Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Macaca See........

I remember a time, not too long ago, when the Republicans were evil. I mean real verifiable evil, sulfur and brimstone evil, nasty as they wanted to be. But now what has happened?
Republicans used to set the pace, they turned liberal into a bad word and successfully painted everyone who opposed them and their nefarious ways as a traitor. They made tax cuts for the rich as American as running a war on a deficit and were proud of it. Now what are they up to?
Stalking Democrats with video cameras, hoping to force a macaca moment. This is sad and pathetic, and maybe a bit creepy. The plan is to ask questions of Democratic congresspeople they see as vulnerable in 2010 in hopes of forcing out an embarrassing response, which they'll then post to YouTube. Did I say a bit creepy? I meant to say full on bull goose looney creepy. But not evil. And that's what makes it sad and pathetic.
The GOP used to be about ideas. Not good ideas, but ideas nonetheless. But the voters resoundingly rejected those ideas in the last two election cycles, because, face it, they didn't work. Now all they have left in their bag of tricks is some second rate and second hand chicanery. They get it now-newspapers and talk radio are out, the new gizmo to spread their message is this internet doohickey. So they're trying to recreate what occurred naturally.
In 2006, Sen. George Allen, running against Jim Webb in Virginia, made an offhand remark about a Webb staffer following Allen's campaign as a macaca. Which turned out to be a racist slur, since S.R. Sidarth,the man Allen was addressing, was a 20-year-old of Indian descent. OOps!
Now the Republican Dirty Trick squad has decided this is the way to regain their footing. Not by actually having anything remotely resembling ideas themselves, because they all became intellectually bankrupt backing Bush/Cheney for all those years. Now all they can do is trot out Michael Steele and Bobby Jindal in hopes of scoring points in the whole "We don't see color either" department, and rally around Sarah Palin, because she kinda sorta represents the morality they claim to have when their teenage daughters aren't getting knocked up and having babies out of wedlock, destined to suckle at the public teat until some corporation, looking for an inroad into closely knit political circles, hires her as a "consultant" where she'll make $100K to introduce certain people to other certain people while Dad is out racing snowmobiles and Mom is winking at gray-haired old men at the regional party caucus.

3 comments:

C Woods said...

This is truly sad and pathetic. The GOP is desperate.

The problem is, that they will take those sound bites and pair them with questions that are in no way related to the statement to make the Democrats look stupid, if not evil.

When Richard Scaife Mellon appointed a couple of reporters to dig up dirt on Clinton, he gave them unlimited time to d0 it. Given enough time, one can find dirt on a newborn. If they video tape everything someone says, surely the person will say something stupid sooner or later. We all do ---but luckily most of us aren't caught on tape.

Although I am a Liberal (gasp!) I used to say I would vote for anyone I thought would do a good job ---and I have been known to vote for a Republican on occasion ---but since the Reagan years, I'm not sure I could ever vote for a Republican again. If I do, I hope someone will be kind enough to commit me before I can do more harm to myself or others.

Snave said...

Great rant, Lew! Thanks for writing it.

They really are bereft of ideas, and they now show their contempt of We the People by thinking we are so stupid we will fall for their dirty tricks and negativity. It IS sad. And I think C. Woods is right, they will take evil data and use it in even more evil ways... and a significant number of people will fall for it.

And C. Woods, I'm with you on voting for an occasional Republican. There was a guy here in Oregon running for Sec of State who was conservative and from my part of the state (the red part)... but he was a friend of education (my industry). He was running against some former beauty queen religiouso type who was trying to ride the Gingrich Negativity Wave. Oregon has a closed primary system, in which voters can only vote for candidates from their own party... so I changed parties and became a Republican so I could vote for the nice conservative and do what I could to keep his divide-and-conquer-mentality opponent out of office. Sadly, she won, but I did my part. And the guy who lost was a GOOD guy, so I didn't feel bad about voting GOP then.

Tom Harper said...

This is scary and sad and pathetic all at the same time. The wingnuts are showing that they're incredibly low and devious; but they're too inept to come up with anything that might work.

Some Republican genius must have thought of this "Gotcha!" scheme when he was surfing through one of those newfangled cable TV channels and saw an episode of "Punk'd."