The King of the Bloviators never fails to keep us well-fed

[thewayne]

"It's classic. Somebody proposes this thing, under the guise that women are being beat to a pulp in this country because of the Republican War on Women. Women are being beat up, they're being mistreated all over the place. So we need a federal law saying you can't do it anymore. So now the Democrats get all of this credit for being compassionate, tolerant, understanding, protective of women."
—Rush Limbaugh, on the recent re-authorization of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act

The Republican War on Women has nothing at all to do with it. Women have been beat up since the dawn of time, and this bill was originally signed by President Clinton, some time before the RNC went bat-shit crazy with the advent of the Tea Baggers. One provision of the renewal that's driving House Repubs nuts is the extension of protection to cover gay couples and American Indians, apparently some men know that the chance of getting caught and prosecuted by Tribal Police for beating on one is almost nil and they've made a game of it.

I think it's a sad commentary on humanity that ANYONE gets beat on. But I guess that for Rush, angry white men and Republicans are oppressed minorities and he's their voice.

Comments

[silveradept]

Rush has been the voice of the self-proclaimed oppressed white man for years.

Also, by his logic, wouldn't it make sense for Republicans to go along with the Violence Against Women Act, so as to deny the Democrats the satisfaction of being the caring party?

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

They should. Some have suggested that they should get behind the legalization of marijuana, but they won't.

It seems to me that they're turning a deaf ear towards what Bobby Jindal and others have been crying from the wilderness that they have to stop being the stupid party. I think it would help republicans to embrace what Karl Rove wants to do and purge the Tea Baggers from their party, I'd love to see the Tea Baggers go it alone and form their own national party, it'd be endlessly entertaining to watch their own internecine squabbling.

But I see a couple of problems. First, the purge of liberal and moderate conservatives from the RNC predates the appearance of the Tea Bagger movement. Second, the perpetual fear of being primaried. Even though so many RNC districts are gerrymandered to the point that it's all but a lock, they still risk being primaried.

Bill Maher recently talked about 'don't count the republicans out, both parties have executed quick turnarounds in the past and returned.' I don't count the RNC out per se, but I don't think they're going to learn their lesson and reform in time for next year's mid-term elections. Excluding Chris Christie from the CPAC conference is plain evidence of that.

And I think they're going to lose more seats, both at the national level and at the state level, maybe not enough to change the House majority, but enough to weaken it further. And if they don't learn their lessons in time for next year's mid-terms, I don't think they'll be particularly viable for the next general election cycle in '15.

[silveradept]

I don't see the Republican reforming anything for this or the next cycle, because they still haven't had it demonstrated to them the futility of governing by obstruction. The ideological purge will likely continue for a long while, even while Rove tries to field electable candidates. Considering Fox and talk radio basically insist that anyone whoop works with a Democrat is a traitor and an apostate, even if you're a governor just hit by a hurricane working with the federal government on disaster relief, there's probably no way to break this cycle excepting for the moderates to be primaried out, the fringe to take over, and for the Republican Party to be ground into fine particles of silica. Soccer rather than later, because I want to get back to sane governance between two parties that understand how to compromise and whose interests they need to at least be showing a fig leaf to.