If any Democrat can't beat any of the Battling Bickersons in the Fox News debate last night, then the oldest political party in the world might as well fold its tent in permanently whipped humiliation. The televised exchange spotlighted the GOP's fractured ideological stance -- which is now wide indeed -- and overall the participants reflected the charm of a Bob Dole, the compassion of a Pat Robertson, and the brilliance of a George W. Bush.
Each tried his best on occasion to come across as light-hearted and personable -- except, of course, the humorless Ron Paul -- but the funniest moment came from Fox News' co-interrogator Brit Hume as he labored mightily to foment a third world war over the recent Strait of Hormuz incident. The poor dear was obviously crushed when he failed to enlist the panelists' disgust over the lack of the U.S. Navy's general bombardment of ... somebody, anybody ... but the South Carolina Republican Party compensated by opening the debate with a rousing choral rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.
Fox News didn't yet have a transcript up at the time of this early-morning writing, so I'm afraid I can't provide a link for your fullest edification. I did try settling for Fox News' online coverage of the debate, but when, early on, it noted John McCain's past as a "ship captain" rather than Naval aviator (a reference I now see they have just deleted), I thought it best to rely on Fox News no more. Can those folks, first try, ever get anything right?
So I skipped on over to the New York Times for quotable quotes instead, especially since the Times itself entered as a target in last night's debate. The ever-witty Fred Thompson, with cue-card jokes firmly at hand, at one point quipped that "you can tell that the news is good coming out of Iraq because you read so little about it in The New York Times." Oh my, good one, Fred, a real zinger. One wonders who reads the Times to Fred, or if they've read to him any of its expansively positive tales of late; but golly shucks, a great joke is a great joke and reality only tends to spoil it.
Nonetheless the Times seemed to award "best performance" to the ungrateful Mr. Thompson, crediting him for having "provided some of the liveliest moments of the debate." These came about from Fred's crosshairs being fixed on Mike Huckabee, whom the former charged would deliver unto us "liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies." I'm unsure what a "liberal foreign policy" is, exactly, other than decades of Cold Warriorism, but let us quibble not: the demagogic essence of Fred's broad offensives throughout the evening was merely that of dropping the dreaded L-bomb on the Huck.
One also wonders if Huckabee helped himself last night, as he tended to confirm Fred's charges on his "liberal economic" contours by countering with outrageous decencies like this: "We need to make sure that we communicate that our party is just as interested in helping the people who are single moms, who are working two jobs and still just barely paying the rent as we are the people at the top of the economy."
Has Mike checked his party registration lately? Is he aware that few Republicans pols since Alf Landon have cared about policies with a humanitarian spin? Give it up, Mike. You can't reinvent the modern GOP in a few months, and you can't change its primaries' megalomaniacal obsession with trickle-down tax cuts. Those single moms can by God fend for themselves, the losers.
The best scorching, however, came not from Thompson, in my opinion, but McCain. And it was -- you guessed it -- Mitt Romney who got sautéed. The moment came during one of Mitt's tedious demagogic spiels directed at Michigan's unemployed: "I know that there are some people who think, as Senator McCain did -- he said, you know, some jobs have left Michigan that are never coming back. I disagree. I’m going to fight for every single job." To which McCain replied, cooly: "Sometimes you have to tell people things they don’t want to hear along with things that they do want to hear. There are some jobs that aren’t coming back to Michigan. There are some jobs that won’t come back here to South Carolina." And with that touch of globalization reality, Mitt was left looking like the desperate demagogue he is.
Unfortunately, desperate demagoguery sells -- especially to desperate people. How it sells to the desperate in Michigan, we'll soon see.
And of course there was Rudy Giuliani, who mostly focused on setting a new record for the number of times a man can say "Ronald Reagan" in 90 minutes. I really do regret that a transcript isn't up yet, for I very much wanted to count the bootlicking references. It was like Rudy was on some kind of pre-recorded loop. In lieu of that count, however, I bring you this choice selection from Rudy, who hammered his early support of the surge in Iraq with Keith Olbermann-like, comedic rapidity: "The night of the president’s speech, I was on television. I supported the surge. I’ve supported it throughout." How he omitted squeezing "9/11" into that I'll leave for others to ponder, although I imagine somewhere out there today is an unemployed debate-prepper.
