Republicans Pretending to Act Like Adults
Again, I've got to hand it to Steve Benen for expressing how I felt when I watched the Republican response to the President's Weekly Address.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) delivered the Republicans' weekly address yesterday, and repeated plenty of tired talking points. Listeners learned, for example, that those rascally Democrats intend to "remake America in the image of Europe." Gripping stuff.
But there was a phrase that Cantor mentioned that stood out for me. The frequently-confused Republican leader said that if voters backed the GOP in November, his party would offer "responsible, adult leadership."
Now, of all the things Republicans have to offer the electorate, perhaps no three words in the English language are less appropriate than "responsible, adult leadership." As should be abundantly clear by now, today's GOP officials approach their responsibilities and substantive discourse with all the maturity of a child. A young child. A young, slow child. A medicated, young, slow child who's easily distracted and hasn't learned social norms about honesty.
Jacob Weisberg notes in his latest piece that there were responsible, adult leaders in the Republican Party in the not-too-distant past, but they've gone missing.
As Steve noted and as I've also written about here, the Republicans are simply not a serious political party right now. They have nothing to offer other than attacking the Democrats at every turn and they are more than willing to use every means at their disposal to assure they get back into power.
Go read all of Steve's post for more on this but I'll quote him one more time on Cantor.
Cantor is promising "responsible, adult leadership"? From whom, exactly? When was the last time a Republican leader said something intelligent and accurate about any area of public policy? When was the last time the GOP acted in a responsible fashion during a substantive debate? When was the last time the nation saw so much as a glimmer of maturity from any member of the party leadership?
Weisberg concluded, "The rise of hyperpartisanship is not one of those problems for which the left and right are equally to blame. Democrats, who like legislating better than Republican do, and who have seldom had the GOP's ability to march in lockstep, still instinctively prefer to work on a bipartisan basis. They continue to hope, against the odds, that [Responsible Republicans] will escape extinction and one day provide partners for them again."
As Steve added in his post, this won't happen until this starts costing them some elections. Sadly with the media enabling them and their astroturf teabagger movement to be seen as somehow mainstream instead of fringe, that makes the getting these people out of office all the much harder. These people need to go the way of the Know Nothings. Just how badly they have to behave before it forces the media to acknowledge it is beyond me. Right now, almost nothing seems to be out of bounds for them to consider how the party is acting to be extremist.
The damn Democrats have got to get their message out. These Republicans do not and will not act like responsible adults. The Dems should be using this message from Cantor as a launching point to tell people that Repubs are assholes through and through.
One thing for sure , the Repugs have supplied the Dems with plenty of ammo to use against them but Dems being Dems they'll "yuk yuk duhhh" and live up to their reputation .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
Adult leadership or adult situations?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Depends
He wears depends? Is that a step up from diapers?
Lew
Fighting the Christian American Taliban daily.
And a few posting trolls in the gun thread and comcast thread sure could use a couple of cases.
lying sack of shit, yep that's it.
Cantor is one of the chosen stars of the Zionist Cabal. Him and Emanuel are peas in a pod. They report and get their marching orders from Israel. Just mention Wall St. reform to these guys and they start squirming. They want to take it all away from the middle class and sell it to the Chinese or anyone who can pay.
I think you mean Lieberman. Thats on piece of slime that needs to go!
"Responsible, adult leadership???????"
Give me a break.
Does the name "Michael Steele" mean anything to Eric Cantor?
"Responsible, adult leadership???????"
Yeah, like Mark Foley.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
"Wide stance" Larry Craig.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
David Vitter
Tom Delay
David Drier
....the fools do not realize,a population that can ,..... not paticipate .............in the 'economy'...,can not keep it viable!..........."we are listening,.......and we're not blind.,......this is your life....this is your time."
The entire Bush/Cheney junta!!!
Like Europe! Oh my gawd!
We wouldn't want to be in the top ten in standard of living and happiness again? You know, like we were 40 years ago when the social safety nets of the New Deal were still in place.
Nope, everybody enjoys this corporate fascist s**thole we now have so much more.
I have left countless repubs speechless when I point this out. I truly believe that the average GOPer never thinks anything through. To paraphrase their idiot president "It's hard work (thinking). The work is hard, and it's really hard work."
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
"if voters backed the GOP in November, his party would offer "responsible, adult leadership."
