Thursday, November 07, 2013

FINALLY: A USE FOR LIBERTARIANS!

Moving away now from the New York City mayoral election results -- with sincere thanks for all the laffs! -- I direct your attention to my favorite aspect of the Virginia governor's race: The suggestion by some of the brethren that Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis was planted by the Democrats to fix the election for McAuliffe. The Washington Free Beacon:
A donor to the Democratic Party of Virginia and bundler for Barack Obama funded a political action committee that provided Virginia Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis with a crucial campaign contribution that helped get him on the ballot.
Whoever heard of someone contributing to more than one party? Why, it's like betting on more than one team at a time -- too complicated to be real!

Polls suggest Sarvis didn't affect the outcome, but they would, wouldn't they? Let's hear from the unskewed! Stephen Green at PJ Media:
But let’s not forget my Libertarian friends, who delivered 7% of the vote to phony-balony Libertarian Robert Sarvis. Thanks to them, McAuliffe was able to win with a 48% plurality.
Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary:
Democrats had a huge financial and demographic advantage in Virginia as well as a divided GOP and a false flag Libertarian candidate that might have taken votes away from the Republicans.
False flag -- Tobin's taking lessons from Alex Jones, it seems. And ever-lovin' Jeff Godlstein:
First, we have to remember that not everyone follows politics as closely as we all do — and yet they would probably tell you that they are politically well-versed, reading the Washington Post, where both conservative George Will and “conservative” Jennifer Rubin were busy writing “a pox on both their houses” columns that, as was the case with Rubin, saw her endorsing the “Libertarian” candidate who it turns out was largely bankrolled by an Obama bundler, and who couldn’t get the support of libertarians Rand or Ron Paul, likely because his support of legalizing marijuana was about the only thing libertarian about the guy...
Wheels within wheels, sheeple!

The beautiful thing about this conspiracy and cover-up is that it implicates Gary Johnson and the libertoids at Reason, including Nick Gillespie, writing for liberal media truth-concealer Time magazine. No, wait -- the beautiful thing is that Cuccinelli apparently thought Sarvis was such a menace that he brought Ron Paul to Virginia to scare off some more moderate voters on the eve of the election. (After the fall, Paul blamed it on the kulaks.)

Actually, the really beautiful thing is this: I've been telling you good people for years that libertarianism is basically a niche brand of conservatism -- a political Converse to their Nike. Libertarians protest this isn't so, but conservatives know it is. And nothing shows it more clearly than the way conservatives celebrate the libertarian movement when it works for them, and flip out when it doesn't work to their advantage. You can't get mad at a dog for biting you -- unless it's your own dog.

102 comments:

  1. So does this explain the election of LePage in Maine? Was he a liberal false flag operation too?

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  2. Derelict11:46 AM

    Once again, conservatism cannot fail--the people really and truly DO! want it. It has, in this instance, been hornswoggled by those wily Democrats and their glibertarian allies!


    Reality shields to full power! All hands, please ignore the crappiness of our candidate!

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  3. Derelict11:48 AM

    LePage makes me want to never go back to Maine. His continued existence as anything other than an object of scorn and derision among Mainers should be excuse enough to give the place back to the Acadians.

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  4. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps12:03 PM

    Dear GOP: Maybe if you wanted nominal Libertarians to vote for you, you shouldn't have run a man who promised to vigorously police people's cellphones, bedrooms and wombs. Pretty wild idea, I know.

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  5. Running a false flag Libertarian candidate to siphon off GOP votes- the most perfidious perfidy that was ever perfed.

    Running a false flag Green candidate to siphon off Democratic votes- a sound campaign strategy.

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  6. That would certainly improve the cuisine up there... Cajuns plus lobster equals nothing but win.

