennsylvania Senator. It seems to me a major problem with the Republican party is they need a faster method of shaving off the dead weight.”
So when will you be leaving the Republican Party?
If you don’t want to take what I say seriously, that’s fine. I already knew you were an idiot. However, thoughtful people with a concern for the longevity of their party might want to take a look at my former home state of Kansas, where the state Republican Party has been completely overrun by nuts. Moderates bolting the party threw the governorship to Kathleen Sebelius.
Rush Limbaugh is nothing more than a vile demagogue.
His stock in trade is appealing to the lowest common denominator. When he’s through, he’ll be a footnote like Walter Winchell, or George Jessel.
I’m Jewish and I can’t stand those two.
P.S. I was never a registered Republican, because all this happened before I turned 18.
Yeah, remember the Kansas school board and evolution? An international laughingstock.
I’m surprised they didn’t vote to make the tooth fairy the official state bird.
I wish I could forget it. Kansas flirted with creationism twice, once in 1999 and once in 2005. I lived just thirty miles away from Topeka, in Lawrence, KS (a small college town that grew up around the University of Kansas), and I was there at the school board meeting when they made their second foray into teaching creationism. It was ludicrous.
Moreover, they used my taxes to bring creationists on junkets from all over the country, including one spokesperson for a Turkish cult (Bilim Arastirma Vakfi)!
They all got turfed out in the next election, just like in 1999, and I hope that all future KS school board members have learned their lesson.
Don’t laugh. Rick Perry just picked Gail Lowe, a creationist, to head the Texas Board of Education. More stupid southerners in the works.
“Rick Perry just picked Gail Lowe, a creationist, to head the Texas Board of Education. More stupid southerners in the works.”
More opportunity for our nieces. Both are ethnically Chinese. One has a Phd in biomedical engineering, the other is in med school.
Way to go Texas.