Romney Derangement Syndrome lives on
Now that the election is over, and Mitt Romney has retired to private life, I’ve noticed that many of the newest articles about him in the MSM and posts about him in the blogosphere seem to engender a host of incredibly vicious personal comments from the sore winners on the left.
It would seem odd, wouldn’t it? Romney lost, and almost certainly will not enter national politics again. He waged a rather polite campaign under daunting circumstances. He’s clearly a good man on the personal level, whatever anyone may think of his politics.
And yet the hatefest goes on. Much of it is just an example of the free-floating rage on the left, a relic of the extreme Bush Derangement Syndrome in which they macerated for eight long years. But there wasn’t a similar post-election rage at John McCain. Why?
I think it’s because Obama sets the tone and the rest follow. Obama’s campaign against McCain was neither especially vicious nor especially personal. But Obama’s fight against Romney was almost entirely that, and relentless too. The focus was class warfare (one of Obama’s favorites) and attacks on Romney as a person, and the minions picked up on the “rich white guy out to exploit the people” meme and ran with it. They are still running, hard and fast.
Here’s a comment I found at PJ that describes the phenomenon exactly:
In what kind of twisted mind is it necessary to continue to vilify the guy to the point of denying his own humanity? The election is over, he is not coming back. There is no need to continue to play the smear games. The most frightening thing to me is that many people seem to have internalized the hate. They cannot turn it off. It is not a thoughtful reaction, but instead a reflex. It demonstrates the power of the media in relentlessly teaching the Obama followers their talking points. Now that the talking points have been internalized, [they] are apparently not easy to exorcise.
I would add that it’s not just the power of the media, it’s the power of Obama himself. He acts as a smooth, subtle releaser for hatred of the right and all Republicans (not just Mitt Romney), by blaming the other party as bad actors to a degree I really haven’t seen in previous presidents.
I saw the results myself, to my shock, among quite a few of my friends right before the election. I didn’t expect them to support Romney or even like him. But there was gratuitous, vicious hatred, a kind of group festival of contempt for him. Remember, it was said that Obama had “contempt” for Romney? Stuff like this filters down even to people who are relatively politically uninvolved. When my friends parrot talking points like that, you know the message has been effective. And although I haven’t talked to these particular people about it since the election, I’d be very surprised if their hatred has dissipated—or ever will.
That seems to be the price of running for president on the Republican ticket these days. How many decent people would be willing to pay it? It’s the flip side of the unhealthy veneration of Obama, by the way. From the start, one of the “tells” that something was very very wrong with Obama was not just the near-worship of the man, but his not-so-subtle encouragement of what you might call a cult of personality.
An ominous sign, both psychologically and politically.
Maybe there was no post-election rage directed at John McCain after the 2008 election, but there certainly was a hate fest directed at Sarah Palin. Palin derangement syndrome at least matched Bush derangement syndrome.
nohype: correct. But that was pretty much MSM-directed. I don’t recall Obama having much to do with it, except that I don’t recall him denouncing it, so in a way that was the green light for it.
You may have seen the Dana Milbank column, in the Washington Post, that attacks Romney for not chastising the GOP in Congress to cave in to Obama on the fiscal issue. Through his peculiar reasoning, Milbank has determined that Romney has a duty to do so.
Milbank is predictably acting as a dutiful sock puppet for Obama. What is striking is the vitriol against Romney that is contained in the comments. Disgusting and bordering on shocking.
First, IMO, the left is such a loose consortium of mutually exclusive (and oftentimes contradictory) special interest groups, that the only way to create even a semblence of unity is to have a common enemy. Once one establishes that enemy the roots grow deep (as Neoneocon points out). This is the specific outgrowth of the oft repeated observation that “Republicans think Democrats are wrong. Democrats think Republicans are evil.” The targeting of Dick Cheny as “Darth Vader” was not accidental; it was specifically designed to connote a gut-churning image of evil (ever wonder why George Lucas used a Nazi shaped helmet for the Lord of the Dark Side?). Just look at Iran. We’re long past the shah and “Mar Bar Carter” and yet thirty years later the U.S. is still “The Great Satan,” and Obama, the most Islamophilic president ever, is still derided in the Middle East as the leader of that great enemy. It’s the same pattern being played domestically.
Second, it’s about ginning up emotion, i.e. marketing the “evil Republican enemy.” The Dems appeal to emotion almost naturally, and Republicans can’t underdstand why the public doesn’t recognize or respond to the lack of logic. It’s not about logic. Thus, logical inconsistencies or hypocrisies are irrelevant. It’s emotion that matters and all that matters is that the peasants continue to march against the great, evil Republican enemy. There is a line by Dennis Hopper in Waterworld when he gets the residents on the Exxon Valdez to start rowing. Asked where they’re going, he says something like I don’t know, but they’ll row for three days before they figure that out. Kind of sums it up. Why do they hate Republicans? They don’t care why as long as they keep on hating them to give the left a political edge—any flimsey excuse will do just as well as any other. (I refer back to my earlier comments that conservative billionaires need to establish broad based media outlets to counter precisely this kind of emotional “Emmanuel Goldstein” marketing of “news” from the left).
