| Tuesday, August 19, 2008 |
| Banned in 240 seconds: RedState becomes the Free Republic |
I did an experiment today, to see how long it would take to get banned from RedState.com, the right wing site that styles itself a home for "independent conservative thinkers," not at all like the thought-policed, drone-winger sites like the Free Republic, or the loony bin flypaper sites like Little Green Footballs, and which gets frequent link love from "legit" online journalists at places like Politico and the Washington Post. So here's what I did. I signed up, using the same ID I use here, JReid. Then, I posted a comment to a thread entitled "You are the one McCain is waiting for" whose point is, I guess, that ordinary Republicans will carry McCain over the top, not his vp pick. (I think the post is supposed to be tongue in cheek, but hell, with this crowd? Who knows...) First a clip from the original post:
Much virtual ink has been spilled Internet-wide on the problem of Senator McCain's running mate selection. Policy views, succession, age, experience, home states, and every other conceivable preference are touted by one person or another as essential to the pick.
I say they're all right, and they're all wrong. You should be John McCain's running mate in 2008. It's perfect! You are in a swing state, you shore up the Bush states, and you make Obama work in his 'safe' states. You are a political novice, and you are experienced. You're young. You're mature. You are a mainstream Republican, a reformer, and a maverick. You even look like America.
You were even Time's People of the Year. You can't go wrong. ... Okay, so now for my comment, which went up at 11:02 a.m. by their clock (which is odd, because I joined at 11:48 a.m. EST) Anyhoo, I wrote:
RedStaters discover God: and He is John McCain
JReid August 19th, 2008 at 11:02 a.m. (link)
What's with the sudden hero worship of McCain by RedStaters? Here I'm assuming it's tongue and cheek, but other threads? Not so much. Frankly, it's getting creepy, like the "Pray for George W. Bush" threads that used to dominate the Free Republic.
John McCain is a politician, and frankly, not a very good one. Certainly not an inspiring one. His entire campaign boils down to: "vote for me. The other guy's a traitor." Which means that no matter who wins in November, his campaign has ensured that half the country will hate the next president's guts ... again.
Besides, wasn't this the guy RS readers found unacceptable during the primaries? Now he's Godlike? Kind of hard to accuse Democrats of beatifying Obama when this site does the same to John McCain...
[Waiting to be banned for apostasy.] Literally 4 minutes later, came this post:
well, if you insist.
Moe Lane August 19th, 2008 at 11:06 a.m. (link)
Although if I wasn't on my way to Pearl right now I'd keep you around long enough to ask whether you guys really think that anybody actually believes you when you try to pass yourselves off as Republicans. So that's it. The amount of time it takes to be banned from RedState for criticizing John McCain is 4 minutes. And you can't be a Republican if you don't slavishly support John McCain.
I think that might even beat my previous record at Free Republic, where I was banned a grand total of THREE TIMES (using three different ID's) for criticizing George W. Bush, back before he became "unpopular..." The point: the right is consistent, in using strict thought policing to keep their flock in line. The FReepers aren't outliers, they're mainstream. Recall that RedState was one of those sites where so-called conservatives denounced John McCain all through the primaries (along with tax raiser Mike Huckabee,) as unacceptable as the Republican nominee. McCain, lo those many months ago, was guilty of the sin of collusion with Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold. He was soft on immigration. He was soft on the Bush tax cuts. He was soft on torture. Now, having reversed himself on all three, and returned to his pre-Bush, neoconservative zeal on Iraq, McCain is RedState's boy, and you'd better love him, if you want to post there. Sadly, American conservatism has been reduced to a series of cults of personality -- Reagan, then Bush II, now John McCain, where the drones (talk radio listeners, group blog members, and worse, Republican voters of all economic classes,) are inducted, indoctrinated, and deployed in the service of the people paying the bills: major corporations, oil companies, and lately, the private military. To push the agenda, the right uses wealthy individual talking heads like Rush, Hannity and the former Bush flaks who run RedState, and they whip their throng into shape, demanding total loyalty and obeisance, and weeding out doubters. Perhaps most unseemly of all, the right has also indoctrinated religious zealots -- America's Taliban, if you will -- to tie these beliefs to existing zealotry on issues like abortion. Combined, its a potent mix of religious zeal, hero worship, and strident determination to enrich others, at the expense of the faithful. I find it remarkable that it continues to work on so many people, and that the right has managed to convince those poor slobs that it's the other guy who's turning their candidate of choice into a Messiah. | Labels: blogs, John McCain, RedState, right wingers |
posted by JReid @ 12:25 PM   |
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| Friday, June 06, 2008 |
| A bit of wisdom from the folks at RedState |
Every so often, the corporation-worshiping Bush-bots at RedState stumble on a grain of truth. Here's your morsel for the week. It's from their section titled, "Barack Obama is like Jesus but cooler"...
The post, "To battle with a metaphor," starts with this Tom Toles Cartoon...
... then goes into the typical RedState blather about how underqualified Barack Obama is supposed to be (this from the people who still think George W. Bush is a fine president...)
Then, comes the kernel of truth:
In the 2008 campaign John McCain is fighting a metaphor not arguing policy or even facts.
Unless he does something to strip away the patina of a transcendent post-racial leader who will usher in the Age of Aquarius from Barack Obama, John McCain will spend election day shouting "where is the outrage?"
