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kpete

(72,056 posts)
Thu Feb 23, 2012, 11:18 PM Feb 2012

Matt Taibbi: Arizona Debate/Republican Disaster: "This is the last stage in any paranoid illness"



...................

This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster.

...............................


This is the last stage in any paranoid illness. You start by suspecting that somebody out there is out to get you; in the end, you’re sure that even the people who love you the most under your own roof, your own doctors, your parents, your wife and your children, they’re in on the plot. To quote Matt Damon in the almost-underrated spy film The Good Shepherd, they became convinced that there’s "a stranger in the house."

This is where the Republican Party is now. They’ve run out of foreign enemies to point fingers at. They’ve already maxed out the rhetoric against us orgiastic, anarchy-loving pansexual liberal terrorists. The only possible remaining explanation for their troubles is that their own leaders have failed them. There is a stranger in the house!

This current race for the presidential nomination has therefore devolved into a kind of Freudian Agatha Christie story, in which the disturbed and highly paranoid voter base by turns tests the orthodoxy of each candidate, trying to figure out which one is the spy, which one is really Barack Obama bin Laden-Marx under the candidate mask!

more:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/arizona-debate-conservative-chickens-come-home-to-roost-20120223

21 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Matt Taibbi: Arizona Debate/Republican Disaster: "This is the last stage in any paranoid illness" (Original Post) kpete Feb 2012 OP
!!! NAO Feb 2012 #1
!!!! cliffordu Feb 2012 #2
reagan was left of these clowns madrchsod Feb 2012 #3
St Reagan would not be welcome in today's Republican party av8rdave Feb 2012 #4
The vehicle in front of me last night had an "I miss Reagan" bumper sticker. Thor_MN Feb 2012 #5
Circular firing squad. trumad Feb 2012 #6
So this is why the thread was killing my internet connection. Gregorian Feb 2012 #15
sorry--- I'll retire it. trumad Feb 2012 #16
Ergot has gotten into the repuke rye. nt Javaman Feb 2012 #7
Best. Article. Ever! teewrex Feb 2012 #8
Good analysis! n/t deutsey Feb 2012 #9
Great op-ed, great analysis, with a nice sprinkling of Righteous Rant! emulatorloo Feb 2012 #10
Great article... quispquake Feb 2012 #11
Superb read! Loge23 Feb 2012 #12
But they cannot stray from the course set thirty years ago. Ikonoklast Feb 2012 #13
How dare he bash Arizona!!! Doctor_J Feb 2012 #14
"AZ is one big desert loony bin." Ptah Feb 2012 #19
Great article!! SalviaBlue Feb 2012 #17
Smells Like Dead Elephants - as Matt Taibbi once wrote DinahMoeHum Feb 2012 #18
As long as we allow Hate Radio and Cabel "News" to go Doctor_J Feb 2012 #20
knr Douglas Carpenter Feb 2012 #21

Gregorian

(23,867 posts)
15. So this is why the thread was killing my internet connection.
Fri Feb 24, 2012, 03:23 PM
Feb 2012

That gif is almost 2 megs. Have mercy on us.

quispquake

(3,050 posts)
11. Great article...
Fri Feb 24, 2012, 10:51 AM
Feb 2012

"The finger-pointing game is a fun one to play, but it’s a little like drugs – you have to keep taking bigger and bigger doses in order to get the same high."

Yup...

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/arizona-debate-conservative-chickens-come-home-to-roost-20120223#ixzz1nJLawac0

Loge23

(3,922 posts)
12. Superb read!
Fri Feb 24, 2012, 10:54 AM
Feb 2012

Taibbi nails it - the right has become a cornered, rabid animal.
Hopefully, this is a sign of the last gasp of politically sanctioned sexism, racism, and extremist politics in this country.

Ikonoklast

(23,973 posts)
13. But they cannot stray from the course set thirty years ago.
Fri Feb 24, 2012, 01:39 PM
Feb 2012

The Republican Party made a Faustian deal with the Religiously Intolerant, the Racists, the Selfish Monied, the Politically Ignorant, the Xenophobes and Nativists...and they haven't a clue as how to break the chains to those factions with which they so willingly bound their party.

This is the coalition they have formed, and breaking it asunder means the destruction of their political party, so they must double down and keep moving down that path until the inevitable happens.

This is just the end stage of the losing side of a demographic shift as their base of Angry White Males is slowly but inexorably becoming a voting minority in this nation, as they are losing their grasp even among that group.

They have no choice but to maintain their coalition of the fringe, and that choice will destroy them.

 

Doctor_J

(36,392 posts)
14. How dare he bash Arizona!!!
Fri Feb 24, 2012, 02:49 PM
Feb 2012

that was the horseshit thrown at me last week when I pointed out that AZ is one big desert loony bin.

 

Doctor_J

(36,392 posts)
20. As long as we allow Hate Radio and Cabel "News" to go
Sat Feb 25, 2012, 11:58 AM
Feb 2012

unpunished, they can be as nutty as they want and still gain voters. I sort of thought that by now the revolutionary american spirit would have led us to accomplish some major retaliation against the Limpballs, Levins, Medveds, and Becks. Hope is dwindling.

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