Well Eric, what if they don't? You'll still continue to act like immature, self centered crybabies? Hold your breath till you pass out? Watch it sonny, or we'll turn this political car around!
You people are pathetic and laughable caricatures of competent political figures. It's like trying to reason with four year olds.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
Such as: If you don't play the game the way I want you to, I'm taking all my marbles and going home!
If you don't write the bill the way I want it written, I will hold my breath until I turn blue!
You won the election game by cheating--you got more votes! I'm gonna throw bricks through your windows until you let me have the country ball back!
MOM!!! (American People) They're acting like adults and trying to do good things for the country and I don't like it!! They should be giving more money to the corporations and stomping on the neck of the middle class like WE did!!
NO FAIR!! We weren't finished bankrupting the country yet and we didn't get to invade IRAN! And they're making fun of Our Holy Sarah, Mother of God!!
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
That sounds awful familiar, kinda like "the adults are back in charge." That was a Bush talking point from the begining of his disaterous presidency, who do they think they are fooling?
When angry, count four, when very angry, swear.
-Mark Twain-
Apparently, at least 25% of the population...
Pure as a golden stream from Yellow Snow Mtn.
You don't need to be Jewish to join "Jews Against Eric Cantor" on FaceBook!
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Jews-Against-Eric-Cantor/105366782833312
"Fox News is a cancer on our Nation" -- Me
Thanks.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Of course this is what they're saying. It's precisely because it's what they're not. That's just the way they roll.
They do it because it works. And because the Democrats keep acting like abused spouses, never quite learning their lessons, and always succumbing to the idea that maybe, next time around, Republicans will work with them. Bipartisanship is, after all, the way things should be.
When the Republicans describe themselves in outrageous terms, clearly the opposite of who they actually are, Democrats get flustered and flummoxed. They're just beside themselves with confusion. It's a game, folks.
The Republicans know that the American people long for responsible, adult leadership. They also know that about half the American people believe a politician is an adult if he tells them he is over and over again.
And the Democrats better get out in front of this. Go on every news channel and scream about every instance in which Democrats act like adults and Republicans act like spoiled brats. You know, before "Republicans will provide responsible, adult leadership." becomes a national meme.
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
He said, she said.
“I’m the adult.”
“No, I am. You’re a child.”
“You’re the childish child.”
Ad nausea. The back and forth never ends. As long as we go tit-for-tat in a game of one-upmanship, everybody loses. It’s a game, but the playbook needs to change. Both sides are equally good at name calling. If there is nothing but name calling from both sides, people will perceive no difference. Voters will vote according to who has the best zingers.
Change the playbook.
I think we’re getting smarter. I think Jon Stewart and company have created new generation more sensitive to the absurdities of politics. In a guise of comedy, young people are learning by what is funny. For now, funny is hypocrisy; the joke is what’s said in contradiction to what’s done. In time, this generation via satire, will know the difference between being fed BS, and being told the truth. It isn't happening quickly, but it's happening nonetheless.
So many times I hear “Wake up America…” It’s taking some time, but I think we are waking up. I can smell the coffee.
Hope you are right but I'm not very optimistic , if people are still supporting the Repugs now after the last nine and a half years , I'd say that they are definitely hopeless cases .Fox , Beck , Limbaugh ... their ratings are still right up there and then to top it off we have the latest
Supremefarcical court decision .Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
lower our tax burden by taking a pay cut to what he is actually worth? (less than zero)
When they talk...we need to follow up. We need to talk when they don't talk. We need to get our message out there a thousand times for EVERY one lie they put out there.
This piece of shit makes me want to slap something when I see his smirky puss. God, I can't stand these ass holes in the repukkke party.
You mean the message that they had 8 years in power with the majorities to enact everything they wanted; and what they gave us was debt, wars for profit, civil-rights abuses, corruption, and a dismantling of the government agencies responsible for protecting us from those abuses and fighting that corruption?
Or that the repubs are ass holes?
..