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  7. Actually, after all the depredations and indignities that women especially had to face in VA under the McDonnell regime, I'm a little miffed that the projected Dem blowout didn't happen. And New Jersey? Jesus... the fact that Christie got a few pictures of himself with Obama and agreed to accept Sandy relief money does not make him a "Moderate Republican". Governor Kramden (I wish I could claim that was original, but I'm stealing it for the next two years) is anti choice, anti gay, is willing to scapegoat teachers for all NJ's budget problems, and demonizes the minimum wage. He's just another conservative Pug who happens to be constrained by a Dem legislature, and any NJ Dem that crossed over and voted for him is probably dumb enough to be mugged through the mail.

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  8. I loved Charlie Pierce's description of LePage as a "human bowling shirt".

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  9. How long, oh Lord, will Libertarians allow themselves to be so cruelly used?

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  10. Difficult as it might be for Republicans to imagine, there are Democrats with libertarian sympathies (vice versa? Far less so.) This is because the Democratic Party is not the front for socialists, Communists, and America-haters that they're convinced it is. In fact, if you have a primarily pro-corporate-interest agenda, but just can't find within yourself a seething hatred of the poor, the queer, and the non-white, I daresay the Democratic Party is the place for you.

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  11. Cato the Censor12:20 PM

    Note the Reason rundown on the race bragging about the Libertarian candidate receiving a whopping six percent of the vote.

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  12. Haystack12:29 PM

    The conservative columnist's dilemma...


    "Shall I write a soul-searching, whither-the-GOP piece pondering the corrosive effects of nonstop bigotry and economic vandalism or should I just spit out some angry arggh-blarggh about Democratic chicanery?"

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  13. Jay B.12:29 PM

    and who couldn’t get the support of libertarians Rand or Ron Paul, likely because his support of legalizing marijuana was about the only thing libertarian about the guy...


    And the only thing libertarian about Ron Paul is his 19th Century fiscal policies. This is a fun game!

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  14. tigrismus12:30 PM

    an Obama bundler


    Man, Obama is so old-fashioned! Does he use a board?

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  15. is his 19th Century views on race


    Also.

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  16. Haystack12:36 PM

    This is a fun game!


    The only thing libertarian about Rand Paul is his opposition to drone strikes on white militia groups.

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  17. tigrismus12:43 PM

    Not fair: he's also easy on required board certifications for medical professionals.

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  18. Jay B.12:45 PM

    Well, that goes along with his 19th Century birth.

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  19. willf1:07 PM

    and who couldn’t get the support of libertarians Rand or Ron Paul
    Those two are republicans. In fact, I'm not certain if the Libertarians have one person in Congress whom is not a republican.

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  20. willf1:08 PM

    whom?
    argh.

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  21. He's really more of a neo-Confederate, with regards to both states' rights and racial views.

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  22. Was he even born, or did Ayn Rand find him being spontaneously formed in a gulch?

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  23. JennOfArk1:22 PM

    ...where both conservative George Will and “conservative” Jennifer Rubin...


    If you had never ever heard of Godlstein and were unfamiliar with all of his previous rants, this one short group of words including quotation marks around "conservative" in relation to Jennifer Fucking Rubin would be the only evidence you'd need to conclude that Godlstein is batshit fucking insane, and perhaps terminally stupid as well.

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  24. zencomix1:28 PM

    If you want to get some of that sweet Obama Bundler Money, I can get you in on the ground floor of the 2016 Libertarian Caucus in Iowa. Spots are filling up fast, so don't delay!

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  25. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume1:33 PM

    You can edit your posts you know.

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  26. mgmonklewis2:06 PM

    He sprang fully-formed, Athena-like, from the head of Ayn Rand. Who then denounced him as a mooching parasite.

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  27. I think the fact that Christie is a straight up extremely conservative Republican and this doesn't faze New Jersey Male Democrats should remind us that, au fond, all the social liberal stuff is just fluff to those Dems. Sure, they think gay marriage is ok now and they really don't give a fuck about abortion/not abortion but they vote on those issues. And as for teachers and teacher's unions! Don't get them started on how much they'd like to see school funding and schools dissapear from the roster of "shit we have to deal with." Any dem who voted for Christie either didn't know about his actual policies or , in the end, prefers them or at least tolerates them because they think (erroneously) that he is good for business.

