Tuesday, October 09, 2012

TWO, THREE, MANY LOOKING-GLASSES. As I've been noticing every time I pick her stuff up for the Rightblogger columns, Jennifer Rubin has of late lost contact with the earth's gravitational pull. Her latest column on "Obama cultists’ crack-up" (published by the Washington Post, a known liberal media truth-silencing operation) is intemperate even by her usual standards, but deep under the sea of foam and spittle is a wonderful specimen of reverse logic that should be dredged up for public inspection:
The left, as I suggested, may soon (if not before the election, than certainly after if he loses) reach the point in which Obama is trashed to save liberalism. It is not, the left tells us, the Keynesian record of failure that was to blame for the debate wipeout; rather it was Obama’s cruddy performance. It’s not that liberalism lacks a reform agenda that is both feasible and politically popular, you see. No, the problem was that Obama didn’t shout “Liar!” loudly enough.
Most of us who are over ten years old will remember George W. Bush and John McCain, the former of whom has been rendered invisible by the party he lately led (at least John Kerry got to go to conventions), and the latter of whom has been a curse on wingnuts' lips since May 2008 at least for failing to wear the corpse of Reagan and yell "Wolverines." If someone's trashing candidates for failing an ideology, it ain't us.

We've come to an especially weird phase in a very weird campaign in which the guy who claimed the Obama-leading poll results of a few weeks back were "skewed" and made up his own re-weighted polls to contradict them now says the new Romney-leading poll results are proof that he was right, as the polls "are rapidly becoming less skewed precisely because I exposed them for being skewed via my web site." As delusions of grandeur go, that's world class.

The weirdest part is, they're getting crazier when they're ahead. It's almost as if some part of them believes that even victory will not be enough -- that they could be borne through the streets of the capital in thrones made from the skulls of their enemies, and the thought that someone somewhere might continue to disagree with them will yet vex them into madness. I'm not sure it's really a political movement anymore; increasingly it resembles a mass psychosis.

59 comments:

  1. Tehanu10:55 PM

    "If someone's trashing candidates for failing an ideology, it ain't us."

    It's always projection with them. Always. And it's been a mass psychosis since they thought Goldwater was going to save them from those nasty niCLANGs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. XeckyGilchrist11:00 PM

    The weirdest part is, they're getting crazier when they're ahead. It's almost as if some part of them believes that even victory will not be enough

    As you said, most of us over ten remember the Bush years, and we know damn well what horrors these people are when they win.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Leeds man11:02 PM

    "increasingly it resembles a mass psychosis."

    Resembles? It's fucking textbook.

    ReplyDelete
  4. M. Krebs11:13 PM

    Looks like Krugman really gets under their skin.

    ReplyDelete
  5. mortimer12:07 AM

    They not only erased W. from the Tampa convention. Goopers and their Wurlitzer monkeys have managed to spook Democrats into avoiding mention of the Bush catastrophe, too. Now, bringing up Bush's 8-year long shit tsunami is seen as just a lame excuse for Obama's failure to miraculously clean up all the mess. What's even more bizarre is you don't see many people pointing out that what the Romney/Ryan freak has in store for us is Bushism on steroids; the trillions in tax gifts for rich people are a given, the only question is which unfunded wars they'll start. After Romney's Mild 'n Moderate Mormon debate performance I half expect they'll disinter the "compassionate conservatism" corpse for another waltz. Just in time for Halloween.

    ReplyDelete
  6. redoubt12:07 AM

    Two, Three, Many Looking Glasses

    . . .and Rubin can't see herself in any of them.

    It's almost as if some part of them believes that even victory will not be enough

    Kurosawa has already made this movie. . .

    ReplyDelete
  7. "The weirdest part is, they're getting crazier when they're ahead."

    Thing is that they're not ahead for any practical understanding of ahead, They're going from "Obama's stealing the election" to "Obama's stealing the election but we're catching up." It's almost as if they can sense that the slot machine's not going to come up all cherries for them.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard12:56 AM

    (if not before the election, than certainly after if he loses)

    She sure feels confident about this. That'll only make the inevitable letdown turn into a meltdown.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Fats Durston1:14 AM

    DearJennifer Rubin,

    Andrew "decadent Left ... fifth column" Sullivan is not the "left." Many of us would also not consider Chris "wouldya-look-at-that-flightsuit-codpiece" Matthews of the left, either. In any case, both of these persons are actually media personalities, whose stage personae have been created to move their product via outbursts and overreactions. That is what they do. Kind of like you, you warmongering. lying, clueless monster.

