Category Archives: GOP

We like to watch

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Anyone surprised by the GOP sex club scandal, in which a RNC staff member dropped $2K of donor money at a bondage-themed strip club in LA, just hasn’t been paying attention. Republicans surpassed Democrats as the party most likely to be getting kinky a long time ago, and the fact that this fiasco came to light on Michael Steele’s watch only adds to the merriment. After Sarah Palin, he is their greatest gift to the Dems.

Voyeur, the club in question, has a show inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. That’s weird  enough right there, and makes you wonder if the DNC might be more comfortable in a Clockwork Orange themed joint, wherein patrons eyes are taped open and forced to watch Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

But our days of self-abasement are behind us, at least for the time being. Having finally passed a health-care reform bill (now that was torture) we can afford to be high-minded in the wake of this mini-scandal. (I mean, come on — two thousand dollars? You can hardly get a week of valet parking for that in West Hollywood.) “If limos, chartered aircraft and sex clubs are where they think their donors’ money should be spent, who are we to judge?” a DNC spokesman told the Times, before covering the phone and bursting into laughter.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are just getting into the self-flagellation. Having fucked the pooch (sorry, even that is still illegal in LA) on health care, and having ceded their party’s future to a bunch of wingnuts, the GOP has only self-inflicted misery to look forward to. And I always knew they liked playing dress-up; they’ve  been pretending to be the party of average Americans for so long that it’s finally caught up with them. Hand me that paddle.

The sheik he told his boogie men

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Of all the idiotic complaints about Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9.11 plotters in a federal court in Manhattan, the most offensive is that a public trial will give him a megaphone for his propaganda — and his words will cause our city, nay, our nation to fall. 

This hysteria (fueled entirely by Republican Obama Derangement Syndrome, which makes every action of this administration the handiwork of Satan) was in plain view when Holder defended his decision before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. (Why he felt he had to defend his decision is another matter.) Breast-beating — GOP breasts, natch — was much in evidence, as when the reliably hysterical Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) claimed, “These are not normal criminals.”

No, they’re not; they are far bigger scumbags because they slaughtered people in the name of religion and righteousness and I actually do believe that if there is a Satan, he is warming up a front-row seat for them in hell right now. But why do these standard-bearers of the right have so little faith in our court system, let alone this whole free speech thing? What are they, communists? (Vietnam just shut down Facebook btw, presumably because of that pesky free-speech stuff; maybe Sessions should move there?)

The fact that KSM (as the court documents call him) and his co-conspirators were successful on 9.11 says more about our lack of readiness and intelligence failures than it does about their criminal genius. These are not superheroes from Batman; they are zealots who should have the right to spew their anti-US propaganda right in the heart of still-bustling downtown NYC before we convict them and send them to prison forever. (No martyrdom, since that’s what they asked for.)

As Holder so eloquently put it, “We need not cower in the face of this enemy. Our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm, and our people are ready.” Or as GWB liked to say, “Bring ’em on.”

A vote for the Joker

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How fitting that Heath Ledger received a posthumous Oscar for his role as Batman’s archenemy, just as the equally unhinged Republican party is trying to figure out how to do battle with its own dark nemesis. As reported in today’s Times, the GOP governors are split on whether or not to take money slated for their states in the Obama’s stimulus package. The more moderate (and seemingly sane) leaders, like Florida’s Crist and California’s Arnold, are not only frank about needing the dough but see the future of the party hinging on its willingness to cooperate with a popular president at a time of great fiscal crisis.  

And then there are the ideologically pure, like Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and Alaska’s Sarah Palin (how can we miss her when she won’t go away?) who think, since they oppose government help on principle, they shouldn’t take a dime. Or some dimes. It is no coincidence that those who are most vehemently opposed are also considering a run for president in 2010. 

This would be fun if it were simply about the dubious future of the GOP and the internecine warfare stayed within party walls, like some futuristic cage match. Let them devour each other, and the longer it takes them to heed the words of men like Crist–who said, ” We need to be nonpartisan” if we’re going to survive–the better. 

But the money they’re refusing is chiefly for expanded unemployment compensation. Taking it could force states that don’t already do so to provide relief to part-time workers who have lost their jobs. One of our economy’s dirty little secrets is that it’s supported by part-time labor, and compensating those who don’t actually work 40 hours (on one job, that is — workers with families commonly work several part-time jobs to make ends meet) seems simply fair and decent. 

