Crawford, whose Twitter handle is @scrawford, tweeted on Saturday: “someone should find out whether any comcast connection to olbermann fracas – and remember Quiz Show plot line.” . . .
She has previously raised concern that the merger might give Comcast the ability to tamper with MSNBC . . .
“What happens to MSNBC post-merger?” she wrote in a blog post last month. “Right now, it’s providing the only response to Fox News.
Liberals so routinely employ this Dark Night of Fascism motif — the idea that Republicans are totalitarian Christianist theocrats, etc. — that after a while they forget that it is merely partisan propaganda and begin to take it seriously. That’s why we like it when liberals lose, and we can laugh at their lunacy, rather than suffer when they win and impose their lunacy as policy.
BTW, you should congratulate me on resisting the temptation to reference Demi Lovato bikini pics in the headline.
O’Donnell was arguing on “Morning Joe” with Glenn Greenwald, who accused him of “trying to blame ‘the Left’ and ‘liberalism’ for the Democrats’ political woes.” O’Donnell responded:
“Glenn, unlike you, I am not a progressive. I am not a liberal who is so afraid of the word that I had to change my name to progressive. Liberals amuse me. I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals, OK? However, I know this about my country. Liberals are 20 percent of the electorate. Conservatives are 41 percent of the electorate, OK? . . . You can sit there and pretend that liberals should run more liberal in conservative districts. You love the loss of the Blue Dogs. The only way, the only way you have a chairman Barney Frank, there’s only one way, that’s by electing Blue Dogs. It’s the only way. That’s the only way you have a Speaker Pelosi.”
And in so arguing, O’Donnell makes the case that my friend Ali Akbar has often made: Nothing is more important for Republicans than the defeat of “Blue Dog” Democrats, because it is only by the aid of these alleged “moderate” or “centrist” Democrats that liberals can achieve majority status.
This was what Bill Clinton taught me, by the way. I used to be what was called a “Sam Nunn Democrat,” and thought that Clinton was the same breed. After the useless folly of the Dukakis campaign in 1988 (when I didn’t even bother to vote), I was enthusiastic in 1992, putting a Clinton-Gore bumper sticker on my car and everything.
So I voted for a centrist Democrat and what did I get? Gays in the military, HillaryCare and the so-called “assault weapons” ban. In other words, a vote for Clinton was a vote for the Dukakis agenda.
People who say, “I vote for the man, not the party” are idiots. When you vote for the man, you’re voting for his party. Having been born and bred a loyal party-line Democrat, my experience with the first two years of the Clinton administration convinced me that I could no longer in good conscience vote for Democrats. (It was the infringement my Second Amendment rights that was the deal-breaker. I got my first semi-automatic rifle for Christmas when I was 11.)
But in becoming an ex-Democrat, I did not become a “moderate.” Instead, I became a right-winger. Why? Because I recognized that politics is a tug-of-war, and Clinton convinced me that I’d spent my entire adult life pulling on the wrong end of the rope. So I went way over to the other end of the rope, and started pulling as hard as I could.
Mike Castle was an echo ofliberalism, and not a choice. While I regret the GOP defeat in Delaware, I refuse to accept the idea that Mike Castle was the best Republicans could have hoped for in that campaign. Notice that Republicans just elected Pat Toomey to a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, where we were told — just six years ago — that Arlen Specter was the best we could hope for.
Liberalism always fails as policy and will also fail as politics, so long as Republicans are willing (a) to identify liberalism for what it is, and (b) to oppose it coherently and without apology.
One ought to add the caveat (c) that GOP opposition to liberalism should be presented by credible candidates running competent campaigns. But we should never assume that, because any state, district or demographic group has previously supported Democrats that we should abandon conservative arguments and instead adopt a Republican “me, too” approach to liberalism. I was not won over by “me, too” arguments, and I don’t think any other Democrat voter ever will be.
The key fact that Lawrence O’Donnell points out — twice as many American voters identify as “conservative” than identify as “liberal” — tells us that conservatism can be, and should be, the politics of Republican victory. But people will never be persuaded by an argument they never hear, and we thus do ourselves no favors by supporting Republican politicians who are unwilling to make the argument for conservative policies.
And I apologize for mistakenly suggesting that Lawrence O’Donnell had checked out those Demi Lovato bikini pics. Must have confused him with multimillionaire cradle-robber Keith Olbermann.
