If you don't confess terrorist plots in 30 minutes, your waterboarding is free!

Reading the comments to Stephanopolous's "apology" on his ABC (Faux Lite) blog gives reason to hope. It seems that Americans may finally be waking up to the realization that Republicans are liars and that the "MSM" are active participants in the mendacity.

We have 10 months to hammer home this truth before the mid-terms.

Dominos is a great example of what's wrong with big business. Massive advertising and a product that's as cheaply made as possible, offered at a low price. It's mostly empty carbs and fat, and I suspect that the box costs more than the pizza to make.
There's dozens of small pizza places in my city that sell much better pizza at a little higher price.
So if you want the junk food of politics, listen to Fox news, if you're willing to make a little more effort, check out your own neighborhood and see what's there.

it was George W. Bush, Goldberg argues, who "abandon[ed] conservative policies in order to be more popular" -- which strikes me as pretty silly advice.

And that's where I gave up and you should too. It's the Big Lie of the entire right-wing movement right now: they truly, truly believe that the bulk of the country thinks like Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.

Bush "strayed" from being a solid conservative? Remember "reformer with results?" "Compassionate conservative?" "Big tent?" Those were the positions Bush needed to not even get the popular vote in 2000.

Sometimes you can wrap this up in Jonah's idiocy, but for this it's even simpler. He truly just is a liar, pretending that there was some amazing super ultra-right Bush that was vetted, approved of, and voted for by the bulk of America. There wasn't. Those who think there was are lying or insanely delusional, or both.

Republicans are on TV this week pretending that 9/11 didn't happen under a Republican president. This is far, far beyond tomato sauce.

in the mid-80s, my sons and i moved from chicago (home of more great pizza places than you can shake a stick at) to winston-salem.
the only pizza places were domino's, pizza hut, and other crappy chains.
the boys came up with a great slogan for them: "pizza for people who don't know any better."
the same slogan could apply to the republican party these days.

As always, conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed. If they failed or they lost, it always means they weren't conservative enough, not that the public doesn't agree with their principles.

If the Republicans returned to true conservativism (e.g., staying out of personal lives with respect to religion and sex) and ended their many hypocritical stances on issues (e.g., we're for national security AND we want to import lots of oil -- global warming and green energy be damned), they'd have a chance to recover their political fortunes.

I am sure everyone has noticed this, but may be it's worth pointing out, that the hard communists also used to say that the USSR and Mao's China were not really communist, and that's why they failed, and therefore, the failure does not discredit the pure communist ideology at all.

Yes! What August said!

Bush was not a TRUE conservative. Neither was his Dad. Nor were Reagan, Ford, or Nixon - and certainly not that Democrat in uniform, Ike.
No, we've never had a true Conservative leader in this country. They all failed conservativism.
What we have to do is we have to find a true conservative, one who REALLY believes in it. Like that guy with the funny mustache in Germany. Now there, THERE, was a TRUE Conservative!

At first blush, the parallels might seem compelling. Domino's screwed up; Republicans screwed up.

Yeah, but right off the bat, Goldberg's prescription involves the Republicans admitting it.

Fat chance.

It's actually a great analogy: They'll both talk about it a lot, but neither Domino's nor the RNC will really do much to change their product--same cardboard, same hate-filled greed.

I thought Domino's was done in by the You Tube video with the 14 year-old boys picking their noses and putting it on the pizzas.

Come to think of it...guess that's what happened to the Republican Party as well. Destroyed by a bunch of gross adolescent slobs.

Republican conservatism is a sham; it's a combination of corporate kleptocracy, naive libertarianism, and christian theocracy. And the latter two are merely a political prop for the first.

Didn't Dana Perino say the same thing as Rudy not too long ago.

I surmise this is just a GOP talking point and if they say it enough people are supposed to forget the past and embrace this new reality? Just how ignorant do they think the Tea Baggers are?

On the other hand, I bet Dominos would kill for the Republicans market share;>

Importantly, the consumer has many choices when it comes to pizza. American politics, on the other hand, gives the consumer only two mediocre choices. Thus, unlike Domino's, the GOP only needs to wait for the fickle American electorate to tire of the current party and go back to the only other option on the table.

"...it was George W. Bush, Goldberg argues, who
'abandon[ed] conservative policies in order to be more popular...'"

