Rich Lowry should read more and rely on cliche less.

People don't get "ginned up". It doesn't mean "become enthused." An effect is "ginned up" -- meaning "contrived". Someone must have told him that it meant "worked up".

It's a safe bet that the wingers will try to repeat their old tactics, and it's probable, given what's happened in recent elections, that those tactics won't work. The faithful will rally, but their numbers have dwindled. The camp followers, who made the winger numbers into a plurality, have decamped.

So, what will happen? My guess is that a sizable fraction will go completely untethered... but we shall see.

Oh well, at least it's a safe bet that Obama won't be able to lead us into a war without justifying it with evidence, using the Justice Dept to manipulate elections, ignoring the Hatch Act or Records Retention laws, or hiring incompetent allies for agencies like Fema. The fourth estate can be more effective than oversight committees - if they choose to be.

Why shouldn't Kristol be cheerful? Rahm Emanuel? Hillary Clinton? It's all going swimmingly for them so far.

Of course they're cheerful. After their years-long efforts to convince us that there's a pony in there somewhere, they can now switch to convincing us that Obama killed all of the ponies.

Kristol and the right wing media machine can get all four of those Southern Republican governors who are now leaders of their regional party all excited--so they will stop accepting redistribution of the national wealth from blue states and give their subsidies (which are largely based on the poverty status of their people and their states) back to the U.S. treasury. Haley Barbour--of RNC and K Street fame, and no doubt future leader of the Republicans in the wilderness--will be glad to explain. He's done it so well with post-Katrina reconstruction in Mississippi.

charles

Nothing makes a right-winger cheerful like the opportunity to be a nasty, duplicitous motherfucker.

If I were a Liberal, I would by definition support their to say it, even though I disagreed. However, I am not a Liberal, so I recognize it as a clear and present danger! As much as we wish, there is no law against their stupidity; there should be laws against evil. Then again, this country will inevitably go through another era of stupidity and the devils will again be in control of government.

I find it inconceivable that poor people, any other than millionaires, will vote against their pocketbook! SS and Medicare recipients support a party that keeps trying to kill both programs, benefits that their descendants will eventually surely need. When a world view is limited to some preacher’s interpretation of the bible, what else can be expected!

Kristol and his gang will be busy doing the devil's work over the next few years. It will take them a while, but they may eventually realize we have tired of their vicious rhetoric, partisanship, and character!

On another note, which Wizard of Oz characters does Kristol be best resemble? -Kevo

The Black Helicopters are being rolled out of the hangers as we speak.

I'd say it's more probable by far that Bill is wrong, as usual. Betting that Bill is right on anything has to be one of the worst bets you could make.

As anecdotal evidence, I know of at least a few conservatives who are in what can only be described as a head-holding, eyes-downcast, muttering-to-themselves-about-the-end-of-life-as-we-know-it funk.

Cheerful? You be the judge.

I think we can assume from what we saw attending the Sarah Palin rallies exactly what the rightwing media will courting. Politics are like hemlines and pro wrestling. Hemlines can go up or down every season and in pro wrestling today's hero can be, literally, tomorrow's villain in the blink of an eye. I think the right wing fad is over. The followers will become louder and more shrill, but it will be a much narrower group...and it will include some far darker elements more openly.

Obama's victory was an electoral bloodbath, and his popular win (considering the polarization of the country, his race and lack of a strong third party candidate) was impressive). Much more decisive than either of George Bush's wins. I honestly don't believe the nation at large is in the mood for the rancor and divisiveness that the right wing needs to fuel itself.

The right wing media will still be a popular and profitable venture, but it will be much more restricted in its scope and reach.

After all those years screaming about how we were traitors for not supporting the Bush admin, asshats like Kristol want to turn around and undermine the folks who are trying to fix the crisis we're facing. For the sake of their ideology, they are going to get in the way of the solutions to our problems. I guess it's just more of the "one standard for you, another for us" thinking that has come to define the GOP.

It may look pretty bright for the Dems right now, but you can count on some difficult times ahead. Thanks to the GOP wrecking crew, the new administration will face many unpleasant choices, in which bad outcomes will have to be balanced against even worse ones. As this happens the Wurlitzer will have plenty of opportunities to shriek and jump up and down and fling excrement (what they do best). And as the bad times wear on, more and more people will start listening to them again.

