Craziest Republican of the Day: Jim DeMint

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The right-wing senator from South Carolina isn't happy with the direction of the GOP:

The problem in the Republican Party is that the leadership has gone to the left. I need some new Republicans.

Really? To the left? Well, perhaps so, relatively speaking. After all, one can be to the left of an extremist like DeMint and still be extremely conservative.

DeMint's comments come as party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas), and RNC chairman Michael Steele have come under fire from several conservative bloggers and conservative grassroots activists.

They argue that they have not done enough to thwart the Democratic legislative agenda and to back conservative candidates running in primary elections.

Those on the right point to some establishment Republicans' initial support for state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R-N.Y.) instead of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman the New York special House election.

Conservatives have also rallied around former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio (R) instead of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R), the NRSC's choice in the state's GOP Senate primary.

True, there is something of a civil war going on in the Republican Party, along with a push for purity on the right, and so it's understandable, perhaps, that DeMint is complaining that the party leadership isn't rightist enough for his liking.

Indeed, while DeMint is certainly crazy, say, to think that what the GOP needs is to be even more extreme than it is now -- that is, crazy in the sense that what he wants wouldn't be good for Republicans (if good for those of us on the other side) -- but, given the current state of the GOP, he may actually be more genuinely Republican, more authentic, than those Republicans to his left, however conservative those others may be.

I mean, come on, McConnell and Cornyn? Hardly a couple of lefties. They may be slightly to DeMint's left, sure, but what concerns such Republicans, those DeMint wishes to replace with his own kind, is not just ideological purity but electoral success, and that means a bigger tent than the one DeMint would have the GOP be. I don't want to give McConnell et al. much in the way of credit -- they hardly bear much resemblance to the moderates who once ruled the party -- but I do recognize that some in the GOP leadership are working to build up the party, not reduce it to a narrow sliver on the far right.

Again, though, DeMint seems to be in tune with the Republican Zeitgeist, which is all about rigid right-wing extremism. And so, while crazy, he's about as dedicated a partisan as they come.

A day in the life of Ivan Cornysovitch

By Capt. Fogg

I guess Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is trying to cornhole us again. I imagine that he woke up early one morning and realized there was another absurd, extreme, preposterous, shameful, ridiculous, and grotesque simile he hadn't used yet to vilify any health care reform that doesn't appeal to the corporate overlords he serves. We've already heard about "death panels" and how extending the program that Cornyn benefits from to the rest of us, is just like Pol Pot's killing fields and Hitler's death camps. Somehow he'd overlooked Stalin's Gulag Archipelago, and it's important we hear about it right away.

You see, the problem is that the Democrats aren't accepting "input" from the Republicans although it's pretty clear that the only "input" he or they have offered is to drop the damn subject. Still it's hard to understand why Tex himself isn't trying to escape from that death camp of federal employee insurance that just might kill him at any time now.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Deep in the Cornyn hole of Texas

By Capt. Fogg

I got an e-mail from Texas Senator John Cornyn this morning. Somehow I had the urge to take another shower. In the relentless crusade to mock, rebuke, deride, insult, sneer at, and taunt the "opposition," Cornyn is an endless cornucopia of crepuscular reasoning and shady opinions, such as his assertion that the "delays" in supplying Texas and the United States with hundreds of millions of H1N1 vaccinations argue against the public option in health-care reform:

These delays and limited access make me question whether the government, which cannot run existing public health programs competently, should be trusted with even more responsibility – such as running a new government health plan. [italics mine]

Of course, Cornyn doesn't give examples of how the government can't run health care, either from Medicare, the Veteran's Administration, or indeed from the government health care Cornyn and his cronies enjoy. Of course, he doesn't have to, he's preaching to Republicans -- a faith-based group who never seem to question the tenebrous tenets of that faith. The Government just can't do anything right: Reagan said so and the Republicans are hell-bent for leather to make sure it's self-fulfilling.

Perhaps John can explain what the failure of the oil industry that supports him to end oil shortages and give us 29 cents a gallon gasoline again argues for or against, or why we shouldn't say that Exxon can't run anything properly, including keeping tanker captains sober. One offensively stupid argument deserves another, I should think, and the argument that the government can't do anything and so shouldn't be allowed to do anything is a stupid argument and an annoying one coming from someone who is part of the government and is stalling, obfuscating and sabotaging health care reform -- right after having supported Bush's massive increases of unaccountable executive power and failed wars for 8 years.

No, a public option for health care is a:

Trojan horse that will ultimately lead to a government takeover of our health care system,

says John Cornyn, another way of invoking the slippery-slope fallacy. If we allow A, we'll allow A+B, and if we allow A+B, we'll allow A+B+C... Of course, any truth to this is no more than accidental because none of these steps compel the other, That's why we call it a fallacy, but again, he's arguing to Republicans and Lone Star Republicans at that, not exactly a constellation bright enough to light up the sky. Funny that he didn't argue that an invasion of Iraq would lead to a "government takeover" of the world or that warrantless surveillance and the end of habeas corpus would lead to a police state.

No, we're not on a slippery slope toward invading Ireland, the U.S. Postal Service isn't going to take over DHL or UPS or FedEx, and none of those could handle a minute fraction of the envelopes, post cards, advertising fliers, or periodicals the USPS delivers. No, the public schools aren't going to take over the private schools, and the Social Security Administration isn't going to take over your pension. The county hospital or the VA hospital isn't going to take over the private hospitals. It isn't the "government" producing the vaccines, and if we had to depend on the profitability of doing that to induce the pharmaceutical industry to do it, we'd have far greater shortages and tens of millions who wouldn't get any and couldn't afford it and would help the disease spread because of it.

Of course, I'm sure Tex Cornyn will get his vaccination, one way or another. He'll get it for free. He gets all his health care for free, so why should he give a Texas damn about you?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Rounding up the righteous

By Capt. Fogg

Glenn Beck, that bottomless sack of snake shit, is trying to make you forget that the last administration set new highs in illegal surveillance of private citizens by referencing a small item at the Whitehouse.gov webpage which asks that the endless stream of e-mail lies be forwarded. The site, if you care to look, has information and videos that attempt to disprove the mostly baseless claims. The professional liars are alarmed and so they want you to be alarmed -- and so they break out the swastikas again and try to pin them on the Democrats. They're rounding up the conservatives, they cry, while trying not to snicker. "They've created a new 'Information Czar,'" says the Bullshit Czar, Glenn Beck.

People who invent psychotic scenarios and dress them up as dire warnings are "conservatives" you see and only trying to help you see that Obama is a fascistcomministmuslim and illegal alien -- conservatively speaking.

If you're like me, you've had enough of the Palin "death panel" fraud and a great many others and forwarding them to Snopes or Factcheck simply doesn't help much. Returning them with comment to the people who sent them to you doesn't help either. Depending on the Media to refute the obvious and childish fabrications is a lost hope, but it seems that Mr. Beck and Senator Cornyn and the other professional traitors and haters of honesty are afraid someone will get to the bottom of it all and trace the sabotage, the lies and the psychotic ravings back to the RNC and into their own hard drives from whence it originates.

Behold, we're now all being asked to "squeal on our neighbors" say the folks who wanted to have postal letter carriers peek in our basement windows a few years ago and encouraged librarians to spy on those of us who read. Obama is making up a list, just like Santa and he's going to put all those people who tried to warn you that Obama is Hitler into camps.

Did I mention that Poland invaded Germany? The liberals don't want you to know.



(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)