Third, keep in mind that it’s all about superficial appearances. It doesn’t matter that true diversity is never achieved, only skin color counts, or that poverty is truly reduced, only redistribution of wealth is important. It doesn’t matter that programs need to be fiscally responsible or produce results and long as they look like they’re being fiscally responsible and producing results. That’s why a $900 Pentagon hammer receives such scrutiny, but the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on conventions and “retreats” by bureaucrats trating themselves to vacations are ignored.
Yeah, it happened to Palin too. Thing is, the Romney people thought they were immune and, I suspect, bought into the Palin hate themselves. But the amount of hatred floating about in the liberal community, not only for Republicans, conservatives, and Tea Party members, but for climate skeptics or anyone else who doesn’t parrot the party line, is disturbing. Sometimes I feel like I am living through the early days of the Nazi takeover of Germany. And this is only the third comment, so not an example of Godwin’s law đ
Maybe we need a candidate on the right who isn’t a particularly decent man. Patriotic, yes, but a groin-kicking, eye-gouging knife-fighter who likes nothing more than throwing dirt into his opponent’s face and then sucker-punching him. Somebody more at home in a dark alley than a mahogany-paneled corner office. Quick wits in verbal combat and a thick skin would also be required in order to withstand the media assault that would surely occur. I can’t think of any Republicans currently in office who would fit this description, but there must be somebody out there on our side who does. We don’t need a saint, or someone who will stay on the “high ground”. We need someone who can win.
And these folks think they are the moral and tolerant ones.
As Sheridan Whiteside said, “I may vomit.”
Good piece referenced on Insty that the biggest losers if zero’s plan goes through are the high-earning people in the bluest states.
Not the rich who make money on cap gains, or the urban land speculators and so forth. The people with high W2 income, such as lawyers, doctors, tech workers, financial professionals. They will take the biggest hits. Due to cost of living differentials, including housingn prices and mortgage size, losing the mort int ded will hit them harder than the folks in the lower-priced red states.
Good. They voted for it, they can have the worst of it.
Makes me feel a bit better in a schadenfreudian sort of way.
Sounds like Orwell’s Two Minutes of Hate.
Obama ran the past four years on “it’s all Bushes fault” and he’s going to run the next four years on “it’s all the Republicans fault”. He has to find somebody to blame and demonize. Obama has a bad case of innocent bystander. He is always a victim.
They’re adolescents who can’t control themselves. Early in the first term, Valerie Jarrett talked about speaking “truth to power.” No, Valerie, at that point You were power. Time to grow up, take responsibility, be the establishment. They never did, and never will by all accounts. A gang of adolescents elected by a nation of adolescents.
Neo-
speaking of PJ Media and RDS — I read this a few days ago:
http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2012/11/29/stay-hungry-honey-boo-boo/
The author Michael Walsh, whom I have not read before, claims in his Bio to be a conservative. But I didn’t get that sense from his criticism of Romney, which seemed to me was mostly personal in nature.
Besides being an “I told you so” article, the author pretty much agreed with all of the crap that Obama exploited during the campaign – “he’s not one of us”, “not a job creator”, priviledged background, and so on. He credits Obama for working tirelessly as to gain power, but gives no credit to Romney for hard work in his personal and professional achievements. So much of it was dismissive of Romney as anything but a rich, out of touch phony, it would have fit nicely on a liberal newspaper’s editorial page. The article levels the charge he wasn’t “hungry” like Obama. Maybe true, but I’m not sure the type of hunger Obama has is healthy or something that’s a good thing for the rest of us.
I guess if theres a point to my point, I agree with you there’s a visceral dislike of the guy. I believe the hatred people feel for him is rooted in jealousy more than any other emotion. It’s easy for people who are not as lucky to have been born into money, to pretend they’d be successful too. But that’s seldom the case with the sons and daughters of the wealthy. Whatever you think of the guy as a candidate, he isn’t lazy or selfish or aloof, but that is the stereotype he’s been assigned.
Mr. Frank Says:
December 5th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Except it’s constant.
McCain, was never confrontational and often kittenish in dealing with candidate O. Romney, on the other hand, confronted him, physically, on stage, in public, all of which was nationally televised and discomfiting, it seems, to many women. The man was not afraid of the black man or of the inevitable epithet. The man stood up to the to the charlatan. You may disagree with O as did McCain but you may not breach the liege relationship â know thy place.
