Frank Rich: The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York - NTimes

icon gravatar.comwww.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/opinion/01rich.html
sent by RicKelis since 100 days 11 hours 56 minutes, published about 100 days 6 hours 5 minutes
BARACK OBAMA’S most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman as secretary of the Army. This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The right’s embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P. ≈The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. [right-wingers] Beck, Palin and their acolytes constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, [but] it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode. Pat Buchanan wrote “America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.” They are right. That America was lost years ago, But most Americans like their country’s 21st-century profile. Only in the alternative universe of the far right is Obama a pariah and Palin the great white hope. There is only one political opponent whom Obama really has to worry about at this moment: Hamid Karzai. It’s Afghanistan and joblessness, not the Stalinists of the right, that have the power to bring this president down.
tags: rich, gop meltdown, purge, rw oblivion
5 commentscategory: Right Wing karma: 127

comments

  1. #1    outtake:
    The New York fracas was ignited by the routine decision of 11 local Republican county chairmen to anoint an assemblywoman, Dede Scozzafava, as their party’s nominee for the vacant seat. Bloggers trashed her as a radical leftist and ditched her for a third-party candidate they deem a “true” conservative, an accountant and businessman named Doug Hoffman.
    [Looking at] the pathology of this movement, its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government....
    written by RicKelis since 100 days 11 hours 54 minutesRicKelis
  2. #2    "Only in the alternative universe of the far right is Obama a pariah"
    And there's more than one alternate universe....or is there?
    written by CwV since 100 days 9 hours 49 minutesCwV
  3. #3    17% definitely won't win a national election as independents see who is in control of the Republican party. I'm hoping the moderate Republicans will now come out to support the Democratic candidate as they tell the carpetbagging Hoffman to go home. I also hope the Dems don't try to purify their party to the extreme left. While I don't like 'corporate bought' moderates destroying health care reform, I would rather have them controlling issues than the religious right. Anytime a moderate Republican is elected to congress from the northeast or west, voters are saying they want the southern conservatives to control our government. I don't think independent and moderate minded voters understand this fact of life.
    written by tahoeprogressive since 100 days 5 hours 18 minutestahoeprogressive
  4. #4    #3 - Lots of luck. The people of this country don't know how to view their class interests and vote with their lizard brains.
    I see Obama's term as a chance for the ruling elites to redistribute wealth upward, again, under cover of a "progressive" black president. This is just an interregnum between the nascent fascism of Bush II and the next authoritarian personality who the American people will "elect" enthusiastically.

    The GOP will use the 2011 celebrations of Saint Ronnie's 100th birthday to spread the myths about his greatness and to get all the sheep in line to vote for the Republican candidate in 2012. And Obama signed the papers necessary to have the party a nationwide celebration.
    written by matt since 100 days 4 hours 1 minutematt
  5. #5    Unemployment is getting a lot of attention now because people always want to know what you're going to do for them NOW and the quickly forget how much you did for them last quarter. It's a sign of some success, but that we need to move on to focus more on this issue.

    In the handful of states with 10%+ unemployment what can be done?
    What do they need? What is preventing them from employing more people?
    Is there any common denominator to those states in particular?

    As we did once before, let's focus on those states and see what we might do.
    written by MarkH since 100 days 1 time 42 minutesMarkH
closed comments
Who has negatively flagged this story?


who are we
code: license, download  |  images license Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional    Valid CSS!   [Valid RSS]