In general, though, the debate pretty much confirmed that any Democratic candidate should have the easiest cakewalk in the history of U.S. presidential elections. The GOP's 30-year-old fusion has unraveled, and that's what principally was on display last night in South Carolina. It no longer has a threefold base -- social, economic and national-security radicals -- but three bases. And there's a huge difference.
I would love to believe you Mr. Carpenter - but the Democrats have a long and distinguished history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Let's hope the habit has abated somewhat for 2008.
Posted by: Neil Ferstand | January 11, 2008 at 11:03 AM
You know liberalism is a manifestation of satan's very nature!? And the gop's god is made in thier own image!? And you know if "rudy" becomes prez, he will replace on our currency "In God We Trust",(the gop god)with,"In rudy we trust".
Posted by: Alex | January 11, 2008 at 11:35 AM
You didn't mention much about Ron Paul other than that he is humorless.
I would say you are right that any democrat would have a cake walk with any of the republican candidates, except Ron Paul. I think he'd put up pretty tough competition, especially with Kucinich as his running mate.
I'd say Ron Paul is the only the Republican party has going for it.
Posted by: Bob | January 11, 2008 at 11:53 AM
The reason Ron Paul seems humorless to you is because of being true to his word.Our country is in a whole lot of trouble. Laughing it off when times are desperate is not in his character. Democrats and republicans are protecting their interests which are not for the people but for big funders. The only true exceptions are Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.This is a time to mourn for our country that has lost it's way. Truth and reality will hit us at home; unless we follow and listen to all those blind leaders of the blind.
Truth and freedom is in knowing our need to totally turn around and change our ways. Have a good day.
Posted by: mary | January 11, 2008 at 11:59 AM
I would expect this kind of an exclusionary fluff piece coming from the mainstream Pravda Press, not an independent commentator. It's obvious that to the author of this article the only differences were stylistic, whereas, the actual differences were on matters of policy. With the exception of Ron Paul, all the other candidates advocated big government, global socialist positions, yet we are to believe that Mr. Paul's only contribution was his lack of humor? It's obvious who is buttering the bread of this author's dinner plate.
Posted by: A. Magnus | January 11, 2008 at 12:03 PM
It's obvious who is buttering the bread of this author's dinner plate.
Posted by: A. Magnus
Mr. Magnus, it's not obvious to me. Could you please tell us who it is? And in what way these payments reach Mr. Carpenter.
My own personal opinion on Paul: Based on his other positions, the man is so gullible that just a peek at the "secret evidence" and Power-Point presentations will turn him into a raving neo-con.
We've already had a President who can't hear himself think. I don't need one who doesn't bother to read his own newsletter.
Posted by: Mooser | January 11, 2008 at 01:12 PM
Has anybody else noticed that supporting Ron Paul seems inevitably to lead to a disgusting excess of self-righteousness?
Posted by: Mooser | January 11, 2008 at 01:14 PM
THE FIX IS ALLREADY IN....THE DEMOCRATS TAKE A DIVE AND NOMINATE
HILLARY....even if its Obama when they reactivate CARL ROVE they'll have convinced 51% of America Barack,s Willie Horton
who converted to Islam in prison
.....all that's left to do after November 4TH is officially
declare the DEMOCRATIC PARTY BRAIN DEAD and have Ted Kennedy remove the feeding tube!!!
Posted by: Bobby Decker | January 11, 2008 at 03:23 PM
Boy oh boy, I wish I was as smart as you and had your great analytical powers. Thank God you are alive and have this blog for I was running out of things to waste my time on.
GO RON PAUL!