If Bush abandoned conservative policies in order to win support, doesn't that mean that said policies are not popular with Americans?

Am I missing something here?

And the best pizza in Omaha is Zio's.

Goldberg is right, as far as it goes: a little frank contrition would be a good start for the GOP. But that's a no-brainer, and Goldberg goes on to admit that the hard choices are about what the new improved "product" should look like - and he doesn't touch that one.

That's the problem. Even if the GOP is willing to confess its sins - and many of them are - they are no closer to deciding what policies they ought to be advancing now. Only so much of the electorate, however noisy it gets, is going to be satisfied with bomb-throwing, Party of No tactics as a substitute for actual policies.

Domino's can use better ingredients, and offer both thin crust and chicago style to nab a wider customer base without alienating anyone. In crafting some type of platform, the GOP's choices are much harder.

"Somehow our policies have become unpopular, despite the extra toppings of rat droppings, human hair, and dust bunnies that we offer free of charge. I know--we'll rename our extras so that they sound like the toppings that other party offers, and we'll be back in business."

Poor George Bush!! I can't count the number of times Bush mouthed talking points about not caring about popular opinion. And it was probably the one thing about his administration that was true - the quote "Who cares what you think?" and Cheney's end of term "So what?" is enough evidence.

So now his water-carriers have turned against him and are accusing him of seeking popularity! It was probably the least venal effort he made.

Hilarious.

pragmatic@11.24 - WOW - those remarks on Stephenopolous's blog are SCORCHING!

Maybe the American public IS waking up to the gross negligence of our "political pundits" in not speaking up when the Republicans spout out-right lies on the air.

Now, maybe the news industry - with the exception of Fox, of course - will wake up and grow some balls.

This theme isn't really new. I first heard it in June 2008, on a conservative call-in radio show. The commentator was explaining that the reason people didn't like Republicans wasn't because of their conservative policies, but rather, because of the "wildly liberal" policies adopted by George Bush. It's a pretty useful form of denial -- it allows Republicans to explain away their electoral failures without having to confront the real reasons for those failures. However, Steve is right, ultimately, it may not matter. The key phrase here is "a motivated right-wing base and a frustrated progressive base." Right now, the Democratic Party is pushing it's own particular brand of self-delusion, i.e., that: (1) the Tea Party movement is an irrelevant joke which may safely be ignored, and (2) the alleged demoralization of its progressive wing is a myth. Seems like both parties are drinking their own brand of Kool-Aid.

you want to equate politics with pizza? fine. the GOP has no intention of making their "pizza" better. all they know how to do is convince you that the shitty tasting unhealthy "pizza" (that winds up being more expensive in the long run despite any "cash back" promotion they run) they serve is the only pizza you want. certainly the only pizza you should want. and the competing pizza places support al queda & make your kids gay.

A typical readers digest homily is that I must be good because god doesn't make ungood stuffenscence .
The republican party , which has been noted here as being hysterically unrepentant , is an insular party of inch deep mile wide obfuscation and commitment . Adopting themselves (no less) as the party of god , they run with a Readers Digest argument about the god not making ungood junk , to exonerate and explain away their liabilities as obviously double plus godly good .
The early Archie Bunker wins what the later Archie Bunker winced painfully at .

Interesting. Strikes me that "remaking" the GOP would involve a significant change in what the leaders of the GOP believe.

Changing beliefs is extremely difficult. Of course, the level of hypocrisy and cynicism displayed by GOP leaders for many years now is so high that maybe they really don't believe anything--other than in the benefits of holding power to enrich themselves and their friends.

In that case, it shouldn't be too hard to re-invent the Party, since its leaders appear to believe in nothing but self-interest (can you say, Ayn Rand?)...but, the Party will not change what it delivers to the country in that event. It'll just be the same old Monarchist crap disguised with a new topping.

Our country is seriously fucked up. The only light in the gloom is that voters did finally oust the GOP...long after the damage was done, unfortunately.

We better hope the GOP's latest gambit--of pretending to be a populist party--fails, because if they snooker the voters yet again, I shudder to think of the result.

Jonah Goldberg suggests the Republican Party would be wise to follow the pizza chain's lead.