And without compensation, unemployed workers can’t survive, let alone spend and stimulate the economy. In rural areas of Louisiana and Alaska, you need gas to fill your tank to drive your truck to look for a job. But Jindal, Palin, Haley Barbour et al would rather make a point than save our economy. Why ask why? In the Dark Knight,  Bruce Wayne’s faithful manservant Alfred cautions Bruce Wayne (who underneath that black armor is a bit of a bleeding heart) from looking for a motive in the Joker’s madness. “Some men,” he says, “just want to watch the world burn.”

Republican joy

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Yesterday’s bombshell arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was charged with, among other offenses, trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacated senate seat to the highest bidder, offered relief to one of our country’s most beleaguered minorities: the Republican party. An old-fashioned Democratic scandal, complete with bad hair and a challenge to tape him doing something illegal! Why, it’s better than Gary Hart.

You could hear the joy in Bay Buchanan’s voice on CNN yesterday, shortly after the news of the governor’s arrest broke, as she spoke of the drip-drip-drip of insinuations to come. You can see it in the headlines on the Drudge Report, with links to stories claiming the scandal “could dog Obama.” With the president-elect getting almost universally high marks for his transition efforts and cabinet picks, the right has had little to cheer about until now. Sure, there was the news that Obama planned on using his middle name, Hussein, when being sworn in as president. And yeah, there was his promise to give “a major address” in an Islamic capital once he takes the job. That kind of stuff is good for the black-helicopter types who flock to “resistance” sites like Grassfire.

But nothing says red meat like a tape of a former prosecutor saying that the political appointment it is in his power to make “is a fucking valuable thing, you don’t just give it away for nothing.” This is beyond brazen. This is just plain old crazy. 

Long before the election many Republicans (and some Democrats) believed that Obama’s time in the sewer of Chicago politics would be his undoing; surely some of that fecal matter would stick to his blue suit! So far no luck — but they are already pouncing on any association he may have had with the governor. Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod consulted to Blagojevich in the past (though their association ended in 2002) and both the president-elect and the governor have ties to convicted Chicago businessman Antoin Rezko. The GOP is clearly hoping this will be their Whitewater and perhaps a starter kit for a new vast, right-wing conspiracy to take down a Democratic president, even before he’s begun!

It’s clear that the party that got us into so much of our current troubles has nothing else to offer, but that’s beside the point. At Fox News (which slugged the story with the self-fulfilling headline “Blagojevich arrest puts Obama ties in the spotlight”) it’s like Christmas come early. And you know how they feel about Christmas.

Later, hater

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It’s not too early for members of the GOP to start blaming each other for Tuesday’s defeat — actually, rivals in McCain and Palin’s camps started weeks before the election — and from the sidelines it’s already making for some entertaining chatter. The very notion that the Alaskan governor could be the next face of the Republican party is sparking an extreme reaction. 

Fox News’ Carl Cameron reported yesterday that people in McCain’s camp swear that Palin did not know which countries are in NAFTA (the whole “North America” part might have tipped her off) or that Africa was a continent and not a country. And this from the people who have labeled the media as snarky and disrespectful in its coverage of McCain’s vice-presidential pick. 

What I’m hoping is that when the cannibals get done feeding on the clowns (“Does this taste funny to you?”) the deeper thinkers in the party will commence to contemplate their future. Some have already spoken of the unholy alliance between born-again, anti-intellectual red-meat reactionaries and the heirs of the “party of ideas” that arguably began with William Buckley. (That Buckley’s son was abandoned by the magazine his father started for having the temerity to endorse Obama — in a Tina Brown-edited, Barry Diller-owned publication no less — was one of the many ironies of conservatism’s collapse.) Do they have a common platform? And what might it look like?

One thing is obvious: it’s going to take more than hate. Simply saying no to whatever Obama and the Democratic congress proposes won’t work, not just because of the majority (not filibuster-proof but compelling enough to get some moderate Republicans to come along on key legislation) but because of the mood of the country. If people were as scared of taxes as Grover Norquist is, they would not have elected a candidate who pretty much guaranteed years of sacrifice, and all but promised financial hardship. 

Americans, it seems, don’t hate government: They hate government that doesn’t work, that abandons its citizens in the wake of natural disasters, and looks the other way when people profit off of man-made ones, whether it be Wall Street or Halliburton. As we return to a belief in our system, and our role in it, the right will have to come up with more than “nope” to counter hope, and try not to get deranged in the face of change. Rush Limbaugh has already vowed to be the voice of all those who did not vote for Obama. You know: losers.