Political quotes of the moment

[Doktor Howl]

Hm... that sucks. At least, I was thinking, Europeans culture got quite the backlash from nazis (it's been waning a bit lately, especially in Italy), a lot of NEVER AGAIN sentiment, which is good. But I wonder, would we have learned that lesson as hard if they had not killed 6 million Jews and Gypsies and whatnot? Like, I mean, if you get Nazis (like a disease), will it really take another genocide before people wake the fuck up?

Naw.

We're just going to gut ourselves and collapse like a house of cards.

Um, yeah, we'll be dragging everyone with us.  Sorry about that.

[Cain]

When you guys go down though, I give it two years before fascist parties start winning elections here.

Cuz when the US goes down, the international chaos will lead to mass migration, which will put more stress on "Fortress Europe" and necessitate cutting down on social benefits and rebuilding militaries.  And the collapse will be blamed on US "decadence" as opposed to the actual causes (a bunch of clowns with Harvard Business School degress).  The rhetoric around all that aligns nicely with the Third Positionists, such as the BNP and various Italian parties.

[Cain]

Assuming we don't collapse first, which is a very real possibility (thanks, irresponsible loans to dodgy post-Communist states!).

But then we get to have a re-run of the whole Weimar Republic thing, across the entire continent!

[Cain]

John Robb on the militia arrests last week in the US:

The arrest of a heavily armed Christian militia in Michigan, beyond what it tells us about where the US is headed, provides a great example of how NOT to conduct insurgency.   Lots of small unit training (weapons and camouflage), a Web site (including YouTube videos) that states intent/shows preparations, and the planning of fantasy attacks on police with IEDs will result in one thing: rapid arrest/death.  It's just pathetic. 

[Jenne]

This got David Frum fired from the American Enterprise Institute, a Conservative think-tank:
http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo-page Posted 3/22/10

Waterloo

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It's hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they'll compensate for today's expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It's a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today's disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama's Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton's in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton's 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the "doughnut hole" and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents' insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I've been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush's listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today's defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it's mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it's Waterloo all right: ours.

Follow David Frum on Twitter: @davidfrum

[Cain]

While Frum is generally right in this article, is anyone else nauseated that the man who coined the phrase "Axis of Evil" is now suggesting overheated rhetoric may be a bad thing?

[Jenne]

Methinks it very interesting that a rat like him jumped ship.

[LMNO]

@ Cain:  

As far as the article goes, I like how he points out how one half of the movement requires the other half to fail.


Political ouroborous, ITT.


Hmmm... Now I am making connections between this and Dok's thread about economy and complexity....

[Jenne]

I just like how he calls out Rush Limbaugh and the fact that the listeners of Rush and Fox News by association are sheep, led by their overreacting masters, who have no thought about the longevity of the Conservative movement.

Ourobouros indeedy.

[Cramulus]

greate poste, Jenne

The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government.

It'd be nice if the populists reached this conclusion too

[Jenne]

greate poste, Jenne

The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government.

It'd be nice if the populists reached this conclusion too

Thanks, Cram...I was worried about oversaturation since it was all over the teevee this past weekend.  But when I saw no mention of it here, thought I'd give it a swing, even if it missed.  The fact that an insider like Frum is agitated makes me wet, just a wee bit.

[Cramulus]

X-Post

THE PRESIDENT:Now, over the last year, there's been a lot of misinformation spread about health reform. There's been a lot of fear-mongering, a lot of overheated rhetoric. You turned on the news, you'd see that those same folks who were hollering about it before it passed, they're still hollering, about how the world will end because we passed this bill. (Laughter.) This is not an exaggeration. John Boehner called the passage of this bill --

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: -- no need to -- we don't need to boo, I just want to give the facts -- called this passage of this bill "Armageddon." You had others who said this is the end of freedom as we know it.

So after I signed the bill, I looked around. (Laughter and applause.) I looked up at the sky to see if asteroids were coming. (Laughter.) I looked at the ground to see if cracks had opened up in the earth. You know what, it turned out it was a pretty nice day. (Laughter and applause.) Birds were still chirping. Folks were strolling down the street. Nobody had lost their doctor. Nobody had pulled the plug on Granny. (Laughter.) Nobody was being dragged away to be forced into some government-run health care plan.

democracy is a messy business. It is the worst form of government except for all the other ones that have been tried.

[Freeky]

Amazing amounts of troofiness from a politician, ITT.

[Mangrove]

So after I signed the bill, I looked around. (Laughter and applause.) I looked up at the sky to see if asteroids were coming. (Laughter.) I looked at the ground to see if cracks had opened up in the earth. You know what, it turned out it was a pretty nice day. (Laughter and applause.) Birds were still chirping. Folks were strolling down the street. Nobody had lost their doctor. Nobody had pulled the plug on Granny. (Laughter.) Nobody was being dragged away to be forced into some government-run health care plan.


Does Obama have Bill Hicks on his i-Pod?

Reminds me of Bill's 'have you ever watched CNN for more than say....24 hours continuously?' bit. WAR DISEASE, AIDS, FAMINE, DEATH!!! etc

[Jasper]

He will be remembered as the most likable president in history, regardless of anything else.