Dick Morris goes after Chris Christie with egg on his face
Here’s conservative commentator Dick Morris saying something ridiculous:
I’ve got egg on my face. I predicted a Romney landslide and, instead, we ended up with an Obama squeaker.
The key reason for my bum prediction is that I mistakenly believed that the 2008 surge in black, Latino, and young voter turnout would recede in 2012 to “normal” levels. Didn’t happen. These high levels of minority and young voter participation are here to stay. And, with them, a permanent reshaping of our nation’s politics.
Before we go on, I’m just going to say that anyone predicting a Romney landslide before last night was either A) lying to themselves or B) lying to you. I suspect Morris falls into the second category, along with most of his colleagues up there on Bullshit Mountain.
But Morris isn’t content with egg on his face, he wants egg all over his body:
But the more proximate cause of my error was that I did not take full account of the impact of hurricane Sandy and of Governor Chris Christie’s bipartisan march through New Jersey arm in arm with President Obama. Not to mention Christe’s fawning promotion of Obama’s presidential leadership.
It made all the difference.
A key element of Romney’s appeal, particularly after the first debate, was his ability to govern with Democrats in Massachusetts. Obama’s one-party strident approach, so much the opposite of what he pledged in his first national speech in 2004, had turned voters off. But by working seamlessly with an acerbic Republican Governor like Christie, Obama was able to blunt Romney’s advantage in this crucial area.
Here that folks? Dick Morris was wrong because Chris Christie said nice things about Obama. Absent Sandy and that awful, no-good RINO Christie, Romney would have won by a landslide, and Dick Morris wouldn’t have that runny yoke dripping down his chin.
I really admire the things Christie said in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. I’ve always had a soft spot for the New Jersey governor despite my deep disagreements with him on political issues, partly because he isn’t cowed by conservative media—a media which has pretty much taken the Republican Party hostage (as I go to great length on over at Mother Jones.)
This is naturally going to upset the folks within conservative media who see Christie as a threat. I mean, a moderate, squishy Republican like Scott Brown isn’t that big of a deal. He might not be a perfect red-blooded conservative, but he’s not going to tell Fox and Friends off either. Christie, on the other hand, if he goes rogue well…that’s cause for concern.
So Dick Morris is going on the offensive. Blame acts of god and the sharp tongue of one New Jersey Republican who had the audacity to say something nice about the president on the reverse-landslide Romney just suffered. It’s stupid, yeah, but it’s also smart. Because this is the stuff that gets people all fired up and keeps eyeballs glued to Fox News and clicks clickety-click-clicking their way to conservative blogs.
It’s all about the money, you know? It always has been.
What were the odds we’d have multiple Dick Morris references in a single non-slow-news day?Report
Yes, well your post led me down my own rabbit hole, and since I was writing today about this subject already…it was inevitable. Dick Morris is low hanging fruit.Report
Dick Morris is low hanging fruit.
Which, coincidentally, is where you just kicked him. 😉Report
It’s getting so you can’t trust Dick Morris to give it to you straight anymore. O tempora, O mores!Report
Yeah, times are changin’. The traditional demographic of people who believe what Dick Morris says is shrinking.Report
That such a demographic ever existed in the first place is pretty astounding in its own right.Report
Yes, it’s hard to believe that Bill Clinton was a part of it for so long.Report
In that case, though, Morris was paid to be right, so he had to perform and did.
Since then, though, he’s only paid to have grammatically intelligible sentences come out of his mouth.
Like most people, he does no more to earn his money than meet the basic requirements.Report
The Dick Morris Martingale. Double down until you finally win one and erase all your losses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system)
This is why they have table limits at casinos. Dick Morris hit the table limit back in 2005, something about Hillary that didn’t happen, that she’d be found in Central Park at midnight with Bill’s lecherous lying balls in her teeth, something like that.
If political predicting were a real casino, Dick Morris would have been found in a Reno dumpster long ago.Report
If political predicting were a real casino, Dick Morris would have been found in a Reno dumpster long ago.