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  28. mgmonklewis2:09 PM

    Governor Kramden is good, though I also like Governor Creosote or the Pillsbury DoughGov.

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  29. redoubt2:14 PM

    Neo? Dude's more like an OG Confederate. I can see him holding Jeff Davis' cloak in Irwinville, Georgia.

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  30. BigHank532:27 PM

    Hey, all those clods over at Cato and Reason are getting paid to be used. The ones who do it for free, though....man, those guys are perverts.

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  31. BigHank532:35 PM

    I was going to make a joke about how that Libertarian Caucus could be held in a minivan and probably should be, but then I realized that all the libertarians are too goddamned cheap to actually rent a minivan, so they'd just have the Caucus at the Des Moines airport. Probably in the men's room. Then I realized Nick Gillespe could save the airfare and just jerk off into an envelope and mail that to Iowa for all the difference that would make.

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  32. mortimer20002:36 PM

    OT, but ya gotta love Godlstein. In the midst of a diatribe about how Democrats absurdly paint the GOP as anti-women, he writes:

    ...the Democrats are waging a war on women that sees them increasingly being frozen out of the workforce. This is the real war on women, but somehow it gets bracketed by talk of blue nosed GOPers, most of them married with kids (proving that yes, they’ve at least heard of sex, if not inadvertently engaged in it, perhaps by tripping and falling and landing with their dick in their unsuspecting wives)..

    If you're keeping score, the "GOPers" are the ones with dicks.

    Comments bear out their not-at-all-anti-women views:
    ...single woman are looking to the gov’t as a substitute husband.
    ...abortion is so important to these single women because they want to be able to use sex to get what they want (pleasure or power) and face no consequences or have no checks on this exploitation of human biology.
    ...
    As long as the State continues to confiscate resources from the (mostly male) producers so they can be redistributed to (mostly female) consumers, particularly single moms, then having a direct committed relationship with one man will stay low on the priority list. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

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  33. QuickStriker2:46 PM

    Terminal stupidity is part of being a conservative. It's definition.

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  34. Waingro2:47 PM

    Appropos of Derelict's earlier comment- scare quotes are the conservative reality shield.

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  35. Mr. Wonderful2:47 PM

    A friend who lives in NJ told me they refer to him either as "Fat Fatty" or "Chris Crisco."

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  36. Mr. Wonderful2:48 PM

    Postage Due.

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  37. Wait--so having sex without babies is wrongfully exploiting my own human biology? Because having sex with babies and needing the financial support of the man is also wrongfully exploiting my own human biology--like I'm baby ranching?

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  38. smut clyde2:54 PM

    It's as if there's a weird variant of Tourette's which *forces* Godlstein to insert scare quotes around random words. I look forward to the Oliver Sacks essay.

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  39. Mr. Wonderful2:57 PM

    "then having a direct committed relationship with one man will stay low on the priority list."


    Sub-text: "Can't I get some credit, and some nookie, for being willing (unlike most men) to have a direct committed relationship? Isn't that what you girls supposedly want? Okay, then! Here it is! But NO-O-O. You've got the State all willing to confiscate resources from (mostly male) producers and re-distribute them to you, now, don't you? Okay, fine. Just don't come crawling to me for a direct committed relationship when, thanks to your triumphant socialism, the state withers away, and you're left ALL ALONE, you bitch."

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  40. smut clyde2:57 PM

    Wait, what, the largest body of recipients of the state's largesse is female? This is an aspect of the Military of which I was not previously aware.

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  41. tigrismus3:14 PM

    ...single woman are looking to the gov’t as a substitute husband.


    When it's really a substitute strict father, right?

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  42. tigrismus3:19 PM

    We are turning a profit using public resources.