Posted by: Bradley E. Bourn | January 11, 2008 at 04:09 PM
PM, love the sentiments of your commentary, BUT you simply underestimate the ability of corporate money... I mean the BILLIONS of dollars behind corporate America and the hyper-wealthy who rule this nation - to gloss-over any differences (between their candidates/positions) and to invert reality come November 2008.
(Chamber of Commerce vows $60 million to defeat "anti-business" candidates.) http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-chamber8jan08,0,4301350.story
i.e. the "What's the Matter With Kansas?" syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F
Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and other states were PARAGONS of "grass-roots Populism" through most of the 20th century, but enough of the public allowed themselves to be HOODWINKED by Karl Rove's Repub divide-and-conquer Identity Politics of the late 1990s-2006 to give Bush, Cheney & the ruling class the power they needed to raid deeply into the jobs, wages, benefits, pockets & pocketbooks of working family Americans.
The fact that many of these elections were stolen by Diebold machines (probably starting with Senator Chuck Hagel, co-owner of ES&S voting machines in Kansas in 1996
http://www.scoop.co.nz/news/politics.html
Hagel improbably winning even Black precincts in, Suprise! votes tabulated on ESS predecessor American Information Systems voting machines, only, for that election) doesn't count for too much: it still means that Americans were STILL willing to let themselves be robbed by identity politics hatred. (The textbook or iconic image of that identity-politics self-destructing animosity is a Herblock cartoon from the early 1960s of a poor, barefoot white farmer in coveralls, trying to stay out of the muck of a large muchole labelled "Segregation" by jumping up on the back of a young black male, also in farm-worker overalls, who is sinking into the mud with the white man struggling furiously on his shoulders.)
We know that, despite Kerry's pathetically lame, take-a-fall, say-no-bad-thing about a Skull-and-Bones brother campaign, Bush/Cheney/Rove STILL had to steal Ohio... and probably Florida, Nevada, Iowa, and New Mexico as well. Iowa of course is lilly-white, New Mexico disenfranchising natives is what American empire has been about for 300 years. (And how deceased Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rhenquist got his start in politics, sandbagging minority voters at polls in 1950s Arizona.) It doesn't matter: Big Biz/establishment Republicans KNOW HOW TO STEAL ELECTIONS, to get the populace to accept the ruthless Robber Baron agenda, and there are no Teddy Roosevelts or FDRs or Trumans or Lyndon Johnsons on the horizon to turn that freight train around.
What is worse than Kerry "Taking-a-Fall" for Bush-Cheney in 2004.. is that THAT AGENDA is STILL the DOMINANT agenda in the "DEMOCRATIC" Party, from Nancy Pelosi practically kissing George W. Bush
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bush-vows-to-use-his-veto-whatever-the-cost/2007/03/29/1174761668801.html
at the "I will veto everything you Democratic 'opposition' leaders do" dinner
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bush-vows-to-use-his-veto-whatever-the-cost/2007/03/29/1174761668801.html, to Richardson, Biden, Dodd, Hillary, Kerry, Obama, and others talking "UNITE AMERICA, END PARTISAN BICKERING."
Sorry about this long-winded comment, but I hope I have laid out the case that clueless Democrats will do OVER HALF of the Republican's shaft-the-majority work for them...
And this gem of a cite proves that the Dems are already in trouble: the Chamber of Commerce, alone, pledges to spend $60 million, SIXTY MILLION DOLLARS, to defeat ANY "anti-business candidates. (Never mind that they were instrumental in defeating Senate MAJORITY LEADER Tom Daschle back in 2002, and now, predictably enough, we are almost in a RECESSION, if not there already!)
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-chamber8jan08,0,4301350.story
That is OVER HALF of what the entire Kerry/Democratic Party presidential campaign raised in 2004, coming from ONE big-biz advocacy group!
Just imagine how much more Exxon-Mobile can push into the process through their wholly-owned AEI (a quasi-governmental Right-Wing think tank that the media runs to everytime they want some intellectual polish on the latest Right-Wing talking points), Mellon-Scaife foundation fortune, Olin foundation fortune, Halliburton, Lockheed, Blackwater, and other billion-dollar corporate fundraisers.