    Signed,

    The Left

    ReplyDelete
  10. Fats Durston1:20 AM

    The right-wingers' amnesiac narratives are just down-right bizarre. It's like the big brother running the "Why are you hitting yourself?" gag, and then asking the victim later, almost earnestly: "Why were you hitting yourself?"

    ReplyDelete
  11. So at this point, she's basically Roger L. Simon with breasts (and boy, is he on a roll since the debates)

    ReplyDelete
  12. DocAmazing1:27 AM

    "What is good in life?"

    "To Rush your enemies, to see them driven to boredom, and to print the lamentation of your Rubin!"

    ReplyDelete
  13. GregMc1:42 AM

    Is it immoderate of one to give more than one upvote? I'd like to upvote this comment Chicagostyle.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Odder2:46 AM

    Ancient French/Chinese curse: may you live in times with a great déjà vu Manchu.

    ReplyDelete
  15. MBouffant3:47 AM

    I'm not sure it's really a political movement anymore; increasingly it resembles a mass psychosis.


    J. Chait:


    Already the extremism of the party has advanced to such a point that its most fervent elements are identified less by their ideology—which is nearly impossible to distinguish any more from that of the mainstream—than by the degree to which their detachment from reality departs from paranoia as a mere figure of speech and approaches actual, clinical paranoia. “Radical” Republicans believe that Obama has created death panels, may have been secretly born overseas, and is plotting a United Nations invasion. The “mainstream” Republicans believe in goldbuggery and a massive plot by climate scientists, and deny the dramatic rise in income inequality in America.

    They'll be screaming about "Soviet Russia" when they are finally institutionalized.

    ReplyDelete
  16. As the banner at Balloon Juice says, "Peak Wingnut was a lie."

    ReplyDelete
  17. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard4:12 AM

    CROM, I wish to tread the jeweled thrones of this comment under my sandalled feet.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard4:15 AM

    I was going to comment that the GOP symbol should be a goldfish rather than an elephant, but that whole "3 second memory" thing is B.S.

    ReplyDelete
  19. chuckling4:45 AM

    The right bloggers' problem with the Bush policies is that it's hard to miss them when they haven't really gone away. So now they have to vociferously denounce those who administer and support the very same policies the right bloggers recently championed so vociferously.


    Unfortunately, the opposite is proving true as well. Too many of those who once denounced Bush administration policies are now vociferously supporting them.


    Human nature, eh. Naked apes who have always been at war with Eastasia.


    And so it goes.

    ReplyDelete
  20. In other words, if Obama
    were a white Republican, they'd be clamoring to carve his likeness onto
    Mt. Rushmore for what he's done in his first term.
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  21. montag26:20 AM

    Maybe the proof of that mass psychosis is that there's been no Colonel Nicholson moment, no prominent right-wing figure saying at a critical juncture, "what have I done?"

    The delusions are grand, indeed. We're sailing resolutely toward a kind of authoritarian dystopia unimaginable a few decades ago, and many on the right see it as a coming Golden Age, because the truly wealthy will finally obtain their dream of scavenging up all the loose change in society, of a privatized government that relieves them of even the task of collecting rents, and true freedom is only available to those few with the financial wherewithal to own the government.

    Even then, it won't be enough for the truly stone bonkers among the low-information right wing. We could repeal the 14th Amendment and send the Emancipation Proclamation into oblivion, and there would be hue and cry for the re-enslaved slaves to pay reparations to slave owners for 150 years of lost profits.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Pope Zebbidie XIII6:51 AM

    Roger L Simon does have breasts.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Bizarro Mike7:00 AM

    I think "stop hitting yourself" is a good description of conservative social policy. Poor people need to take personal responsibility for the harm the policy is inflicting on them. It stands to unreason, you see.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Bizarro Mike7:04 AM

    " It is not, the left tells us, the Keynesian record of failure that was
    to blame for the debate wipeout; rather it was Obama’s cruddy
    performance."

