In other words, it appears the nattering nabobs of negativity in the right-wing media and Right Blogostan are the ones who are out of touch with the conservative grassroots, not Bush and the party apparatus. The brown nosers like Hugh Hewitts and Assrocket are the ones who have read the politics correctly (although they’d probably lick Shrub’s you-know-what irregardless; that’s just their personality.)
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October 5, 2005
WB: Silent Minority
Comments
“irregardless”–OWW!–just don’t use that solecism again, okay Billmon? It hurts my ears and it makes an otherwise excellent (as usual) post sound awfully ign’rant, there at the end.
Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 5 2005 20:42 utc | 1
“irregardless”- simply ‘regardless’ with added emphasis. Just one of the many things about Billmon that make the stop worthwhile…. ign’rant, but with a flair! Whatta guy!
Soandso
Posted by: Soandso | Oct 5 2005 21:19 utc | 2
Trent Lott may not be so quick to fall in line:
“I have a lot of confidence in this president. I do think he has picked some really good nominees and like all of us, we make mistakes now and then, and it’s our responsibility under the constitution in the Senate to review this nominee,” Lott said.
“(Bush is) not the nominee, and it’s not enough to just say ‘Trust me.'”
I think more than a few bible belters may continue to stake out a hard line position on Miers. They know that Bush is strugling with the radicals, and want to position themselves to be the new standard bearers of ‘true’ conservatism.
Posted by: Night Owl | Oct 5 2005 21:30 utc | 3
New MoDo
“I hope President Bush doesn’t have any more office wives tucked away in the White House. There are only so many supremely powerful jobs to give to women who are not qualified to get them.”
and New Fisk
“It’s not that Britons wouldn’t fight for America. They just didn’t want to fight for Bush or his friends. And if that included the prime minister, they didn’t want to fight for Blair either. Still less did they wish to embark on endless wars with a Texas governor-executioner who dodged the Vietnam draft and who, with his oil buddies, was now sending America’s poor to destroy a Muslim nation that had nothing at all to do with the crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001.”
Posted by: PeeDee | Oct 5 2005 21:55 utc | 4
In other words, it appears the nattering nabobs of negativity in the right-wing media and Right Blogostan are the ones who are out of touch with the conservative grassroots, not Bush and the party apparatus.
I don’t think we can assume this. Is there any potential Bush nominee that would get bad numbers with the base after two days? Remember the first post-Katrina poll? I tend to think that the immediate screamfest we see in the blogs takes at least 5-7 days to really filter out, if it’s going to.
Posted by: Aaron S. Veenstra | Oct 5 2005 22:39 utc | 5
*spank, spank* bad boy, Billmon. correct that grammar immediately!
there’s another faux pas, too, but I’m too lazy to find it..at the end of a graph you use “is” and I think it should be “has,” but like I say, I’m lazy.
otherwise, of course, I’m grammatically infallible.
Did anyone already post about the rumor of indictments? I hope hope hope…
and I just read about Miers or however you spell her name, and the photo op of the Aug. 6 pdb…and maybe it’s conveeeenient that she gets put on SCOTUS about now.
personally, the one-time ruling for Bush in 2000 has made those “strict constitutionalists” a laughing stock to me…except they deal with the law of the land.
however, the Supreme Court 5 ruined the credibility of the court long before George ruined the rest of the country.
isn’t it amazing how everything he touches turns to shit?
King Hankie George
Posted by: fauxreal | Oct 6 2005 0:26 utc | 6
You have to wonder how many of those conservatives constituting 58% voicing approval were even aware of the vast right-wing pushback. With an extended confirmation process, this could be a high water mark.
Posted by: Malcolm | Oct 6 2005 2:16 utc | 7
Trouble from the right:
Conservatives Confront Bush Aides
The main complaints cited at the Norquist and Weyrich sessions yesterday, according to several accounts, centered on Miers’s lack of track record and the charge of cronyism. “It was very tough and people were very unhappy,” said one person who attended. Another said much of the anger resulted from the fact that “everyone prepared to go to the mat” to support a strong, controversial nominee and Miers was a letdown. As a result, a third attendee observed, Gillespie and Mehlman came in for rough treatment: “They got pummeled. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The 90-minute Norquist session, where Gillespie appeared before 100 activists, was the more fiery encounter, according to participants. Among those speaking out was Jessica Echard, executive director of the Eagle Forum, founded by Phyllis Schlafly. Although she declined to give a full account later because of the meeting ground rules, Echard said in an interview that her group could not for now support Miers: “We feel this is a disappointment in President Bush. If it’s going to be a woman, we expected an equal heavyweight to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her liberal stance, and we did not get that in Miss Miers.”