Nah, Jonah, the broader lessen for Republicans here is that they used advertising and gimmicks to become the no. 2 pizza chain in the country and that it took Americans decades to finally figure out the product they sold sucks.

It's pretty simple isn't it? Democrats serve pizza. The GOP serves crap and tells you its pizza. If they started serving pizza they'd Democrats.

Wash a dog, comb a dog -- still a dog!

In one of those Domino's commercials, they make a claim of something absurd like they use 40% more spices than their competitors. How do they know the formulas of their competitors? So maybe this could work for the GOP. They seem to like making numbers up at random too.

The comments at the Domino's turnaround site are revealing. People still don't like the pizza and in fact think the new stuff tastes awful.

So the lesson for Republicans is that not only do they need to admit they had problems (which is itself very unlikely) but they would have to change to offer something considered to be good. And what are the chances of that?

c u n d gulag wrote: "Like that guy with the funny mustache in Germany. Now there, THERE, was a TRUE Conservative!"

Amusingly, Jonah Goldberg would disagree. He thinks that both that guy, and the guy with the funny mustache who was running Russia at the same time, were liberals.

Well, let me be absolutely precise: He may or may not actually think that, but for purposes of making money, we wrote it in a book.

Repubs/conservatives survive on myths: that Republicans are actually a moderate party, tax cuts and wars produce magical results, Reagan reinvented America and solved all our economic problems until Clinton came along and messed it all up...

The Democratic-lite, me-too big government would be a bigger failure than trying to really be a conservative party. If people want a nanny state and big government they will always vote for the the Democratic Party.

There was nothing conservative about adding five trillion to the national debt, creating new cabinet departments, and maintaining open borders for eight years.

The Republicans problem is that the Democrats have a lock on more than 50% of the population and the demographic groups that are automatically support the Democratic Party are growing.

"Hmm, voters to seem to hate what we're offering. Maybe we should go to war against moderates and move even further off the right-wing cliff."

You mean,

"Hmm, voters to seem to hate what we're offering. Maybe their problem is they're just not getting enough of it, they need to know they can be killed ."

Tom Monaghan founded Domino's 45 years ago. He was a far right anti-abortion fanatic who poured millions into anti-abortion efforts. Though he no longer owns the chain, Domino's should be boycotted forever due to this association. If you have capitalism, it is better to support local businesses (such as pizza joints) rather than national corporate chains. Workers of the world: Unite behind the locals, lose your chains!

He thinks that both that guy, and the guy with the funny mustache who was running Russia at the same time, were liberals.

What about Groucho? He had a funny mustache and was running around Hollywood at the time....

Steve, too bad that Obama probably believes in "kinder, gentler endless war" himself. Tell me at the end of this year how many troops we actually will have withdrawn from Iraq.

The Republicans problem is that the Democrats have a lock on more than 50% of the population and the demographic groups that are automatically support the Democratic Party are growing.

Ain't democracy a bitch?

Republican Dominos, when confronted with the survey data saying that customers thought the crust was cardboard and the sauce ketchup, would say that the real problem was that they didn't give the customers _enough_ cardboard and ketchup. And also that garlic was gay.

"Even if the GOP is willing to confess its sins - and many of them are"

They are only willing to admit the sins of OTHER Republicans. LOL

Well, no. I don't mean to strain the metaphor here, but the qualitative differences matter. Domino's saw the market research and concluded, "Hmm, people seem to hate our pizza. Maybe we should make it better." Republicans saw the election results and concluded, "Hmm, voters to seem to hate what we're offering. Maybe we should go to war against moderates and move even further off the right-wing cliff."

I would say El Jefe very much abandoned conservative policies, or as much as I have ever understood them. (And I mean the normal verbal articulation of conservative policies, not necessarily the rubber hits the road policies.) For instance, I'm pretty sure the various police states acts the Bushies supported were not in the vein of most flavors of conservatism, unless you mean Buckley-style support for Franco. When you babble on about freedom a lot, I'd expect that your actions would have something to do with it.

Likewise the prescription drug subsidy - that's a liberal goal, and in theory the subsidy satisfied it, but it certainly isn't smaller government, and yet it is not a liberal action either, since most of the money went to, and was intended to go to pharmacutical companies. That might be right-wing, but it's not conservativism as I have ever understood them to be saying, and it isn't liberalism either, much less love-your-neighbor-hippiedom.