Tom, that was hilarious.Report
I laughed hard.Report
Yeah, that was a good line. We’ve got some funny folks around here–maybe they should start their own comedy writing team and produce some video shorts for the League.Report
LOL!Report
I am a conservative, I loathe Dickless Morris. Always on selling his books and BS with his lame wife. If this moron says left, I am going right.Report
I’ve spent the last couple of hours alternating between finding the “blame Christie” meme hilarious and offensive. Hilarious because the notion that the voting patterns of anyone outside of already blue New Jersey were affected by Christie’s saying a few nice words about Obama is nothing short of batshit insane. Offensive because the meme amounts to an insistence that Christie’s role as a Romney surrogate was more important than his role as a governor and his duty to his state in the midst of a heretofore unfathomable crisis.
I mean who gives a crap if Christie’s words managed to ensure better fed-state cooperation that actually helps thousands of people whonlost their homes and millions of people without power? Chrsitie’s job, it would seem, was to give the middle finger to his constituents and play the role of a surrogate 24/7.
A few months ago, I got pissed at liberals for looking to disown Cory Booker over his being a crappy surrogate for Obama. Well, this meme is infinitely worse.Report
Mark Thompson: on the edge. I think this is as close to cussin’ as I’ve ever seen you, Mr. T.Report
Is it interesting that the actual electoral vote tallies were pretty much the mirror of Morris’ predicted tallies, but he calls the latter a landslide and the former a “squeaker?”Report
What I find astonishing is that Morris goes to real data, the stuff that people paid to make these types of predictions are aware of, as a defense of why he was so wrong.
It’s almost like he overlooked – or completely rejected! – the evidence and methodologies statisticians use to make their predictions. And he opted instead for something more reliably conservative, more Real American, more natural and truer. His gut.Report
Judging from some of my friends on Facebook (and I have many, many conservative friends. And I do not talk politics with them, because it’s stressful and pointless and I’d rather hang out and drink beer with them, not argue) — this loss has been met with..confusion.
Deep confusion. They don’t understand it. In general, they were all of the mind that the polls were wrong — that the vast, silent majority of America agreed with them.
Dick Morris might have believed it as well.Report
that the vast, silent majority of America
Will that meme never die???
First, it’s the people who don’t speak up. Then it’s the people who don’t vote. Then it’s the people who silently disagree with what they publicly say they agree with.
Next up: the “silent majority” is all the people who didn’t speak up about all the things they silently disagreed with but publicly supported.
And after that: it’s all the people who silently disagreed with their silent disagreement about all the thing they disagreed with but publicly supported.
The silent majority cannot fail.Report
Why would it die? What human being doesn’t want to believe that most people agree with him? (I suppose a few avowed contrarians might — but they’d also want to be right so they could do a happy dance in front of the wrong masses).
It’s a particularly fun human flaw that percolates through all of human society, everywhere. Heck, trying to firewall that urge is a giant chunk of the scientific method.Report
The lurkers support them in email!Report
It’s as if he’s not even trying to hide his dishonesty anymore.Report
“Anymore”?Report
Chris Christie had a major role in Obamas re-election. How ironic, a major republican figure delivers the fatal blow. At the end, US is shafted. Happy election America. NOT!Report
Yeah, you do know this claim that Christie had a major role in getting Obama reelected is batshit insane, right?Report
MarkT, there was some noise in the polls that Obama’s “handling” of Sandy helped. Christie gave him a platform.
Chris Christie is dead in GOP eyes. If Bloomberg could cold-shoulder Obama’s request for a photo-op, Christie should have laughed even louder with days to go in a tight campaign. Instead, CC went from Barack Obama’s most derisive detractor to his most enthusiastic and effective character witness. I won’t even do the nauseating Springsteen angle.
After feathering his own nest by hogging the keynote speech at the GOP convention, doing a commercial for himself rather than the party or its nominee, christie just voted himself off the island.
He’s up for re-election in 2013, likely against Democrat Cory Booker in a Democrat state. 2014-2016 will find Christie in the Where-Are-They-Now File. Perhaps we’ll see him again in 2020. It’ll take at least that long to mend his bridges in his own party.
Or perhaps he’ll be the Dem nominee: I left my party and then they left me but I left them first or something. That’ll work even better.Report
Heh… yeah, it’s the Democrats with ressentiment.Report
Come on, it’s common knowledge that everyone in Ohio ans Colorado were just waiting for the final endorsement of the New Jersey governor before they cast their votes.
I mean, who wasn’t, right?
If TVD, George Turner, and Teresa Rice are good indicators, the GOP is a long way from facing up to reality after this election.Report
A real GOP governor would’ve quit his job to get a commentators position at Fox News instead.Report
Burn!Report
Chris Christie is dead in GOP eyes.