    Did I miss something in the debate? When does Ms. Rubin suggest that Obama was talking about Keynesian policies? I seem to recall a stimulus bill of Bush's that was quite similar, except it had the gimmick that we were all mailed checks from the government. Then we expanded medicare coverage with no eye to price control and no additional revenue. Did Ms. Rubin like those policies? How would she contrast them with Obama's?

    ReplyDelete
  25. this is probably very, very close to the truth of it. Most, if not all, wingnuts and teabaggers appear to hold politics in the same part of the primitive node of nerve cells that passes for a brain where soccer hooligans hold their love of sports. If their team traditionally has been beating the shit out of the local community college as a "warm up" for the season, and then one year that team uses plays and strategies the wingnuts used in the past to actually make a close game of it, then they are gonna whine and rant that the other team is "cheating!"


    Wingnuts don't give a shit about principles or national loyalty or the best of for the common good or anything like that--they only care that their team is guaranteed an easy win. Period. Policies literally don't matter to these idiots as much as who is implementing them. It's a tribal thing.

    ReplyDelete
  26. The weirdest part is, they're getting crazier when they're ahead. It's almost as if some part of them believes that even victory will not be enough


    Naw...even the Nazis calmed down after Hitler became Chancellor in '33.


    Right? Or am I confusing them with someone else?

    ReplyDelete
  27. satch7:36 AM

    Ordinarily, I'd chuckle and smile along with this piece, as I do with all of Roy's pieces, but this time, I'm not so sure. Sure, Obama's debate performance was lame. But most, if not all of even the wingiest wingnuts praise for Romney was on his "style", how he "looked confident", how he "commanded the stage", how he had a "predatory smile" in his reaction shots (personally, I thought his "smile" was the simpering smirk of a guy who was already thinking of the next lie he was going to tell, knowing he would get away with it). God knows they couldn't praise his actual positions in the debate, since he was Etch-A-Sketching those as fast as he could. No, the thing that bothers me is that after two years of Romney pandering to the most twisted, retrograde mouth breathers seen on the political landscape in sixty years, one ninety minute debate has wiped the memories of the electorate and tightened the polls. You think Rubin is bad now? Imagine what it'll be like if Romney wins.

    ReplyDelete
  28. not a day goes by when i don't thank god for dick cheney getting us out of the great depression.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Marilyn Merlot8:33 AM

    I don't remember Obama becoming liberalism made flesh. Did Rubin watch a Cronenberg film for "inspiration"?

    ReplyDelete
  30. Marilyn Merlot8:37 AM

    I read one of his goddamn pukestains (sorry, articles) on the debate and he basically ascribed Romney's victory and Obama's loss to "daddy issues". Seriously? COME ON!

    ReplyDelete
  31. Derelict8:42 AM

    I would go further and ask when it DIDN'T have all the hallmarks of mass psychosis? Was it back when Goldwater's most fervent believers were talking to their neighbors and explaining how, yeah, sure, we could definitely survive total nuclear war? Was it when Nixon's supporters were telling me that we really didn't need the Constitution because the president really was intended to function more like a king?


    Tell me when was the right even within shouting distance of sane?

    ReplyDelete
  32. chuckling9:04 AM

    Well, I doubt they'd go that far. Short of internment camps for their religio-political enemies, I suspect they'll always be at least a little bit unfulfilled.

    ReplyDelete
  33. satch9:12 AM

    Oh, yeah... why Obama's in favor of abortion on demand, right up to the moment of birth... and Israel, he HATES Israel, man... and he's a gorger on Keynesianism, but he failed to revive the economy... and he thinks he's a God!!! It's sadly hilarious (how's that for juxtaposition?) to watch gorks like Rubin bravely doing battle with the Obama who lives in their heads.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Adrian9:43 AM

    My biggest fear when Obama was elected that he would become the Right's pet Democrat.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Halloween_Jack10:02 AM

    Wow, that paragraph of Rubin's sounds familiar. Let's mad-lib this mess:


    The leftright, as I suggested, may soon (if not before the election, than certainly after if he loses) reach the point in which ObamaRomney is trashed to save liberalismconservatism. It is not, the
    leftright tells us, the Keynesiantrickle-down theory record of failure that was to blame for the debate wipeoutslide in the polls; rather it was
    ObamaRomney ’s cruddy performance. It’s not that
    liberalismconservatism lacks a reform agenda that is both feasible and politically popular, you see. No, the problem was that
    ObamaRomney didn’t shout “Liar!”"Deficit! Kenya! 9/11!" loudly enough.