    So, wait, he's OK with it?

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  43. why hast thou gone galt on me?

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  44. XeckyGilchrist3:37 PM

    It isn't cheating when the people who are supposed to win do it.

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  45. What's all this about Librarians, now?

    http://agonyin8fits.blogspot.com/2013/11/rand-paul-consumers-find-they-were-sold.html

    ~

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  46. JennOfArk3:52 PM

    I'm still stuck on Fat Bastard.

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  47. tigrismus3:56 PM

    We also appreciate the original insights he has shared with our readers over the last few months


    Original to whom?

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  48. Glock H. Palin, Esq.4:04 PM

    I don't think anyone is going to top "The Outlaw Jersey Whale".

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  49. mrstilton4:06 PM

    Alas, LePage is, ethnically speaking, an Acadien. And he emerged from a background of appalling deprivation and adversity to achieve whatever it is he's achieved. Which I suppose only goes to show that there is nothing, however potentially ennobling, that human depravity and sociopathy can't overcome.

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  50. Derelict4:12 PM

    I want to bite through the umbilical cord of this comment, then swaddle and cradle it gently.

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  51. Halloween_Jack4:31 PM

    Nothing wrong with using the Grand Canyon as a metaphor; it's generally the most awesome thing that any random person has ever seen, right?

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  52. Halloween_Jack4:32 PM

    Srsly, I'd like to see the wingnut purity test that she failed.

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  53. Jaime Oria4:32 PM

    So has 'false flag' now become the 21st Century Dolchstoßlegende ?

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  54. whetstone4:35 PM

    The "kick-me" sign in the back.

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  55. smut clyde4:42 PM

    You gotta admit, it's easier to spell.

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  56. whetstone4:43 PM

    Let us not forget the rest of the ticket, which consisted of a Lt. Gov. candidate who is crazier than Cuccinelli, and an AG candidate who is dumber. (A lot dumber.) Both of them are equally theocratic.



    Fun fact! When you search for Ken Cuccinelli, Google autoreturns "ken cuccinelli sodomy"; and for Obenshain, "mark obenshain miscarriage" (see link above). E.W. Jackson is fortunate to just have "Virginia" follow his name, but those who are curious may click down to #4, "E.W. Jackson yoga."


    Hopefully the faithful will continue to blame the libertarian and find even more snake-handlers to feed into the electoral grain thresher, because I plan to return to my home state to run on a platform of taking away their guns to sell to the Sandinistas to pay for everyone's abortions. My running-mate will be a bag of sand that believes in redistribution.

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  57. Halloween_Jack4:49 PM

    FFS (as it were).

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  58. Halloween_Jack4:55 PM

    As long as we're accusing Democrats of stealth operations, I'd like to congratulate the nation's lesbians for ninjaing into the nation's fourth-largest city and getting an unrepentant bulldagger elected for the third time in a row. Clearly, some dykes to watch out for!

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  59. Man, I broke my like finger.

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  60. I don't get why it is women and children who are being all socialistic and subsidized with our tax dollars. Its their skyving off boyfriends and fathers who are a) getting to procreate and b) not paying the rent/babyranching fees. Its the single but reproductive lothario who is benefitting not the single mother and the kid.

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  61. I presume that no actual woman can be a real conservative. He may not even realize she's human (and he might be right about that) so the quotation marks might just be kind of hovering over and near her nym and any description of her because woman/authority/columnist just doesn't compute for him.

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  62. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps5:16 PM

    She wrote an op-ed in the WP weakly endorsing Sarvis, on the grounds that McAuliffe will be a "bad Bill Clinton" and the Cooch isn't actually interested in governing.

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  63. And now I suppose you want free medical care!

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  64. This strange trick will get you Obama Bundler Cash!

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  65. I call him the "Harkonnen on the Hudson".

