No one could have predicted this would happen:

In a bid to beef up House Republicans’ ability to scrutinize an Obama administration, incoming House Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is moving to increase the GOP side of the panel’s oversight power.

A day after he was formally selected as ranking member last week, Issa ousted 14 of 39 Republican committee staffers, including many senior aides. Outgoing staffers said they were told the panel’s minority will shift its focus away from legislation toward oversight of federal agencies.

By bringing in aides with investigative backgrounds, committee Republicans believe they can increase their capacity to conduct independent investigations, despite lacking the majority’s subpoena power.

And you know what? This is what they are supposed to do. Still, it is pretty funny given the GOP obstruction of oversight of the past eight years. One of Issa’s shining moments in the sun, using parliamentary tricks and delaying tactics to make sure Doug Feith did not have time to provide testimony to Congress:

It should come as no surprise that the culprit was none other than Rep. Steve King, who, through sheer schoolboy effrontery in a House subcommittee last week, muted the testimony of Douglas Feith, one of the key architects of the Bush administration’s systematized disregard for the Geneva Convention. King’s constituents had a right, as did the nation at large, to hear Feith answer for his part in making a spurious case for war.

***

Evoking the memory of that fateful day, King asked the committee’s chairman whether there was adequate time for an opening statement. Issa followed suit by raising a parliamentary inquiry, a failed attempt to “summon” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Issa’s distraction allowed King the time to piece together yet another speech in the guise of a clarification. The pair then insisted upon recognizing an archaic five-minute limit on questioning, which is hardly, if ever, observed. This measure proved to be debilitating. As each representative raised her or his questions, Feith found himself pressed for time with his answers. The back and forth that ensured was confusing at best. Each exchange was highly constrictive and limited in its clarity. The subcommittee chairman, Jerrold Nadler of New York, was continually forced to remind those present that, “the time of the gentleman” had expired.

More on his antics here. Wankers.

This is like deja vu all over again:

Senate Republicans have requested information about Attorney General nominee Eric Holder’s role in the Elian Gonzalez controversy as part of a broad probe into his tenure with the Clinton administration and potential ties to presidential scandals during that era.

Eight of nine GOP members on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote Clinton Presidential Library Director Terry Garner on Thursday to ask for 10 categories of material, and that includes any information on Holder’s involvement with the Cuban boy seized by U.S. agents in April 2000.

Maybe we can arrange for Clinton to get another blowjob from an intern somewhere to distract the GOP. I am sure Clinton won’t mind. Well, Bill won’t.

*** Update ***

I am reminded in the comments that the Elian Gonzalez affair is the source one of the all time classics of the wingnut genre, from Nooner herself:

The great unanswered question of course is: What was driving Mr. Clinton? What made him do such a thing? What accounts for his commitment in this case? Concern for the father? But such concern is wholly out of character for this president; he showed no such concern for parents at Waco or when he freed the Puerto Rican terrorists. Concern for his vision of the rule of law? But Mr. Clinton views the law as a thing to suit his purposes or a thing to get around.

Why did he do this thing? He will no doubt never say, a pliant press will never push him on it, and in any case if they did who would expect him to speak with candor and honesty? Absent the knowledge of what happened in this great public policy question, the mind inevitably wonders.

Was it fear of Fidel Castro—fear that the dictator will unleash another flood of refugees, like the Mariel boatlift of 1980? Mr. Clinton would take that seriously, because he lost his gubernatorial election that year after he agreed to house some of the Cubans. In Bill Clinton’s universe anything that ever hurt Bill Clinton is bad, and must not be repeated. But such a threat, if it was made, is not a child-custody matter but a national-security matter, and should be dealt with in national-security terms.

Was it another threat from Havana? Was it normalization with Cuba—Mr. Clinton’s lust for a legacy, and Mr. Castro’s insistence that the gift come at a price? If the price was a child, well, that’s a price Mr. Clinton would likely pay. What is a mere child compared with this president’s need to be considered important by history?

Was Mr. Clinton being blackmailed? The Starr report tells us of what the president said to Monica Lewinsky about their telephone sex: that there was reason to believe that they were monitored by a foreign intelligence service. Naturally the service would have taped the calls, to use in the blackmail of the president. Maybe it was Mr. Castro’s intelligence service, or that of a Castro friend.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to. A great and searing tragedy has occurred, and none of us knows what drove it, or why the president did what he did. Maybe Congress will investigate. Maybe a few years from now we’ll find out what really happened.