    As long as we're cracking out the psych references, let's talk about projection.

    ReplyDelete
  36. John D.10:35 AM

    But they're giving every indication of melting down even if they win. That's Roy's point here.

    ReplyDelete
  37. BigHank5310:42 AM

    That's more projection than I needed at this hour of the morning. Looks like my vow to avoid the martinis before noon may be out the window.

    ReplyDelete
  38. The Dark Avenger10:43 AM

    Let's remember one of her greatest hits from this year:

    The Obama campaign can’t bear the thought that the well-traveled Mitt Romney will make a nice impression on his overseas tour.
    So it held today what can only be described as a petulant call with
    reporters, trying to spin the media that Obama’s trip abroad in 2008 was
    “substantive.” (If so, it was grossly inappropriate since the country
    had another president at the time.) Oddly, the spin call’s account of
    2008 left out the Berlin speech. Why?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/obama-team-nervous-about-romney-overseas-trip/2012/07/23/gJQAcJ2c4W_blog.html

    Remember how he ended up demonstrating a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease, Jennifer?

    ReplyDelete
  39. "and he thinks he's a God!!!"

    As opposed to Mitt Romney, who merely expects to become a God after death.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Mr. Wonderful11:04 AM

    This. And it's not that they're so steeped in blood they make a conscious decision to commit to the fantasy. They really don't know the difference between the normal pretenses of the public, political sphere, and objective reality. The body of the Bush administration is still warm, and Mitch McConnell's vow to obstruct everything he can is still echoing, but the Rubins of the tribe truly believe Obama has been the worst president in history because of his own ineptitude. You say to them, "If the middle class can't buy stuff, the American economy will get AIDS," and they say, "Freedom," and they mean it.

    ReplyDelete
  41. PulletSurprise11:14 AM

    And now they're dreaming sweet dreams of the Tausendjähriges Reich once again, wherein every win is a forever win.

    ReplyDelete
  42. chuckling1:53 PM

    And that's certainly one difference between conservatives and liberals these days. Most liberals don't think conservatives should be put in internment camps, or otherwise harshly dealt with as conservatives would like to do unto them. No, we are much more enlightened than that. Awesomely so, in fact. I think it's sufficient that conservatives recognize that awesomeness our big brains bestow on us and, as is customary, bow repeatedly and make respectful, scraping-like hand gestures while backing away slowly from our presence. After that they can wank off to their guns and gods and violent video games all they want in the privacy of their own flyover country. Though some more radical liberals would like to tattoo the letters "LIV" on conservative foreheads to avoid any misunderstandings should one inadvertently wander into the northeast corridor or anywhere that matters between L.A. and Seattle. Poor saps would just think it was the word "love" misspelled, if they could even recognize the error, and see it as a sign of our historical Jesus-style love for them. They like totally wouldn't get it stands for "low information voter," i.e. moron.


    Yawn. Did you know yawns actually are communicable? I saw that on teevee this morning. Don't worry though, it was a PBS show filmed at the 92nd Street Y. I wan't watching Dr. Phil again, I swear.

    ReplyDelete
  43. JennOfArk9:28 PM

    Yep. Remember the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger promise/threat that the guys who destroyed civility in Washington by impeaching a popular president for a blowjob would "restore civility" if only we'd give them what they wanted - complete control of all branches of government? And remember how long that lasted - all the way into February of 2001, when the White House concocted fake stories of West Wing offices being "trashed" and w's being removed from computer keyboards etc. It only got better after 9/11, when administration officials warned people to "watch what they say, watch what they do," and continued all the way up until they got their nasty asses handed to them in 2006 and again in 2008.