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  66. Slightly OT, but I checked out Free Republic after re-reading a great "BREITBART WAS MURDERED!!!" thread, and the place seems to be a shadow of itself. Gone are the thousand comment threads... What happened? Did most of them die of old age?

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  67. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps5:23 PM

    The 2012 campaign was tough on Freep. Lots of purges of the insufficiently pure; if the moderators caught you endorsing a candidate that wasn't Jim Robinson's current favorite, you'd get zotted.

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  68. So... the circular firing squad even encompasses the rank-and-file? (Rankled and file is more like it) This Conservative Civil War is even more entertaining than I'd thought.

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  69. Halloween_Jack5:26 PM

    Huh. Arguing that the Cooch wouldn't have done much governing would actually be the best argument for him possible, but that's from the perspective of a Sane-American, of course.

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  70. smut clyde5:43 PM

    A strict-father substitute who can take those single women to Purity Balls.

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  71. I think its one of the interesting things about these anti welfare state arguments that "our taxes" can be wasted when they are (supposedly) siphoned off by women or blacks or whoever, but our natural resources aren't wasted when they are appropriated by corporations sucking our water out, or pumping out our gas, or destroying our forests and public lands. I was just struck with his clear conviction that the way women earn money is by having babies and then demanding support from either the real earners (men) or the taxpayers (also men). Its like it never occured to him that in the modern economy women also earn money and pay taxes. But its like only some forms of exploitation bother him--women exploiting their bodies and the taxpayers (horrifying!) although at least when I have a baby its pretty much a renewable resource plus a future taxpayer. Corporations using up our air, water, trees, and minerals? Go for it!

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  72. tigrismus6:01 PM

    It is odd, especially considering his own family refutes him. Obviously the solution is for welfare mothers to incorporate.

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  73. Mark_Bzzzz9:03 PM

    It's amazing that in a few decades the Libertarians have evolved from a few propellerheads who just believed that if the government suddenly ceased to exist then everyone would suddenly be rich, to today, where it's just a bunch of right wing cranks who want to make sure that women don't make their own health care decisions.

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  74. I read a biographical piece on him and the thing that struck me is how bog standard it is. The guy is from a French/Maine/Catholic family that because of anti contraceptive beliefs had 11 children and simply couldn't take care of them all. He was basically kicked out onto the street to take care of himself-literally, not in a fun "don't come home till dinner time" way-- and although he managed to do so in a financial sense he clearly lost whatever early, childish, compassion he has for anyone other than himself. His real history sounds like Angela's Ashes without the humor.

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  75. hellslittlestangel10:10 PM

    It's not just wingnuts. There is a blog devoted to documenting this weird tic.

    http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

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  76. Dear GOP: Maybe if you wanted nominal Libertarians to vote for you,


    you should have seasoned your theocratic authoritarianism with even more tax cuts and deregulation, since that's always worked before.

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  77. XeckyGilchrist10:30 PM

    Oh, indeed, I see horribly misused quotes everywhere. The particularly wingnut thing seems to me to be quotes misused to express contempt - others do that, too, but not to the extent that you find on the other side of the aisle there.

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  78. IncongruousAmoeba11:18 PM

    Whereas if you have a mostly anti-corporate-interest agenda, neither party is the place for you. (rimshot)


    The Republican Party "Crazy Strategy" -- the upgrade to their original Southern Strategy -- is of course a way to distinguish their pro-corporate agenda from the pro-corporate agenda of the Democratic Party, and it's kind of disconcerting how successful they've been with it.

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  79. AGoodQuestion11:57 PM

    First, we have to remember that not everyone follows politics as closely as we all do
    Godlstein is pretending he didn't hear about the restraining order politics took out.

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  80. AGoodQuestion12:01 AM

    "ken cuccinelli sodomy"? There really is porn for every taste.

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  81. AGoodQuestion12:06 AM

    Essentially she was doomed when she agreed to take a regular paycheck from the WaPo. The Movement has a built-in persecution complex, enlivened by delusions of invincibility. That means that anyone with access to mainstream audiences can't really be "one of us." If Godlstein and his ilk haven't already turned on Ross Douthat, it's only a matter of time.