A classic.

I mentioned this in an earlier post, when I noted that the main reason the GOP appears to have spiked the auto bailout is because Sen. Corker thinks UAW workers make too much money, but this comment makes me think that we need to bring it up again to drive the point home:

Also, isn’t it ODD to have US Senators negotiating wage and benefit levels with the employees of private companies? These Southern Senators were actually NEGOTIATING WAGE LEVELS with the UAW leadership in a back room while they were filibustering the bill. Is that outrageous? Unheard of? What. The. Fuck?

Still, autoworkers remain angry with the senators who tried to negotiate wage and benefit concessions from the union, then scuttled the House-passed bill that would have granted the loans and set up a “car czar” to oversee the nearly insolvent companies and get concessions from the union and creditors. Their top targets were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.); Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who led negotiations on a compromise; and Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who has been a vocal critic of the loans.

Angry United Auto Workers members lash out at Southern senators

Just think about that for a minute. That kind of interference is on the level of Terry Schiavo interference. US Senators from “right to work” states with foreign auto plants trying to NEGOTIATE WAGE AND BENEFIT LEVELS with workers of private companies doing business IN OTHER STATES. That totally blows me away.

US Senators are openly colluding with foreign auto companies to drive down the wages of American workers. Something to think about the next time you hear “You’re either with us or against us.”

And as a side note, as someone who has never really cared much for unions, I am as shocked as anyone to see myself defending the UAW this vigorously. I guess I am just taken aback by how brazen the efforts are to blame this on the workers and to let the economy explode just to destroy unions. It is pretty mind-boggling, and that is even after a pretty amazingly awful eight years of suck.

*** Update ***

Also, well-known pink commie Ben Stein was really in rare form last night on Larry King:

BEN STEIN, ECONOMIST: Well I think what happened was that the Republicans were sick of the bailout and they were also sick of the idea that the autoworkers had voted Democrat so many times and turned Michigan into an entirely Democratic state and they’re also a little envious on behalf of the constituents of the way—the imaginary super wage benefit legacy cause.

But I think they made a terrible and unpatriotic mistake. We’re teetering on the brink of a depression. We can ship money to Iraqi warlords and giant cargo planes. We ship money all over the world. We can’t ship it to help our own people? We can ship it to Goldman Sachs and rescue people that get $100 million a year but we can’t rescue an autoworker and his family? That’s crazy.

***

STEIN: But it is going to do a lot to deal with the onrushing depression business. That’s the problem. The problem isn’t the about business model of GM has failed. We know its failed. The business model of Goldman Sachs has failed. We’ve got a lot of failed business models.

What we are having is an onrushing depression. We have got to stop it now. We have got to have a government contra-cyclical action that stops it. If we fall off a cliff into depression, it will be so much worse than any of the bailout costs. You cannot imagine it. You do not want to let this go into Great Depression.

***

STEIN: I absolutely agree, absolutely right. The government shoved tens of billions of dollars down the throats of banks who said, we don’t even want it. Now Detroit and the workers there who are decent Americans are begging for it. For gosh sake, let’s do the right thing.

You really need to read the entire thing. However wrong Ben Stein might be on any number of issues, he at least appears to working from a reality based environment on this. for the life of me, I don’t understand how people think if these companies all fail the only fall-out will be a few union workers won’t be living high on the hog. For christ’s sake, even Toyota is worried.

*** Update #2 ***

I rather like this:

“I don’t know what Sen. Vitter has against GM or the United Auto Workers or the entire domestic auto industry; whatever it is, whatever he thinks we’ve done, it’s time for him to forgive us, just like Sen. Vitter has asked the citizens of Louisiana to forgive him, ” said Johnson, president of Local 2166. Otherwise, Johnson said of Vitter, it would appear, “He’d rather pay a prostitute than pay auto workers.”

That ought to wrinkle Vitter’s diaper.

Mitch McConnell and company voted repeatedly to pay these guys to… not shoot at us:

The Iraqi government plans to cut salaries for the estimated 100,000 members of the Awakening movement whose revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq played a key role in bringing about the sharp fall in violence in Iraq.

The move is certain to aggravate building tensions between the Sunni volunteer force and the Shiite-led government, which assumed responsibility for the Awakening movement from the U.S. military earlier this month.

