The Daily Sausage – Friday Edition

Warren/Brown, disdain for workers, Ann Romney gets in the ring, the Overton Window Frame, Ballot Cops, the League of Dangerous Mapmakers, and the graph that should accompany every article about Millennials.

Welcome to the Daily Sausage.

First up, we have Charles P. Pierce taking on the Elizabeth Warren – Scott Brown Massachusetts Senate debates. I watched part of them; I wasn’t that impressed with either candidate. Brown came across as petty, mean, and too small for his office, while Warren didn’t call him on half his bullshit. Hopefully she creams him in debates 2 through 4.

The Great and Powerful K(rugman)oz is back with a new blog post, “Disdain for Workers”.

In the past, however, even Republican politicians who privately shared the elite’s contempt for the masses knew enough to keep it to themselves and managed to fake some appreciation for ordinary workers. At this point, however, the party’s contempt for the working class is apparently too complete, too pervasive to hide.

The point is that what people are now calling the Boca Moment wasn’t some trivial gaffe. It was a window into the true attitudes of what has become a party of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy, a party that considers the rest of us unworthy of even a pretense of respect.

If you are not wealthy and politically connected, the difference between the GOP and the Democrats boils down to the Democrats being willing to give you a reacharound while they’re fucking you.

Ann Romney has decided to inject herself into the Presidential campaign, calling on Republican critics of her husband Mitt Romney to “Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring.”

Yes, because antagonizing the right-wing media is going to REALLY boost her husband’s election chances.

No wonder Mitt said they’re holding her back because people will get tired of her. I’ve only heard her speak three times and I already wish she’d go away.

And now, let’s talk about the coming GOP Civil War.

After Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, disaffected Southern Democrats left the Democratic party en masse and promptly latched on to the Republican party. In 1968, Barry Goldwater and his “movement conservatives” tossed the Rockefeller Republicans (who today are Blue Dog Democrats) out of the Republican party.

Ever since then, the GOP has embraced every extremist group that’s come along and promised them votes, up to and including the Tea Party, whose roots may have been with good intentions but rapidly became a home for some of the most batshit fringe elements of American politics.

So, when Chuck Schumer comes out and says that a group of “mainstream” Republicans have told him that they intend to regain control of the GOP from a dangerous and absolutionist Tea Party-powered fringe,  I have but one question, and that question is: are you fucking with me?

Look, the GOP can no more jettison its collected detritus than the Democratic party could cut loose blacks and Hispanics,, not without exiling themselves from the reigns of power for a generation or more. The GOP is already virtually extinct along the Pacific and in New England. Indiana is the only reliably Red state left in the Midwest, and even that went Blue during the last Presidential election. The Southwest is becoming more and more Hispanic, and less and less Republican. Pretty soon, you’ll have a GOP that’s confined to the Plains, Mountains, and South, and virtually irrelevant in American politics.

However, much as Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the Temple, so too must the GOP drive the hucksters from their midst.

Only until the GOP abandons the fringe can we even attempt to restore some sense of balance in politics. A less ideologically rigid GOP means more compromise, and a more liberal Democratic party.

The Overton Window is the range of policies agreed on by society to be acceptable. The goal of both parties is to shift the Overton Window to encompass more of their world view. However, there are hard limits to what the American people can and will accept on both sides of the ideological spectrum, whether it’s outright socialism or communism on the left or fascism on the right. I call that the Overton Window Frame. Right now, the GOP is as conservative as it’s ever going to get. They have reached the Overton Window Frame. They can pull and pull and pull, but they’re never going to move the window any further than it is now.

Speaking of which, we have a story on True The Vote and the King Street Patriots titled “The Ballot Cops”.

Holy fucking shit. These morons are going to roll into poor ethnic neighborhoods and are going to get their asses kicked by a bunch of little old black ladies that remember the last time a bunch of dumbass white folks tried bullshit like this.

Related note: if you see one of these morons, CALL AND COMPLAIN. Don’t let yourself and others become victims of voter intimidation.

Moving on, an excellent article on the guys behind drawing the maps after redistricting, “The League of dangerous Mapmakers”.

And finally, the graph that should accompany every article about Millennials, period.

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