Recycled Tags

Shorter entire PUMA Nation/Firebaggers:

"We were right all along about the utter failure of your Magical Black Man.  We expect the Republican Congress in 2010 we help to bring to power will convince you to drop him for Hillary vs Sarah in 2012." 

It's the formal return of my dusty ol' Palinocrats tag, but I expect it to get plenty of use in the new year.

Concern Trolling For Hillary

Conservatives like Tony Blankley are being super helpful by suggesting that Dems should dump the Already Failed Obama Presidency and run Hillary instead!

Only God knows what will happen to America in the next year and a half (and he hasn't told me), but it is not implausible that by 2012, the Democratic Party will see Hillary Clinton's nomination as its best chance for keeping the White House.

Of course, if the economy comes booming back, unemployment is cut in half and there are no foreign policy disasters, President Barack Obama surely will get an unopposed nomination and probably his re-election. But if current estimates are right, that unemployment still may be close to double digits at the end of next year -- and particularly if foreign affairs go badly -- Hillary just might be the one.

It seems odd that a failed foreign policy might be the basis for a president's secretary of state to replace him on the presidential ticket, but it is beginning to set up that way.

Of course, as secretary of state, Hillary cannot plausibly be assigned any responsibility for a bad economy and high unemployment. Nor, perhaps ironically, would her fingerprints be on a stunningly unpopular health care plan that increases the national debt by trillions, increases the cost of health care premiums for the middle class and increases taxes on the middle class while also reducing the benefits to the middle class.

Nor, curiously, is she likely to be seen as responsible for the Obama administration's foreign policy. It has been reported repeatedly in major newspapers that she is one of the most marginalized secretaries of state in modern times. The White House has made little effort to disabuse the press and the public of that view. She was not even included in the president's Moscow summit. She is seen as the good soldier and team player with little voice in policy.

Of course should the Democrats be that unpopular in 2012 that Obama would be replaced by Hillary, it would mean that the Dems would be getting the crap stomped out of them anyway is the unsaid part of Blankley's little helpful theory here. But the seeds of doubt must be planted now you see. The PUMAs and Palinocrats are going to be even more useful to the GOP in 2012 than they were in 2008, and it's time to set them against the President...

The Mirror Universe Has A Blog

And I'm getting increasingly convinced that it's the Daily Beast website. There's good stuff there most days, but this week not only can you read Amy Siskind's Palinocrat manifesto on why Obama is a misogynist bastard (and Betty Cracker's takedown of her PUMA nonsense is a classic mainly because it's so easy that Cookie Monster can do it) but you can check out Conor Friedersdorf's truly weird mumbled apology for the GOP's racism problem:

In the more familiar narrative, the Republican Party is cast on the wrong side of racial issues. The reputation isn’t entirely undeserved: luminaries William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater wrongly opposed key civil rights advances, for example. And even loyalists who defend Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy can hardly abide his racist remarks about blacks and Jews.

Today’s GOP is much improved, Confederate flag loving politicos notwithstanding. Say what you will about George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Sarah Palin, but none are on the wrong side of America’s historic racial divide—just as your typical high-ranking Republican official, asked what he thinks about race, now reflexively invokes Martin Luther King’s ideal of color blindness.

That’s progress!

To his credit, Dick Cheney hates everyone equally, so it's not racism. And Bush and Palin aren't overt racists. But let's talk about the current leadership of the GOP, and let's talk about the fact that in 2009, all the GOP Senators are white.

I’d bet dollars to Freedom Fries that racial bigotry in America is now correlated with age, education level and region far more closely than political affiliation. Every so often, however, somewhere in America, a local GOP official or rank-and-file Republican disseminates an image of Barack Obama with a bone through his nose, or a drawing of a watermelon patch on the White House lawn, or most recently, a fried-chicken eating POTUS on a poster with a subhead denouncing miscegenation.

So racism doesn't correlate to party affiliation except for the numerous examples of the Republican Party officials who have demonstrated racism. Right.

