Such is the price of power that Lindsey Graham feels the need to mock his own beliefs. Yet, here is further proof that the mob has now taken over the GOP and is holding its "leaders" hostage.

It's not clear whether we should feel pity for Graham or contempt. Graham is a Judge Advocate General, a 25-year veteran of our military courts. And it is true that he is also a man who has paid a steep political price in his native South Carolina from his right wing constituents who have called him a traitor and a Republican in Name Only whenever he takes the side of the law against the lynch mob.

Yet, how are we to square his beliefs today with views expressed just a few years ago in an interview in Newsweek, when Graham said this about the corruption of American justice that has been engineered by right wing Republicans who have very skillfully played on our fears: "If the president of the United States authorizes people to 'do whatever you have to do' -- here's what we'd be giving up: If we let our chief of state decide the law is getting in the way, what's to prevent some other foreign chief of state from saying, 'that American pilot we've captured, he knows where the next bomb wave is coming, do what you got to do.' That's what's hard about being a democracy.

"I know Al Qaeda are a bad bunch of people. I know the Taliban are, you know, animals. But every war in the future won't be with them. I'm willing to give, but I can't sit by and watch a guy be tried and, even though I may hate his guts, he never gets to see the evidence against him ... You know what I've learned from this? I can see how easy it was to put all the Japanese in jail [during World War II]. The temptations are great to lash out and fight back. But history tells us, in the long run, the way we've tried to live our life as a nation is the best way, that the higher purpose of our reason to exist as a nation always serves us better than going the low road ... The bottom line -- why does Lindsey care about this? I don't love the terrorists. I just love what Americans stand for."

The radical right wants us to believe that they have what it takes to protect us from the bad guys, even if they have to endanger 200 years of American rule of law to do it. But if we listen to them and give into our fears today - if, in trying to protect ourselves we dishonor the law and American traditions of justice - who will there be to protect us from us tomorrow?

This is just the usual boilerplate. "Come back to the middle" is Republican for "do as we say." If Obama DOES try this, he deserves to be a one-term President, and will be, too.

There will be no one Ted. And that is indeed where this country, now totally hijacked by the Corporations and the politicans that they own, not to mention the megaphone called the Corporate Media, is going. What kind of country is it when for over 8 years the Corporations and the polictians they own, mostly Repiglicans, almost totally destroyed our country, and the world economy, then have done all they can do to block Obama from fixing it, and then that same party is 'rewarded' by the very citizens who were crushed by this Corporate takeover of Amercia ? That is, indeed, the American tragedy: the stupidity of the average American.

Obama already is and has been in "the middle." It's what led to a smaller and less effective stimulus; it's what led to a more moderate health care reform bill; it's what produced a less ambitious Wall Street reform package.

But, Steve, from a conservative Republican standpoint doing any of those things _at all_ is far to the left and, thus, anathema. Republicans are opposed to even trying to do that kind of stuff. The conservatives who want to pull policy to the right aren't Republicans, they're Democrats. Republicans don't want The Government to do much of anything. They don't try to work with Democrats on stuff because they don't want to work at all.

And the corrupted host of MTP wasn't even going to challenge him.

The joke is on us: Obama ran as a liberal and is governing from the middle (and on the right from a war powers/surveillance stance). Next stop is getting rid of Social Security. Yep, Barry is a real socialist all right.

The truly sad part is that Obama loves it when the radicals call him a "socialist" and claim he's governing from the "left"- it makes his corporate-centric triangulation strategy with Democrats all the more viable. That's why he has been utterly passive in the face of these absurd attacks.

Just for fun, I'd like to see Obama say "I'm going to pursue the exact same policies as Ronald Reagan." It will be fun to see the Republicans call Ronald Reagan a socialist. I'm sure they'll love the higher taxes and stronger regulation. For all the talk of Obama being some radical liberal, he's more conservative than Reagan on most issues.

stormskies, you put it perfectly, and I will never, never, be able to understand it. It's not even simply a matter of the stupidity of the average American. That I could understand. Its a strange, deliberate, willful ignorance or denial of reality.

It's easy to dismiss these people as merely the Republican's loony base, but this is a very large swath of the public buying into this nonsense. Its where this country is now. We can blame the corporations and their media mouthpieces, but the american people have to shoulder equal blame. Its not the policies or agenda that the public is attracted to...it's the meanness that its all wrapped in. We've become a mean-spirited, ugly culture. We're a nation of petty bullies, and thats what the Republican Party is, that's what the tea baggers are...and sadly, to a large degree that's what this country is.

I'm convince Obama won the election by-enlarge because he was a fad. It was an empty gesture by the American people.

