The American Spectator

S.L. Toddard| 9.21.09 @ 1:24PM

"(which is akin to citing Abe Lincoln on the virtues of states' rights)"

Or citing Abe Lincoln on the virtues of conservatism at all.

Tim| 9.21.09 @ 2:06PM

I still haven't managed to figure out how the GOP, a burning, listing ship, can muster enough firepower to stave off the overwhelming democrat majority.

Victor| 9.21.09 @ 9:46PM

Dear Tim,
It's called the First Amendment, The Second Amendment and the Tenth Amendment followed by Article I, Section 8. Let's hold them to it shall we?
We have the will, but not the resolve as there are too many limp-wristed, panty-waisted spineless girlie-men that want to be liiiiked by the dems and so they cave in.
Mat 26:41 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
Ronald reagan knew what to do and so should we.
"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
Doing the Right thing is always the Right thing to do!

Tim| 9.22.09 @ 9:30AM

I agree. Absent any coherent GOP resistance, the only thing holding back the dems is Americans' stubbornness, as evidenced by the town halls.

S.L. Toddard| 9.21.09 @ 2:11PM

"TNR went on to whine at great length that those meanies in the GOP have turned into the "Party of No."

If only!

"This is the sort of self-absorption that 7th Graders exhibit. This is narcissism, pure and simple. It is the attitude that they, the liberals, define the world, and that those who don't come on board are by very definition not playing fair, because of course all fair play involves playing on the ground of and by the rules as the liberals define or redefine them."

The inimitable and august civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald identified these same tendencies on the right. It might do some of us good to have a brief, honest look at the Right which we inhabit:

The Right in this country -- meaning the faction that followed George Bush for the last eight years -- long ago ceased being a movement of political ideas and is driven by two, and only two, extreme emotions: (1) intense, aggressive rage towards their revolving door of enemies, and (2) bottomless self-pity over how unfairly they're being treated. As their imminent defeat looks increasingly likely (potentially on a humiliating scale), these two impulses are in maximum overdrive, feeding off one another in endless self-perpetuation (the more they lose, the more victimized they feel, the more they rage against their enemies who oppress them, etc.).
The Right's rejection by the public can't possibly be due to anything they have done. It can only be due to some extremely vicious enemy that oppresses them uniquely and so very unfairly. For the moment, they're only losing because The Leftist Mainstream Media hates them and is deeply biased against them…
Needless to say, whether the excuse-making is coherent or consistent matters not in the slightest. The objective, as always, is to believe that they are weak and hapless victims being stomped on by some Evil, Unfair Force, and that self-pitying worldview can then explain away every last one of their failings. That is the mentality that lies at the heart of today's right-wing ideologue; more or less, it's all there is (for a long time, it was also the media and the Left's fault -- but not theirs -- that things were going so poorly in Iraq, even though they controlled all the branches of the Government).
…there are literally countless facts one could cite to negate the Right's incessant, tired complaint about The Liberal Media. As but just one example, the single most influential figure dictating what is reported by The Liberal Media -- Matt Drudge -- is a supreme right-wing hack. Just as Mark Halperin and John Harris proclaimed: He's the Walter Cronkite of our era, he rules the Media World, and is the nation's assignment editor. Every story he promotes -- Gwen Ifill has a Pro-Obama Conflict of Interest!!!! -- ends up immediately infecting the narrative of The Liberal Mainstream Media. How does one explain that?
Using only undisputed facts, one could write volumes -- and many have -- destroying the self-evidently moronic claim that the media outlets owned by the nation's largest and most powerful corporations are tireless propagandists for a Leftist agenda. But those facts can never and will never penetrate because the two-pronged Right-wing dogma of objective superiority and unique victimhood is a matter of religious faith and deep personal need.
Go pick whatever right-wing journals or polemicists you want and (with some isolated exceptions) what you will find is this simultaneously self-loving and self-pitying worldview permeating virtually everything they say, think and believe. You can reduce most of their arguments, and all of their group-based drives, to a rudimentary logical proposition: "I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness." It doesn't matter what "X" happens to be for any one of them -- conservative, male, Republican, Christian, Jewish, religious, white, Western, American -- that is the formula that expresses how they perceive the world and their role in it.
Petulance and self-pitying grievance is what fuels them. This endless need to self-victimize would be one thing if the groups to which they belonged were small minorities targeted by a hostile and more powerful majority. But the exact opposite is true. By and large, the groups to which they belong (and therefore see as oppressed and treated with unparalleled unfairness) are the most numerous and the most powerful in the country and always have been. Yet still -- nothing is their fault; they face hopeless obstacles imposed by Evil and Omnipotent Forces which hate them; "I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness."
They have run the country for the entire decade. For the last 14 years, they've controlled the House for all but 20 months. They spent substantial parts of the last eight years in control of all branches of government simultaneously. They've won 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections. The country's largest and richest corporations -- including the ones owning the most powerful media outlets -- pour money into their party and perceive, correctly, that their interests are served by the Right's agenda. But still -- they can't get a fair shake; everything is deeply oppressive to them; it's all so unfair.
As they've ruled the country, it's been driven into the ground on every level. The President they revered and endlessly glorified is the most unpopular in modern American history. They've ushered in disastrous wars, virtual economic panic, state-sanctioned torture and astonishing debt. Their leaders have been exposed as bloated, corrupted criminals and hypocrites. Their current candidate chose as his Vice President someone who can barely string together a complete sentence or opine on the simplest of matters, and himself acknowledges that he's been joined at the hip with the failed Bush Presidency on virtually all key issues.
But still -- they're about to lose not because of anything they did, but because the corporate-owned Media hates them and is distorting their message; because they're being persecuted for their religion (which more than 75% of Americans share); because they are just weak, kind, good little Davids being hopelessly crushed by the Goliath forces arrayed in a confederacy against them. That they belong to virtually every majority group and wield most power makes no impact on any of that. This kind of self-centered, self-victimizing, self-pitying worldview provides great psychological comfort and a release from any responsibility for one's actions, and so they are highly motivated never to give it up. To the contrary, they'll cling to it -- are clinging to it -- even more desperately as their failures and rejection by the public become more vividly apparent.

