Even Kossacks who've been hugely disappointed in President Obama are starting to realize that for them, he's clearly preferable to anyone the Republicans might nominate. For that reason, they've dialed back their criticism of Obama for falling short of the progressive ideal on issues from health care to the deficit in favor of blasts at their enemies on the right.
As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.
Hunter: The GOP is a cult of paranoid stupidity...
...I question whether presidential candidates like Michele Bachmann or obstinate, self-aggrandizing figures like Eric Cantor or Paul Ryan even know what it is they are proposing when they propose it, or have the mental capacity to understand any of the counterarguments. This is largely what happens when a party devolves into ideological cultism, and devalues even their own prior intellectual voices in favor of conspiracy theories and persecution complexes...
Jed Lewison: ...driven by hatred of Obama
...They hate Obama more than they hate anything else in the world. And their concern about Perry isn't what Perry does or doesn't believe, or what Perry will or will not do. It's whether they think another Texas cowboy can take the White House. They don't care if their nominee is a lunatic. They just care about whether he can win.
Jonathan Smucker: The Tea Party is a triumph of racist marketing...
...The so-called Tea Party was designed...to catalyze white closeted (or sometimes not) racists who consciously or not felt entitled to always have a white male President with an "American-sounding" name...The Tea Party also acts as something of a political fetish object. Like a sexual fetish object, one latches onto an acceptable object to stand in for the thing that is forbidden. It is no longer acceptable in our society to openly admit one's discomfort with a black President. It is more acceptable (to one's neighbors and to one's own conscience) to embrace the Tea Party and our "forefathers" and to lament, "I want my country back"...
...The meme "big government" itself carries a story of an assault on values by a dangerous "other". This vague "otherization" is key to the Tea Party strategy. It's the cognitive thread that unites a lot of disparate themes. "Other" means threat, and there's one big file drawer in our brains for that threat. We can throw blacks and immigrants and socialists and homosexuals all into the same file, so that our fear of the "other" is triggered whenever we encounter any of the above...
Bill in Portland Maine: ...not to mention esthetically challenged
...If you support the tea party, you support racists, bigots, hypocrites and Obey-Us-Or-You're-Going-To-Hell theo-zombies. And Americans are running away from them in droves because they now know that they're one ankle bite away from a life of lawn chairs, tri-corn hats and an insatiable desire to collect Anita Bryant records...
Ray Pensador: Don't listen to conservatives' ideas...
...A civil and modern society that operates under the rule of law, respects the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, can only exist under Liberalism...
I don't give a shit about quoting Reagan, or Linbaugh [sic], or making statements like, "You see, even 'so and so' who is a conservative Republican, agrees with 'this or that.'" I only care about what we (Liberals, and Progressive) have to say about anything, because after all, we are the only ones that are sane, believe in science, and empirical evidence, and true investigative journalism, and freedom and equality...
Pensador: ...but beware their violent outbursts
...I find it extremely disheartening and disconcerting to witness the passivity with which progressives react to the drumbeat of threats by what is clearly an increasingly emboldened fascist right in this country.
I don't know what else can these bullies do to tell you they're coming after you. There is a constant drumbeat on right wing hate radio and TV demonizing liberals and progressives. These thugs running for president on the Republican side, like Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachmann, talking all kind bullshit with allusions to violence, and in some cases acting on it by having their staffs push, shove, and manhandle reporters...