With all "Democratic" 'leaders' but Kucinich and Edwards talking about "Ending the Partisan divide", and with Republicans able to turn "Lincoln Bedroom" molehills into front-page dominating "scandals", and with Bush and Cheney pushing to start war with Iran as soon as possible, saying that the GOP is "splintered" is hopeful, to say the least.
Posted by: Lj | January 11, 2008 at 04:35 PM
Ron Paul's being "humorless" is quite the litmus test.
Especially in light of the humor of the rest of the assclowns running, it's astounding.
What's the burr up your tail about Ron?
Posted by: Humorless (therefore unqualified to be Prez) | January 11, 2008 at 04:58 PM
"Has anybody else noticed that supporting Ron Paul seems inevitably to lead to a disgusting excess of self-righteousness?"
Mooser
Which is Chicken, Which is egg?
That is: Is it a pre-existing condition?
Posted by: CV | January 11, 2008 at 06:26 PM
Great commentary, P.M., but (to steal a line from Neal (first comment, above) "NEVER COUNT OUT the Democrat's Ability to SNATCH DEFEAT from JAWS OF VICTORY," and if there is one thing that we have learned from the Gore, Daschle, & Kerry campaigns, and Nancy Pelosi's 110th Congress, it is that if the Dem. candidates/leaders DON'T COME OUT SWINGING (running hard-hitting oppo ads, "Opposition Research" ads that DEMOLISH an opponent's record and credibility, using karl rove methods if with an honest message) the MOMENT THEY ANNOUNCE their campaigns, THEY WILL NOT start being aggressive later on in their campaigns or leadership agenda. They just have been too trained (Pavlov-dog fashion) that to CONFRONT Republican gross, criminal abuses of power is being "TOO PARTISAN' so they don't.
Indeed, Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer, kerry, and all the other Democratic pooh-bahs who 'run' the Congress this year, STILL HAVE NOT SOUGHT to AGGRESSIVELY PROSECUTE well documented VOTING FRAUD cases... much less the Rove-Gonzales PURGE-GATE scandal, the turning of the US Justice Department into a Karl Rovian wing of the KKK with a corrupt partisan conviction of Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to show for it!
And the above description of Dem complicity with Republican abuses of power doesn't even mention- never underestimate the ability of corporate money - the BILLIONS of dollars behind corporate America and the hyper-wealthy who rule this nation - to gloss over any differences (between Repub candidates and positions) and to invert reality come election November 2008.
i.e. the "What's the Matter With Kansas?" syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F
Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and other states have been PARAGONS of "grass-roots Populism" through most of the 20th century, but enough of the public allowed themselves to be HOODWINKED by Karl Rovian Repub divide-and-conquer Identity Politics of the late 1990s-2006 to give Bush, Cheney & the ruling class the power they needed to raid deeply into the jobs, wages, benefits, pockets & pocketbooks of working family Americans this past decade.
The fact that many of these elections were stolen by Diebold machines (probably starting with Senator Chuck Hagel, co-owner of ES&S voting machines in Kansas in 1996
http://www.scoop.co.nz/news/politics.html
Hagel improbably winning even Black precincts in, Suprise! votes tabulated solely on ES&S predecessor American Information Systems voting machines for that election) doesn't count for too much: it still means that Americans were STILL WILLING to let themselves be robbed by identity politics hatred.
(The textbook or iconic image of that identity-politics self-destructing hatred of "others" is a Herblock cartoon from the early 1960s of a poor, barefoot white farmer in coveralls, trying to stay out of the muck of a large mud-hole labeled "Segregation," by jumping up on the back of a young black male, also in farm-worker overalls, who is sinking into the mud as the white man struggles furiously on his shoulders.)
We know that, despite Kerry's pathetically lame, Take-a-Fall, say-no-bad-thing about a Skull-and-Bones-brother campaign, that Bush/Cheney/Rove STILL had to steal Ohio... and probably Florida, Nevada, Iowa, and New Mexico as well.
