"The leader of the Republican Party ..."
You hardly need say more ...

The thinkprogress.org link to the governor's comment isn't working for me; I just get a message that thinkprogress.org doesn't exist. Is that a server error or a link typo?

there's an enormous opening in the Republican Party ranks for the Republican politician willing to call Rush a big fat idiot and a lying liar: that person could remake the Republicans into a party of genuine conservatism. But who will be brave enough to do it?

Big Pharma has already instructed Sanford to kiss Piyush's tuchus in Macy's window to atone for his unpatriotic heresy. Then Sanford's got four grueling months of diaper duty for Biggie P's hand-picked 48th President and Vice President, Trig and Tripp.

Yes, they are faster - Fed Ex just beat UPS to the Guv's door delivering knee pads.

I'm no fan of Sanford, but any Republican who isn't a mindless Dittohead is a major improvement over the current crop of fools.

Wouldn't it be nice if Reichmarschall Baron Von Rush tried to give Sanford a jackboot to the butt---and Sanford cut Der Fat Fuhrer of Foolishness off at the knees instead?

The point I was going to make is comparable to sjw. If Sanford holds firm, he could become the "sensible" voice moderate-but-not-crazy Republican voters are looking for. But that will only break the upcoming GOP "civil war" wide open. The party elders have decided that hiding behind Rush - a man who rarely ventures outside his radio show lest he face real criticism, ironic, no? - is the best course of action, though moderate-righties see that way leads to irrelevance.
What I sadly suspect is that this is Sanford prescribing to the philosophy "any P.R. is good P.R." looking for attention from Daddy Rush so when he grovels for forgiveness, he will always be on Rush's radar, and thee more he veers right, the more Rush will tout his bona fides as being one to watch - "he learned his lesson, he's grown from the experience & now he's ready to lead us out of the era of Obama" that kind of horse crap.

Why the GOP sucks right now- they can't stand for anything so they fall for anything Rush-of-Oxycontin says. With boneheads like Boehner and McConnell leading the pack its no wonder. And they dare compare themselves to Reagan. RR would laugh at them with a smile and charismatic wink.

Rhetoric and impaled bankers: a revolutionary new trolley-car paradigm, together with an introduction to problematology. 600 words.

Sanford doesn't have to apologize. He just has to point out that he was misquoted. It is the liberal MSM that should apologize for misquoting him.

Isn't Rush busy at the moment putting together a Summitt on why women are abandoning him on Sadie Hawkins Day. Geez, oh, warm and cuddly guy, do you really have to bring together women to tell you why they despise you?

The thinkprogress.org link to the governor's comment isn't working for me
---------------

The sheer awesomeness of Sanford's Republican New Ideas have overcome the word "think" in the domain name. You'll have to find a URI that doesn't include Bad Concepts.

YOUR WELCOME,

The Internet Says It
I Believe It
And That Settles It

It's been remarked on already, but the GOP base is essentially the audience for talk radio. That's why it's not simply a sardonic observation about Rush being the defacto leader of the party.

I used to kvetch about the loss of the Fairness Doctrine and the unfair advantage it gave the radical right. No more. It's getting increasingly obvious that the right's tribalism is a phenomenon of exclusion. In a country as diverse as ours, that's a recipe for premature death.

Gentle reminder: Sanford has been the biggest advocate for cutting spending and lowering taxes to "address" the failing economy. I mean, he beats that drum obsessively.

He doesn't like Rush. Fine. But that doesn't make him a sensible and moderate Republican.

Steve Benen wrote: "Americans who root for American failure are idiots."

Bloggers of any political persuasion who equate a particular president, or the policy proposals of a particular president, with "America" are idiots.

I hope and expect that during the last eight years, you would have objected strenuously to any Republican who equated opposition to Bush's policies with being "anti-American".

And speaking for myself, I absolutely wanted Bush and Cheney to fail. That's because I believed their policies were not intended to benefit "America" -- the nation as a whole -- but for corrupt purposes of private financial gain for themselves and their ultra-rich cronies and financial backers, to the grave detriment of America.

I am glad that Bush and Cheney failed to turn Iraq into a puppet regime of the oil corporations under the authoritarian rule of Ahmed Chalabi as the "new improved Saddam" and to use a subjugated Iraq as a base for further imperialistic wars of aggression across the region.

