Someone reset the “Days Since Mass Shooting” clock, the end of common ground on abortion, peyote break at the RNC, the Week In Fail, Romney’s speech, the GOP’s Cult of Celebrity, more on Lindsay Graham, and a SPECIAL GUEST WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE CLINT EASTWOOD.
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
NOW can we talk about gun control?
Esquire’s John H. Richardson has one of the better articles I’ve read articulating the lack of middle ground between anti-abortion activists and everyone else. The interview portion at the end is very much worth a read.
Where the wheels come off the “abortion should be illegal” argument is when you start asking what would happen to women that get abortions if they were made illegal. Do you throw them in jail? What do you charge them with?
Once the wheels are off that wagon, the rest of it becomes an incomprehensible mess. When you read the interview, it becomes incredibly clear that there is no compromise to be made here: even if you personally don’t believe in abortion, if you believe that women should be allowed to choose for themselves, you are inherently immoral.
Ed from Gin and Tacos offers us a hit from his peyote break at the RNC, which includes the video of Clint Eastwood’s speech from last night.
TPM’s Benjy Sarlin and Evan McMorris-Santoro have a great summary of the RNC’s Week Of Fail.
Wonkblog’s Ezra Klein follows up with a question about Mitt’s speech that’s particularly apropos to the campaign in general: “Where was the policy?”
The Daily Beast’s Michele Goldberg tackles the GOP’s Cult of Celebrity. See, liberals are used to having Hollywood stars on our side; Brad Pitt, George Clooney, etc. have all hosted Obama fundraisers this cycle. When an actor or actress comes out as conservative, the GOP can’t help but fawn over them and hold them up to contrast against the godless liberal Hollywood coastal elites. Can you imagine President Obama inviting Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, or Janeane Garofalo to introduce him at the DNC with a fifteen minute ad-libbed speech? That would be insane. And yet, the GOP fawns over Clint Eastwood’s rambling diatribe, an old angry white man arguing with an Imaginary Barack Obama in an empty chair.
Speaking of old, angry white men arguing with an Imaginary Barack Obama, Lindsey Graham everyone!
“The demographics race we’re losing badly,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
I talked about this earlier in the week, but I wanted to circle back and talk about it some more.
Here’s the truth: the GOP is teetering on the brink of national electoral irrelevancy. The GOP is already virtually non-existent at a Congressional level in places like New England and California. Formerly deep red Southern and Southwestern states like Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia are all starting to trend Democrat.
After 2008, the GOP was in desperate need of a policy shift, and then was the time to do it. The time had come to start redefining the party along more moderate lines, having been decisively thumped by the Democrats two electoral cycles in a row.
Unfortunately, policy shifts are hard. They mean cutting loose the part of your base that is anchoring you to the past and attempting to build a new base with new policies, with the understanding that in the meantime you’re going to lose A LOT of elections.
For fifty years, ever since Barry Goldwater defeated Nelson Rockefeller, and since Lee Atwater and Richard Nixon rolled out the deeply cynical Southern Strategy to drive disaffected Southern former Democrats angry over the Civil Rights Act into the Republican Party, and since Ronald Reagan invited the deeply divisive Christian Right into American politics via the GOP, we have seen the Republican party slowly but surely abandon any pretense of moderation and move into the realm of extremism.
Today the only angry white men the GOP is creating are on the other side. People like me that are angry at their deeply cynical view of the American people and blatant attempts to manipulate the country to meet the goals of their ultra-wealthy masters.
There will always be angry white men who long for a time when they didn’t have to complete with blacks, hispanics, asians, women, or anyone else for the best jobs. That’s their right. But the time where they have a voice in American politics is over. Their divisive invective is no longer welcome in this house.
Finally, The Daily Sausage has a special guest speaker that may or may not be Clint Eastwood…
IT’S HOLOGRAM RONALD REAGAN / NOT CLINT EASTWOOD!
Yes, Hologram Reagan is real. Apparently the RNC put the kibosh on it at the RNC because they didn’t want it to overshadow Mitt Romney.
Yes, you read that right. They didn’t want a hologram of a dead guy to overshadow their actual living and breathing Presidential candidate.
Personally, I’m of the mind that they were more concerned about the optics of legions of old white people genuflecting at the feet of a hologram of Ronald Reagan.