When will Dems stop letting Repubs define the terms of the debate? Stop paying defense and go on offense. Start using the term Republican Recession every chance they get ("well, the Republican Recession has been devastating to the American public, and while we're making progress, the Repubs refuse to let us fix the problems they created." "It's the Republican Recession and its defenders that Americans are angry about.").

I do like fostert's idea of using their Reagan worship against them. Ronnie was the founding father of the Republican Recession, sowing the seeds that grew like economic kudzu, choking our middle class.

Our free and liberty-minded ancestors created a democratic society realizing man could only at best be periodically trustworthy - different institutions sharing power would keep the untrustworthy in check into the future. Or so our founding framers may have thought, and here is the modern irony lost on the likes of L. Graham:

Our Constitution was born of liberalism. It is liberalism - that threat to monarchy (central arbitrary authority) - that inspired our founding framers. It was liberalism that served the courageous platform for our founders to change a flawed government and give us here in the 21st century a great document with which to work.

Republicans, even the considered moderates like Graham have lost their bearings and have helped and abetted the derailing of our ability to function as a viable democratic society on the national level largely because they have abandoned the merits of liberalism through a conservative lens for one that is authoritarian with suspicions cast toward rule by the people (who don't look or act like them)!

What I haven't heard injected into the narrative is the evidence that the Right has taken such extreme positions, their modern-day intellectual rationale to obstruct our governance is tantamount to quite a few historical eras in our past where a loud and possibly powerful minority lost important battles that have helped define us and our society today. Graham and his parties - Republican and Tea - are the ones who have been on the wrong side of history consistently, and the only hope we have of turning such radicalism back this November is if enough smart voters come out to call bullshit on it:

Our founding framers were on the right side of history when they produced the Constitution - Graham and his ilk share the same intellectual arguments as the Anti-Federalists of the time.

Graham's people share the same arguments in a weird blend of a way with the Quincy Adams crowd when Andy Jackson won in 1828 and Calhoun's nullification efforts of 1832.

The Teabaggers have shown they'd share the same intellectual arguments as Tilden's faction who forced the end of Reconstruction, and later ironically the Bloody Shirt Republican thereafter.

How about Jim Crow? the 10thers got that covered.

It goes on, but we'll never here it incorporated into the narrative anytime soon! -Kevo

You see? This is exactly why the Repubs get the press. Appear on these shows and make these outlandish statments and then not be challenged as you do in this report. The Media is not about to challenge them because it may spoil their 24 news cycle. If they did challenge then the guests would be so embarrased that that wouldn't appear on anything except Fox News. The Media must have an adversarial situation to make their ratings. They will do anything to protect that by resisting to ask follow up questions that would expose the BS. Today's politics are driven by the Corporate desire for profits without any regard to expected Truth in Journalism. It's a fact.

Gee whiz, that's weird, because I could have SWORN that Obama ran pretty clearly as a terrist-pallin'-around-withing, Marxist whitey-hater who wanted to destroy our way of life. I must have imagined all that stuff about Madrassas, Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers.

The political "middle" is not a natural element like the distance from Chicago to New York that can be measured and have an actual middle determined. A political middle is defined by culture and acceptance. If we continue to see Obama called a socialist and have Obama's politics defined as far left, then the middle between Obama and DeMint (the acknowledged leader of the right in the Senate) shifts to the right. Mindless writers like Broder participate in the defining right as the middle when they declare someone like Joe Sestak is on the extreme left along with Obama. But if enough people think that way, it is that way because there is no other measure.

SaintZak: You are totally right. Just look at the stupid baffoon called 'Mike' above. It so perfectly illustrates what you have said. Kevo you are so right on too, as it patrick II.

What? Another Republican inverts reality and gets away with it? Well, stop the presses.

Republicans get away with shit because Democrats are too tony to fight back. When even a dubiously masculine figure like Butters feels free to bitch-slap us, the message gets even more discouraging. Not only are Democrats the Mommy Party, we don't even have sharp fingernails.

Right now, the bullies are running wild. And why shouldn't they? Obama won't stand up for liberalism, so the case is making itself. We won't fight, we don't fight, and we lose. There's no mystery here at all.

Here's to sharp fingernails ......... comments are so right on walt ...

So, since socialism is defined as "common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources" and "Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy." (both from wiki) do we have the nerve to call DeMint, or Boehner, or McConnell a fascist everytime Obama is called a socialist? Does that make sense? Too counterproductive? Otherwise Obama continues to be branded socialist (as opposed to progressive or liberal) and Demint as a conservative (as opposed to a Fascist). The middle between defining Obama as a socialist and Demint as a conservative is to the right of where it would be if DeMint were branded a fascist.
Do people have the nerve for that? Is it too "unreasonable" Then the middle will continue to move to the right.

It's what led to a smaller and less effective stimulus; it's what led to a more moderate health care reform bill; it's what produced a less ambitious Wall Street reform package.