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  82. AGoodQuestion12:30 AM

    Good for her/them. It's gotta make Christine Quinn a little grumpy, though.

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  83. AGoodQuestion12:34 AM

    LePage won in a five-way race the last time. Say what you want about Stephen Kingland but the idea of the governor being reelected is a bad joke. The reason his administration has been a neverending succession of dick moves - aside from personal preference - is that it's basically now or never.

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  84. montag21:02 AM

    So much folderol to obscure the obvious. If a toadified prick like McAuliffe could beat "The Cooch," maybe, just maybe, Cuccinelli was just an abominably bad candidate who appealed mostly to the biggest flaming leaping screamers in the electorate. Cuccinelli ran very hard to the right, enough so to make Todd Akin seem almost normal.


    So, including votes for a lamoid libertarian, a majority of the people of Virginia thought Cuccinelli was sheepshit on a stick.


    Good thing whining has always been in fashion in the GOP.

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  85. montag21:03 AM

    So much folderol to obscure the obvious. If a toadified prick like McAuliffe could beat "The Cooch," maybe, just maybe, Cuccinelli was just an abominably bad candidate who appealed mostly to the biggest flaming leaping screamers in the electorate. Cuccinelli ran very hard to the right, enough so to make Todd Akin seem almost normal.


    So, including votes for a lamoid libertarian, a majority of the people of Virginia thought Cuccinelli was sheepshit on a stick.


    Good thing whining has always been in fashion in the GOP.

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  86. nanute4:11 AM

    Which one? :)

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  87. mortimer20008:30 AM

    But only if you're registered with Disqus. It's the only reason I did.

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  88. A true Libertarian would use that background as a springboard for an "And See How Well I Turned Out!" argument. Libertarianism will never die as long as there's one person around who rose from a Dickensian childhood a la Abe Lincoln to achieve something approximating success.

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  89. RogerAiles10:24 AM

    While the mayor of North America's fourth-largest city smokes crack and kills motherfuckers (rhetorically).

    USA! USA! USA!

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  90. RogerAiles10:26 AM

    Libertarian Fonzie lets his false flag fly!


    The real question is: How much did Cooch pay RoPaul for his appearance?

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  91. dstatton10:46 AM

    So most of the libertarians would have voted for the vaginal probe guy?

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  92. RogerAiles10:56 AM

    Their inverted skulls also make nice doorstops, given their density and nearly flat crania.

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  93. Pasty white guys are never going to be vaginally probed. Sort of makes it a non issue for libertarians.

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  94. Hell, I'm well on the way to supporting it even for people who don't ask for it.

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  95. PulletSurprise12:03 PM

    "The world's angriest yoga ball."

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  96. catclub12:09 PM

    I looked at the difference between the Lt Gov race and the Gov race, and decided that Sarvis had taken many more votes from MacAuliffe than from Cooch.


    Governor:

    Cooch = 46% Terry Mac =48% Sarvis = 6%


    Lt Governor:

    Crazy person=45% Democrat=54%


    What am I missing?

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  97. The Lt Governor candidate was blackity-black-black.

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  98. Halloween_Jack3:05 PM

    Ah, the "No True Schlockmeister" fallacy.

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  99. FMguru3:26 PM

    Someone (I think it was Warren Ellis) described libertarianism - at least, the SF propellerhead version - as the belief that "if we cut tax rates to zero, then everybody gets a free rocketship"

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  100. FINALLY: A USE FOR LIBERTARIANS!



    Boat anchors?

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  101. FlipYrWhig1:13 PM

    Public resources, pubic resources, six of one, etc.

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  102. Marshall Brickman nailed them in an NYT op-ed years ago. Called them "quotation" marks inside a send-up of some bunch of twits.

    -dlj.

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