The U.S. military, which calls the movement the Sons of Iraq, had been paying members $300 a month to carry guns and protect their neighborhoods against Al Qaeda.

Starting this month, Awakening members will be paid 300,000 Iraqi dinars, or about $250 a month, according to government spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly. Awakening leaders, who had been earning $400 to $600, will also receive the lower salary.

And these guys:

Insurance giant AIG was given $152 billion in bailout money by the federal government since nearly collapsing in September. Now the company is planning to take millions of that money and hand it over to employees in a program that sounds a lot like bonuses.

AIG’s new CEO is only taking a single dollar for his compensation this year and the top 60 executives won’t be getting bonuses. But that hasn’t stopped AIG from finding a creative way to keep some of their top employees in what they’re calling “retention payments,” reports CBS News correspondent Priya David.

To some it seems like business-as-usual end-of-the-year bonuses.

But $15 billion to the auto industry, one of the last industries in the country that actually makes something, is a violation of core principles.

You don’t have to be crazy to wonder if the $15 billion will save anything- I don’t have much hope it will. I still don’t know if any of them other than Ford are really in a position to survive. We might very well be pissing away $15 billion dollars if we do eventually aid them. Right now I see the options as do nothing, and let them die, or do something, and they might live. For all I know, it may be too late:

General Motors Corp. said Friday it will temporarily close 20 factories across North America and make sweeping cuts to its vehicle production as it tries to adjust to dramatically weaker automobile demand.

GM said it will cut 250,000 vehicles from its production schedule for the first quarter of 2009, which includes a cut of 60,000 vehicles announced last week. Normal production would be around 750,000 cars and trucks for the quarter, spokesman Tony Sapienza said.

Many plants will be shut down for the whole month of January, he said, and all told, the factories will be closed for 30 percent of the quarter.

“We’re adjusting pretty dramatically,” spokesman Chris Lee said.

The move affects most of GM’s plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. During the shutdowns, employees will be temporarily laid off and receive a portion of their normal pay from the company. They can also apply for state unemployment benefits, Lee said.

They may already be dead.

On the other hand, you do have to be crazy to be able to pretend that somehow any principles are at stake other than union busting, which, I guess, is a principle in and of itself:

An action alert circulated among Senate Republicans on Wednesday called for Republicans to “stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor.”

In doing so, analysts said, Republicans were planting the seeds for a fundraising appeal to big business—other than the Big Three, of course—as they gear up for a major political fight next year over expected legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize.

Mitch McConnell and the Republicans (a more complete list here) who all voted against this bill but for the financial bailout will all earn 160k and the best benefits package in the country, but are going to let an entire industry die because some autoworkers make more money than Bob Corker thinks they should. You might call that class warfare. I don’t like the idea of bailouts any more than anyone else, but now is not a time for misguided “principles.”

What about the billions we just flat out “lost” in Iraq ($9 billion, to be exact)? Here is another $2 billion down the crapper:

I don’t want to hear it about the $15 billion dollars and your principles. I just don’t. Especially when the chain reaction to suppliers and dealerships and what not could have a devastating impact on an already battered and beaten economy. A couple weeks ago someone in the comments asked- If you were told terrorists were going to attack our economy and we could lose 2 million jobs, but you could possibly stop it by spending 15 billion dollars on a new system of defense, do you think the government would?

I think I know the answer to that. But I am not a crazy Republican Senator from the new confederacy.

The NY Times reports:

In a sequence of events that neatly captures the contradictions of Barack Obama’s rise through Illinois politics, a phone call he made three months ago to urge passage of a state ethics bill indirectly contributed to the downfall of a fellow Democrat he twice supported, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.

Mr. Obama placed the call to his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate. Mr. Jones was a critic of the legislation, which sought to curb the influence of money in politics, as was Mr. Blagojevich, who had vetoed it. But after the call from Mr. Obama, the Senate overrode the veto, prompting the governor to press state contractors for campaign contributions before the law’s restrictions could take effect on Jan. 1, prosecutors say.

Tipped off to Mr. Blagojevich’s efforts, federal agents obtained wiretaps for his phones and eventually overheard what they say was scheming by the governor to profit from his appointment of a successor to the United States Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Obama.