Support for human rights was a liberal doctrine last time I checked. Support for aggressive action when threatened was a conservative tendency. Inventing a known non-existent threat from some small country full of brown people and then invading that country when it did not attack you just for the money and the election boost doesn't strike as either conservative or liberal. In fact, that's pretty much literally out of Hitler's playbook. (See the invasion of Poland 1939: in particular the part where they dressed up some executed prisoners in Polish uniforms, claimed that Poles had attacked a radio station and then used that as a justification for a war of conquest Hitler had intended to carry out for some years.)

What makes it truly freaky is how much the main actions of Bush seem neither libertarian nor old school Republican (I include Reagan here), in intent or in conceptualization, nor were they liberalism as I have ever understood it (unless it's the liberalism of the British Liberal party of 1900 or so). Yet the 'true conservatism' expressed by the main right-wingers of the moment seems to discard any of the things old Republicans supported (I include Reagan here again), and supports all this strange neo-fascist/banana Republic stuff, blended with a whole lot of neo-confederate imagery. The only thing they seem to be consistent on is lower taxes (and unlike the R's of yore, higher deficits - NOT including Reagan here). So they seem to be searching for a meaner, nastier, darker form of Bushism.

It's really as if FDR had gotten into (term-limited) office and decided that the issue was not the 'melefactors of great wealth' but the jobless and the bankrupt. And he had decided that the right thing to do was follow the lead of South American juntas (and to consider Hitler as a role model of sorts), build up the police state, stick it to the not-wealthy early, often and hard, and invade some random small countries, while nattering on about the Four Freedoms of lower taxes & bigger deficits, excellent rewards for maximum fraud, heavy oppression and endless losing war. ('You have a right... to be poor... to be ripped off... to be afraid! And you have the right to be pointlessly killed and to pointlessly murder!')

And again, the diagnosis seems to be that we didn't suffer ENOUGH. So I can see the absolute truth that Bush wasn't conservative... and then after that, their diagnosis goes all wrong and descends into incoherent babbling. I can't tell if the National Review is going home to mama (but Buckley came out against the whole Iraq thing last I checked) or heading off to strange new worlds of stupid.

p.s. My contribution to the Boy Am I Annoyed with Democrats Fairness Doctrine: Apparently the Democrats in DC (Or is that DC centrists? Democrats in the Senate? Are they the same now? Seems about half and half at this point. Half the party is doing the Tango and the other half is line-dancing.) have decided the main problem with the Bush program was not in its philosophy, but in its implementation. Damn those tea partiers, and damn those DFHs for not being Bushy enough.

max
['I've been kinda hoping, for a coupla years now, that this would all kind of calm down and everyone would stop sounding like DaDa performance artists, but I suppose that's one of the problems of an in-process ideological realignment.']

Something's up. Sounds like the right is starting to say "Hey, we know we have made mistakes. Give us another chance." If we don't start hearing the right rebutting this, then it's a new tact. Dont trust 'em.

A pizza is all about the dough.

People get indigestion when the fat is indigestable, like lard, or hard transfats.

The sauce can also be too acidic.

The toppings are mere window dressing when it comes to a good pizza.

The GOP is all about dough, theirs.

They also are into acidic shrill whine, whose vintage has gone vinegar.

Goldberg's analogy falls flat, doesn't quite stick together, and is a bit too pasty for my tastes in journalism.

Here's why so many GOPers get confused about how to fix their problems: they confuse the ongoing popularity of their RHETORIC with the spectacular idiocy of their POLICIES.

That "small government," "low tax," "strong defense" stuff will always play well with a substantial proportion on the American population. Their odd mix of anarchist and authoritarian ideas has been charging up populist zeal ever since the antifederalists tried to kill the Constitution and the nullifiers tried to strangle the Union, and it isn't going away. Yet any time you actually try to apply those ideas in practice, it all goes to hell in a handbasket. Still, if your platform consists of little more than slavish worship of wealth and (private sector) power, you'd have to cling to what little authentic link to old style American values you had.

Democrats might need a new topping or two as well:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described in private then-Sen. Barack Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Obama is the nation's first African-American president.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100109/ap_on_el_se/us_obama_reid

and the guy with the funny mustache who was running Russia at the same time, were liberals.