Steve, you don't understand the Republican mindset. The scope of these programs doesn't matter, because these are communist policies that will undermine American morale. Pretty soon we'll all be waving little red books in the air while the government erects statues of Chairman Obama in every town square in America. Every bare wall will feature a gigantic portrait of Dear Leader. As far as clowns like Graham are concerned, the Cultural Revolution is on.

It just goes to show the bankruptcy of conventional left-right-middle lexicon in what passes for our political dialogue.

patrick II......of course you are making perfect sense, and that sense reflects actual reality .. the problem of course is, as walt pointed out, the dems have zero balls, no sharp fingernails, that can say iot over and over about these repiglicans being fascists ... and of course the megaphone of the corporate/facist media that would not repeat it over and over as they do the socialist screeching by the repiglicans ...and their media

Patrick II

Don't look at fascism through the lens of economics, because fascism has nothing to do with economics. The corporate and concentrated state power that goes with it are ancellary.

The reason many of us are say that the right wing dominated GOP has fascist tendencies is that fascism is really nothing more than tribalism writ large -- actually "populist nationalism" according to experts.

Sarah Palin's "Real America" or the religious right's insistance that America is a "Christian Nation" whose culture must be purged of its "secular, progressive" influences, and purified according to idealized myths of national greatness by a homogonized American community -- these are about as close to a fascist politics as we are going to get.

The absolute and instantaneous opposition that greeted Obama's election on the right is worrisome because it shows the right is just one step removed -- should it ever regain power -- of justifying to itself and the country the suspension of all future elections (just as Hitler did after coming to power in 1933) that might threaten the country's economic or physical security by risking the election of an equally dangerous and illegitimate usurper like Barak Hussein Obama

I was going to make a dark comment about 'time for the tumbrels to roll'. but Ted Frier's remark about " purified according to idealized myths of national greatness" Reminded me of the Aryan/Valhalla mysticism of early Nazi Germany.

Some of you no doubt recall those propaganda images of blond Valkyries posing under sunny skies, and the Hitler Youth, bare chested as they did their calisthenics.

-or images of a diminutive megalomanic addressing a huge crowd, in front of a neoclssical structure. . .

Dang! This is Labor Day Weekend. Time off. And now you've got me worrying about those poor wingless angels!

I'm not sure Americans are aware of where the political center is.

For illumination -- in the context of America 2004, take a look at this.  Or for 2008, this.

The logical place all this leads, at first, is the 'purification' of those who 'qualify' to vote so as to gurantee and sustain their absolute power and control.

Here's a silly question for Graham: when might your party "come back to the middle"?
=-=-=-=-=-=

Sounds like one of those "follow-up question" thingies that you might hear from a chese-eating surrender monkey foreign journalist. You won't find any of that on Meet The Press, thank God™. ("It's our best format." -- Dick Cheney's communications director, Cathie Martin)

If the Repubs had their way, the fucking middle would be a return to the social and regulatory structure of the god damn mid-19th century.

Meanwhile,

Boycott the Wall Street Journal

he is starting to kiss up the SC GOP because a county party censured him last week

http://www.heraldonline.com/2010/09/05/2428416/aiken-gop-censures-graham.html

Okay, but besides researching other countries to which one might flee after the midterms or after 2012, what would the best political action between now and November be to stave off that emigration-inducing set of results that some of us both predict and greatly fear? And which organization provides the best value for money in shoving the GOP's lies back in their faces?

"what would the best political action between now and November be to stave off that emigration-inducing set of results that some of us both predict and greatly fear?"

Its sad to say, but I think things have to get a lot worse before people begin to revolt against the Republicans, their corporate masters and the propaganda machine passing as our news media. Not until the american people are flat on their backs, waiting for hours in soup lines and warming themselves around garbage can bonfires in shanty towns will there be a legitimate uprising to break the corporate control over this country.

Maybe we need these lunatics to gain control, so the public will get a real taste of reality...because this crop is far, far worse than the Bush crowd was. Maybe if they gained control and gutted unemployement benefits people would get a little taste of hurt Republican style.

Things are bad now, but they could be a whole lot worse, and I think we have to get there before we see a real change of percpective in this country. People need to feel the reality of the world according to Limbaugh and Beck and Palin not just be entertained by their hot air.

What Obama really needs to do is get him and Michelle some Jesus by joining the same church Ron and Nancy joined, and then attend that church with the same frequency.

Another bunch of WM comments with more to say than any bunch of full time paid pundits. But any talk about maybe letting Repubs win anything is worrisome to me. Like SaintZak wrote, it would ONLY work if it led to an immediate obvious total disaster, (not just the usual ongoing Bush type disaster) and I don't personally have enough time left to suffer through it anyway. The know-nothing mindset of the far right will indeed not allow in anything that does not fit their preconceived notions. They for example of course resist a carbon tax and call cap and trade "cap and tax" (thanks, Sarah). And they will stop any efforts on global warming (including denying the science) until half the population of the earth is fried and every coastal city is underwater. Then they will still deny the evidence and blame it on liberals or Satan or something.