Iowa of course is lily-white state that was robbed of an honest vote count, and in New Mexico, disenfranchising natives is what American empire has been about for over 300 years. (And how deceased Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rhenquist got his start in politics, sandbagging minority voters at polls in 1950s Arizona.)
IT DOESN'T MATTER! Big Biz/establishment Republicans KNOW HOW TO STEAL ELECTIONS, to get the populace to accept the ruthless Robber Baron agenda by blaming minorities for economic problems, and now using "The War on Terror" to legitimize monstrously huge government expenditures, war powers, and chronic invasions of privacy. Today there are no Teddy Roosevelts or Franklin D Roosevelts or Harry Trumans or Lyndon Johnsons on the horizon to turn that freight train around, and Barak Obama has neither the firepower of John and Bobby Kennedy, nor the multi-million dollar Kennedy empire and media machine backing him.
What is worse than Kerry "Taking-a-Fall" for Bush-Cheney in 2004.. is that THAT AGENDA is STILL the DOMINANT agenda in the "DEMOCRATIC" Party, from Nancy Pelosi practically kissing George W. Bush
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bush-vows-to-use-his-veto-whatever-the-cost/2007/03/29/1174761668801.html
at the "I will veto everything you Democratic 'opposition' leaders do" dinner, to Richardson, Biden, Dodd, Hillary, Kerry, Obama, Reid, and others Democratic "leaders" talking "UNITE AMERICA to END PARTISAN BICKERING" even as Republicans continue to make a fortune robbing American voters and looting the US Treasury.
Sorry about this long-winded comment, but I hope I have laid out the case that clueless Democrats will do OVER HALF of the Republican's shaft-the-majority work for them...
And this gem of a cite proves that the Dems are already in trouble: the Chamber of Commerce, alone, pledges to spend $60 million, SIXTY MILLION DOLLARS, to defeat ANY "anti-business candidates.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-chamber8jan08,0,4301350.story
(Never mind that they, Chamber of Commerce campaign hit-teams, were instrumental in defeating Dem. Senate MAJORITY LEADER Tom Daschle back in 2002, and now, predictably enough, we Americans are almost in yet another Bush RECESSION, if we aren't there already!)
That is, the Chamber of Commerce, alone, plegdes to spend OVER HALF of the money raised by the entire Kerry/Democratic Party presidential campaign in 2004; this money coming from ONE big-biz advocacy group for Democrat-busting pro-business attack ads, alone!
Just imagine how much more Exxon-Mobile can push into the process through their wholly-owned AEI (a quasi-governmental Right-Wing think tank that the media runs to every time they want some intellectual polish on the latest Right-Wing talking points), or how much the Mellon-Scaife foundation fortune, Olin foundation fortune, Halliburton, Lockheed, Blackwater, and other billion-dollar corporations can push into the process to defeat any Democratic candidate.
With all "Democratic" 'leaders' but Kucinich and Edwards talking about "Ending partisan bickering," and with Republicans able to turn "Lincoln Bedroom" molehills into front-page "scandals", and with Bush and Cheney pushing to start war with Iran as soon as possible, saying that the GOP will be "splintered" come November 2008 is being hopeful, to say the very least.
Posted by: Lj | January 11, 2008 at 07:25 PM
You are truly fu##ing kidding yourself, me, us.
Bush absolutely stole 2000 killing 200+ years democracy by calling upon daddies bought and paid for garbage to cast their five votes. US 0, poor 0, world screwed.
Then in 2004 he used the oldest startegy in the book - election fraud. Diebold fixed Ohio and walla another fraudulent stolen election.
The Democrats are fighting fixed elections and murderous people who will do anything absolutely anything to win in a country no longer democratic just run by the richest.
They will be lucky to come even close and we will go on illegally killing thousands for oil profiteering. And so it goes...
Posted by: Fred | January 11, 2008 at 08:36 PM
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Posted by: Bobby Decker | January 12, 2008 at 02:18 PM