I take that as O’s personal contempt. His posse, the Left, has never thought it wise to defeat an opponent but not destroy him personally. It is meant as retribution, warning, and threat.
southpaw,
“I believe the hatred people feel for him is rooted in jealousy more than any other emotion.”
IMO The class-warfare that the left practices is essentially this: Consistently look up the economic ladder and be jealous of those above you; never look down the ladder to realize that there are people below you looking up and being jealous of you.
This is, I think, and easily exploitable flaw that the right could use, but no one that I’ve seen had the smarts or the fortitude to do it. Marco Rubio recently came close when he noted that you can’t improve the economy by making rich people poor, you must work at making poor people rich. Nice, clean, concise and easy to understand. Exposure? Virtually nil.
Solution: Conservative billionaires establishing more Fox News type netorks and helping the likes of pjmedia go mainstream.
Mutual hatred of the enemy is the only glue that keeps the various special interests of the left together. They all like govt handouts, but they are often competitive with each other. Vicious hatred builds solidarity.
In Florida we were besieged with tv commercials – and for the first time in my memory, the nasty and petty attack ads that directly smeared the GOP candidate as a PERSON did not come from any of the PAC or other special interest organization — they were directly from the Obama campaign “I’m Barak Obama and I approve this message.”
Obama and his people are vile human beings. It was a big disappointment to me that Romney agreed to have lunch with that scum. That merely serves to validate and justify the PERSONAL attacks on his CHARACTER, which were a highlight of the ads.
I would have preferred if Romney had issued a press release along the line of: “I am flattered that the President has invited me to visit; and I am a true believer in moving forward in a spirit of cooperation following any election. However, since I am not a Washington legislator, and there is no cooperating on issues of national importance I could provide, I am respectfully declining the invitation. While my campaign message was that Mr. Obama was no longer the right man to serve Americans to turn around our economny; in contrast my family was hurt by the non-stop, relentless, vile and viscious lies and personal smears that were the cornerstone of the President’s advertising campaign. Therefore, I do not feel it is appropriate to simply pretend all of that never occurred, but I wish the President the all the best in his upcoming term.”
But…..the members of the Party of Stupid NEVER have the balls to take a stand like that, and to hell with worrying about whatever the press wants to say about it.
Go along to get along. Go along to get along.
As for what Libs have been told to think about Romney, when I would read comments on newspaper type sites, the brainwashed lefty refrain I see is not just the out of touch plutocrat stuff but that Romney was a LYING, LIAR who does nothing but LIE, LIE, LIE.
I was thinking the other day about apologies. If the Repubs made a comment that was out of line (Romney’s 47%, Atkins/mourdock), they issued a public apology. But the apology was never accepted and Lefties continued to hammer the issue as though there was never an apology made. Contrast that with someone like Bob Costas, that can make an apology about a stupid remark and that’s supposed to be that.
I guess the moral of the story is that Repubs should stop apologizing.
George Pal @ 2:04,
“Romney, on the other hand, confronted [Obama], physically, on stage, in public, all of which was . . . discomfiting, it seems, to many women.”
And a re-play of Rick Lazio approaching Hillary Clinton years earlier in the debate for the new York Senate campaign.
Ann Althouse recently made the pertinent observation on the criticism of the critics of Susan Rice: If women (choose any protected class here) can not be criticized because they are (a protected class) then that inhibits our right to freedom of speech. Should we not, then, strive to keep (protected classes) out of public life so as to safeguard our freedom of speech?
Her point, of course, was not advocating reducing minority participation, but noting how absurd the claim is that one shan’t be criticized simply because one is a member of a “protected” class.
So why would someone who is discomfitted by a Republican who does not “play nicely” together support an entire political party that “plays nicely” with no one?
It’s not ‘Romney’ Derangement Syndrome, he’s just the current figurehead. Before him it was Sarah Palin, before her it was the perennial favorite George Bush and Dick Cheney. Before them, it was Reagan’s lackey, Bush senior and before him Reagan “the teflon President”, then Nixon, all the way back to the original; “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” Barry Goldwater
As T puts it it’s, Evil Republican Enemy Derangement Syndrome. Or E.R.E.D.S.
Occam’s Razor: Leftists are willing puppets of Satan.
The Left is ALL ABOUT hate any more. The reason why it didn’t get focused on McCain was because it was still using Bush as a target, and whatever there was was focused quite clearly on Palin, and it STAYED there.
But now, Bush is too far in the past, and Palin has dropped out of the limelight, so it had to move forward, and Romney became the target… it’ll stay there for the time being, until it’s ready to focus it on the next GOP candidate… like Marco Rubio.
‘But there wasnât a similar post-election rage at John McCain. Why?’
Because John McCain was one of them.
neo, it is all tribalism. Your liberal friends have open disdain for anyone not in the liberal ‘tribe.’ They are part of a mob, as Ann Coulter says. This is human nature but it isn’t progressive.