Once again, I want to remind everyone that Obama has done a lot of good stuff. Really. It's however hard to understand how a guy who painted a picture in the campaign, vague as it was, has been so unwilling and unable to paint a picture of what he is about as president, and as has been written above, thus portray himself as something other than what the far right has characterized him. They are able to publicly portray him as a Hitler meddling in everyone's life, while actually thinking of him as a compromising wimp.

I understand in a way Gibbs' ridiculous bitching about the left not appreciating what the Obama admin has done. So, those guys have been working real, real hard and accomplishing some things against a crazed and in part at least racially motivated opposition. But the failure in establishing a compelling narrative, and not at the same time clearly characterizing the ideas (well non-ideas...anti-ideas?) of the right is just baffling.

It's not like the left hasn't pretty clearly explained it over and over to the O admin, in case they don't get it.

Now hear this: any American who votes Republican in the next election is stupid beyond all hope. Dumber than a doughnut.

The near-term conventional wisdom to which the Obama presidency is condemning us is only part of the story.

Obama's timidity and ideological blindness will long poison the water against black Presidential candidates, and against inspirational oratory.

"If we continue to see Obama called a socialist and have Obama's politics defined as far left, then the middle between Obama and DeMint (the acknowledged leader of the right in the Senate) shifts to the right." -PatII

Yes, and it is a worn tactic used for years, just as the game Graham plays...because it works. We need to try to understand WHY this shit flies. If the 'left' was half as strong or represented in the current and past Democratic administrations, as the right-wing insists, I believe there would be fighting in the streets by now. Exactly how far the status quo of Democratic power play into these myths is sometimes hard to tell from the cheap seats, but let me tell you we will be the first to know the consequences.

Old Patch - Right on, we need to start framing this debate rather than continuing to constantly be responding to mindless Republican talking points. I for one am not prepared to concede this election, as two months is a long time, and President Obama has a long list of fairly progressive victories that we can and should be trumpeting. If you are also not prepared to concede this election, join me at http://www.winningprogressive.org to help spread the message to the public how President Obama's progressive leadership has benefitted the American people.

Of course the real joke about the "back to the middle" statement is just how far to the right the middle of American Politics has gone.

Only in America would President Obama and the Democratic Party be considered dangerously liberal. In most of the rest of the world, he'd be a right wing reactionary.

Which says EVERYTHING about how far right the Republicans and their fellow travellers have moved.

Look no further than MTP to see how thoroughly corporate interests control the dialogue. GOP sock puppet David Gregory runs the show, and the stark contrast between his approach towards Lindsey Graham and then David Plouffe is Exhibit A.

Graham: Softball questions with little or no follow-up. Allows Lindsey ramble, making outrageous statements and revising history without any challenge whatsoever.

Plouffe: Every question was framed negatively (are Democrats sorry for their strategy, was healthcare a mistake, is Obama a liability?). Constantly interrupted with aggressive follow-up questions (BTW, Plouffe did a masterful job and threw everything right back into Gregory's face).

When you put those interviews side by side, it's clear that MTP is WORSE than Faux News. At least with FNN, it's clear what side they're on. MTP still carries the veneer of respectability worn thin by years under Russert and now cracking with Gregory.

Going forward, Obama really needs to start taking his cues from Plouffe. I don't think Axelrod is up to the task of confronting the RW noise machine. Plouffe, however, can dish it with the best of them.

You write: "The conventional wisdom will be that liberalism did Democrats in, despite all evidence to the contrary, and despite the fact that liberals were right, especially about the economy."

The problem with this statement is that people believe the first part -- liberalism hurt --and not the second -- we were right.

Is there a way to promote the "we were right" messaage without it being interpreted as "blame the previous guy?"

How were liberals right, especially about the economy? That's the message that's not out there.

Anyone?

Graham's comment was featured prominently on the NBC Evening News Last night, Sunday, September 5, 2010. Corporate media wants to make sure that lie enters the bloodstream of the majority uninformed. The damn liberal media!

These people are psychopaths. D and R alike, they send your children (never their children) overseas to kill other peoples' children, all in the interest of greater profits. If the USA was a person, it would belong in an asylum for the criminally insane.

I think he lost the Mid-term elections for his Party when he let Pelosi and Obay put together that ridiculous "Stimulus" plan. He had NO credibility with the Center even before he took office. He let the House put it together to make sure he had teh staffing for the White House straight and it was MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more than he wanted. for want of a nail . . . .