You might want to wait a bit on that pronouncement. As much as you’d love for it to be true, of course. But hoping is different than expecting.Report
Yeah that was some cold shoulder Mike Bloomberg gave Obama down the stretch there.Report
Michael, you can do better than this. The others not so much.Report
The general perception is that Bloomberg has been screwing his constituents over royally; Christie’s constituents, by contrast, are very happy about how he has responded to the storm. And honestly, Tom, this is offensive- you haven’t got a clue what it’s like around here this last week and a half. I know you’ve got family in Philly, but Philly got off extremely easy from the storm (a fact that Philadelphians are having a difficult time recognizing, but that’s another story entirely).
As for Christie’s odds against Cory Booker, don’t be so sure of yourself. Even before the storm, Christie’s approval numbers were quite good, and NJ holds it’s gubernatorial elections in odd years, meaning turnout is always particularly low, always a good thing for GOP candidates. Popular as Cory Booker is, and as much as I like him, he’s going to be a coin flip to beat Christie. And if Booker doesn’t get the Dem nomination somehow, then there’s no one on the Dem bench that I can see mounting a serious challenge to Christie.
Also, too: math shows that Sandy had no meaningful effect: http://pbump.tumblr.com/post/35035727547/when-you-hear-someone-lie-and-say-sandy-slowed
It probably improved Obamas performance in NJ a few points- we’re one of the few states where Obama actually increased his margin from 2008- but NJ was going to Obama by double digits no matter what was going to happen.Report
Good lord, Mark. You really think helping people recover from a major natural disaster is more important than partisan politics? You’re a damn commie, ya are!
(But in all seriousness, I do hope you and yours are doing well. I was sorry to hear about your tree–I love weeping willows; every kid should have an opportunity to swing from their branches–but I do hope you had no more serious losses than that.)Report
Thanks, James. I’m happy to report that the lost tree was indeed the most serious immediate loss for me, though a number of my neighbors got significantly worse, and I obviously was not immune to the big-picture effects of the storm – extended lack of power, extremely hazardous driving conditions (still far from resolved), etc. My county was declared a disaster area last Friday; I believe we’re still under gas rationing orders, and a good chunk of the county is still without power, with no small number of roads remaining impassable. Even up in Morris County, I know of at least one major facility of one of the area’s biggest employers that is still unable to open, and won’t be able to open for at least another week.
Obviously, the worst damage is in places like Monmouth and Ocean counties, and I work with a good number of folks from there. The damage in those areas is astounding. The Wife and I also each have family with shore homes that were hit pretty hard; thankfully, they’re both still standing and on their original foundations, albeit water damaged, but having looked at extensive surveys of the islands on which those homes were located…..the scope of the damage really is unthinkable. When disasters hit, I have a natural inclination to think that the photos that get broadcast are cherry-picked to show only the worst of the damage, meaning that they’re not showing the majority of areas that look substantially better. In this instance, though, out of concern for family and co-workers, I’ve found myself sifting through pictures and presentations that provide a wider view than what filters its way into popular media; what I’ve discovered is that the images filtering their way into popular media in this case are pretty much representative of the entire shore north of Atlantic City. And keep in mind that, while much of the shore is vacation homes*, there are a fair number of folks who live there year-round, and some parts of the shore, like Brick and Toms River, are completely filled with purely full-time residents.
And for what it’s worth, these areas of the state are Christie Country and GOP strongholds – Monmouth and Ocean counties went 62 and 65 percent, respectively, for Christie. The folks I know from there, themselves Christie and Romney supporters to my knowledge, have been effusive in their praise of his cooperation with Obama, and not a single one has asked “what the hell is Christie thinking, cozying up to Obama like that”? The Dems I know from other counties have likewise been effusive in their praise of Christie’s handling of the storm. About the only folks who have raised any complaints are the folks from the southwestern corner of the state, which was mostly unscathed by the storm and which is culturally more like rural Virginia than it is like even the other GOP areas of the state.
And this is all before you get to discussing the massive problems in the densely-populated northeastern part of the state like Hoboken, Moonachie, Little River, and Perth Amboy (which is on the coast, but not usually considered part of the Shore).
