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Old 05-21-2009, 10:48 AM   #1
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Default Comedy Relief: GOP, RNC to rebrand Democrats as 'Socialists'

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A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”

Which pretty much sums up the attitude some members of the RNC have toward their chairman these days.

Steele wrote a memo last month opposing the resolution. Steele said that while he believes Democrats “are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism,” he also said in a (rare) flash of insight that officially referring to them as the Democrat Socialist Party “will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”

Two other resolutions — to urge Republican lawmakers to reject earmarks and to commend them for opposing “bailouts and reckless spending bills” — are also on the agenda, but language that would have denounced Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican turned Democrat, and Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for voting for President Obama’s stimulus package has been dropped.

Steele didn’t want the special session to be held at all. The RNC will hold its regular summer meeting in July, and all matters could have waited until then. But the special session is being viewed by some in the party as a “comeuppance” for Steele and an implied criticism of his performance and behavior in his first 100 days in office.

Exercising a rarely used party rule that allows any 16 RNC members from 16 different states to demand a special meeting, conservatives in the party forced Steele’s hand, and now the special meeting will be tacked onto the end of a previously scheduled meeting of state party chairmen that will convene next week at National Harbor outside Washington.

A further comeuppance — a vote of “no confidence” in Steele — is not being contemplated, I am informed, because Steele’s opponents in the RNC have already won a major victory by forcing him to accept greater controls on how he spends party funds.

Also, while there has been some talk about replacing Steele, few consider that likely, at least in the near future. “Without a Republican president to decide on that change, that won’t happen,” the RNC member said.

But Steele is not a popular chairman within the RNC, and his recent statements that appeared to attack Mitt Romney and the Republican base have undermined his popularity even further.

Steele was elected to a two-year term as party chairman on Jan. 30 on the sixth ballot, but instead of quietly trying to consolidate power within the party and build up his image, he embarked on a publicity tour that included statements that some in the party considered baffling at best and incendiary at worst.

“He has a tin ear,” the RNC member told me when I asked him to name Steele’s worst problem. “He has a tin ear when it comes to the building (i.e., the RNC staff), the RNC and the party.”

Last Friday, when Steele was guest-hosting conservative pundit Bill Bennett’s radio show, a caller suggested that Romney would have been a stronger candidate against Barack Obama than John McCain but that liberals and the media had pushed for McCain to win the Republican nomination.

The caller was, perhaps, not making the most intellectually rigorous of arguments, but in his answer Steele seemed to outdo the caller.

“Remember, it was the base that rejected Mitt because of his switch on pro-life, from pro-choice to pro-life,” Steele replied. “It was the base that rejected Mitt because it had issues with Mormonism. It was the base that rejected Mitt because they thought he was back and forth and waffling on those very economic issues you’re talking about.”

Steele, who himself has said that abortion is a matter of “individual choice,” was opening old wounds not only by attacking Romney but also by suggesting the Republican base is bigoted when it comes to Mormons.

“His job should be to get everybody to sit down and focus on a message for the party and then get them to be the messengers,” the RNC member told me. “Steele wants to do the right thing, but he is clueless as to how the RNC really runs.”

Roger Simon is POLITICO’s chief political columnist.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22445.html
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Old 05-21-2009, 11:10 AM   #2
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Who needs terrorists when we have partisan politics?

Divided we fall - it's gonna be a hell of a ride!
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Old 05-21-2009, 11:12 AM   #3
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Looks like the GOP is going to sink further into the abyss.

Now is the time for coming together and remaining steadfast in your platform. Not a time to start calling the ruling party names. That is childish.

We need unity. Not division.
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Old 05-21-2009, 11:17 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by u2sarajevo View Post
Looks like the GOP is going to sink further into the abyss.

<snip>

We need unity. Not division.
The GOP isn't sinking ..... it is digging extremely hard.

Of course it is trying to catch the Democrats, after all the GOP is behind.
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Old 05-21-2009, 11:20 AM   #5
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That Steele sounds like a real b-bag. I am constantly baffled by how people like that continue to get themselves into positions of authority and success.
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Old 05-26-2009, 09:46 AM   #6
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A blast from the past.

