That's easy: "I was misquoted by the liberal media!"

Well, someone has to be the first to stop kissing Limbaugh's ass.

...right?

"Post Script: How quickly will Limbaugh and the Club for Growth force McHenry to denounce himself? And how can McHenry spin out of unambiguous comments like these?"

I'll be generous and give him 2 days....

Expect condemnation from Limburger in 3... 2... 1...

-Z

The Reagan Era may be over, but the Nixon one sure isn't. Crooks, Liars, Exposure, but not enough accountability.

"By the time the same congressman leading the tax revolt concedes that taxes are already low, you know the jig is up."

I hate to disagree with Steve twice in the same day, but I don't think that stating that marginal tax rates are the lowest they've been in generations is the same as conceding that taxes are "too low". That said, McHenry's comments for Time magazine are a nice surprise.

Club for Greed will get a tax-cutting madman who wants marginal rates at ZERO percent to challenge McHenry in the 2010 primary in 5... 4... 3... 2...

DanP:

Bush 43 was, in every way that really matters, a reincarnation of Nixon (as much as Rove is Lee Atwater). Everything Bush thinks he knows about government comes out of Nixon's "unitary executive" fascism. It's not for nothing that Rice recently described her own statements about the president being above the law in Frost/Nixon terms.

When he's admitting that the Reagan era is over and the Republican demands for tax cuts are no longer relevant ...

... he's actually lying and just trying to put on a good face for a GOP that's been relegated to a punchline.

McHenry -- and all the other GOPers who appear to be having changes of heart -- still believes all the crap he's spouted over the years. He just finally realized that saying it out loud no longer resonates.

Let's not think that these clowns are having a collective epiphany. They're not.

It's all just PR and branding. The product still sucks as bad as it always has ...

If Rove is a reincarination of Lee Atwater do you think he will ever have a death bed conversion the way Atwater did when he was diagnosed with brain cancer? No wait Rove would need to have either a brain or a heart to have a converstion of any kind. He has neither.

I'm a little worried by how fast some people on the right are starting to realize that they need a new shtick. Jeb Bush, now Patric McHenry? McHenry is not the sharpest tool in the box--though he is a tool--and if he is starting to get it pretty soon it wont matter if Rush Limbaugh disses him. Eventually enough republicans who want to stay in power will end up "independents" or democrats and the base will start looking for new leaders. And perhaps the base, too, will wake up. If so, we could be in trouble. I still think it will be forty years before those numbskulls figure it out. But that's forty years too soon for me.

aimai

Redrover:

That confession was just the Zeitgeist of Evil leaving a dying body to take up residence in the next host.

aimai has it figured out. GOP politicians will pull an Arlen Sphincter in mass. They will all rebrand as Donkeys and run for office. Shades of this were evident in the last election when more than one GOP did not identify as such.

It's all just PR and branding. The product still sucks as bad as it always has ...

Exactly. It's more than obvious to the majority of Americans that:

1. Rand/Reagan "no-rules free market anarchy" / "welfare for the rich" economic theories are disastrous;

2. Nixon/Cheney "the ends justify the means" / American exceptionalism thuggery in international relations are acutely counter-productive;

3. Rove/Limbaugh/Coulter "murder people who disagree with us" politics are, you know, psychotic; and

4. Hatred and bigotry are actually immoral, contrary to what the "Religious Right" keeps saying.

Virtually no one in the GOP has realized any of these things. It's all well and good to stick to your principles, but what if your principles are proven to be shit? Answer: ignore this, and insist that the issue is the need for better marketing. When proven wrong, just fight that much harder!

Bush 43 was, in every way that really matters, a reincarnation of Nixon...

The connection, of course, being Dick Cheney, who learned well at the feet of the master.

...and I almost forgot:

5. Bush/Palin "we don't need no fancy learnin'" know-nothing rejection of science / embrace of medievalism is something that only appeals to an uneducated zealot fringe.

This reminds me of an alcoholic hitting rock bottom and starting to get glimmers of reality that he "needs to change". I would look for several more of these slight revelations followed by severe relapses before this particular patient begins to show real signs of recovery.

Sigmund Freud would have a field day with these bumpkins. I am going to take McHenry's gaffe of actual self examination as a good sign that wingnuts are possibly becoming the slightest bit sane. Though it could (likely was)have been just a GOP brainfart that sometimes happens when the Moon is just right.

Rush can't let this challenge to his authority go unpunished, any more than a dominant bull hippo can allow younger interlopers to "visit" one of his females. I predict a McHenry walkback by tomorrow night. It will be mealy-mouthed and implausible, but he will give it the ol' college try. Rush must not be made unhappy.

Well, someone has to be the first to stop kissing Limbaugh's ass.

I think that award is going to go to Colin Powell.

While we're congratulating ourselves on the Republican party rotting like the picture of Dorian Gray, but is the Democratic Party losing it's soul by accommodating many of the sins of the former? The torture issue isn't just about "torture to get information" with "no" sequelae. It is almost certain that some of the subjects/victims died from what happened to them. IOW, representatives of the USA tortured some people to death. This should not go unpunished, even if we can imagine some pass for those who wanted some information from waterboarding (which wouldn't produce those deaths) etc. See below:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-05/how-many-were-tortured-to-death/

Chopin: And remember, they elected a chair of the party who last campaigned for office by trying to fool voters into believing he was a Democrat...

remember...the GOP has sunk so low that if there was no income-tax at all, Rush Limbaugh would be urging the government to give anyone with an income of over a half-millions bucks some kind of cash bonus every year. Just because.

I can't help wondering lately if Rush is actually nothing but a very elaborate, and savage practical joke on the GOP, and his moronic followers. Coulter clearly is--I think she tipped her hand with recent comments in the last couple of years that were so ridiculous that they could be nothing other than parody. Limbaugh has been wallowing around in that territory for awhile now.

That confession was just the Zeitgeist of Evil

gives whole new meaning to "evil twin". . .

"...the Reagan era is over. 'Marginal tax rates are the lowest they've been in generations, and all we can talk about is tax cuts'"

BLASPHEME !

Bush 43 was, in every way that really matters, a reincarnation of Nixon

except, since Nixon was bad, he came back a few rungs further down the chain...

Any chance of any of the big news mags doing a feature on the MAJORITY party? Like, who's who, which personalities are leading the show, what their personal causes are, how are they organizing for their big policy push this session?

What it's like running a traditional national party that includes liberal, moderate, and conservative wings?

What it's like being the majority party in a Democracy where the media carries on the national discourse like you only existed as background noise for the Prez vs Repub plot line?

As a rough guess, I think the Libertarians and the Green Party get as much air time as the Democrats. Maybe more.

"Taxpayers fed up with the spending and tax increases happening in Washington will be holding hundreds of similar protests across the country," noted McHenry's spokesman and communications director Brock McCleary

He'll remain in opposition to tax increases.

Could be that he is in a mid-life crisis - Sorta changing to a "Give me Libertines, or give me death".

But, Powell, who tried to cover up the My Lai massacre, while serving with the AmeriCal Division, will now say to Leader Rush, "Me Lie".