*Although in many areas having a vacation home is a sign of being wealthy, on the Jersey Shore, it’s at least as common for a vacation home to be owned by a working class family as it is to be owned by someone with a lot of dough. One of the aforementioned family members is a nurse married to a middle manager who, at the time the home was purchased, was fresh out of the service.Report
Actually, MarkT, your being a Dem in NJ precludes you from seeing what it looks like from outside. To GOPers, his self-serving performance at the convention was a WFT moment, and his bleat changing from scorch-the-earth Obama critic [“In the dark fumbling for the leadership light switch”] to putting his tongue down the back of the president’s trousers was laughable on its own terms regardless of political content.
Then the fawning over Springsteen, compliments of a phone call set up by the president…
And you might be right that Christie wins re-election in ’13, but payback is hell and he pissed off a lot of people, and it’s the donkeys who have long memories, not the elephants.Report
Uhhh….you do know I’m not a Dem in NJ, right? In fact, at this point, in state races I vote far more often for Republicans than for Democrats – NJ Democrats are a group that I view as, on the whole, extraordinarily untrustworthy and corrupt (Booker is a very rare exception), and most NJ Republican pols are at least tolerable. Even if Booker runs next year against Christie, I’m significantly more likely to vote for Christie – while CB would be a fine governor, I don’t trust how the Assembly Dems like to act when they have a fellow Dem in the governor’s mansion. You’ll be surprised to learn that I voted GOP for everything from Senator on down, except for one Freeholder position where the Republican incumbent wants to consolidate the municipal police forces into one countywide force, and the Democrat is vehemently opposed to this.
It’s on national politics where I am somewhat more sympathetic to Democrats than Republicans (and only somewhat – I voted LP the last two Prez. elections for a reason).
I also am uninterested in the response to Christie’s performance at the convention – if people are upset with that, then I completely understand. Then again, the same was basically said about Bill Clinton’s 1988 DNC speech.
But if it Republicans outside of NJ find Christie’s comments about Obama during and after Sandy”laughable,” then that says an awful lot more about those Republicans than it does about Christie. “Glib” does not even begin to describe it. Indeed, it pretty much epitomizes exactly why the GOP couldn’t unseat an incumbent Democratic President in this economy.
Do Republicans want to know why Christie said nice things about Obama in the midst of a crisis? The answer is very simply this: Obama actually did nice things in the midst of a crisis. That so many Republicans outside of NJ think acknowledging this is an outrageous sin that somehow affected the votes of anyone outside of this state is, frankly, extremely offensive to the people who have actually had to live through it.
This is of a piece with movement conservatives’ increasingly troubling pattern of not giving a hoot about anything other than their own sensitivities. The day after the benefit concert for Sandy, I came across this lovely post: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/11/01/NBC-runs-Hurricane-Sandy-Obama-fundraisers
What’s more important than putting together a successful benefit for hurricane victims in NY and NJ (almost none of whom are country music fans, by the way – IIRC, NYC’s only country station folded a decade ago)? That conservatives’ feelings are hurt in the rest of the country because the benefit doesn’t include any country singers. WTF?Report
Freeholder
??
I assume this is some East Coast thing that goes back to just after the colonial era, and that’s why none of us outside New England and the Mid-Atlantic have ever heard of it?Report
It may actually be specific to NJ, but the Board of Freeholders is just what folks in other states call the county commissioners.Report
Just telling you how it is from the outside, MarkT. Christie’s praise for Obama was over the top, not just a professional acknowledgement but a de facto endorsement of his personal leadership qualities–a genuine campaign issue. A core campaign issue. Just a week before, Christie had been mocking Obama about not being able to find the lightswitch of leadership.
As I say, laughable for its contradiction regardless of its actual content. Coupled with his self-serving performance at the convention, Christie is an Army of One. For Christie.
As for your GOPness, your voting against the Sopranos is acknowledged as principled, but outside the thoroughly corrupt state of NJ means not much. ;-PReport
I was unaware that Christie’s duties as a surrogate are supposed to impact what he says and does in his capacity as an actual governing official. Sometimes campaign issues and real life intersect – in most instances, the government official who chooses the latter over the former is viewed as someone worthy of praise, not someone worthy of scorn.
The act of actually governing is supposed to come before party loyalty; otherwise, what the hell is the point of seeking the ability to govern? Only in the modern conservative movement could being an effective advocate for one’s constituents be characterized as being selfish.