This has Daniel Halper at Commentary magazine in a snit, and he treats us to some Grade A sarcasm:

Additionally, in case anyone doubted it, Obama’s “relationship with Mr. Blagojevich [has] always [been] defined more by political proximity than by personal chemistry.” Phew, glad that’s cleared up. In a way, it’s too bad Obama was elected; who, now, will be able to bestow upon the former-Senator the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

The second commenter in the thread expands on the derision:

Yeah, St. Barack saved the day, with his courageous phone call to Emil Jones re ILLINOIS POLITICAL ETHICS REFORM — a no-lose proposition if there ever was one, with absolutely no political downside for a national politician. Besides, Rezko had ALREADY bought Barack’s house using $$ he’d shaken down from the construction industry and other state vendors. So Barack didn’t have to worry about being evicted from either his house or his US Senate seat. How freakin’ courageous. He’s a bigger hero than Lincoln AND Grant rolled into one.

Now look, neocons. I know it must upset you that this Blagojevich scandal as of yet has failed to taint Obama, because I understand how excited you were to continue your guilt by association high from the election. The letdown is always rough after a binge, so a little hair of the dog is understandable.

But let me break this down for you. Sometimes, elected leaders are asked to show real courage, and vote against the will of the people to do something that is unpopular, but the right thing to do. They will pay a political price, but as leaders, that is what they have to do if they have the best interests of the nation at heart. In these cases, there is no reward other than knowing they have done the right thing, and there is a short-term political price to pay.

Other times, elected leaders get no-brainers- political gifts, if you will. They get to do the right thing, and they will be rewarded by the electorate for doing what is best for the country, and it really is a “gimme”- they get to do the right thing and will be given credit by the media and the voters. This case, with Obama pushing for the passage of this legislation, appears to be one such occurence.

This is just how it works out, and I know this is going to be hard for you to understand. After all, we have just spent eight years with George Bush and his third way, in which Republicans do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons and suffer huge political costs. I know that you have confused yourselves into thinking that is political courage, but in reality, it is just stupid, bad for the country, and for politicians, untenable. Unless, of course, you like the new heights of electoral success that the Republicans have achieved in 2006 and 2008.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Barack Obama is no George Bush.

*** Update ***

Halper writes in to clarify that his intent to mock the speed with which the NT Times to defend Obama, not Obama himself. Not sure how that jibes with his medal of freedom remark, and I am not sure why the Times is to be mocked for getting something right, but thought I would put the clarification out there. Picking on them for getting something right, particularly when their pages featured Judith Miller for so long and still have the inestimably wrong Bill Kristol writing for them seems to be rather odd. At least we are both glad that Obama really isn’t culpable for anything in this case as of now.

Watching the news coverage of Blagealphabet, and how truly damning the recordings are, and the only thing that keeps popping into my mind is what on earth he was thinking. It was so damned brazen- this was not garden variety corruption. Jeffrey Toobin seems to be in a state of shock.

Meanwhile, the GOP is still completely clueless:

Shortly after the news broke that Blagojevich was arrested for, among other things, seeking to profit for filling the Senate seat vacated by Obama, the RNC fired off an e-mail to reporters that included laudatory remarks the president-elect has made about the troubled governor in the past.

Included in the RNC e-mail was an Obama quote: “If the governor asks me to work on his behalf, I’ll be happy to do it.”

The e-mail also noted that when Obama endorsed Blagojevich for a second term, The Associated Press reported the president-elect said: “We’ve got a governor in Rod Blagojevich who has delivered consistently on behalf of the people of Illinois.”

Apparently the RNC missed Blagojevich hating on Obama in the indictment. At any rate, today’s poll says 80% of the country approves of how Obama has been handling himself with the transition. Good luck with the smear. Morons.

And since we have not had one for a while, here is a kitty:

Two unrelated stories:

1.) Red State sent out questionnaires to all the candidates wanting to head the RNC, asking that they fill them out. None of them have responded.

2.) Larry Craig has lost his sex appeal. No, you perverts, his appeal to remove his guilty plea for soliciting sex in a bathroom.

I have said this before, but it is worth repeating:

In order for the Republicans to get back to their roots so that they may one day get back in power, they are going to have to become “fiscal conservatives” again. Now granted, looking at the history of Republican rule, they have NEVER been fiscal conservatives, as the vast majority of our national debt, to include the largest annual budget deficits, were all brought to you via Republicans. However, there are a lot of idiots like me out there who don’t pay attention, and think Republicans are fiscally responsible. As such, expect the Republicans to spend the next few years simply saying no to any and all spending. What they are hoping is a couple years of them saying no and the Obama administration spending will allow them to rebuild their favorite fantasy- the GOP as prudent defenders of the taxpayer’s money.