It is time to fight back. Tell them that it is too bad Obama is not white. If he was white, you could say what you think about him and his policies.
“..Romney became the target⊠itâll stay there for the time being, until itâs ready to focus it on the next GOP candidate⊠like Marco Rubio.”
I read somewhere that the media’s attempted “Palinization” of Rubio is already underway.
Whoever poses the biggest potential threat to Hillary or whoever the left decides to put up for our “show” election in 2016 (since I no longer have any faith in an honest outcome – I think we’re done; stick a fork in us), will be relentlessly vilified.
It worked with Palin. ALL democrats and at least 25% of Republicans know, with 100% certainty, that she is a Moron. It worked with Romney. “Etch a Sketch,” out of touch plutocrat, selfish billionaire, phoney, liar, tax cheat, uncaring heartless capitalist who doesn’t care if 47% of Americans (including all retirees and VETERANS! GASP!!! Say it ain’t so!!!) f–king DIE of starvation or lack of medical care.
Will they pick “he’s an ignorant fool” narrative to run with, with Rubio? (Palin, Reagan, Quayle, W) Will they pick “he may be smart, but he’s a mean spirited right wing extremist” as the narrative? (Dole, Nixon, Goldwater – and it would have been used for Gingrich too – except on top of that would have been Gingrich’s slimy (3 times a loser in marriage) character – a double whammy). Rich out of touch plutocrat (Bush Senior, Romney) probably won’t work with Rubio.
I’ll predict the mocking, Palin idiot route. Some quote will be taken completely out of context and repeated ad nauseum until it becomes the “truth.” SNL probably already has somebody auditioning to play the role of Rubio — “I can sees Coooba from my front poorsh eeen Miamee” (Remember – it’s not racist if a liberal does it!).
We shall see.
“He waged a rather polite campaign under daunting circumstances. Heâs clearly a good man on the personal level, whatever anyone may think of his politics.”
A lot of the stuff the left thinks oppresses them never happened. Re: we are a right wing cabal of racists while big business buys elections and controls the media… stop laughing.. So Romney was in on that conspiracy (on both sides) against the people; ergo evil.
I give the libbies abortion a potential actual fear of cons. There is buying of favors in government by lobbyists.. but not the full mind control cr*p they imply.
Back in ’08, here in Manhattan, my democrat friends went way beyond what neo called the Obama “cult of personality”. It was shocking because it was clearly so sexual in nature and they didn’t seem to realize it. One particularly striking example was a letter I received from a Jewish octogenarian which she wrote to celebrate Obama’s election. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that this letter was written by a white, Jewish, 80-something “savvy” New Yorker fantasizing about having sex with a (relatively) young, virile, black male. That’s how sick our society has become. And it’s not hyperbole. If you even dare to criticize the object of their love in NYC, woe be unto you. Seriously.
T Says:
“ever wonder why George Lucas used a Nazi shaped helmet for the Lord of the Dark Side?”
It looks just like a Japanese feudal armor helmet style. I’ve seen pictures just like it from the period. They even were black.
I also have a Rainbow D2 vac that looks a like like R2D2.
If you do not have a rational, coherent ideology based on real world experiences grounded in history, and an understanding of human nature; you resort to the mob mentality and incite hatred. You appeal to the irrational, the emotive kindergarten id. You label all outsiders as subhuman and evil. That is the leftist mindset.
I want the House Republicans to pass a bill taxing all income above $50K at 99%, taxing capital gains at 99%, and taxing the income of all federal, state, and local public employees at 99% without regard to income. And attach a rider on the bill that requires all heterosexual, white males to wear a leg cuff so their location can be monitored at all times. Call it the Soak the Capitalist Pigs Peoples Redistribution Act. That is jujutsu. Turn their force back upon them. Obamaphone woman will be dancing in the street and carrying pictures of Boehner.
People need to hate; it is the best temporary therapy there is. Free, quick and easy, it takes one’s mind off of whatever is troubling. Furthermore it brings people together if some people can find a common hate. Therefore the problem of loneliness is solved by hate. It also makes self examination unnecessary because one is preoccupied with hate all the time. Likewise self-esteem is enhanced because one is better than the hate object. It is a wonder why no one has published a book called “The Joy of Hate”.
As for hating Romney, it reassures those who voted for Obama that they made the right decision; hate is a means they have for overcoming doubts. It is also an admission that they supported Obama for reasons that are emotional rather than rational.
I almost forgot, hatred is a replacement for self-hatred.
parker Says:
December 5th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
Yeah, but what happens after it passes the Senate, is signed by Obama, and is upheld by the Roberts Court?
The feedback, or reaction if you will, has appeared too.
At some point, you come to the rather stunning realization that rational argumentum is simply pointless with these “mind-numbed robots”.