And there was a time when I was thoroughly Republican for everything. A time when I attended Heritage Foundation and YAFfer events, even took a couple of courses at the Leadership Institute and listened regularly to Rush Limbaugh. Hell, I even volunteered on the Congressional campaign for a GOP congressman in upstate NY and made GOTV calls for Al D’Amato.
I’m not going to pretend that my views on certain issues haven’t changed significantly over the years or that my distance from the national GOP at this point is just a matter of “I didn’t leave it, it left me.” That wouldn’t be entirely true, at least not for purposes of describing my current position. But in terms of why I distanced myself enough from it in the first place to allow my views to evolve in the manner they have, the finger can be pointed squarely at the refusal of the GOP and conservative movement to have an interest in any facts but their own, or any concern for anything but their own, increasingly sensitive, feelings.
Christie is one of only a handful of prominent GOPers I’ve seen since to exhibit the types of qualities needed to disabuse me of that notion. That he’s getting lambasted for it is all I need to know that conservatives aren’t ready to return from the wilderness.Report
all I need to know that conservatives aren’t ready to return from the wilderness.
Word.Report
Also, it seems worth mentioning that Frank Lautenberg is: (1) recovering from cancer treatment; (2) 88 years old; and (3) up for reelection in 2014, a midterm election. Should Christie either lose next year to Cory Booker or choose not to run for reelection, he’d be quite likely to take that Senate seat should he so choose. At that point, he’d be back on the national stage.Report
Whatever it did for Obama’s point spread in NJ, Sandy probably did have a real impact on turnout. NJ and NY alone had something like a 16-20% reduction in voter turnout from 2008, and while some of that might be attributable to voter fatigue, it’s telling that those two states have such a massive reduction over 2008 when in general turnout was about even….Report
Good point, Nob. I hadn’t thought to compare turnout numbers (technically, I think some of the displaced folks are also still allowed to vote). Given that the hardest hit parts of NJ (and to a lesser extent, NY) are typically also GOP strongholds, the improvement in Obama’s support could also be largely (though perhaps not entirely) explained in NJ as being a result of particularly reduced turnout in GOP strongholds. This is especially likely in light of the fact that the hardest hit counties, in addition to largely being GOP strongholds, are also by far the largest counties to hold that distinction – nearly a quarter of Christie’s 2009 vote total came out of Monmouth and Ocean counties alone.Report
Any word from Riker’s Island?Report
If Christie is dead in GOP eyes, then that’s a shame for the party, which needs people like him to shock them back into reality. Obama was ahead in the polls before Sandy. His response to the hurricane may have boosted his level of victory, but that’s about it.
Yeah, Christie could have given Obama the cold shoulder, but that’s not who Christie is and playing the jerk wouldn’t have done him any good.
There’s lots of blame to go around for Romney’s loss, including Romney’s own flip-flops and outright lies, but Christie’s praise of Obama isn’t among them.Report
If Christie helped Obama, that help came in a display of bi-partisanship to solve problems. And if the GOP wants to view that as treason to GOP causes, they will continue to lose elections. Because maybe the base wants total obstruction, but the majority of Americans want to work together. That obstructionism is the root of GOP losses. Even the root of shifting demographic losses.
To my mind, Christie’s real strength lies in his ability to clearly articulate what people need to do to let the systems of government function, and his is not a partisan skill, it’s a governing skill. He put people over party, and if that’s a bad thing to do in the GOP, particularly in a crisis, then the GOP will shrivel up like an old man on his death bed, hooked to the life support of corporate donors, unwilling to pull the plug despite no hope of revival.Report
This.
After trying to make the case that Obama can’t work across the aisle and Romney can (perhaps the only line that held any appeal, imo), going after Christie for working together with the sitting President to help the people of his state during a major crisis is really the nail in the coffin.
Wake up and remake the GOP to be something people can believe and trust again, or go the way of the Whigs. And if the meme continues to be that only the Party matters, then please stop accusing Democrats of being commies, because that Party first stuff is right out of Mao and Stalin.Report
Bravo!Report
I wholeheartedly endorse this continued pursuit of purity. Swapping out Lugar for Mourdock… GENIUS!Report
Tom, the only “polls” that showed that “noise” where Rasmussen and Gallup.
You’re faced with a choice here, Tom. Either Gallup and Rasmussen were right (and everyone else wrong) on the likely voter models and numbers and that Hurricane Sandy changed the entire nation’s view on party identification, who they wanted to vote for, and how much they wanted to vote to coincidentally exactly the numbers “everyone else” had (wrongly) been reporting…
Or Gallup and Rasmussen were wrong, and used the last week of the election to rapidly modify their likely voter screen to match everyone else.