With that in mind, Tim Pawlenty has an op-ed in the Politico, urging the Republicans to… wait for it, wait for it… “return” to fiscal responsibility:

The Republican Party’s conservative values — freedom, personal and moral responsibility, the power of capitalism and a limited accountable government — are as important as ever. The GOP should build on its core principles by making its case with common sense ideas that are better than our competitors.

Our approach on issues like security, energy independence, free market solutions for better health care and education with a focus on accountability for results instead of just increased spending are ideas that will do just that.

But it all starts by putting first things first. A cornerstone of the Republican Party must be fiscal responsibility — living within our means like most Americans do. Wall Street and the federal government chronically disregard this principle and have substantially contributed to our current economic mess.

And because he knows Republicans don’t have it in their DNA to be responsible about anything (see this morning’s post for confirmation of that assertion), he is proposing a balanced budget amendment to FORCE them to be responsible. The Republicans understand that right now their number one mission is to return to the pre-Bush fantasy (and it is a fantasy, as this graph demonstrates) that they are somehow responsible stewards of your money. The fact that this is mere fiction will not stop them, and you should be prepared to swat down all the disingenuous posturing and posing they intend to do as they attempt to simulate fiscal responsibility the next few years. This isn’t about actual fiscal conservatism, this is about getting back in power to relive the glory years of the Bush administration, because we need to face facts- the folks pushing this pile of twaddle are the same ones who make up the 28% crowd who would have voted for Bush again in 2008.

I would love a fiscally responsible government, and that is why I voted for the Democrats. At least if they blow billions, it will be on the American people.

Here we go again:

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) called on President-elect Obama Monday to raise the Small Business Administration to a cabinet-level position, as it was under the Clinton administration.

Snowe’s request raises an interesting scenario: If Obama raised the SBA and then named Snowe as the secretary, Maine Gov. John Baldacci—a Democrat—would be in position to appoint a Democrat to the Senate, giving the party at least 59 members. That’d leave them one short of a filibuster-proof majority. If Al Franken pulled out a victory in the Minnesota recount, Democrats would be at 60.

I can’t be the only one who thinks all this nonsense about 60 is just an excuse- “Oh noes, we wanted to do this, but we only had 58 Democrtaic votes!” With as many moderates and conservative Dems as there are out there, I am hard pressed to think of scenarios where they would be unable to peel off a Republican vote or two, and should they fail to do that, they will have probably already lost conservative Democrats. The simple fact that they are counting Lieberman as one of the solid 58 votes shows how fanciful this thinking is. This focus on 60 Democrats is silliness.

Speaking of fetishes- Bush’s EPA director can’t figure out the difference between science and God. I am sure this surprises no one.

With two wars and a crumbling economy and a budget that is a disaster, for the life of me I can not figure out why the GOP is obsessed with the revival of the fairness doctrine. It truly is bizarre the obsession with this, and in unrelated posts here, every now and then one of the wingnut trolls will pop in and spout off something about it. What is even weirder about it is that ONLY Republicans are talking about it.

I can’t figure it out. Look, guys- you so did such a smashing job fucking EVERYTHING up that Congress and the Obama administration are too occupied with actual emergencies to worry about the stupid damned fairness doctrine.

*** Update ***

More paranoia. Someone just forwarded an email to one of my email lists claiming that NBC pulled the SNL “bailout skit” from the entire internet and asked “Now how much power would you have to have to pull something from the entire internet?”

You can find the “bailout” sketch, in its entirety, hidden away at the… NBC website. The name of the skit displays the depths of NBC’s perfidy, as it is called ‘C-Span Bailout.’ Tricky, hunh? They even reshowed the entire episode of SNL that contained this skit two weeks ago.

There is a new redneck diva in town:

Gov. Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist was paid $68,400 and her hair stylist received more than $42,000 for roughly two months of work, according to a new campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

***

Republican officials said this week that additional clothing charges would appear on the Republican National Committee’s campaign finance report totaling less than $30,000. But the committee’s report, which was due at midnight on Thursday, was not yet available as of late evening.

