The Future of the GOP?

Krugman:

You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

I’ve been thinking about this and I’m starting to conclude that the 2012 GOP race could easily come down to a three-way between Palin, Romney, and Huckabee. Palin and the Huckster will have the theocons battling it out against Romney, who will represent the party’s old establishment.

In a race like that, Palin would have a decent shot to win the nomination as much of the base will still be angry about the media’s treatment of Palin and their unsubstantiated claims of ACORN-based voter fraud in 2008. Their resentment will linger and fester, causing them to nominate Palin in a final act of “fuck you” defiance that the hard-right theocrats seem to be so good at.

More from Krugman:

But the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.

This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.

I think we’ll win tomorrow. But once that happens, the battle will have only just begun.

You think the war the GOP waged on Clinton was ugly? It was nothing compared to what’s coming once Obama is in office. Limbaugh and his ilk will once again go apeshit accusing Obama of being a Muslim Marxist with a crazy Christian preacher who hates puppies and they’ll be crying about Michelle’s nonexistent “whitey” video and they’ll be angry at both of them because they will adopt a breed of dog that the wingnuts don’t favor. Remember how much they hate Socks that cat?

And, worse, the wingnuts will have the help of Fox News to rile up their resentment.

But in their anger, post-rationalism, and pettiness, the hard-right may cease to be relevant, especially if Obama, as expected proves to be a competent leader who inspires our better selves.

I can’t wait for the first GOP presidential debate, which, if this year is any guide, will be held shortly after the 2010 midterms.

TN Church Attacker Hated The “Liberal Movement” – Updated

From Yahoo!:

Knoxville’s police chief says the man accused of a shooting that killed two people at a Tennessee church targeted the congregation because of its liberal social stance.

Chief Sterling Owen IV said Monday that police found a letter in Jim D. Adkisson’s car. Owen said Adkisson was apparently frustrated over being out of work and had a “stated hatred of the liberal movement.”

It’s a tragic situation, and your heart has to go out to the members of the congregation and the families of those who were shot down.

When I heard the shooting was in a Unitarian Church, my first thought was that it was some right-wing nut job like Adkisson who attacked them for being too liberal. When we live in a country where the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage spend hours a day savaging and dehumanizing any one to the left of Dick Cheney, the only surprise is that this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often.

Update:

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.”

Does that sound like anyone we know? Anyone who might dominate talk radio?

More:

Adkisson told Still that “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.”

Snip:

Inside the house, officers found “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by radio talk show host Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by talk show host Sean Hannity, and “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly.

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of “the liberal movement,” and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his “hatred of the liberal movement,” Owen said. “Liberals in general, as well as gays.”

Yep, just as suspected. The kind of hate those right-wing talkers and their ilk put out daily has to have some kind of an impact on those who listen to it daily, even those who are stable. But for the mentally unstable, their garbage can puch people over the edge.

Michael Savage and others didn’t pull the trigger, but they sure as hell helped load the gun.

Did the ‘Limbaugh Effect’ Affect Indiana Results?

Pardon me for linking to Fox:

In an e-mail entitled “The Limbaugh Effect in Indiana = 7 percent,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton wrote: “According to the latest exit polling data, 17 percent of voters in the Indiana primary today said they would vote for John McCain in a Clinton/McCain match-up. Forty-one percent of that number is constituted by people who voted Clinton in the primary but also indicated they will vote for McCain in the general election. That comes out to just under 7 percent of the primary electorate the number that may be attributed to a Limbaugh Effect.”

I don’t know what role Limbaugh’s minions played in determining the Indiana results, but I was shocked yesterday to see the number of voters in my heavily Republican precinct who were given blue cards (indicating they were voting on the Democratic ballot) before entering the voting booth. It’s hard to imagine that all those Republicans were voting in the Democratic primarybecause they favored Clinton or Obama over McCain.

Limbaugh Hoping for Riots at DNC in Denver

I’ve heard John Gibson pray and hope for riots in Denver, and though I thought his thoughts were pretty typical of the rabid-right, I didn’t think anyone with a large audience would publicly hope that demonstrators would burn down Denver while protesting Clinton’s nomination.

I was wrong:

“Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don’t elect Democrats,” Limbaugh said during Wednesday’s radio broadcast. He then went on to say that’s the best thing that could happen to the country.

Snip.

“There won’t be riots at our convention,” Limbaugh said of the Republican National Convention. “We don’t riot. We don’t burn our cars. We don’t burn down our houses. We don’t kill our children. We don’t do half the things the American left does.”

See? In Limbaugh’s mind, we on the American left (whatever that is) burn our cars and house and kill our children.

Disgusting.

The Limbaugh Effect?

Rush Limbaugh encouraged his listeners in  Texas to vote for Clinton as a way to prolong the Democratic primaries.

From CNN:

As Hillary Clinton battles to keep her presidential bid alive, she may be getting help from an unlikely source: conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Limbaugh has been actively urging his Texas listeners to cross over and vote for Clinton in that state’s open primary Tuesday, arguing it helps the Republicans if the Democratic race remains unsettled for weeks to come.

“I want Hillary to stay in this…this is too good a soap opera,” Limbaugh told fellow conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham on Fox News Friday. He reiterated the comments on his Monday show and replayed the exchange with Ingram.

He also said Clinton is more willing than the Republican National Committee and John McCain’s campaign to criticize Barack Obama.

“We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically. It’s obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it, they don’t have the stomach for it,” Limbaugh continued. “As you probably know we’re getting all kinds of memos from the RNC saying we’re not going to be critical. Mark McKinnon of McCain’s campaign said he’ll quit if they get critical over Obama. This is the presidency of the United States we’re talking about. I want our party to win I want the Democrats to lose.

Did it have an effect?

Maybe.

From Reason:

It’s a similar story in Texas, where Limbaugh has the most listeners of any of these states. Obama won the Republican vote 52-47, but conservatives (22 percent of all voters, up from 15 percent in the Kerry-Edwards primary) went against Obama. For the first time since Super Tuesday, they were Clinton’s best ideological group: She won them 53-43. And Clinton won 13 percent of the people who said Obama was the most electable candidate.

Ohio didn’t wind up being very close, but Clinton won the Texas primary by about 98,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast. If the exits are right, about 252,000 of those voters were Republicans, and about 618,000 were conservatives. Clinton truly might have won the Texas primary on the backs of Rush Limbaugh listeners.

Remember, Limbaugh is highly influential.  He has tens of millions of listeners in the US.

Did his endorsement of Hillary in Texas give her the edge?

I don’t know, but it’s worth considering.

“Keep her in it so we can win it!”

From politico:

Rush Limbaugh, one of many conservative talkers deeply hostile toward John McCain, has begun talking about bailing out Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president, suggesting repeatedly on the air yesterday and today that he’d raise money for her — though not exactly because he likes her.

“It is rumored that the Clintons are digging into their own personal wealth to fund Hillary’s campaign. I’m thinking of maybe doing a fundraiser,” Limbaugh said yesterday.

While I think Limbaugh is just trying to have a little bit of fun now that McCain will be their nominee, at least Limbaugh recognizes reality: as unexcited as the GOP base is about McCain, nothing will get them to the polls faster and in greater numbers than a Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

Right now, in the thick of the primary season, it’s easy to forget how much the GOPers HATE Hillary. She makes them crazy in a way that makes my side’s hatred of Bush (which I think I quite justified) seem subdued.  If the Democrats want to help elect John McCain, they really should nominate Clinton.