Nothing you can say will be effective or convincing …no matter how true, no matter how empirically grounded, no matter how polite, no matter how constructive, no matter how informative …no matter how mutually beneficial.
You are now The Other; their putative masters have colored you as “devil” …and they have acquiesced to this unquestioningly.
Worse: they congratulate themselves on their wicked acceptance of The Lie.
They have corrupted and broken the American social and political compact; their culture is no longer tuned to our culture. Their distortions have made what should be commonality and community into something too twisted to recognize, and too broken to repair.
By all this, they have made themselves into something despicable …to something loathsome.
A mob …to be feared?
Their destructive ignorance is coming to resemble a malignancy in far too many frightening ways.
It is not mere disagreement anymore …I smell the stench of evil in the body politic.
We …the collective “we” …are not headed to a good place.
…indeed we are not.
“Yeah, but what happens after it passes the Senate, is signed by Obama, and is upheld by the Roberts Court?”
The first thing that happens is heterosexual, white males remove the leg cuff, then it all comes tumbling down because John Galt is happily residing in Singapore, and the second revolution begins. If the leftists wants to push, we don’t shove, we turn it back on them. They are allowed to burn the house down. Ashes, Ashes.
BTW, I also want the republican house to raise the minimum wage to $25/hour and impose a VAT of 1,000% on movie theater tickets and cable subscriptions. Give them what they want until it is ashes in their foul mouths and their tears are the only source of their hydration. The leftists want pedal to the metal on their trip down their road of destruction. Fine, crash the vehicle into the wall and then we shall find out who remains standing and who is on the ground.
nohype Says:
December 5th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
I commented on another blog in September 2008, “PDS has already gotten worse in two weeks than BDS did in eight years.”
Well, at least it’s not a Two-minute Hate.
T Says:
December 5th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
While class warfare rhetoric is aimed at “the rich”, I think that for the most part middle class people don’t resent people who are wealthier than they are. Most recognize that richer people create jobs, and earned their wealth by inventing and providing goods and services that enhance their lives.
Also, middle class people are generally independent and comfortable. I own my own house, and I couldn’t care less that Bill Gates or Michael Moore lives in a mansion. Their ostentatious wealth does not detract from my enjoyment of life.
On the other hand, the targets of class warfare rhetoric are the poor, and they are encouraged to resent and even hate anyone who has more than they do.
When the SHTF and the money runs out, the FSA will not attack the well-guarded gated compounds of the “millionaires and billionaires”. No, they will target ordinary middle class homes, which are much easier pickings.
I think itâs because Obama sets the tone and the rest follow.
Indeed. Take a look at Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary. As Carney’s posture becomes increasingly hunched — recalling Obama’s in the hours just before the election, when he thought he was losing and exhorted his minions to seek “revenge” — Carney’s expression becomes a permanent sneer. A small, snarling, sneering man, just like his boss.
Cleaver Says:
December 5th, 2012 at 8:57 pm
Capitalism rewards those who are intelligent, inventive, hard-working, and visionary.
Socialism rewards the mediocre, the lazy, and the inept. They get to use the power of government to force their betters to work for their benefit.
So I guess it’s no surprise that socialism is more popular.
Which is why, once again, democracy doesn’t work, and is not a stable form of government.
In any population, the stupid, lazy, and inept outnumber the intelligent, hardworking, and competent.
The universal franchise will inevitably destroy us, and there’s no question about it.
All political discussion and analysis is pointless and a waste of time until we acknowledge that central fact.
We will not pull out of this tailspin until we devise a system where only intelligent, educated, productive members of society have a say in government. Voting must become an earned privilege, not a right.
rickl,
“We will not pull out of this tailspin until we devise a system where only intelligent, educated, productive members of society have a say in government.”
There are those who would say that we already have the intelligent, educated and hardworking at the helm of the ship of state. They’re mostly already Harvard, Yale and Columbia grads.
I would disagree with that, as I’m sure you would, too, but therein lies the problem. Who decides exactly what educated, intelligent and hardworking means?
Neo, for your own sake, maybe you should do what Glenn Beck did and get out …he moved to Texas. But Im not sure thats the place to run to, with the Mexican cartels and all. Oklahoma might not be to bad.
Those of you in liberal areas, if your friends know you are not one of them, what will happen if things go really south? Is it zombie mob time?
Aha, today I just heard, in the audiobook version of “Road to Serfdom,” Hayek (writing in the ’40s) point out that leaders stoke hatred of the rich for the same reason that Nazis stoked hatred of Jews.
Ugh.
He also writes about the school system (in 1940s Europe!) filling the students with hatred and distrust of the rich and a revulsion for capitalism! Sound familiar?