So they spent $180k on clothing for her highness- even though she is just like you and me, a commoner from Alaska. I know, I know, Republicans- John Edwards got an expensive haircut.

Someone could make a very interesting man on the street interview videotaping Republican donors and asking them if they think, in light of the election results, this was money well spent. A quarter million to dress up the VP, and no GOTV or ground game. Weird priorities, indeed.

Since there still seems to be some bizarre combination of excuse-making, reality dodging, blame-shifting, and general confusion among the right as to why Obama won, let me lay it out real simple for you:

Two Wars
Dow at 8000 when it was up near 14000 a short bit ago
Our financial industry so screwed up that we are spending trillions to rescue ourselves
At the very least, five trillion in national debt over the last eight years
$500 billion deficit
A deep recession for the last year while all Republicans did was say we are not “officially” in a recession.
Rising unemployment
Stagnant wages
Skyrocketing health care costs
$4 dollar a gallon gasoline

And on and on and on. The Republicans have lost the last two elections not because of media bias, but because they are being blamed for the current mess we are in, and they are being blamed for good reason. Until 2006 they controlled Congress and the White House, right now they control the White House. Listening to Republicans trying to blame their loss on media bias is like listening to OJ Simpson trying to blame his conviction on racism.

The Republicans did not lose because of media bias. Dan Rather wasn’t in New Orleans knocking water bottles out of people’s hands at the convention center. Brian Williams didn’t crash the stock market. Keith Olbermann didn’t invade Iraq. Chris Matthews doesn’t run OPEC.

Republicans lost because they were in charge of the country for the better part of the last decade, and their governance has been an unmitigated disaster. This is not rocket science. You can argue that Democrats should share some of the blame for some of the policies, and you would not get any disagreement from me, but that does not change the fact that the Republicans were in charge, and blew it.

Via Steve Benen, read James Joyner complain that the right ran out of current ideas some time around Iran/Contra.

Part of the reason I’m drawn to the center-left blogs, including those cited above, Kevin Drum, Steve Benen, and others despite disagreeing with them while finding it increasingly difficult to find center-right blogs worth my time is that the former are much more likely to get beyond the debates of the 1980 election. There’s almost no serious analysis of health care reform, urban planning, education, and many other issues that regularly crop up on the best lefty blogs on their conservative counterparts. If we read about those issues at all, they’re framed as if Ronald Reagan were still aspiring to high office: Say No to socialism! Abolish the Department of Education! Government IS the problem!

While traditionalist grand theory is still valuable and worth discussion, it doesn’t work as a blanket response to micro-level issues. And defining conservatism solely by “What would Reagan do?” is a political non-starter in a world that simply looks much different than in did twenty-eight years ago. It would be as if Reagan constantly droned on about the evils of Harry Truman. Time marches on. Debates must, too, in order to be interesting.

...then, via Clif at Sadly, No!, read Jules Crittenden Andrew Breitbart (my mistake) unintentionally concede Joyner’s point.

With the economy in the pits, the young, the restless and unapologetically handsome should use their looks, vigor and Internet knowledge to wrest away elective office from joyless bureaucrats who gallingly repackaged the soiled utopian promises of their overly replayed Woodstock days as “hope” and “change.”

[...] The suburban Mall Rats will be the first Obamacons to come back to the fold when they realize that trickle-up socialism limits their lifestyle options. So let’s stop first at Abercrombie and Fitch. See those shirtless models in the storefront tossing footballs in the air?

There’s a better use of their time and efforts. Tanned, coiffed and seriously cut, these young studs could be tossing free-trade legislation across the halls of the Cannon House Office Building faster than you can Twitter “The Bella Twins.”

[...] Sure, a lot of our newly elected officials may not be completely up to speed on the issues, but once elected, they’ll have close to three months to cram. That’s almost a full semester – enough time to get the gist of the Constitution. Leave the details for the staffers.

Got that? James Joyner worries that Republican ideas can be exhaustively covered in a pamphlet. Mistaking that weakness for a strength, Breitbart imagines contesting the next election with an unstoppable army of Sarah Palins.

Between Joyner and Crittenden Breitbart, who sounds more in tune with the country as a whole?

Who sounds more in tune with the Republican party?

***Update***

For whatever weird reason I mistakenly wrote Crittenden when I meant Breitbart. Boo for proofreading.