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
"Meanwhile we will continue to act like spoiled rotten thirteen year olds in need of boot camp and continue with the lies and obstruction ." Are the Dems still alive ? Haven't seen any lately .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
doesn't cover the adults. I'm an adult and I act responsibly. The republicans are the children that whine like babies when things aren't going their way. That had to be the most ridiculous speech I've seen in a long time. Does he really think he's preaching to anyone other than the choir?
since they slavishly follow anything and everything those cry-baby Rethugs say and do.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
...when will Democrats 'hit on' the central theme of what Republicans are all about, and have been for generations. Namely, to do, say and act out in whatever way necessary to undermine, sabotage, pull dirty-tricks, ridicule, obfuscate and deny, deny, deny, everything and anything that a Democratic Administration or Congress tries to do that could remotely be seen as progress for the country.
Robert Parry nailed it when he hit the highlights - Nixon/Kissinger's sabotage of Johnson's Vietnam Peace initiative in '68, which not only resulted in the Repugs getting to run as the 'Peace Party' but also managed to get another 50,000 our our men and women killed until the 'end' in '72...or the illegal smuggling of arms and the promise of more to come to Iran in '80 to ensure that there would be no 'October Surprise' from Carter...the vindictive, ruthless, obsession of the 'Whitewater investigation' that ended with impeachment for a 'trumped up' charge that any number of previous - and at least one more - President has been guilty of over the centuries...and now this, venal, corrupt, systematic set of lies, innuendos and racist-based motivated attacks on an 'elected' President. All designed to undermine said Pres and to 'say hell no' to anything that he or a Democratic Congress is trying to do to fix problems and improve the plight of Americans. Hell, if it were to be announced that Obama's team had discovered a way to turn horse-shit into gold - at no cost - that damned asshole McConnell would say that Kentucky already had enough gold, plus they needed the horse-shit to keep all that grass blue...the bastard.
The strategy should be to hammer home the point that Republicans are only interested in power and money - theirs - and their 'friends' too, of course and will, and have, done anything - anything to get it and/or keep it.
here in Canada if I spot a huge grotesque motor home from the US taking up 4 or 5 parking spots its usually a Repug bunch and they are armed to the teeth.
Why do so many people posting herein have no apparent awareness of Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"?!?
What we're seeing is not new...
Furthermore, PLEASE, stop calling our contemporary, propagandist broadcast venues "media." Fox and virtually every other station on the air (both video and radio) is owned and controlled by the vile corporatists who have a vested interest in working the paranoids (aka Teh Stoopid) into a furry. We no longer have a media; we have a 'massage'--propaganda is the lotion the corporatists continue to use as they bend us over...
Do you mean a little fur-covered creature? Or do you mean "a fury"?
Of course, a "fur-covered creature would apply, as well.....rat, rodent,weasel,etc.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
When ask if he was part of an organized political party. He said no I'm a democrat.
But on a weekly podcast driftglass said it best about republicans:
That there are 40 million of us that do not have the morals or the intelligence to make sound rational decisions.
These people should not be allowed to participate in government.
I do not know who was the first preson to say this but in the last 9 years I have become a believer. republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness!
completely out of their minds to vote Republicans back into power. If you are inclined to do so, what do you think would be different from the previous Republican Administration? We've seen first hand what they can do, and if anything, their 'leadership' is even worse now!
back into power.
See 1994 elections, House and Senate.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
As Voltaire observed, in his day the Holy Roman Empire wasn't holy, wasn't Roman, and wasn't an empire, for an inaccuracy trifecta. But in that case, the lack of correspondance between a once accurate name, and the reality, had arisen gradually over the centuries.
Well, "responsible, adult leadership" isn't just an inaccurate description. It's fully intentional BS. And we don't have to wait for the perspective of centuries to know that.
Cantor always reminds me of the self-assured, obnoxious rich kid who ran for class president on a platform of looks and minor bribes. 'We're better than the other side, the losers!' is not a responsible, adult platform, it is adolescent stupidity.
Can't think of any other way to define these repugs. If they happen to be "rich", have Spoiled Child Syndrome. Psychologists may describe spoiled children as "overindulged", "grandiose",
"narcissistic" or "egocentric-regressed". Spoiled children grow up to be spoiled, self-indulgent adults.
Now ask yourself a question... do you want these sick people in control of your government?
Their homeworld was a place called Earth, located in an uninteresting part of the galaxy. They had an expression: pride goeth before a fall. Their pride was their undoing. I know. I was there....They did not listen, of course. Arrogant men never do.
"Responsible, adult leadership," wasn't that the reason given for putting Cheney in the White House to baby sit George W? Oh ya, that worked out really well.
Comments are closed on this entry