    Winning doesn't make them nicer or better behaved; it just gives them free rein to really stick it to everyone on the other side. They only promise better behavior to get what they want, and like a whiny child who promises to behave if given the newest toy, they immediately revert to form once they've gotten it. Except worse, because it's been reinforced that the way to get what they want is by being total douchebags. Witness Rmoney's constant refrain that we need a president who can work with Congress, as if the failure to work together has been on the president's side rather than that of the unruly children who lead his party.

    ReplyDelete
  44. And in what world do you "win" a political debate on the basis of your "reform agenda's" political popularity? The debate was scored on the basis of "zingers" and body language and appearances, so although it might be flawed due to its inherent superficial nature, winning or losing the debate had absolutely nothing to do with the candidates' policy positions.

    ReplyDelete
  45. XeckyGilchrist9:45 PM

    Well said. And every one of their failures (and successes) is just, to them, a fresh excuse to scream about liberals even louder.

    ReplyDelete
  46. ADHDJ9:46 PM

    "the Right's pet Democrat"


    How old were you during the Clinton years? Welfare reform, Medicare Part C, and NAFTA did fuck-all to endear Clinton to the right. For that matter, fiscal conservatism and paleocon style isolationism did fuck-all to endear Carter to the right. Aggressive foreign policy did fuck-all to endear Kennedy to the right.


    On the other side, Nixon creating the EPA, OSHA, NTSB, etc. did fuck-all to endear him to the left. Likewise Bush's liberal stance on immigration. Or Reagan's. Or both those presidents' work on the EITC.


    Politics just doesn't work that way.


    For that matter, Obama's heroic efforts to save EITC did fuck all to endear him to the left, too.


    Chuckles and the rest of the purity troll brigade: do you have any fucking idea what lengths the president had to go in the 2010 budget negotiations to save EITC? While even Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold wouldn't do shit and were happy to screw over millions of poor families to make their little point about the Bush tax cuts? (Good thing Feingold spent all his efforts on trying to get re-elected instead!) Only Bernie Sanders and Obama were willing to spend any political capital doing the right thing.


    If you want to say that I love drones or whatever, dude, you love millions of poor Americans starving to death.


    Somewhere, a firedoglake thread is missing another bizarre racist pun on Obama's name.

    ReplyDelete
  47. mortimer9:46 PM

    (If so, it was grossly inappropriate since the country
    had another president at the time.)


    I'm guessing that what she's complaining was grossly inappropriate was that Obama's trip was substantive, and shouldn't have been substantive since there was another president at the time. Lucky for Obama, who was the "other" president at the time of Romney's trip, there wasn't anything substantive about Mitt's shambolic little tour. So it all makes sense.

    ReplyDelete
  48. By the way, not to belabor the brownshirt connection, but has anyone else noticed the prevalence of bullshit internet headlines here and there about poor Romney supporters (and Obama critics) getting savage twitter treatment and death threats and all manner of absolutely unbelievable obscene harassment for their political views?

    It's very eerie, but I get the terrible feeling that there is a concerted effort to create this fake sense that wingnuts are being victimized and persecuted. Seriously, am I being paranoid? Or is this frighteningly like the 1920s/30s SA activity designed to support the false argument that progressives are the violent ones who will need to be "controlled" once the wingnuts gain absolute power?

    ReplyDelete
  49. SqueakyRat9:47 PM

    "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, Mr. President. A 100 million casualties, 120 tops."

    ReplyDelete
  50. Leeds man9:49 PM

    You can't fight here. This is the War Room.

    ReplyDelete
  51. KatWillow9:50 PM

    The repugs were really sore winners way back in 2001. Remember how they crowed with sneering joy over their (moron drunk) guy being appointed president? "Get over it!"

    ReplyDelete
  52. ColBatGuano1:22 AM

    "We have a mine shaft gap!"

    ReplyDelete
  53. GregMc2:46 AM

    Is that you, Eric Alterman?

    ReplyDelete
  54. No. You're not being paranoid.

    ReplyDelete
  55. The Dark Avenger1:07 PM

    I just learned that when Jennifer Rubin ‘interviews’ you all she really does is call you up and yell at you

    — PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls)

    From TPM today.

    ReplyDelete
  56. skippy12:52 PM

    liked for the bridge over the river kwai reference

    ReplyDelete
  57. skippy12:54 PM

    wow, it's classic movie night at alicublog!

    ReplyDelete