Go on. Which one was more likely? Sandy altered the entire electorate to match what all the other pollsters were saying OR Rasmussen and Gallup were just wrong all along?Report
The most likely thing is that what I want to be true is in fact true.Report
Chris Christie had a major role in Obamas re-election.
Christie was the spoiler.Report
If the hurricane was an act if God and the hurricane caused Obama to win does that mean God favored Obama?Report
You know, when I perused Facebook this morning, a lot of my high school friends (I come from the Bible Belt) and some members of my family (deeeeeeeeeeep South), who clearly hadn’t voted for Obama, were saying pretty much this: the person who God wanted to win, won. It’s all God’s plan.
They seemed to take comfort in this. I suppose to them it’s an issue of theodicy, which fits nicely with the hurricane bit.Report
It’s all God’s plan.
And here I thought Springsteen stopped at hugging Christie.Report
Did they mention they felt God wanted Obama to win so to make America suffer and understand the true Godly path?
‘Cause I’m hearing that. Apparently, we have to suffer in the darkness of Obama’s Socialist Rule. Which is weird, because Reagan was a bit more left than Obama and that was morning in America.
Maybe we’re on political savings time? I dunno.Report
If the hurricane was an act if God and the hurricane caused Obama to win does that mean God favored Obama?
It’s like Dinosaurs. God’s challenging your faith.Report
I listened to Fox for a little while last night and caught Karl Rove’s meltdown. It was hilarious. Dick Morris was on just now with Bill O’Reilly, who asked him something like, well, is your reputation ruined because you were so wrong, and he replied that he was in a league with David Axelrod because he won an election too. Unbelievable.Report
Ax bet his mustache on this one 😉Report
Dick Morris, that toe-sucking Judas, once a Clinton insider, reminds me more than slightly of David Frum. There’s no zealot like the converted, or more properly, disillusioned.
In a sense, Morris has a point. The nation grows increasingly tired of Congressional bickering. The 2010 election ought to have shown the politicians what happens when the Party in Power rides roughshod over decorum and compromise to achieve an objective. In that case it was the health care legislation. For various reasons, the GOP leadership refused to compromise and lost anyway.
The lesson was lost on the GOP. They looked to the 2010 elections as validation of their no-compromise stances and they were wrong. Between 2010 and election day, they continued to throw spanners in the gears and the country got even angrier.
So here’s Chris Christie, saying nice things about the President, who really was on top of this situation, providing some leadership and the GOP went apeshit. Paul Ryan was deservedly mocked for his dish washing photo-op. The GOP just doesn’t get how this works. When your enemies do something good, isn’t it right and proper to say so? Doesn’t such praise lend credence to your criticisms of things you don’t like? What if Romney had donated a large sum to the Red Cross or some other relief agency, validating his own positions on private charity? For all I know, he did. If so, it didn’t make the news I read.
The biggest loser constituency of this election was the investment bankers of Wall Street. They poured out money on Romney and Scott Brown, only to watch both candidates lose. Dick Morris famously authored Clinton’s “Third Way” strategy, stealing the GOP’s talking points. Had Wall Street told Romney to do the same, we might be looking at a President Romney. But nooo, they had to oppose every semblance of reform and they got their asses handed to them.Report
Stuck in, “Do what I say, not what I do,” mode; where it’s the appearance of things that matter, not the things themselves. So we get Larry Craig, raging against homosexuals and then getting his rocks off in airport bathrooms. We get fulminating about deficits while running deficits through the roof. We get arguments that Obama’s administration is filled with scandals and cronyism when its among the most scandal-free of administrations thus far, and from hacks off one of the most scandal-ridden administrations ever; with many a criminal walking free for lack of accountability.
It’s no surprise that the stat-geeks were right, the bobble-heads wrong. Because the appearances of what they say, not the reality, mattered to them. They’ll continue to get it wrong until they figure that reality on the ground, not their fantasy narratives, matters most.Report
The lion’s share of the pleasure of vice is its forbidden nature. The veneer of hypocritical outrage is merely icing on that cake. The Talmud and other commentaries have lots to say about the nature of the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden. If you read the story, Eve gets the prohibition wrong and the Snake tells her she will become as a god, knowing good and evil. The essence of evil, it seems, is knowing the right thing to do yet doing (or not doing) otherwise. The Rambam is especially good on this subject in the first part of Guide to the Perplexed. Emet / sheker, merely true and false and tov / ra, right and wrong. See Aristotle for the rest, for the Rambam arises out of Aristotle in all this.