You know most of my family are well meaning people who are total kool-aid drinkers. They are mainly guilty of sheeplike belief in the media and it is the media who convinces them that Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Cheney, Palin and, now, Romney are “the other” and are vile, evil and so stupid. Hate them you must. Media is terribly complicit in destroying Republicans. Shamelessly, the MSM bangs out the steady drumbeat of negativity, sometimes subtle but always there, relentlessly. so much so that the lies permeate the culture and wash over the low-information voter.
Rumors of its death are to no avail, that dang MSM still controls The Brain of the liberal Democrat and the low-info voter..
‘People need to hate;’
No; no they don’t. Some people may want to hate, as they may want a drink. But they don’t need it. Most people crave love. That is the problem. The vast majority of humans who have ever lived tend (perhaps only slightly though) toward good. Look around you. Pay attention please. The fate of the world depends upon that.
‘Romney is a very decent and caring man.’
Romney is a politician. By definition, a politician desires power over other people. Have you ever watched any children’s cartoons? The character who works to gain power over other people is always the bad guy. ALWAYS. (even if he doesnât realize it and deep down he is a decent person????)
And if you disagree and still maintain that people need to hate then I must ask:
Is that true of you as well?
southernjames Says:
December 5th, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Re: President invites Romney to lunch.
I would have preferred if Romney had issued a press release along the line of: âI am flattered that the President has invited me to visit; and I am a true believer in moving forward in a spirit of cooperation following any election. However, since I am not a Washington legislator, and there is no cooperating on issues of national importance I could provide, I am respectfully declining the invitation. While my campaign message was that Mr. Obama was no longer the right man to serve Americans to turn around our economny; in contrast my family was hurt by the non-stop, relentless, vile and viscious lies and personal smears that were the cornerstone of the Presidentâs advertising campaign. Therefore, I do not feel it is appropriate to simply pretend all of that never occurred, but I wish the President the all the best in his upcoming term.â
Oh, yeah!
It’d be wildly refreshing to hear any Republican stand up and talk in that manner!
I heard Speaker Boehner on FNS with Chris Wallace. All I can remember is thinking – make the case for austerity and spending cuts! Americans need to hear that.
And, will you, please, make the argument for WHY Republicans don’t want to raise tax rates!? He simply sounded stubborn. Sitting here, I feel that I know their reason (the basis of that pledge, fer pete’s sake).
Raising taxes always constricts the economy.
Raising taxes hits the job creators and gives unemployment numbers a strong jolt.
Raising taxes constrains spending, thus hurting many economic sectors from consumer goods, through agriculture, to real estate.
Which of these.results is desirable during a recession?
What?
Revenge?
Oh.
‘he moved to Texas. But Iâm not sure thatâs the place to run to,’
Right now, Canada is the freest nation on the planet.
T:
Actually, I think it’s time for Ivy Leaguers to be barred from government. Too often, they’re the children of privilege, and they are either the beneficiaries of a “gentleman’s C” or affirmative action. And those institutions have been thoroughly corrupted by Communist influence.
Part of Sarah Palin’s attraction for me was the fact that she was not an Ivy League law school graduate.
As for voters, in the 18th Century the franchise was restricted to white male property owners. That made perfect sense at the time, as the Founders sought to grant the privilege of voting to the best educated and most responsible members of society. Women and minorities generally did not pursue higher education, and white men who were not property owners were usually not as responsible as those who did own property.
Today, of course, women and minorities can own property and pursue higher education, so the standards can be relaxed somewhat. I don’t know exactly how the franchise should be restricted. Maybe property ownership should still be a consideration. Robert A. Heinlein famously proposed that it should be restricted to military veterans. Perhaps it should be a combination of the two.
I do believe that recipients of welfare, food stamps, Section 8 housing, et al, should absolutely be forbidden from voting. Under no circumstances should anybody be permitted to vote themselves shares of other peoples’ money.
People who have fallen on hard times should have to decide between accepting government assistance and voting, but not both. The same holds true for those who have received Social Security and Medicare benefits in excess of the amount of money they have contributed during their working lives. Beyond that point, it’s welfare.
Richard Aubrey Says:
December 5th, 2012 at 1:29 pm
“Good piece referenced on Insty that the biggest losers if zeroâs plan goes through are the high-earning people in the bluest states. … The people with high W2 income, such as lawyers, doctors, tech workers, financial professionals. They will take the biggest hits. Due to cost of living differentials, including housing prices and mortgage size, losing the mort int ded will hit them harder than the folks in the lower-priced red states. Good. They voted for it, they can have the worst of it.
Makes me feel a bit better in a schadenfreudian sort of way.”
Ugh.
My husband is a brilliant physician. He patiently educated me, introducing me to conservative ideas. Dopey, former liberal me, I had been raised in the blue northeast, in a liberal home, gone to traditional schools and never been exposed to these -powerful – ideas.