I am glad that Bush and Cheney failed to establish a totalitarian police state in the US, with unlimited, unaccountable powers to spy on, imprison and torture American citizens, and to turn the US Justice Department into an extension of the Republican National Committee with a mission to protect corrupt Republicans and destroy Democrats with bogus prosecutions.

I am glad that Bush and Cheney failed to "privatize" Social Security into the hands of their ultra-rich cronies and financial backers on Wall Street, because if they had succeeded, Social Security would have gone down the toilet of Wall Street corruption and would no longer exist today.

There are other areas where I am glad that Bush and Cheney failed.

And of course there are issues where they succeeded:

They succeeded in a massive transfer of wealth and power from the American people -- including future generations -- into the hands of a tiny, increasingly hereditary, ultra-rich corporate-feudalist ruling class.

They succeeded in blocking any significant action to reduce the carbon pollution that is causing global warming, to protect hundreds of billions of profits for the fossil fuel corporations.

Such "successes" for Bush and Cheney represent grave harms to America, and in the case of global warming, the entire world and all future generations of human beings.

Please don't engage in the same sort of dishonest nonsense that the Republicans engaged in for eight years -- that support for "Our President" equals support for "America", and to oppose "Our President" equals "anti-Americanism". It's BS and it is unworthy of you.

If Rush Limbaugh hopes that Obama will fail, it's because he believes, or claims to believe, that Obama's "success" -- the successful implementation of Obama's policy proposals -- will be harmful, not beneficial, to the country.

That's fair enough. The proper response, though, is not to act like a Republican and say that wanting Obama's agenda to "fail" is the same as wanting "America" to "fail".

The proper response is to talk about the relevant policy proposals, and why you think they will benefit the country and thus should "succeed", and make the critics back up their assertion that the policies will be harmful and thus should "fail".

Pass the popcorn ... they are all so blantantly incompetent and running scared that it is a delight to watch.

As suggested by sjw and others, perhaps Sanford isn't as dumb as he seems. The Utah governor, Jon Huntsman, made a similar remark about congressional repubs just the day before, and only backed off sligthly. His public pronouncements about forsaking stimulus money will no doubt cause problems at home, which is the kind of thing that only a guy preparing to jump into national waters would do. Perhaps Sanford is about to go all-in on the 2012 sweepstakes. What better way to show how mavericky you are than by punching Fatso in the nose?

Heh, this might be a good time to repeat a joke about Rush I put out back in the day. Multiple choice question, folks!:

Q: What is Rush's favorite dope?

a. Oxycontin

b. His biggest fan (maybe a troll reading this now?)

c. Himself

But SecularAnimist, read this quote from what I said in the Kristol thread and see that there is indeed a difference between wanting soandso not to achieve their goals, versus wanting important programs to fail even if it hurts America. The Repugs are mostly in the latter category, that's the whole point.

Advice roughly like Kristol's can be roughly legitimate if the giver really thinks that the programs won't work, will take important freedoms away, etc. But to be against programs and their success because it will help the other party is un-American. I think the DNC, Democrats running for office, etc. should publicize pro-failure quotes from people like Kristol, Limbaugh, etc. and say "See, this party's advisers put spiting their opposition, and their party's success above the good of the nation."

BTW your oft-repeated nut-shell takedown of the Republican program is a good one.

SecularAnimist: You are equivocating between blind partisanship and merely disagreeing with an agenda. I'm guessing (hoping) that you wanted Bush's plans to fail because they were bad, not because you were a blind anti-Bush or anti-GOP partisan.

And it is a fact, not an opinion, that Bush *was* a massive failure and America *has* suffered as a result. When the president fails, America fails. That is not a false equivalence, as you at least imply it is, that is the reality we live in.

Like Democrats wanted Neocon warmongering to set the standard for the future, and Bush's tax breaks for the rich to succeed and prove that trickle down was the course for the nation.

Democrats always care more for partisanship than the well being of the nation.

Luther, there was nothing Democrats could do to stop Neocon warmongering or Bush's tax cuts. Democrats didn't have votes to even slow things down.

Bush and today's Republican part have no one but themselves to blame. They damaged the country trying to enrich themselves and the world has seen it.

You know, folks, it's truly amazing what a big fat shot of O can do for hurt feelings!

Sec, I think Neil B is right -- the Kristol piece is damning, they really believe that making the country generally better off hurts their niche.

And it's quite true. But that's also a point made by Tom Paine long ago: giving everyone in every new generation the best opportunity does hurt hereditary and concentrated wealth. It's meant to.