The GOP damns their enemies for running up deficits and many other horrible things. The worst retort the Democrats can make to their charges is tu-quoque, for much of what they say is true, if taken apart at the seams. You shall become as gods, knowing good and evil.
I wouldn’t say the GOP is any more hypocritical than the Democrats when it comes to the deficits. They’re both wrong. I’ve said this elsewhere: get the economy firing on all cylinders, we’ll collect more taxes and can address the budget imbalances.Report
Neo-liberalism. Unfortunately, unlike Clinton, for Obama “fairness” comes first.Report
Perhaps you’ll be so good as to explain who’s the Neoliberal or what that epithet might mean in this context. I’m a Liberal, not a Neoliberal. For one, I believe markets ought to be regulated: the more risk the more regulation. Yadda, yadda… it’s not like I haven’t said all this before ad nauseam.
If by Fairness, you’re here to oppose Obama’s Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, go right ahead. I’ll just laugh at you. While the world evolves, we may rely on the Grand Old Party to be the Confederacy of Dunces which arises to oppose it all. Hell, we can’t even get these untutored swine to get as far as Darwin, yet, much less the 21st century.Report
Good Ol’ Blaise. Give him a thumbs-up, he swallows your wristwatch.Report
For now the fantasy continues. Karl Rove (!) is actually claiming that Romney lost because Obama suppressed the vote.
How?
Turning voters off by running such a negative campaign.
::head desk::
Irony is dead.Report
Rove was analyzing, not crying, and he appears to be correct.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/tracing-impact-of-negative-ads-on-presidential-race/2012/11/07/f139a238-2929-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_blog.htmlReport
Yes, running a negative ad is just like passing laws designed to make it more difficult for a particular demographic to vote, or standing outside a polling place trying to intimidate potential voters.
You, sir, would be hilarious if there were any indication that you were being tongue-in-cheek.Report
Kids these days speak a whole different language than I do. Like “voter suppression” to mean something non-coercive that doesn’t interfere with anyone’s ability to register or vote. But I’m so out of it that when I hear “Act of God” I think “hurricane” instead of “sexual assault”.Report
completely OT: Schilling, did you like Sergio’s tshirt he wore in the parade?
http://www.mercurynews.com/giants/ci_21898982/sergio-romos-illegal-shirt-showstopper-at-san-franciscoReport
Space awesome.
Everybody, it’s nothing to do with baseball. Click the link. You’ll love it too.Report
Take care Mike and keep up the good work ’round these parts.Report
I looked up “irony” in the dictionary and there was a picture of Karl Rove complaining about negative ads.Report
Tom, give me a break. You’re better than this. He’s not correct, he’s a bloody moron. Everybody runs negative campaigns. Everybody. Every. Body. Always. Full stop.
This is not “suppressing the vote” and anyone who thinks it is cannot be taken seriously. Sheesh.Report
Nice to hear from you, Erik. Not sure you’re getting the point here. Obama’s negative ads [86% of all his ads] were more effective than Romney’s [79%]. By comparison, 2008 saw 69% from either side and 2004 only 58%.
Indeed Romney’s ads didn’t stick at all–I believe I heard the polls said Dubya was more to blame for this crap economy than Obama! If so, the #1 campaign issue was dead in the H2O and it’s amazing Romney got even this close.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/tracing-impact-of-negative-ads-on-presidential-race/2012/11/07/f139a238-2929-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_blog.htmlReport
No, I’m not missing the point. The point you’re making is that negative ads are effective, and they are. (The economy is mostly the fault of poor regulatory efforts under the Bush administration, but that’s, well, beside the point.)
My point is that this does not qualify as “voter suppression.”Report
So you’re objecting to his use of the term, Erik. Upheld. But I said nothing to endorse his use of the words. I thought we were talking about the ideas, and the story on the GOP side is that many McCain voters went missing, perhaps the last thing the GOP anticipated.Report
What do you think the causal process is that leads from negative ads by the candidate you didn’t vote for last time and wouldn’t vote for this time, to you not going to vote at all?Report
I didn’t say ‘crying’, I said ‘claiming’.