So Stalin was a conservative? A small-government conservative? That's a new one.

Free Republic? Kill 'em all and let God sort the 'em out...

Sorry for the right-wing bumper-sticker slur.
Sort of...
I don't follow right wing internet politics much.
But somehow, on one of those random browser moments, I ended up here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2421769/posts

You need to see that page.
Here is a direct link...
Please note: That page is posted on the freerepublic site.

Far as this left wing hawk is concerned, these bastards are enemies of the USA. Not even bin Landen himself, slanders my POTUS and my country with that much sick venom. Most of you know that I've got zero tolerance for Muslim radicals. Know this too: I've got zero tolerance for this sort of homegrown terrorist bullshit too.

To the assholes in charge of the FreeRepublic site:

Why don't you all just SHIT on the US FLAG...
And post the pictures of your sphincter doing its duty?

RMcD, Their odd mix of anarchist and authoritarian ideas has been charging up populist zeal ever since the antifederalists tried to kill the Constitution and the nullifiers tried to strangle the Union, and it isn't going away.

Well put. These people think Democracy is mob rule so for a conservative it's all about creating and controlling an enraged mob.

Americans didn't stop liking what the Republican party is supposed to deliver.

there is no evidence that Americans ever liked republicans policy offerings - love the misleading, lies and dissembling sound bites - hate the results.

republicans had spent the 20 years prior to bush doing every genuflect possible to HIDE the meaning of their policies from voters. reagan got blue collar union workers to vote against themselves and vote for reagan by using his racist dog whistle-speak to hide his class warfare agenda against the working and disadvantaged.

It wasn't until bush actually went full Monty with the republican/conservative positions that Americans finally caught on (a little bit) and saw how disastrous republicanism is for them.

Slamming down the condescending left-wing kool-aid

Genn Greenwald jumps the brie shark...
And Helen Thomas needs to retire.

Sad.

I try hard to figure out why anyone would vote
republican. When a Demo doesn't run and I read
that a Rep is leading in the particular state,
I want to know why? Why do people want to vote
for a failed party. Because one doesn't vote for
a person, one votes for a party. A failed party.

my plan to reform the republican party:

1. grow up. admit there are problems out there that tax cuts won't solve.

2. agree that when it comes to pizza, chicago style is great, but when it comes to economics, chicago school is dead wrong. this recession is deep and some sort of government intervention besides tax cuts, is needed to get things moving. don't like what the dems did with the stimulus package and where they might be heading with financial reform? propose some alternatives of your own rather than just oppose. show that you can govern (see the next item.)

3.drop your idiotic mantra that government is the problem. government may not be able to solve everything, but if you believe it's the enemy, you can't govern period. the last administration proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt (heck of a job brownie!).

4. build a big tent. this is not the country demographically that pat buchanan grew up in. this is not the monotoned nation sarah palin sees. we are a diverse country and people may look different from you or think differently than you but they all demand to be treated with the respect and dignity to which they are entitled as human beings.

5. be prepared to be pragmatic. dogma, whether of the left or the right, doesn't always fit reality. even your hero, ronald reagan, realized this when he believe it or not RAISED taxes in order to make the budget work.

6. try being civil in your discourse. honestly challenge people who disagree with you but also be willing to listen to their ideas. if you can't do that then you're weak. ignorance is the enemy, not the other side.

7. try building building an honestly conservative news outlet. fox news does you no favors. the wsj editorial board does you no favors. the washington times (if it hasn't collapsed) does you no favors. michelle malkin, ann coulter, rush limbaugh, glen beck do you no favors. uncritical echo chambers can't be expected to tell you when you're right and when you're wrong. nor do they do anything but preach to the choir because they have no credibility beyond those who already believe as you do.

8. have some big ideas. tax cuts aren't a big idea. you say this is a conservative country, yet almost every major public policy initiative that has worked its way into law over the last 80 years, at least, has come from the left. social security, civil rights, medicare. the closest republicans come are the regulatory agencies put in place by nixon ... epa, osha etc. ... but they are agencies that conservatives oppose.

9. every party has its share of clowns, but you really ought to find some way of replacing bachmann, foxx, imhofe etc. with adults. or at least limit their ability to speak out.