Network sources tell Playbook that Keith Olbermann was suspended because he refused to deliver an on-camera mea culpa, which would have allowed him to continue anchoring “Countdown.” Olbermann told his bosses he didn’t know he was barred from making campaign contributions, although he is resisting saying that publicly. Olbermann may not hold as many cards as he thinks. He makes $7 million a year and MSNBC’s prime time is not as dependent on him as it was before the addition of Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, who make considerably less.
Rachel Maddow is getting better ratingsthan Olbermann in the key A25-54 demographic, and Lawrence O’Donnell isn’t far behind. Olbermann is no longer the center of the strategy either – as the network has unveiled a vibrant, massive new campaign “Lean Forward” which focuses on half a dozen members of the MSNBC talent pool.
On the other hand, Olbermann — who is actually older than me, and I just turned 51 — recently spent a couple of years banging 20-something reporterette Katy Tur (he actually interviewed her on “Countdown” earlier this year) but, hey, NTTAWWT. And now that dysfunctional Disney princess Demi Lovato is 18, there’s no reason that Keith should be forced to apologize on air for checking out her bikini picture:
“So I think that the — the liberal progressives saw the strength of the grass-roots movement that we call the Tea Party which stands for ‘taxed enough already’ and they tried to turn against it,” Rep.-elect Allen West (R-Fla.) said Friday on “Hannity” on Fox News.
“And the number one thing that you always try to do to silence an opponent in the United States of America is to call someone a racist.”
West said that attempts to tarnish the Tea Party did not foil his campaign. “And we see that that did not work whatsoever,” he said.
If you’re going to rant against the other team every night, own it. Please, no more Murrow-esque professions of avoiding the voting booth in the name of objectivity when you’re on the air five hours a week screeching about wingnut fascists and the racist dystopia they’re about to impose on America.
Someone needs to compile a highlight reel of Olbermann’s most hyperbolic pronouncements about the Impending Dark Night of Fascism. He’s done that Martin Niemoller lecture so often — we’re always just one election away from cattle cars and concentration camps — that even liberals must be tiring of it by now.
This year, a record total of 13 black candidates won Republican congressional primaries, two of whom won their elections Nov. 2. Another candidate we covered extensively here, Charles Lollar, got just 35 percent against Steny Hoyer in Maryland’s 5th District, but fared well in Calvert and St. Mary’s counties.
We should remember that Allen West didn’t win his first campaign against Ron Klein in 2008, and we should also keep in mind that district lines will be re-drawn before the 2012 election. Black GOP candidates who didn’t win this year ought to be encouraged to try again, using the fundraising and other resources they developed in 2010 as the basis for building stronger campaigns for 2012.
The continued descent of Peggy Noonan into abject silliness seems to parallel that of her Presidential Savior. I can’t sustain a full fisk, but the end of her latest post about the President, which could not resist a swipe at Governor Palin, merits a quick once-over with the bus, emphasis mine:
Noonan
Smith
Electable doesn’t mean not-conservative. Electable means mature, accomplished, stable—and able to persuade.
It also means able to withstand a napalm shower of derision from so-called feminists and so-called conservatives who are so eager to maintain their status on the cocktail party circuit that they will cheerfully throw anyone without the proper résumé under the bus faster than you can say “Noonan should retire”.
Conservatives talked a lot about Ronald Reagan this year, but they have to take him more to heart, because his example here is a guide. All this seemed lost last week on Sarah Palin, who called him, on Fox, “an actor.” She was defending her form of political celebrity—reality show, “Dancing With the Stars,” etc. This is how she did it: “Wasn’t Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn’t he in ‘Bedtime for Bonzo,’ Bozo, something? Ronald Reagan was an actor.”
In other words, the point is that appearing on TV in a paid billet is not a disqualifier. Thankfully, Reagan’s acting career was mostly behind him by the time he was operating at the State and national political level.
Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly flipped their lids, but I’ll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president.
So, what are the minimum requirements for quotation of Reagan’s resume, then, Peggy? Are you entirely certain that Palin is not well-versed in Ron’s résumé? Overreact much?
The point is not “He was a great man and you are a nincompoop,” though that is true. The point is that Reagan’s career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him. He wasn’t in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn’t in search of fame; he’d already lived a life, he was already well known, he’d accomplished things in the world.
Do you read your own drivel, Peggy? Have you not just omitted recounting Sarah’s own history, the very crime of which you’re trying to hang her? Reading yours, let’s see: you write. Got it. Props for selling the book copies, and putting words in some famous mouths. Have you decried Progressivism? For whom did you vote in the last election?
Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service. And you need actual talent: You have to be able to bring people in and along. You can’t just bully them, you can’t just assert and taunt, you have to be able to persuade.