The whole raison d'etre for the Wurlitzer is to undermine Democrats. If doing so damages the country as a whole they are perfectly willing to carry on anyway. There's no winning them over - they'll see this as total war, because that's how they've always looked at it.

It's foolish to imagine that the right wing is out of the game permanently just because they are down right now. They will be back, they will be ruthless and relentless, and they will show no compunction about using any distortion they can put over in order to advance their interests. Eventually, as they repeat and repeat their lies, they will find an audience.

The recent screaming campaign saying the Dems are about to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine is a strategic choice by the movement. They are covering one of their most vulnerable flanks - their collection of synchronized blowhards on AM radio. They know this asset of theirs is vulnerable, so they are putting in a preemptive strike to prevent an attack on it. If Dems foolishly allow the Wurlitzer to maintain its stranglehold on AM radio, there will be a price to pay down the road as they will maintain a powerful ability to ramp up coordinated attacks on Obama administration policy at the most vulnerable times.

Don't laugh at the Wurlitzer. It will cause plenty of headaches in the months and years to come, especially if there's no attempt to move against it.

The recent screaming campaign saying the Dems are about to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine is a strategic choice by the movement. They are covering one of their most vulnerable flanks - their collection of synchronized blowhards on AM radio. They know this asset of theirs is vulnerable, so they are putting in a preemptive strike to prevent an attack on it. If Dems foolishly allow the Wurlitzer to maintain its stranglehold on AM radio, there will be a price to pay down the road as they will maintain a powerful ability to ramp up coordinated attacks on Obama administration policy at the most vulnerable times.

Don't laugh at the Wurlitzer. It will cause plenty of headaches in the months and years to come, especially if there's no attempt to move against it.

AMEN. AMEN. AMEN.

Dimantling the "Wulitzer" has to be a priority for this administration. If the GOP eats itself much of the dismantling will happen on its own. But some leveling device has to be found to tame the beast of the airwaves. Like Christians (the old fashioned kind, anyway) turning the other cheek in the face of a determined enemy, liberal tolerance allows the haters, the mouth frothers to undermine the change we have to have. The airwaves have to be more neutral.

This situation seems to work for the Repubs. If they actually have to run the government, they make a huge mess and the general public eventually figures out that Repubs are clueless dumb shits.

But they've made such a mess this time around that most everybody has quit listening.

Kristol strikes me as genial, but absolutely without a clue of any kind, so I can see him being cheerful. He's too stupid to be anything else.

Everyone else on the right, though, will be in full-on jihad mode, of course. Sorry, I mean "already are".

Kristol always seems incongruously cheerful, but not in a perky way. More like a glassy, oblivious, prescription-drug plastered-smile way.

George W. Bush never got around to doing an interview with the New York Times, but Bill Kristol and Rush Limbaugh have had the West Wing on speed-dial.

that may be, but i bet the reverse was also true: the administration used these fools (and robert novak) to pipe their bullshit to the media. just like cheney and tim russert.

your pal,
blake

"God's innocents" (aka "mentally handicapped") often *are* the most cheerful folks. That's because they don't look at things long term, don't worry about the future; present times are their whole world. And others take care of their present, same as they would with any small child... What's not to be cheerful about?

Vis: National Review's circulation increased to 280,000 during the first two years of the Clinton administration, up from 150,000.

Yes, but were we staring Depression in the face in '92? I suspect that a lot of National Review, Weakly Substandard et all readers will have other things to think about now (like, looking for jobs), rather than renewing -- much less starting -- their subscriptions. Faux Meows may profit but papers? I doubt it

i say kristol is trying to deflect criticism for his part in the republican downfall. that way anyone that 'snipes, wails or wishes' he weren't involved will be considered whiners.

Kristol and the far-right media will be many things next year, but "cheerful" isn't one of them.

Indeed. We're about to learn what "shrill" really sounds like.

I'm guessing outlets like the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal will pick up where conservatives left off eight years ago, and begin every day with a straightforward maxim: What can we do to undermine Democrats today?

Hold on -- since when did the conservatives ever leave off with that maxim?

There's a sizable group of people out there who are saying, "Tell us why Obama's wrong." These folks need a cable network and print publications to answer the question

Ouch, Steve. That was a deft put-down of movement conservatism's intellectual bankruptcy. Bravo!