My husband lived the (passé) American dream. The first generation of his family to even go to college, he went on to become a physician once he was exposed to that world when he worked in medical research. So, four years out of college, he went back to night school. Despite already having his BS in biology, over the course of two and a half years, he worked full time and took all the premed science courses over again. He prepares himself well. He signed on with the US Army in exchange for his med schooling as he came from a blue collar family, with eight children, who could never finance his school. The Army required travel, which I relished, but he gritted his teeth to bear it.
We returned to the blue state in the northeast, over my objections, when his father was ill, due to my husband’s rock solid family values.
Insurance companies have been squeezing this man who works insanely long hours. He is the type of doc, who, when he is home, buries his nose deep in a medical book or journal. Believe me, if you, or a loved one, were hospitalized you WOULD want this man as your doc.
Now, our government is enacting a plan to turn him into a serf.
Worry about the future of medicine. I am seeing bright, young, motivated sons and daughters of practicing physicians being gently directed to alternative careers and it will be a terrible loss. These kids know what is required. Growing up, they missed out on seeing their parents and realize that it takes dedication. Still they were willing to shoulder that. But, servitude?
He is not whining about any of this, mind you. And he has less than no time for the Internet. Just, i have to say, you do not have to hate him. I want to broadcast that, you do not have to hate this very good man.
Don’t hate and want to destroy my husband who never inked in a Democrat circle in his life.
I’d never hate nor want to destroy your husband, Jaynie. My heart hurts for him, and all independent, dedicated, hardworking souls like him who are being targeted for extinction by the government.
southernjames, 3:07 pm —
“I would have preferred if Romney had issued a press release along the line of . . .”
southernjames, I’m only now getting around to complimenting you on that suggested press release. Is “perfect” too strong a description? No bitterness, no jumping up and down, just a calm, down-to-earth on-point statement.
Excellent work!!
My memory of 2008 is that Obama ran against Bush mainly. Palin was tarred and feathered. McCain got his share, too, but was mostly dismissed as a dinosaur.
I think the images of Romney and Palin before him must be knocked down and held down by the Democrats because they do have appeal, their ideas make sense, and what they represent is threatening to Democrats unlike McCain. They cannot allow those threats to seed, root, and grow.
In short, the Democrats are employing counter-revolutionary tactics.
The liberals still view Romney as a potential threat just as with Palin. Romney has stated he won’t run again, but there is no real reason why he shouldn’t. He’d have 4 years to talk economic sense to the public and to reveal his “kinder and more human” side. So they keep demonizing him to make sure he won’t be heard and if heard, won’t be believed.
You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of Liberal ugliness and vindictiveness than this piece by Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/nov/09/what-romney-lost/
Moreover, the comments following it are equally personal and mean-spirited. I assume much of this stems from the fact that Romney effectively engaged Obama on ideas. The Left simply didn’t have a basis on which to pin its hopes and choices other than the idea that Romney was personally evil and morally bankrupt.
What a disgrace.
Rickl @12:45 am
No disagreement from me there and in most of what you wrote that follows.
I offer one modification regarding receipt of social security beyond contribution. Social security involves employee contributions, employer contributions on behalf of the employee and a certain base level of interest for lifetime earnings on that account. Can’t forget about those.
In truth, the SS administration would be better served in taking a lump sum and simply purchasing a commercially available annuity for each ss recipient. It would save costs and put the management of the individuals’ checks in the hands of companies that specialize in doing just that as opposed to a government program doing something and once again proving itself to be a failure.
T says, “In truth, the SS administration would be better served in taking a lump sum and simply purchasing a commercially available annuity for each ss recipient. It would save costs and put the management of the individualsâ checks in the hands of companies that specialize in doing just that as opposed to a government program doing something and once again proving itself to be a failure.”
That option was foreclosed by LBJ when he and the democrat Congress decided to commingle the SS funds with general tax revenues. The money is not there. That’s when it became a Ponzi scheme in reality. As I recall it was done without much opposition except from Goldwater and a few other conservatives.
Sopcial Security is no longer “retirement insurance” paid out of moneys paid in. It is a means tested welfare program that, like so many other government programs, has over promised and can no longer deliver on those promises.
I saw my pension disappear into the maw of the PBGC when my old employer went bankrupt. When there is no more money, some kind of cuts must be made. The sooner it is faced up to, the smaller the cuts will be.
Of course the dems will say that Modern Monetary Theory states that a nation can spend any amount of money because it has the power of the printing press. Unfortunately, that theory has not worked out so well for Zimbabwe and Argentina. They seem not to notice.
Neo, I’m going right to the bottom of the thread here, so perhaps my point has already been made. Nothing was said against McCain because McCain didn’t fight Remember his execrable “you have nothing to fear from an Obama presidency” garbage? McCain was so afraid of his own shadow that he let Obama steamroller over him. There’s no need to keep kicking someone who’s shown themselves more than willing to lick your boots.