Which you have done how, exactly, in the last two years? What about your attempts to bully Sarah Palin with your column? What makes YOU cool? If Sarah Palin has, rather demonstrably, shown talent and leadership, does your endless kvetching make you John Cleese in the Argument sketch?
Americans don’t want, as their representatives, people who seem empty or crazy. They’ll vote no on that.
It’s not just the message, it’s the messenger.
By what diagnostic means do you arrive at the notion that Palin is crazy?
Since freestyle, non-medical diagnosis is all the rage, let us suppose that Peggy Noonan is depressed. It seems as though the anti-Palin crowd are realizing that that, in BHO, they voted for the charming aristocrat whom they admired in grad school, who then turned into the cad who divorced them, and, since Tuesday, morphed into the mal-adjusted father responsible for their current status as basket cases.
So, they turn their self-loathing onto Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, stalwart ladies all, certainly exceedingly the ankle-level bar set by the current administration, and commence a spleen dump.
Well, Peggy, to the extent that this broad-brush generalization applies to you, get stuffed.
The fact that our politics have been moved away from individual liberty and verifiable principles and into the realm of hero-worship, in some idiotic quest for an impossible philosopher-king to wave a wand and magically fix stuff and rule over us in an Aristotalian Golden Age of Swellness (TM) is due to the kind of thinking shown in this article. Thanks.
Bonus: can’t mention the Argument sketch without embedding:
“The [Republican] party’s ideas — about economic issues, social issues and just about everything else — are not popular ideas. They are extremely conservative ideas tarred by association with the extremely unpopular George W. Bush, who helped downsize the party to its extremely conservative base.”
Nancy Pelosi is less popular than smallpox (she never was really popular), and all the smart people who reckoned Democrats could never be beaten by a bunch of extremely extreme extremists — well, somebody forget to tell those darned voters, and so now 60+ House Democrats have joined the growing ranks of the unemployed.
“Chris Matthews, on Wednesday’s Hardball . . . claimed the restraining of a MoveOn.org activist by a Rand Paul supporter reminded him of what “we saw from hoodlums in the thirties in another country I will not mention” and added: “I mean it isn’t far from what we saw in the thirties, where all of a sudden, political parties started showing up in uniform.” Matthews . . . even went on to claim physical attacks against political opponents was something that existed exclusively on one ideological side as he asserted that it was “right wing by its very nature.” . . .
Matthews went on to accuse Republicans of having “hire[d] armies of paramilitaries [to] stomp people.”
This is the exact opposite of truth.
Nobody hired Tim Profitt. He was a volunteer for the Rand Paul campaign. It was Lauren Valle who was hired, and by whom? MoveOn.org, which is trying (falsely) to claim that the GOP enjoys an unfair electoral advantage from an “unprecedented flood of corporate cash.”
Let someone, anyone, examine the “corporate cash” that helped elect the president who sent a thrill up Chris Matthews’ leg: Goldman Sachs $994,795, Citigroup Inc $701,290, JPMorgan $695,132 — go down the list a bit and you come to General Electric, $499,130.
Oh, yeah: General Electric, which stands to profit handsomely from Obama’s energy policies and porked up on stimulus cash. I guess if GE is getting taxpayer-subsidzed profits, they can afford to lose money paying Chris Matthews to do a cable TV show with fewer viewers than Alyssa Milano has Twitter followers.
And don’t lecture us, Mr. Matthews, about people who “hire armies” in politics. Why don’t you ask some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters how Obama’s goon squads cheated in every caucus from Iowa to Texas?
Chris Matthews once again goes to show why it’s wrong to accuse liberals of not having standards. They’ve got exactly two standards — one for them, and one for everybody else.
Wednesday night at the beginning of a debate between Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean, GOP challenger Joe Walsh and Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer. The debate for Illinois 8th congressional district took place at Grayslake Central High School. While League of Women Voters moderator Kathy Tate-Bradish began explaining the rules of the debate an audience member raised his hand and (when called upon) asked if they were going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance. When she said no, the audience booed and almost all in the crowd of more than 300 stood and enthusiastically recited it anyway.
RTWT. The Lid goes on to expose Kathy Tate-Bradish as a partisan hack, Obama and ACORN tool, whose actions stand in stark contrast with the mission of, well, any non-partisan organization, as well as the common-sense guidelines that form the basis of public debate.
This blog decries the idiocy on display, and re-affirms its commitment to positive affirmations of national identity, for example, the Pledge of Allegiance. Joe Walsh, the GOP candidate in IL-8, gets a shout-out to the atrocious Tate-Bradish from his namesake:
And thanks to The Lid for the investigative reporting.
