Hullabaloo

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

 
Panic Artists

by digby

The head of the Republican party had a full blown tantrum yesterday. You almost have to wonder if he isn't back on the little blue babies because this is so over the top it's like something out of a bad Mexican novella:

"Today, as we start the radio program, America is hanging by a thread. So we have to see what we can do with a thread. At the end of the day our freedom has been assaulted. This is the kind of change that people did not think they were going to get when they voted for Barack Obama. I'm asking myself what kind of country are we today. We're not a representative republic. The will of the people was spat upon yesterday. The will of the people is of no concern to the people who now have power and authority from the White House all the way down to Capitol Hill. The will of the people is something to be crushed. So we're not a representative republic. You can't even say loosely defined we are much of a democracy. We have to restore these things. We have to do this by getting rid of these people at the ballot box. We must get them out of office. That's the only thing here."

Does anyone know where I look in the constitution says the representative republic has to take an opinion poll before they pass a bill and vote accordingly? I can't find it. All I can find is this boring junk about elections and voting and stuff.

As usual, there's not a lot of grace under pressure in this crowd. They are behaving as if the government is rounding up teabaggers and putting them into prison camps instead of setting up health insurance system. Is anybody buying this? After all, these are the people who impeach presidents over sex and take office on 5-4 Supreme Court decisions. It is the party that Chris Hayes described this way when he reviewed Hacker and Pierson's Off Center, the chilling tale of the workings and strategy of the Republican machine:

The picture of the GOP's leadership that emerges from Off Center resembles nothing so much as Louis XIV, who was able to consolidate power in the French monarchy by recognizing that much of what limited the king's political power were ultimately social and cultural norms, norms which Louis ingeniously undermined. He was, in short, an innovator, a power entrepreneur who recognized that the "rules" that kept the king in check could be subverted and altered, and that the fractured nature of the aristocracy could be leveraged and manipulated to his advantage.

So basically Limbaugh and the boys are projecting again when they get themselves all worked over "the end of America." They are the ones who are undemocratic, but they've seamlessly re-looped the left's criticism of themselves back on the Democrats. And then supercharged the outrage. I think it may be a form of therapy for them.


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digby 3/23/2010 06:00:00 AM |