The McCarthy Gene
By John Amato Wednesday Dec 03, 2008 1:00pmI haven't seen him on FOX in a long time, but Neal Gabler sez it all...
The GOP's McCarthy gene...Think Goldwater is the father of conservatism? Think again
The killer wrapup:
Republicans continue to push the idea that this is a center-right country and that Americans have swooned for GOP anti-government posturing all these years, but the real electoral bait has been anger, recrimination and scapegoating. That's why John McCain kept describing Barack Obama as some sort of alien and why Palin, taking a page right out of the McCarthy playbook, kept pushing Obama's relationship with onetime radical William Ayers.
And that is also why the Republican Party, despite the recent failure of McCarthyism, is likely to keep moving rightward, appeasing its more extreme elements and stoking their grievances for some time to come. There may be assorted intellectuals and ideologues in the party, maybe even a few centrists, but there is no longer an intellectual or even ideological wing. The party belongs to McCarthy and his heirs -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Palin. It's in the genes.
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One has to go back further than that to see the genesis of what the contemporary Republican Party stands for these days. Nazi Germany harbored all of the same ideological foundations as the current crop of fascists and traitors in the GOP.
Nazis don't buy off-the-rack Brook Brothers suits.
I think you would have to start with the old Confederacy to find the roots of their (non)thinking.
It's not a gene it's a meme. Read Dawkins Mr. Gabler!!!
the book 'lucifer principle' talked extensively about memes, and in this conversation, about GOP hatred, i think that the 'lucifer principle' is an apropos name...
good thread john, the fact that the right has become unmoored from their “brain” trust is both scary and hopeful.
Time instead to remember the right McCarthy, the greatest Democrat in the past 50 years. The only one with the courage to take on LBJ's war machine that murdered 3 million Vietnamese in our previous war of choice, while Bobby (who got his start working for Joe McCarthy) sat on the sidelines concerned only about his own political future. Profiles in courage, right! By jumping in at age 38 when it looked like Gene McCarthy might take away his base, RFK's style bequeathed the Dems with a legacy that kept us 40 years in the wilderness: divide the electorate into special interest groups and pander to each rather than Gene McCarthy's "we" meaning all Americans. To Bobby, the party = blacks + grape pickers + teachers + Israeli lobby + unions. And with modest changes, that was the cynical, burnt out 18 state strategy of recent Dems, too. Finally Dean and then Obama resurrected Eugene McCarthy's approach to winning elections and leading the whole nation morally and intellectually. Rest in peace Gene. Few of us know who to really thank for 2008. Too bad your recent death was overshadowed when a second-rate black comic died the same day.
So that's what causes this condition:
http://www.aboyd.com/images/GBR1001.jpg
And I wooden think of anything else.
In it's advanced forms the condition causes this marked deformity
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/...
I'm of two minds on that. It seals their fate on being marginalised. It also makes them the equivalent of the mujahedin (sic) in North America. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Sara Palin do nothing good to give them voice.
the Repugs were a minority party because they had not yet assembled and financed their propaganda departments. (Fox, Limbaugh, all the money losing so- called "intellectual" publications like National Review, Weekly Standard, Washington Times etc.) Hopefully, thanks to the internets and those tubes, they can be relegated to the permanent minority status they so richly deserve.
Right after Nixon resigned and Jimmy Carter was elected the Republicans were pronounced defunct and then went on to call the shots for the next 40 years. Don't kid yourself.
but what really saved them was their favorite, 3rd rate, Hollywood actor: the sainted Ronnie Raygun. Without that telegenic snake oil salesman, and Senior Bush's Iranian October surprise and disgruntled former republican John Anderson, Republican dominance might not have been such a lock. There doesn't appear to be any more Reagans on the horizon, and the demographics of this country have shifted away from the white, so called "Reagan Democrats". Their racist, xenophobic, and homophobic rhetoric has less and less appeal outside of the ironically labeled "Deep South".
And to be perfectly honest, I found them to be anything but "deep."
the southern people are OK, but collectively they can be a scary bunch. As George Carlin used to say, the south has too much religion for good mental health.
The GOP and the neo- scum it has produced is the same bunch of ass-bitters that fought to keep slaves, for their own profit. It is a fact that stroking your grievances makes you go blind. Then damn "lib-rals" took away my slaves, stroke,stroke,stroke.CEO,citizens,eyes,open
I read Desmond Morris.
We evolved in small tribes, with our own territory and we feared the tribe in the next river valley. If they came into our valley it was imperative that we scare them and or kill them.
Laws came with agriculture and towns. We had to be able to mix with other tribes and not kill them.
Ethnocentrism IS in our blood. It is through rationalism and progress that we move beyond these hardwired tendencies.
As progressives we see the regressives for what they are...throw backs.
I won't even get into religion, another antiquated set of behaviors.
Because of your well earned drunk on hate history, any harsh attacks on Obama will be sometimes interpreted with racial overtones....now I realize that isn't right or fair...but who gives a fuck! Justice can be rather strange. Only a racial holocaust can save your asses. Lol.
The Republicans are the party of division and fear, to cause people to rally around the Great Father because he will protect us. McCain's message was "Fear the black man."
I was so extremely happy that with the recent election, finally the rhetoric of inclusion and hope beat the rhetoric of division and fear.
Heard him on NPR today. For him it's still all about abortion, gays, guns, etc.
and now we must put on our ghost shirts and dance, the dead will rise again and thier will be no more politicians only the real world once again!
I will never forget listening to a Republican go on in amazement that Hispanics and women didn't vote for McCain because we have the same "values" as he did. I wish I could have personally told him that (1) You can't run on a platform of xenophobia and expect nonwhites to vote for you, and (2) just because they both have vaginas, Palin and Clinton are not the same.
I hope they keep going further and further right. It will keep them out of the white house for a good, long time.
being phobic about everything, they attack because they have absolutely nothing as a platform to run on
They, like McCarthy, are left over lilly whites from a previous era that we do not want to return to
A "gene", eh?
Perhaps a new filter is needed in this "Gene" pool.
MORONS!!! After Bush, the American public will never elect another such moron.
hope so, but there are a lot of Americans who watch professional wrestling, NASCAR, and reality TV programs who are up for grabs.
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