What gives? How should the Republican Party deal with these situations? Probably your answer depends on whether you believe that the GOP is substantially racist, or that these incidents are anomalies—the lamentable behavior of an anachronistic subset of the party.

I'm gonna go with the former, considering you can count the number of GOP minorities in Congress on one hand...and let's face it, it's not like the GOP is nice to Latinos or Asians either.

Among the many Republicans I’ve known and with whom I’ve interacted, racism is very much the exception. Granted, I’ve lived only in few coastal American cities. Beyond them, I don’t know what the average Republican is like (or the average Democrat, for that matter).

Try growing up as an adopted black kid in western NC in the late 70's and you have a different take on the matter of what is institutionalized across the mindset of a culture.

Sheesh.

Palinocrats

There's been a lot of talk this election season about Obamicans: pissed-off moderate Republican voters (mostly male) who are sick of Bush, sick of the wingnuttery, and sick of the GOP in general.

But there's always a flipside to everything, and to the Obamicans, their opposite number is the disaffected pro-life feminist who believes that the GOP putting Palin on the ticket and Hillary's loss of Obama is proof the Democrats have abandoned feminism...the Palinocrats like the Daily Beast's Wendy Button.

The final straw came the other week when Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (a.k.a Joe the Plumber) asked a question about higher taxes for small businesses. Instead of celebrating his aspirations, they were mocked. He wasn’t “a real plumber,” and “They’re fighting for Joe the Hedge-Fund manager,” and the patronizing, “I’ve got nothing but love for Joe the Plumber.”

Having worked in politics, I know that absolutely none of this is on the level. This back and forth is posturing, a charade, and a political game. These lines are what I refer to as “hooker lines”—a sure thing to get applause and the press to scribble as if they’re reporting meaningful news.

As the nation slouches toward disaster, the level of political discourse is unworthy of this moment in history. We have Republicans raising Ayers and Democrats fostering ageism with “erratic” and jokes about Depends. Sexism. Racism. Ageism and maybe some Socialism have all made their ugly cameos in election 2008. It’s not inspiring. Perhaps this is why I found the initial mocking of Joe so offensive and I realized an old line applied: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.”

The party I believed in wouldn’t look down on working people under any circumstance. And Joe the Plumber is right. This is the absolutely worst time to raise taxes on anyone: the rich, the middle class, the poor, small businesses and corporations.

Our economy is in the tank for many complicated reasons, especially because people don’t have enough money. So let them keep it. Let businesses keep it so they can create jobs and stay here and weather this storm. And yet, the Democratic ideology remains the same. Our approach to problems—big government solutions paid for by taxing the rich and big and smaller companies—is just as tired and out of date as trickle down economics. How about a novel approach that simply finds a sane way to stop the bleeding?

That’s not exactly the philosophy of a Democrat. Not only has this party belittled working people in this campaign from Joe the Plumber to the bitter comments, it has also been part of tearing down two female candidates. At first, certain Democrats and the press called Senator Clinton “dishonest.” They went after her cleavage. They said her experience as First Lady consisted of having tea parties. There was no outrage over “Bros before Hoes” or “Iron My Shirt.” Did Senator Clinton make mistakes? Of course. She’s human.

But here we are about a week out and it’s déjà vu all over again. Really, front-page news is how the Republican National Committee paid for Governor Sarah Palin’s wardrobe? Where’s the op-ed about how Obama tucks in his shirt when he plays basketball or how Senator Biden buttons the top button on his golf shirt?

As Digby says at the end of eviscerating Wendy Button here:

I suspect there's going to be a very lucrative niche opening up for these Palin Democrats with lots of wingnut welfare to go around.

Hell, I'll go one step further: The path Sarah Palin will have to take to the Oval Office in 2012 is by walking directly on the backs of people like this. They need each other, just like Bush and Rush did.

The GOP is already maneuvering for 2012. The sycophants and water carriers are already lining up for Obamabashing, The Industry.

As I've said before, the hatred for Clinton and Bush combined will be shockingly pale compared to the pure vehemence against Obama.

His honeymoon will be over before he is even sworn in.

Starting the Palinocrats tag now, and keeping an eye out for em. There will be more.