Dave Johnson’s got an excellent piece up in which he points out that laughing at the right is stupid. They’re doing now exactly what they did to Clinton in the 90’s, and it worked then.
In fact they’re back to being as crazy and paranoid as they were when Clinton was President. Remember the accusations that Clinton and Hillary were murderers, that Hillary personally killed Vince Foster, that Clinton ran a drug-smuggling operation out of an airstrip, that he was looking through FBI files, that he fired the travel office to put a cousin in, that he “sold” plots in Arlington cemetery, that he held up runway traffic to get a $500 haircut, that he used cocaine in the White House, that he hung obscene ornaments on the White House Christmas tree and the other fabrications that came daily?
We laughed then, too, and how did that work out? They took over the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Then they started wars. They tortured people. They appointed corporate lobbyists to run every agency. They filled the courts with Federalist Society judges that rule for the corporations and religious right every time. They stole billions…
Let me add two more facts:
- For ordinary people, the economy is never going to fully recover, ever (well, not in the next 4 years anyway). The administration’s own numbers show this, with an overoptimistic model that assumes tax cuts will have the average effect of the last thirty years, rather than the effect they had when Bush did them (a big fat flop). But even if you don’t think they’re overoptimistic, it doesn’t matter. Again, their own numbers show employment will not recover before the next recession.
- Obama and co. are doing a huge giveaway to the richest people in America. By the time they’re done it will probably be as large or larger than anything Bush did. Since it will not work in the sense of helping ordinary people enough, it will be used by Republicans to fuel populist rage. Sure, that’s hypocritical, but does that matter? We all know it doesn’t.
So I’m with Dave. Enjoy mocking Republicans all you want, but in your cold hard calculating heart, take them very very seriously.
Mandos
Yes, precisely. But I do think it’s a little different this time. During the Clinton years it only took them two years to return to credibility, because Bush V1.0 didn’t discredit them to the extent that Bush V2.0 has done.
Also, seen this way, the Rush Limbaugh gambit was a smart move.
Cujo359
I think we have trouble getting past the fact that none of this should work. In a society that consists of informed citizens who are at least passably good at critical thinking, this flim-flam wouldn’t work on anyone but the addled and the very young. Unfortunately, that’s not the society we live in.
Ten Bears
Just as I was to post a clown call as a counter teabag party.
If I don’t laugh at ’em, I’ll end up beating the shit out of them.
et
The difficulty I have at “laughing” at them is that it does no good to anybody but me. People have shown they are not truly outraged because they aren’t pushing their political representatives for prosecution of real wrongdoing. The President is conveniently underplaying any sense of injustice. Most of us had to laugh all through the Bush Administration merely to maintain our sanity. Bush is gone and still we laugh. What is wrong with us?