...when even the NY Times knew a socialist when it saw one.
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Old 05-26-2009, 10:04 AM   #7
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So what you're saying is the current Republican party is no better than a 1913 New York Times columnist?

Listen, even I think that's a bit harsh.
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Old 05-26-2009, 11:10 AM   #8
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Originally Posted by bernardos70 View Post
So what you're saying is the current Republican party is no better than a 1913 New York Times columnist?

Listen, even I think that's a bit harsh.
No, I'm saying that

a) the Republican Party is made up of a bunch of useless hypocrites and clowns; and
b) the Democrats are socialists.

These two ideas are not mutually exclusive.

I thought the 1913 Times writer nailed it:

Quote:
Much that Karl Marx taught is rejected by present-day Socialists. Mr. Roosevelt achieves the redistribution of wealth in a simpler and easier way. He leaves the land, the mines, the factories, the railroads, the banks--all instruments of production and exchange--in the hands of their individual owners, but of the profits of their operation he takes whatever share the people at any given time may choose to appropriate to the common use. The people are going to say, 'We care not who owns and milks the cow, so long as we get all of the milk and cream.'
Obama and McCain, like TR before them, offer refinements to socialist thought of the early 1900 -- not sharp contrasts.
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Old 05-26-2009, 11:43 AM   #9
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Taxation is what it is, at the end of the day, it is a redistribution of wealth of sorts. While anyone can judge how much socialism is too much or too little, this has hardly ever been pure capitalism. And it isn't to be expected, quite frankly.

The balance of it all lies somewhere in between, as most things in life. Those who have less lean towards more socialist ideas. Those with more will understandably support purer capitalism.

If you accept with Republicans that Democrats are socialists, and then go on to agree with them on this matter, then you're in with them. So are Republicans right in this trying to relabel Democrats as socialists and are in fact only "bunch of useless hypocrites and clowns" due to other unrelated policies/ideals? Is that what you mean?
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Old 05-26-2009, 01:51 PM   #10
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So are Republicans right in this trying to relabel Democrats as socialists and are in fact only "bunch of useless hypocrites and clowns" due to other unrelated policies/ideals? Is that what you mean?
More like.....

....if a psychopath says that a schizophrenic is nuts, he certainly has a point. That doesn't make him less of a psychopath, but he is correct about the schizo being a bit bonkers.

(this is not to say that Democrats and Republicans are mentally ill....mentally ill people have a rational excuse for their behavior!)

More generally, all of the nasty things each party says about the other are more or less true...some of the things may be a bit more stretched than others, but the general themes and charges levied by each party against the other are reasonable enough characterizations.

If you break down a number of tit-4-tats between partisans, you'll find many (maybe most) follow this sort of form:

1. X argues that Party A has committed the outrageous act of __________, and that Y's unwillingness to condemn this is tacit support of said destructive act;
2. Y retorts that previously Party B committed an outrageous act that was analogous to _________, and furthermore that X was a hypocrite for not decrying __________ when Party B was in charge;
3. Rinse, lather, repeat.

It's all just a long way of saying, "I know you are but what am I?"

Watching the two parties go back and forth from a (genuinely) disinterested perspective is a bit like watching the Hatfields and McCoy's do battle--they're a bunch of inbreds from the same small gene pool with few meaningful differences between them, fighting loudly and bitterly over a pig.
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Old 05-26-2009, 02:07 PM   #11
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Point well taken.

However, it is very comical. And I'm in general not very in favor of divisive behavior that can tear a country too. Too much damage has already been done at elections though, so I fear it is pretty late for that anyway.

Hatfields vs McCoys is alarmingly analogous sometimes....
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Old 05-26-2009, 02:33 PM   #12
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...I'm in general not very in favor of divisive behavior that can tear a country too.....
I think politics is inherently divisive -- trying to take the divisiveness out of politics is like trying to take the stink out of s_____. You just can't do it.

As one dead dude put it, 'war is politics by other means'. I think it's equally true that politics is war by other means -- it's essentially a zero-sum game where the victors get to divy up the spoils.
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