Replete w/links:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/g.....bsorption/

MLG| 9.21.09 @ 2:19PM

Dems have the majority, if they think any of the bills out there as so great, they can pass them on their own. They don't need the GOP, so what is stopping them? Telling, no?

martin j smith| 9.21.09 @ 3:37PM

I guess SL Toddard doesn't think much of people who disagree with the left. And by the way not all of them are on the "right". O well I don't think of much of the left and I could use the exact say verbiage to describe the left. & gosh do you write a lot.

John| 9.21.09 @ 3:40PM

How is it that the that DNC has control of the House, the Senate and a rubber stamp in the White House, can't get enough votes to pass this Haloween monster blame the RNC for its failure? The real problem is that they know if the push this through without at least the RINO's vote they they are going to be beatup for its cost and failure for the next 2 or 3 elections and they will lose bigtime. The DNC creditability is already on the downside because of their continued support for the "One's" lies and spending and know they are going to pay a price in 2010, now they are trying to keep some support for 2012.

Oldefarte| 9.21.09 @ 5:29PM

TNR, NYT, CBS, WaPo, etc [and their liberal/moronic readers] hopefully WAKE UP beginning with the 2010 election, to learn that Americans are FED UP with the BS of government and/or the MSM. Want to tame these liberal rags----------stop buying/reading/viewing same???????

Roy| 9.21.09 @ 7:16PM

"The Right in this country -- meaning the faction that followed George Bush for the last eight years..."

There could hardly be less point than reading anything that starts off like this.

Jack Stephens| 9.21.09 @ 7:32PM

"every tenent of mainstream GOP thinking"

The word is "tenet."

Nick| 9.21.09 @ 8:11PM

Is this the same Glenn Greenwald who defended white supremacist Matt Hale multiple times on "free speech" grounds?

The same Matt Hale in federal prison for soliciting the murder of a federal judge?

That Glenn Greenwald?

Yosemeti Sam| 9.22.09 @ 9:46AM

" ... The effect is to say that only an evil faction
could oppose universal health coverage as defined by the left...."

As fearless leader of the 'mob', El Rushbo, expressed
as a truism - the Democrat party do not need a single
Republican vote to pass any monstrosity of a bill.

What may be uppermost in a Democrats' mind,
however, is simply 'job security' - hence their
less than marshaled force to ramrod BHOs'
healthscare legislation through Americas' gut.

Them Democrats ain't all of them - that stupid.

They understand that the pendulum - it do
swing back and that - hell hath no fury like
an AMERICAN scorned. GOP - listen up
as well.

Recompense to Americas' ever machiavellian
domestic enemies - their due.