After the vice-presidential debate, I said that I was so tired of this bullshit claim that Joe Biden was too disrespectful, or whatever.
Especially when it comes from "independent" voters who have either never seen a GOP Congresscritter on C-SPAN, Jon Stewart or YouTube, or else are actually not independent, but GOPers in either conscious or unconscious drag.
Well, it turns out that most of those "independents" are actually Republicans in drag, as exit polling and other surveys show.
That, in turn, leads to another question. Why are more and more people who clearly identify politically with the GOP refusing to admit that that is who they are?
My answer? They're embarrassed to be associated with the frequent bits of covert racism or covert sexism, and occasional bits of overt comments, especially on sexism but occasionally on racism, that come too often out of too many Republican mouths.
'll venture most of these "independents" are middle-class, middle-aged, reasonably educated white women in small, but not too small, towns and suburbs who grew up Republican. They still accept most Republican values but are embarrassed at what today's GOP — and perhaps including their own husbands in that — has become.
Most of the blast that follows I originally directed at the clueless, while making a nod to the GOP-lite, too. However, I now address it to these "skirt-hiders." Just like conservative but non-nutbar Christians who don't do more to call out nutbar Christians, until these women do more to call out their party (and being women, threaten a Lysistrata if necessary) they deserve the blast, the contempt, that follows.
"True" independents who think politics should be "more respectful" than Joe Biden allegedly wasn't last night ought to be barred from voting until they read some actual American history. They should still be barred for about five years after that, until we determine that they've actually learned what old-time politics was about, first, and that they don't have an IOKIYAR meme floating in their minds somewhere. The combination of stupidity, naivete and self-righteousness of swaths of the American electorate is staggering, and belies the claim that the US is the "cradle of democracy."
Fake independents ought to be forced to have Todd Akins and Robert Mourdocks win every GOP primary in their region and state until they speak up.
Oh, and can we ban David Brooks from pontificating, too? He claims to be talking about Ryan in this paragraph, but the last sentence is clearly directed at the wrong person:
He was strong on Obama’s economic failures, strong on the Libya debacle (though why do candidates always cram too many topics into their answers early in any debate), and he did have a few chances to highlight the Obama campaign’s crucial weaknesses: the relative absence of any positive agenda and the relative absence of any large plans for the next four years.David, we all know that it's Ryan/Romney that has not a relative, but an absolute, "absense of large plans." Raddatz repeatedly asked Ryan for some and he refused to give any. I think you, not Joe Biden, has visited Neptune ... and left part of your brain there.
Seriously, have these "independents" read nothing of Jackson et al in the 1924 presidential race, or Lincoln, even more in 1864 than in 1860 at times? Or, with substance as well as rhetorical heat, Lincoln-Douglas?
Or .... Ronald Reagan's "I paid for this microphone, Mr. Breen"?
More seriously No. 2 — on the other hand, many Democrats, including Dear Leader, want to be post-partisan politicians. No LBJ cut off Obama's pecker; he did it to himself.
More seriously, was moderator Martha Raddatz "partisan"? This left liberal who isn't voting for either Ryan/Romney or Biden/Obama says no, at least not in "normal" ways. More below the fold, some of which will be expanded into a separate post about her bipartisan partisanship.
Raddatz WAS, indeed, partisan toward the "bipartisan foreign policy establishment" or toward neoconservativism, or even Zionism, if you want to be blunt, with that question about Iran, implying it was our worst security problem, when in reality, it's not even third-worst, and not even worst in its region. (It's arguably not even Israel's worst security problem, contra Zionism's Amen Corner in the US and the Zionist wing of Israeli politics.)
Reality?
Off the top of my head, here's the top US national security problems for now, the future or a mix.
No. 1 is Chinese cyberespionage, that may even be cyberwarfare at this point. Raddatz knows all about that. So, too do Tweedledee and Tweedledum. But, none of them want to talk about how compromised we may be.
No. 2? Global warming's fallouts, including food problems, massive population relocations, etc. Hell, the Pentagon knows this one. So does Raddatz. So do Tweedledee and Tweedledum. But Biden wants to skirt it, along with his boss, and Ryan is a wingnut denialist.
No. 3? As the bipartisan foreign policy establishment seeks to interrnationalize the War on Drugs ever more, a failed-state Mexico, due in large part to that, could be huge.
No. 4? From the greater Middle/Near East, an unstable, not to mention failed-state, nuke-armed Pakistan is far more serious than a stable Iran, even if it has nuclear weapons.
Raddatz knows Nos 3 and 4, too, as do Tweedledee and Tweedledum. But, none of this was asked.
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