Mark Davis, Ronald Reagan, and trick questions

Barrett Brown

I am the founder of the distributed think-tank Project PM and a regular inactive to Vanity Fair and Skeptical Inquirer. My work has also appeared in The Onion, National Lampoon, New York Press, D Magazine, Skeptic, McSweeney's, American Atheist, and a couple of newspapers in the U.S. and Mexico as well as a few policy journals. I'm the author of two books and serve as a consultant to various political entities and private clients.

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10 Responses

  1. JohnR says:

    You have to wonder what the tea-party fantasists would make of Richard Nixon; other than his ethics and persecution mania, I suspect that they would find him a thoroughly reprehensible RINO. It’s extraordinary how the GOP has changed in only a couple of generations, and with no outside threat to blame, other than the threat of irrelevance.Report

  2. Robert Cheeks says:

    C’mon Barrett, you can do better?
    Nixon was a RINO. The effect of the TPers, as a movement, will be determined in a couple of weeks. My own opinion, after looking at the polls, is that this is the most politically significant movement I’ve ever experienced.
    Ronaldo Magnus did a lot I liked and some I didn’t. I think he occasionally allowed the wrong people to advise him. However, there is obviously no comparison between Reagan and our current Kenyan-commie president. What Reagan did that the Left will never be able to forgive was to establish a ground that all of us Americans stand on that simply says American principles and ideals are intrinsically superior to any ideology originating in Europe, Asia, or Africa. And, I think its that reality that a whole lot of Americans will be taking to the polls on Nov. 2, and the truth is, we owe Barrack Hussein Obama and his radical regime a debt of gratitude for the ‘awakening’ and political rising.Report

    • Barrett Brown in reply to Robert Cheeks says:

      @Robert Cheeks, I’m going to have to disagree with you on your notion that the left as a whole couldn’t forgive Reagan for iterating the supremacy of American ideals. Certainly there is a contingent of the left that not only ascribes to cultural relativism not just in the reasonable materialist sense of identifying attributes of culture’s but not believing in some set-in-the-stars or God-given pecking order, but which also goes so far as to save their praise for pre-industrial tribal societies and communist tyrannies while bashing America on every count. But this is a pretty small contingent of the left. Anyone who claims that a majority of the 100 million or so American liberals actually despise American ideals and hate Reagan for paying tribute to them is either ignorant of the subject or has some emotional need to write off all objections to his own worldview as intrinsically invalid lest he go so far as to have to face them.Report

      • Robert Cheeks in reply to Barrett Brown says:

        @Barrett Brown, Thanks Barrett, I actually agree with your premise so I’m neither ‘ignorant’ nor do I have ’emotional needs’ along that direction…however, I may be stupid about other stuff and my ’emotional needs’ may drift along other directions.
        My hyperbolic ‘criticisms’ are always directed at those ‘libruls’ who, presumably, have the intelligence to know better and the where-with-all to resist the so-called ‘immanent salvation of man and society.’ Those intellectual (academic?) leaders who may have some idea that there’s a gnostic component in their statist faith that is grounded on the ‘rise and fall of Soviet Communism’ and potentially understood by them as a ‘common failure of modernity’, a failure that is shared by the West.
        Consequently, we can not bring the ‘intellectual librul’ to Jesus until we make him see that his philosophy is merely a ‘crisis of meaning,’ grounded on the corruption of the spirit. Like Dylan said, “It’s an empty, hungry feelin’ that don’t mean no one no good.”
        I’m not really interested in the unwashed, mass of ‘libruls.’Report

    • Steven Donegal in reply to Robert Cheeks says:

      @Robert Cheeks,
      “My own opinion, after looking at the polls, is that this is the most politically significant movement I’ve ever experienced.”

      Really? This is just the Republican base screaming louder. What do they stand for? The same things they’ve always stood for–lower taxes for them and more spending on things they like. Nothing has changed.Report

  3. JohnR says:

    And thank you, Robert Cheeks!
    For some odd reason, every time I am reminded of the fabulous Tea Party, I immediately remember a great Bill Mauldin cartoon – a new lieutenant is being escorted up to the front somewhere around the middle of the Italian campaign, and while passing through a bombed-out Italian village, he sees a couple of rough-looking GIs at a street cafe table, obviously spoiling for a fight. Willie (or Joe) answers the young officer’s obvious question by explaining “We call them ‘garritroopers’ – they’re too far forward to wear ties and too far back to get shot.” What Bill would think of the modern GOP, I’m not sure, but I bet he’d recognize the type.Report

  4. Robert Cheeks says:

    Thanks John, you’ve made my day!
    If you need someone to talk with following the upcoming election, just drop a comment. I’m here to hep!Report

  5. Buzz Windrip says:

    Thanks to this mid-term election and the rise of the Tea Party, I have lost any and all ability to tell the difference between parody/satire and sincerity. c.f. post #2.Report