The trouble for McCain, is that to strip away said "patina," he would need some really compelling facts. And Johnny Mac has trouble remembering most of his script, can't read the teleprompter, and has thrown out all of his "facts" in favor of the entire idea portfolio of George W. Bush.
What to do?
| Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, presidential candidates, RedState, right wingers |
| posted by JReid @ 10:26 PM |
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| Tuesday, December 04, 2007 |
| Wanna see something interesting? |
Republicans duking it out over their nominees. What's incredible, is the consensus that the worst two candidates for "the base" are Giuliani and ... Huckabee? Yep, Huckabee. The fiscal conservatives hate him because he's an "economic populist" who raised taxed in Arkansas, and who has criticized Club for Growth Republicans as "greedy" (yeah, he's right on that one) ... and social conservatives dislike Rudy because he's ... no, not the cad part, or the dumping his wife, or having NYC cops chauffeur the mistress around on the public dime, or lobbying for Citgo, or taking on the Qatar government as clients ... no, they hate him because of abortion.
Go figure, they're Republicans.
Anyway, on the RS thread, one Fred Thompson supporter calling himself "redneck hippie" writes:
I made a commitment that if nominated I would vote for (not support) EITHER Rudy or Huck. I also made a commitment that if they team up I will stay home. Eight years I might stomach. Sixteen, never."
Wow. That post was followed by this one:
Guiliani's propensity for authoritarianism scares me more than Huckabee's.
I'd rather have my trans fat taken away than my guns.
Okay, clearly a gun nut, but I agree with the first part.
Given how the media (and many voters in 80% pro-Bush Republican Iowa) have fallen in love with Huck, it's pretty shocking to see comments like this:
As a SoCon and FisCon ...
Huckabee is wrong on 100%. He's following a track with HLA and FMA that do nothing but energize the opposition (remember the ERA?) and he will get nothing, including good judges.
On the Fiscal side, he's a budding socialist. On the war... let's close Gitmo! On cooperating with Congress... let's investigate Bush on Plame.
He is the most unacceptable candidate I can possibly imagine. Ron Paul has better points than Huckabee.
Ouch! On to my favorite comment in the thread:
What is Rudy's foreign policy experience, again? What is his governing experience? Mayor of a city?
Oh wait....it's a really big city he was Mayor of....LOL....maybe Koch and Dinkins were Presidential material after all.
How about his military experience to be Commander-In-Chief? How did Rudy handle it when his number was called back in the day? Was he tough on those Communists? What are his National Security credentials again - nominating Bernie Kerik to run DHS?!?!
Every one of these GOPers would fight the War - except for Ronpaul. It's just that with Rudy - you get to stick your thumb in the eye of those dreaded SoCons and GunCons at the same time. Their issues don't matter in a time of war, after all, and we've declared perpetual war.
And yet I have to hear the laughable - utterly ridiculous - gut-bustingly hilarious meme that the next Preisdent will reduce the size of the federal Government - even in the face of Two Dem Houses. It's never been reduced, but the next guy will do it - this time for sure! Heck, Rudy will do it just based on the sheer strength of his personality!
Right.
Go, Reds!
Labels: 2008, Mike Huckabee, presidential candidates, RedState, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani |
| posted by JReid @ 8:47 PM |
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| Saturday, March 31, 2007 |
| RedState's dumb idea |
The boys over at RedState have come up with what might be the most bone-headed idea since that high school kid from South Florida took the credit cards his parents gave him and stole off to Iraq, hoping to commit some random acts of teeni-bopper journalism. In that case, the kids was criticized across the board for endangering not only his own life, but the lives of U.S. servicemen and women and embassy staffers who were forced to track him down and extract him before the kidnappers, insurgents, militias, and other goon squads running rampant through Baghdad got to him first.
Now, the boys from RedState -- a lovely blog, I'm sure, if you're a mindless Bush worshipper -- want to replicate his stupidity. Why, I wonder, should amateur journos who run a blog be capable of delivering more accurate news than, say, veteran correspondents like Michael Ware or Richard Engel? Oh, that's right, because journalists like Ware and Engel are "biased" against the war -- they see only the bombings and the carnage, and forget to notice the sunshine and sweet, tasty pita bread. Give me a break!
Earth to RedStaters: the reason the war seems to be going badly in the TV and print coverage, is because it IS going badly. That's not just the opinion of journalists. (I don't think Fox has a bureau in Iraq, and I'm not sure they would even if they WERE an actual news outlet, rather than a propaganda factory, and well, the whole Geraldo draws a map in the sand thing didn't work out so well, but even their man on such matters, Ollie North, has made it clear that the troops he talks to believe the war is going badly...) It's also the opinion of the Pentagon itself, if you choose to believe the latest intelligence assessment on the war, not to mention the assessments of the generals themselves.
Sending your inexperienced, chicken-hawk behinds to Baghdad will do only two things: first, it will allow you to brag to the quizzlings at LGF and that harpy Laura Ingraham chick that you, like Bill O'Reilly, have actually "been in combat," and thus you really "know what the troops are feeling..." and second, it will force those troops to waste precious time and resources protecting your sorry behinds and escorting you around the Green Zone (you don't dare leave the Green Zone, and if you don't know why, you might want to read up before your trip...) rather than prosecuting their mission -- however flawed.
In other words, if you want to play war, buy a video game. Leave the reporting to the reporters. Besides, since when do you need to feel the hot sand on your faces in order to propagandize for the president?
Labels: Iraq, Iraq war, RedState |
| posted by JReid @ 4:40 PM |
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