Have Conservatives Gone Mad?

[cal04]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/04/have-conservatives-gone-mad/39417/
The closing of the conservative mind has a lot to do with entertainment media
Marc Ambinder

Serious thinkers on the right have finally gotten around to a full and open debate on the epistemic closure problem that's plaguing the conservative movement. The issue, to put it in terms that even I can understand, because I didn't study philosophy much in college: has the conservative base gone mad?

This matters to journalists, because I really do want to take Republicans seriously. Mainstream conservative voices are embracing theories that are, to use Julian Sanchez's phrase, "untethered" to the real world.

Can anyone deny that the most trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama today comes not from the right but from the left? Rachel Maddow's grilling of administration economic officials. Keith Olbermann's hectoring of Democratic leaders on the public option. Glenn Greenwald's criticisms of Elena Kagan. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn's keepin'-them-honest perspectives on health care. The civil libertarian left on detainees and Gitmo. The Huffington Post on derivatives.

I want to find Republicans to take seriously, but it is hard. Not because they don't exist -- serious Republicans -- but because, as Sanchez and others seem to recognize, they are marginalized, even self-marginalizing, and the base itself seems to have developed a notion that bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking, and that therapy is a substitute for thinking.

[BlooInBloo]

1. No, they've always been this way. We told them they were that way....

we were told we were being "shrill".

(shrug)

You guys made your fucking bed. Now lie in it.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Yep. Tht would imply they had once been sane.

[Kookaburra]

2. If they have it was a very short trip

(thought they were already there)

[madrchsod]

3. old time republicans are now moderates

eisenhower's grand daughter and many of her friends supported obama. i think both goldwater would be the perfect dlc`r. there are other republicans that i can think of that would have supported obama and would be what is now a neo liberal.this new crew of republicans would throw ronny under the bus...

[daleanime]

6. Close....

old time republicans are now Blue Dog Democrats, that's how far right this nation has been dragged.:banghead:

[jwirr]

4. Their world is falling to part - McCain got beat, the house & senate

are in Democratic hands, they are becoming a white minority, the climate is changing, we are running out of oil, raygun's trickle down is not working for them any better than it is for us and the rapture has not come.

They are so afraid that they are panic-ed. In all of this they are becoming unstable and worse than they used to be.

[Blue Meany]

7. Key Republican arguments have long been untethered from

reality: tax cuts raise government revenues; the freemarket responds effetively to demand (why hasn't it ended hunger, homlessness, unemployment?); trickledown economics; welfare creates poverty; etc.

The core problem for them, of course, is that they represent the interests of a tiny minority. Therefore,they cannot tell the truth if they wish to get elected. After a while, they start to believe their own propaganda.

[MisterP]

8. don't forget the "Reds at our doorstep" hysteria that informed foreign policy and the GOP

(and much of the "we have to win this way" Dems) for 42 years and killed a few million. Now it's "Muslims/'Islamists' at our doorstep/undermining our Kultur"

[Blue Meany]

9. Yeah, as a kid I always thought it odd the way they said

under Communism nothing could be done right: the car's didn't run, they couldn't feed themselves; they couldn't make refigerators...but, somehow, they built this first-rate military that we had to be scared to death of.

[Demeter]

10. Too Many Years of GOP Rule Have Driven the World to the Brink of Disaster

And to admit their error is just not bearable. So they become even more divorced from Reality, and descend further into a mental illness from which there is no escape.

They don't want to be cured of their misconceptions, because their personal existence will be lost. They have lost the will to survive, because they cannot win.

[meow2u3]

11. Does a male dog lift his leg to pee?

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