Read this lately? It's always worth rereading.
http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/rights/singlehtml.htm

That's why we're here. That's why we had a GI Bill to send soldiers to school after WW-II, which made a middle class that lasted two decades.

That's what we need again.

Yes, the Republicans don't want it to happen. They want another Gilded Age of a few affluent people and a mass of poor.

Shade Tail wrote: "Bush *was* a massive failure and America *has* suffered as a result. When the president fails, America fails."

I disagree. America has suffered as a direct consequence of Bush succeeding in implementing his policies, policies which were intended to benefit his ultra-rich reactionary base at the expense of, and to the detriment of, everyone else -- policies which demonstrably succeeded in accomplishing their actual aims.

America has been spared suffering where Bush failed to implement his policies, such as Social Security privatization.

The idea that the success of Bush's policies would have benefited the country, and that we are suffering because Bush "failed", is wrong.

It is wrong because it is based on the belief that Bush's policies were intended to benefit America, but somehow "failed" to do so. But Bush's policies were not intended to benefit America.

Bush's policies were inherently and inevitably harmful to the country as a whole, because they had as their central purpose and underlying philosophy the goal of benefiting a tiny ultra-rich minority at the expense of everyone else. We are suffering to the extent that Bush succeeded in implementing those policies.

Hank Roberts wrote: "Yes, the Republicans don't want it to happen. They want another Gilded Age of a few affluent people and a mass of poor."

Agreed. Which is exactly why the Republicans have no choice but to lie. Because if they openly campaigned on their actual agenda -- to enrich and empower the rich and powerful at the expense of, and to the detriment of, everyone else, and to establish a social and economic order consisting of a tiny, ultra-rich, increasingly hereditary, corporate-feudalist ruling class lording it over a nation of impoverished, indentured serfs -- they would not only lose elections, but they would pretty quickly cease to exist as a political party.

There is nothing illegitimate about Republicans saying "we want Obama's agenda to fail because we think it would be bad for the country if he succeeds in implementing it". That's exactly what a "principled opposition" is supposed to do.

What is illegitimate and unprincipled is for the Republicans to hide and misrepresent their own actual agenda of ruthless, relentless, rapacious class warfare by the reactionary ultra-rich against everyone else, and to attack Obama's agenda with lies.

SecularAnimist: "I disagree."

That's your prerogative, but your disagreement is entirely somatic. And, quite frankly, rather twisted. For example, you wrote:

"The idea that the success of Bush's policies would have benefited the country, and that we are suffering because Bush 'failed', is wrong."

I can't tell whether or not you are accusing me of actually declaring that Bush's agenda should have succeeded, but I certainly didn't. And it is entirely irrelevant to the point. By screwing over so much of America, Bush failed as the President, period. To look at it in any other way is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose and duties of the President. He might have been a successful partisan political hack, but he was a failed President. And America is suffering from that failure.

Sorry SA, while I understand your point, I can't entirely agree with it. The distinction in part depends on the difference between publicly stated goals and private agendas.

The publicly stated goal in Iraq was to remove Saddam Hussein and establish a peaceful and prosperous democratic form of government there. We were told that this could happen easily and cheaply (welcomed with open arms, most soldiers home in a few months, etc.). I most certainly did want Bush to succeed in regards to these goals and plans. I didn't think there was any chance at all that he would and was sure there was a hidden agenda, but I wanted this to happen. Even if it meant more nation-building exercises down the road, it would have been better than the 4,500+ American deaths, trillions of dollars in spending, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead and millions displaced that have been the actual result of the invasion.

But a small number of highly prominent Republican mouthpieces are rooting for the stimulus bill to fail. They are hoping that if a major health care initiative is passed, it will turn into a disaster. They are worried that success of these measures could cement Democratic majorities and lead to things like a more progressive tax structure and more government regulations (or in Rush's case, he is just committed to publically pushing the "everything liberal is bad" and "everything conservative is good" points of view). This would be like liberals rooting in advance for the kind of clusterfuck Iraq turned into so that Bush didn't get the popularity and votes he needed to eliminate the inheritance tax. None of us did that, or at least nobody with anywhere near the levels of power and public recognition that we are now seeing from the Right.

With respect to Social Security privatization, it was right to root for him to fail to pass legislation for that purpose. It would have been wrong, if it had passed, to root for an economic downturn to destroy the values of everyone's private accounts and force a return to the old system.