Sullivan points to the following gem from the editors at the NRO:

Given their cavalier disregard for the freedom of conscience, it’s little surprise that the gay lobby is equally disdainful of democracy: They began pursuing legal challenges to Proposition 8 practically before they were done tallying the votes. Lamentably, the state attorney general defending the will of the people will be former Jerry Brown, the liberal former governor who was an open opponent of the measure and tried to sabotage it. The legal challenges will be heard by the same state Supreme Court that overturned California’s previous law forbidding gay marriage back in May. There’s a real possibility the will of the people will be spurned a second time, democracy be damned. They’ve already burned the Book of Mormon. The First Amendment is next.

You could point to regrettable incidents that some in the gay lobby may have taken part in, burning the book of mormon seems particularly inflammatory, if you pardon the pun, but the notion that the first amendment is at stake is pretty rich. The logic, according to our repressed wingnuts, is that the first amendment struggle goes something like this:

Wingnut- “Homosexuals are filthy sodomites who should not have access to marriage.”

Evil gay person- “Nonsense. I demand the same rights as you and will fight for them.”

Wingnut- “Why won’t you respect my right to free speech?”

And there you have the wingnut understanding of the Constitution.

Via Sullivan, this DVD from the American Family Association:

Residents of the small Arkansas town of Eureka Springs noticed the homosexual community was growing. But they felt no threat. They went about their business as usual. Then, one day, they woke up to discover that their beloved Eureka Springs, a community which was known far and wide as a center for Christian entertainment—had changed. The City Council had been taken over by a small group of homosexual activists.

The Eureka Springs they knew is gone. It is now a national hub for homosexuals. Eureka Springs is becoming the San Francisco of Arkansas. The story of how this happened is told in the new AFA DVD “They’re Coming To Your Town.”

One of the first actions of the homosexual controlled City Council was to offer a “registry” where homosexuals could register their unofficial “marriage.” City Council member Joyce Zeller said the city will now be promoted, not as a Christian resort, but a city “selling peace, relaxation, history and sex.”

Oogedy-Boogedy! Yes, the existential threat to the way of life for the good folks of Eureka Springs is that people came to their town and… tried to form a family. Terrifying.

And before we forget, this gets back to the Kathleen Parker piece from yesterday- the AFA is the face of the GOP base, at least to those of us on the outside looking in. This is the real problem for the GOP. I can understand how people might not want things to change, especially core issues like marriage. But it isn’t just marriage- it is everything, and Kevin Drum neatly summed up the problem for the GOP:

There will always be plenty of votes for a culturally conservative party. That’s not the problem. The problem is the venomous, spittle-flecked, hardcore cultural conservatism that’s become the public face of the evangelical wing of the GOP. It’s the wing that doesn’t just support more stringent immigration laws, but that turns the issue into a hate fest against La Raza, losing 3 million Latino votes in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just a little skittish about gay marriage, but that turns homophobia into a virtual litmus test, losing 6 million young voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just religious, but that treats belief as a precondition to righteousness, losing 2 million secular voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just nostalgic for old traditions, but that fetishizes the heartland as the only real America, losing 7 million urban voters in the process. It’s the wing that goes into a legislative frenzy over Terry Schiavo but six months later can barely rouse itself into more than a yawn over the destruction of New Orleans.

Now, the GOP didn’t lose all those votes solely because of their embrace of cultural victimhood. It was a Democratic year, after all, and the economy worked against them too. Still, exit polls suggest they had already lost most of this ground by 2006, and the economy had nothing to do with it back then. Conservative gains after 9/11 may have masked the problem for a while, but fundamentally these are voters who saw the Republican Party turn into a party of rabid identity politics and turned away in disgust. It’s probably cost them (so far) about 10 million votes, and in an era where 53-47 is considered a big victory, that’s a helluva deficit to make up elsewhere.

A party that merely wants to move more slowly and more deliberately than liberals in the cultural sphere wouldn’t have lost all those votes. But the real-life GOP, a party whose primary association in much of the public mind is with revulsion toward gays, immigrants, urban elites, and the non-churchgoing, did. That’s oogedy-boogedy.

And all the embrace of Sarah Palin did by the GOP base was solidify that perception. The GOP has decided that the route to electoral success is a divisive “us v. them” mentality. One small problem for the GOP- they included too many people in the “them” category. You would think a huge electoral loss to the “MOST LIBERALEST SENATOR EVER,” a black man named Hussein, would make them think about their strategy for a moment.