10. put some people capable of spouting something other than the party's daily talking points. it might be refreshing to hear someone from your side who can think critically, and i won't be so tempted to throw things at the tv screen.

11. in the alternative of 1-10, go with deep dish.

Goldberg doesn't know what he is talking about, as usual. The true Republican base doesn't think Bush screwed up, except that he spent too much money (though they never bother to acknowledge the big ticket item was Iraq, that they whole heartedly supported.) Go back and watch the Republican debates from 2008 and never is a word of criticism said about Bush. It is at that point I figured whatever Dem was nominated couldn't be beaten,even the young inexperienced black guy. The candidates clearly knew they could not attract support by acknowledging error. And that is why I cannot wait for the Republican debates to start in 2011. The candidates will have to compete to outcrazy each other to appeal to the base. It will be the best thing to ever happen to Obama's poll numbers.

Slamming down the condescending left-wing kool-aid..." koreyel @ 3:44 PM.

Read the article and completely agree with your next two lines.
The majority of Islamic terrorism against the US is based, in one way or another, on the support of the US for Israel. Because there is no economic advantage to that support; viz, Israel controls no oil or precious metals, has a comparatively small population, many people believe that there MUST be an ulterior motive for that support. Many here in the US believe that Israel controls Congress, either through money for campaign contributions or by emotioal blackmail: the Holocaust. Neither are true, but that hasn't stopped the "true believers" in their claims.
In the Middle East, eighty years of anti-Jewish propaganda, often utilized to deflect criticism from corrupt governing elites, has produced populations much more willing to believe (who's going to argue against them?) that Israel, and the US support of that country, are the sum total of all that is wrong in Egypt/Saudia Arabia/Syria, take your pick, and once Israel is gone and/or the US "defeated" all will be well. This has even less contact with reality that the US version, but the proponents of this idea are armed and willing to die.
The Moslem elites screwed up in Palestine before 1948, when they resisted, often to the death of their followers (note: not their OWN, of course), ANY modernization that the Jewish settlers might were bring to Palestine. They did this, while freely selling land and dispossessing their own farmers (basically sharecroppers), by inciting mobs against the Jewish storekeepers and farmers as "invaders" of Palestine. Not an inch of "Moslem" land was taken from anyone before 1948 without payment, usually well more than any other Moslem would pay, too.
The Moslem elites continued to screw up in their battles against Israel after 1948. In 1948, Israel's Jewish population was approxiamtely 600,000; the combined Moslem populations of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Tran-Jordan amounted to easily 50 million. Yet they lost. And continued to lose. Why? It couldn't be because the governing elites were corrupt, incompetent egomaniacs. Admit that and the corrupt, incompetent egomaniacs would soon lose their palaces, jobs and lives; (see: Sadat, Anwar). No, it could only be because the Jews were being helped by the US and Europe.
From that false proposition 60 years of bloodshed have ensued.
And continues...

I'm not sure the Dominoes analogy is very apt. The Republicans intend to deliver the same shit to your door regardless of what you order. Only the marketing will be different.

Disclaimer: I know that this is quite off topic. I'm simply a concerned (progressive) citizen, with no platform so I'm crossposting this on some different progressive blogs that I frequent. My preemptive appologies for the blurb if someone takes offence!

I've been getting worried for the last half year that the republicans are (quite unfairly) winning the message war on the topic of the federal deficit in particular and spending in general. They have been quite successful in establishing a framing of the federal deficit where it is implicitly associated with president Obamas reform agenda and these days get uncontroversely reported by the media as the democrats problem at the same time as the democrats policies are described as big spending.

Many progressive blogs (including this one) has done an admirable job of researching base facts and pointing out that republican policies are mostly responsible but a narrative favouring republicans and putting democrats at a disadvantage is just to easy and tempting for the MSM, since that narrative has been firmly entrenched in the larger publics mind ever since Reagan and the Bush-Dukakis election. Democrats just ARE the tax-and-spend party.

I just read a reporting piece over at Politico where the journalist (Kenneth P. Vogel) wrote (about the tea party movement) that they "mobilized in opposition to the ambitious big-spending initiatives backed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats" - sourced to noone but the journalists pen. Like it was the most uncontroversial and natural thing in the world to write. That will be a problem for us.

So this is a plea really to any progressive with more of a platform than I have.