Palin, however, fought “What is a community organizer?” she laughed. And Romney, for one blessed moment, fought, with the “you didn’t build that” comment, and, especially, when he pimp-slapped the Chicago Jesus during the first debate.
Palin and Romney hit back. That’s why your friends despise them. Thou shalt not have any other gods before Him, after all.
Christopher: I think fighting back was part of it, but most definitely not the whole of it. I noticed a very odd thing about Palin-hatred, for example: it began instantaneously (at least among people I spoke to), before she’d done the fighting, before people knew much about her except that she had a funny accent and did things like hunt. It was cultural when it started, a class and cultural contempt. This was from some women I knew, by the way, among whom conservative women are often perceived as automatically traitors to the Cause (I get sort of grandfathered in, as it were—nor do I set off the class and cultural alarm bells. That’s one of the reasons I puzzle them).
I wrote a great deal about Palin-hated in 2008. It shocked me at the time—its virulence and especially its speed, and the fact that it seemed especially bad among Palin’s fellow women. None of those things shock me that much any more, although they still anger me.
The worst condemnation is usually reserved for apostates.
The Democrats understand that defining the past is effective for controlling the present and paving the way for the future.
Republicans don’t understand that. They allowed Bush and his administration to be turned into strawmen and instead of fighting back to control the narrative, the Republicans instead ran away from it and tacitly conceded the Democrats’ version of history.
At least since Kerry lost to Bush in 2004, the Democrats never stop playing the game. Basic counter-revolutionary tactics.
Me: “the Republicans instead ran away from it and tacitly conceded the Democratsâ version of history.”
Better word: Republicans … tacitly STIPULATED the Democrats’ version of history.
JJ formerly Jimmy J,
“That option was foreclosed by LBJ when he and the democrat Congress decided to commingle the SS funds with general tax revenues.”
I do realize that ss money hasn’t existed in a long long time. I was speaking rhetorically and theoretically. I should have written “. . . the SS administration would have been better served . . . .” Sorry for the confusion.
This is a very interesting and disturbing phenomenon. Shortly before the election, an otherwise seemingly well-adjusted, pleasant and very competent program analyst in my office stated with no hesitation that he “feels revulsion for Romney”.
We were understandably stunned and when pressed for an explanation he merely repeated the comment. Bizarre doesnât begin to describe it.
We may be hopelessly divided and I think it began with the Nixon administration and the Left’s pathological dislike of him.
Sarah Palin was the freshest political voice in the last fifty years of American politics …I’d make the case for longer than that. Inspiring. And with an inspiring story.
The last frontier politician.
Jeezus people. She was one of ours dammit …and we tossed her to the wolves.
I’m ashamed for us. All of us.
davisbr…Yes indeed, but Sarah Derangement was fairly small compared to the absolute pathological HATRED of President Bush. It continues unabated to this moment and well into the future. That strong, smart, stand-up, talented, principled, steady, centered, right-man-at-the-right-time, America loving LEADER.
It used to make me Crazy-Nuts with frustration that he never fired back at the Pygmies.
NeoConScum,
Agreed.
For a US President, image control/correction matters for the nation. It isn’t a narcissistic exercise. It has actual ramifications for the nation’s course past the particular 4 or 8 year administration. But Bush’s seeming ambivalence about defending his image and the lack of pushback by the Republicans empowered and effectively stipulated the version of history advanced by opposing spinners. The Democrats have built their current political success on it.
davisbr: who tossed her to the wolves?
I certainly didn’t. Can’t think of anybody here who did, either.
I spent a lot of time and energy defending her and explaining what was going on in the minds of her detractors, actually.
So, who’s “we”? If you mean the MSM and liberals, and a few (so-called) Republican pundits, yes. But how is that “we”?
Who?
The “We, the people …”
…the social “us”.
The “all this and everything else” and such.
Americans.
As for blame …neo? – They’re your friends. Friends?
Only maybe they’re not, not really.
Sorry …thought it was rhetorically obvious.
My statement stands.
I keep remembering what a writer said (another freelancer at the ad agency where we both worked) the day after Sarah’s first convention speech: “Did you see Sarah Palin last night? We are so screwed.”
That was his hat-tip to her charisma and appeal. This guy, Tom, is in his late 30s now, and he wasn’t one of the Exorcist-type head-spinning lunatics — he was just paying her unwilling tribute.
He was also acknowledging, whether he realized it or not, that the ONLY card they have in the public arena is the mass worship of cult figures. (Yeah, they buy people en masse as well, but this was about the political hustings.) So when we get a candidate who can make an EMOTIONAL appeal to the masses, they instantly get a lynching party together.
This also reminds me of the naked hatred I saw in Hussein’s eyes in the second debate against Mitt. Race hatred, class hatred.