Conservative Donors Wasted Their Cash

I think the real funny story is Linda McMahon wasting $100 million of her own money just to try and buy herself Senate seat.

It's nice having a liberal Skyword snark here on Gather. I always enjoy your writing, Chelsea.

I'm honored that you're using my Paul Ryan pic in your post.

it's the best pic ever

I should have added a tear, streaming down his cheek. ;)

ahahahaha

again, have you noticed an absence of.... connie trolls?

Yes, they are in mourning. Most are just sticking to their posts where they can wax Chicken Little predictions about the downfall of "their" country - it's far too dangerous for their fragile egos to venture out, away from the protection of their own posts.

they were so loud and confident up until Tuesday night... *crickets chirp*

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Just to be clear, it was a huge amount of money but it was not "wasted". Many dollars were redistributed from the very wealthy to many businesses, radio stations, tv stations, printers, polling firms, etc. it would seem that this trickle down would warm the cockles of a liberals heart, and yet here you all are complaining that people actually work for a profit and create a product that someone wanted to purchase.

Only liberals can find it necessary to bitch about free-market capitalism.

@Eric -- Obama's still president. Their money was wasted.


But I wonder how many people donated to Obama with the money spent by them ;)

I am a pretty left wing guy. Never been a communist, but I am way past the level of liberalism that often gets called communist by the American right wing. Still, I can respect honest conservatism: a commitment to fiscal responsibility; a desire for the smallest practical government; a reluctance to embrace rapid societal change. I disagree with much of that, but I can respect it.

But this is not the nature of conservatism in the United States today.

If you read conservative publications from other countries (let me suggest the British base magazine The Economist and the Canadian national newspaper The National Post) you will find that conservatives from outside the United States recognize the fringe lunacy that has taken hold of the Republican Party and the American right wing. Both publications either endorsed Obama or carried opinion pieces by conservative writers that endorsed Obama. Why? Because they could not, in good conscience, endorse the Republican Party in its current form. That would be tantamount to handing the keys to the asylum to the chronic crazies.

Why is conservatism so distorted in the United States? It's a good question and tough to answer.

Americans are, in general, more conservative by nature than Europeans or Canadians. Canada has long had universal socialized medicine, as has Europe, and legalized same-sex marriage years ago.

When the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 took place Americans were shaken to their core. Never before had such a dramatic attack taken place on American soil, never had an attack been so immediately shocking to the American psyche. Even the Pearl Harbor attack that brought the US into WWII did not have the same impact. While Hawaii is now an American state, it was not in 1941. It is also located thousands of miles off the coast of the American mainland. And, there was no live TV coverage. On the other hand, New York is the quintessential American city and the 9/11 attacks were watched on TV, repeatedly, by millions of Americans. I know I watched live as the second tower crumbled to the ground. It was the only time in my life that I actually experienced the physical sensation of my stomach turning, literally turning. (And I am not an American.) Americans felt violated, in much the same manner people do when their home is broken into or the way women feel when they are sexually violated.

The response to the 9/11 attacks exacerbated, rather than alleviated, the angst that Americans felt after that violation. George Bush may or may not have had actionable intelligence in the weeks leading up to 9/11, he may or may not have chosen to look the other way out of a sense of hubris or, worse, in the hopes of using the dramatic event to justify things he knew the American public would not otherwise support (as Dick Cheney mused in February of 2001). But what he certainly did was use the excuse of 9/11 to start a war in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11. He used it for his own ends and took his eye off the ball, letting the author of the 9/11 attacks escape justice for a decade, until Obama orchestrated a measure of justice. Bush also used the excuse of 9/11 to abrogate the rights to which every American citizen is guaranteed by the Constitution.

The Bush years did a lot to destroy American self-confidence, which at its worst is expressed as American arrogance. Watching the country descend into a maelstrom of needless war with no mission, no end in sight, no competent oversight, no control over the wanton spending in country, and no justification demoralized Americans much in the way that Vietnam had. Watching the suspension of Habeus Corpus and other rights by the perversely named Patriot Act led to further distrust of government. Watching the people of New Orleans descend into savagery as they waited in vain for assistance that was far too late in coming embarrassed Americans. Watching the economy collapse with shocking suddenness in the late summer and early fall of 2008 scared people.

In 2008 anyone could have won the presidency on the Democratic ticket. Bush had so disparaged the Republican brand that beating McCain was never the main obstacle. Obama, or any black candidate, would never have been elected but for the depth of revulsion Bush engendered. Even still, for many white Americans the election of a black man to the highest office in the land offended them, insulted them, angered them and motivated them to oppose, oppose, oppose no matter what he did.

This was evident in the virulence of their objections to every thing Obama did or attempted. It was evident in the accusations of communism and socialism against a president whose health care reform is the most capitalistic in nature of any global health care scheme and whose bailouts of banks and auto makers specifically avoided nationalization. Obama's attempts to elicit Republican support for his efforts, themselves another sign of his very moderate, centrist nature, were rebuffed out of hand.

Mix all these feelings (shock, demoralization, distrust, embarrassment, fear, racism) with the unholy alliance of church and state that Republicans had been encouraging since the rise of the "Christian Right" and the party's cynical and deliberate use of that movement and eventual submission to and co-opting by it, and their use of fear, rage and hatred as tools of manipulation, and what you get is a toxic stew. That toxic stew found its most public expression in the formation of the Tea Party.

The movement expresses American patriotism in terms of exclusion: reserving the right to define who is an American. It claims to want smaller government while growing the military footprint and pushing the degree to which government legislates morality and interferes in the personal, private and sexual lives of their citizens. It pretends to be determined to eliminate deficit and debt but only ever increases both.

In short, in all ways that can be measured, the movement is the exact opposite of what it claims to be.

No wonder they are irrationally angry.

YES! Excellent commentary Rory! And so very true!

Sorry, Burd, I do feel very wordy tonight. Probably gearing up for tomorrow night when I have to write a play in six hours.