I believe we need to counter this narrative, and do it with the truth - but presented compactly, forcefully and to the point.

1) In the public discourse, we need to replace the terms "big spending" and "deficit" with the term "structural deficit" and hammer the point that it is the "structural deficit" that is our nations problem.

The deficit issue has to be handled politically; it will never be possible given the current climate to convince Joe Public that we should not worry about it in a recession because we have bigger problems (i.e. Krugmans position).

But what we can do is focus on the structural deficit, because the structural deficit is the real problem. Progressives don't need to explain what the structural deficit is, that's the medias role, and they will do it on background. And progressives don't necessarily need to argue why the structural deficit is the problem, that's also the medias job and they will do it on background if it becomes a media talking point.

But we need to press that the structural deficit is the problem, and that democrats thinks it should be solved.

2) We need to make and promote a list of f.e. the top 3 contributing lawmaking acts of the aughts/zeros/whatever in adding to the structural deficit.

If I haven't been fooled by hanging out to much at progressive blogs - such a list will look someting lika 1) Republican tax cuts. 2) Bush Medicare Part D. 3) Iraq and Afganistan wars.

Pushing those two points I believe is a clear cut winner in that it changes the framing of the public discourse, and that - in addition - it happens to be true & what we must deal with to solve the problem, and finally it also places the blame where blame is due.

And oh yeah, it's a kick in the teeth of the teabaggers....

Any takers?

Domino's could serve the best pizza in the world, and I wouldn't buy it because of its indirect funding of right-wing, anti-women groups, not to mention that I try to avoid restaurants that offer menu items with 740 calories and almost 30 fat grams. These are, incidentally, also the values of the Republican Party, led by people who are funded by corporate interests that see no problem with restricting women's rights and encouraging morbid obesity through irresponsible restaurant offerings.

if mama's boy is right [for once] and “the public stopped liking what the GOP actually delivered.” then i guess we should stick a fork in trickle down economics...they promised it, they delivered it...and, except for a few lucky folks at the top, everybody else stopped liking it

Republicans could be rebranded as feminine hygiene products and they wouldn't have to change a thing about themselves.

David Brandon ran Domino's into the ground just like George Bush ran the Republican Party into the ground, probably for many of the same reasons:

1) The Republican Party platform is based on policies that don't work. Domino's pizza is made with ingredients that are tasteless and bad for you.

2) David Brandon is arrogant and tone deaf, just like Bush and Cheney.

3) David Brandon wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on Republican Party candidates as the GOP crashed and burned over eight years. Obviously makes poor spending decisions.

4) George Bush couldn't defeat Osama bin Laden. Michigan's football team couldn't defeat Appalachian State, losing 34-32 in September, 2007. There are plaques all over Boone County commemorating that legendary event.

Q: How do you get a Michigan recruiter off your porch?
A: Pay for your pizza!

DAnny,
Interesting.
My only quible is with having the MSM explain anything. They'll let the Republicans frame it for them, and then go from there...
Good luck. We're all trying to avert the disaster that would be having Republicans in charge of anything more complex that a manual car wash. Let me know what I can do to help.

"Of course, the level of hypocrisy and cynicism displayed by GOP leaders for many years now is so high that maybe they really don't believe anything--other than in the benefits of holding power to enrich themselves and their friends."
Posted by: LL on January 9, 2010 at 12:28 PM | PERMALINK

Dingdingding!
And we have a winner, folks!

Isn't it a funny thing how all the teabeggers / libertardians / wingnuts / sociopaths never seem to notice that Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater/Xi got their megabillions on no-bid contracts?
That's NOT What John Galt Would Do!
Among all the manifold (and rapidly approaching the infinite) Publican hypocrisies that their crew and the corporate media never mention, that one's among the most telling.
The even funnier thing is that the essence of the evils of collectivist gummints, as portrayed by Ayn Rand, is that the feckless businesspeople who are properly connected get all the money, and the real achievers -- the "productive" ones, in teabegger -- get ripped off. That world of Atlas Shrugged is much closer to the reality of America under the CheneyBush cabal than it is to any of the erstwhile commie "People's Republic"s.

"We have 10 months to hammer home this truth before the mid-terms."

You mean, this time we're going to get it right, after eight years of under Bush? It is to laugh.