And how can you possibly miss that after an election season characterized in multiple states by Republican attempts to suppress the vote, that anyone on the GOP side has to be absolutely immune to self-reflection to make that claim?
Plus, KARL ROVE complaining about negative campaigns???? Talk about pointing to a speck in another’s eye, when you can barely see past the giant redwood stuck in your own.Report
Ms. Bookdragon, Karl Rove’s emotional state [“crying”] is beyond my ken one way or thother. I don’t discuss people, as in ad hom. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, neither of us know Karl Rove, and anyone who claims to know another man’s heart is guessing at best.
Fact is that Obama’s negative campaigning against Romney worked, Mitt’s against Barack’s didn’t. Them’s the facts and the level we’re operating on here.
Unlike computer chess, you can use best strategy and best tactics and still lose when it comes to human beings. As for what was right and wrong in this campaign, fair or unfair, what was decent or indecent—that discussion needs to happen in another room somewhere, not this one.
Don’t mistake me for someone who’s complaining. Romney played some dirty pool [GM “outsourced” to China], and if Obama played some even dirtier pool [Mitt never said GM should be permitted to go under], well, there’s not one American in a thousand who could sort out the difference.
Demagoguery is part of the equation too, if you’ve noticed anything I’ve been writing about Truman ’48 for the past year. Seeing through the game isn’t the same thing as winning the game: Truman and Barack won at the game and Dewey and Romney lost.
I’m a realist, BD. D’ya know why they chop those stupid boards at the karate exhibitions?
Because you either broke the board or you din’t. That’s the test, with all eyes watching. Barack broke the board, Mitt din’t. ‘Tis what it is. Shit, I voted for Dukakis. I’m a sucker for these guys, good men all.Report
Paul Ryan was deservedly mocked for his dish washing photo-op.
This. That was one of the most unintentionally revealing points in the campaign. They wanted credit for something they did not actually do, and they got mad when people pointed out that they hadn’t actually done the thing they wanted credit for. In their eyes it didn’t matter that they didn’t actually do it; all that mattered was that somebody denied them the thing they wanted but weren’t willing to actually earn.
I don’t mean that as an analogy to anything economically, and I’ll argue against any such connection. I’m just saying that it’s indicative of the shallowness of Republican politics today–they want praise for who they are, not what they actually do. Because they’re the good guys, the things they do are thereby endowed with the quality of goodness, rather than doing good things endowing the doer with the quality of goodness.
What this really relates to is in fact the Bush administration’s claim that it was ok for them to use enhanced interrogation methods because they were the good guys–their goodness made the actions legitimate. They never grasped that you are what you do; that doing bad things makes you a bad person.
Likewise, being a good person does not make you a soup kitchen volunteer despite not actually volunteering; being a soup kitchen volunteer makes you a soup kitchen volunteer, and not coincidentally helps make you a good person.Report
It’s really hard for me to believe that, at the end of the day, voters in New Jersey are going to resent the fact that he responded to a hurricane in a way that was insufficiently partisan, petty, and counterproductive. So who cares what the party thinks?Report
I doubt New Jersey voters are going to resent it. However, the GOP needs a lot of scapegoats right now and Christie is likely to end up one.Report
Oh, I don’t doubt it at all. But it’ll probably look good to voters that he’s on the outs with the DC establishment. So, maybe he won’t lose sleep over it.Report
I think you might be over-analyzing, Erik. I think it’s more likely DM made a lunge at the guy he thinks a lot of Republicans are miffed with right now in the hopes that he can claim a last-minute shift in mood that no one could have possibly predicted. Then he has the advantage of being on the side of the huge crowd (in his opinion) that are anti-CC. Won’t work, but then if it was a good idea, DM wouldn’t have recognized it, let alone taken it up.
I make a prediction: the annoyance with CC won’t last the weekend. It’s a knee-jerk thing and there are too many reasons not to poke a sharp stick at a sitting Republican governor. Too few up-and-coming Republicans under the age of 50 to risk dissing an incumbent.Report
saw this twitter twatter to Nate Silver today: “We need a conservative Nate Silver.” SIGH.Report
Now *THAT* is funny.Report
The Nate Silver of 2010 was the “conservative” Nate Silver.
Reason #infinity why I can’t quit you, teh Twitters. Too much comedy.Report
Facepalm.Report