Another conservative captured the mood, according to a witness, by scorning Miers. “She’s the president’s nominee,” he said. “She’s not ours.”
At Weyrich’s two-hour luncheon featuring Mehlman and Goeglein addressing 85 activists, the host opened the discussion by rejecting Bush’s call to trust him. “I told Mehlman that I had had five ‘trust-mes’ in my long history here . . . and I said, ‘I’m sorry, but the president saying he knows her heart is insufficient,” Weyrich said, referring to Republican court appointments that resulted in disappointment for conservatives.
I just think everyone is crediting the conservative “activists” with more clout than they actually have. Not that it isn’t good that the fascist elites are at each other’s throats, but in the end I think The Leader and the party apparatus will prevail, and the dissidents will find out just how insignificant they are compared to the will of the leader. That’s usually how fascist political movements work.
There is, in fact, a parallel with Nazi Germany (I’m in a Godwin’s lawbreaking mood this morning) There was within the National Socialist Worker’s Party an ideological Faction that look the “Socialist” and the “Worker’s” parts seriously. They became increasingly critical of Hitler because he was such a peti bourgeois baby and was obviously selling the movement out to the old elites. But Hitler was able to brush them aside with relative ease, because while they had considerable support among the old party men, HE was the one with the mass following, not them. In the end, most party functionaries (most of whom had joined the party after Hitler had become the maximum leader)put wet fingers to the breeze and decided to side with the winning team.
Something similar happened after the Nazis took power. There were many in the SA (the brown shirts) who wanted to continue the “revolution” and liquidate not just the Jews, Communists and Socialists, but also the existing civil service, the Army, the junker class, etc. But when Hitler decided to “take care of all family business” and moved against them (the Night of the Long Knives) most party members (and most Germans) applauded.
The point is, Hitler was always infinitely more popular than the NSDAP and the party bureaucrats. That was the whole point of having a Führer. Shrub ain’t the Führer, and his personality cult is looking pretty shopworn. But he’s still got the rank and file conservatives on his side — particularly those who have had it drummed into their heads by their idiot pastors that he’s God’s annointed one. If the anti-Miers rebels decide to challenge him, I think they’ll lose.
Posted by: Billmon | Oct 6 2005 15:24 utc | 9
I came over to point out that ‘irregardless’ isn’t a word and saw that, natrually, someone else instantly (probably) flagged it. When one of the best politico-cultural writers we have makes a small, rare mistake, you point it out because you care.
The corrupted version of Godwin’s law is immaterial, here. Billmon has been willing to call this uniquely American kind of fascism (‘lite’) by its proper name for a while now.
I think anecdotal evidence is very useful in understanding a personality cult, because it is remarkably uniform (like the talking points always are); your ‘sample’ doesn’t have to be that big. I have a couple very intelligent friends who are ‘civilian’ Bush Loyalists, and the Miers nomination – or something like it – is not enough to tear down their wall of denial; think about how much they’ve invested in that wall! Sure, the Bowtie Brigade is pissed, but Billmon’s right: they are a neccesary but not sufficient part of Bush’s original coalition.
In any con, everyone gets betrayed eventually, most especially the con’s ‘allies’. It’s just a matter of time.
Posted by: jonnybutter | Oct 6 2005 19:23 utc | 10
In any con, everyone gets betrayed eventually, most especially the con’s ‘allies’. It’s just a matter of time.
But there have been plenty of cons where the marks simply refused to believe they’d been conned, despite all the evidence, and became absolutely enraged at anyone who tried to point it out. And They often ended up blaming the whistleblowers for the inevitable collapse.
Posted by: Billmon | Oct 6 2005 20:49 utc | 11
The intellecktuals just provide hot air cover when required, and usefully engage the attentions of the left in meaningless debates. As Gore points out in a speech yesterday, the only masters Bush really needs to keep on side are those that control network TV. All the rest of the nattering nabobs, including the holy rollers, just have to swallow their pride and either get with the program or get out of the way. The publick will vote the way TV tells them to.
Posted by: PeeDee | Oct 6 2005 21:21 utc | 12
But there have been plenty of cons where the marks simply refused to believe they’d been conned, despite all the evidence, and became absolutely enraged at anyone who tried to point it out.
True. A mark is a mark whether they ever admit it or not.
Posted by: jonnybutter | Oct 6 2005 22:33 utc | 13
I came over to point out that ‘irregardless’ isn’t a word and saw that, natrually, someone else instantly (probably) flagged it. When one of the best politico-cultural writers we have makes a small, rare mistake …
I let it slide because between the Nazis in the White House along with the Taliborn Again brown-shirted marks sitting in the pews, I think the last thing we need … *switch to Foghorn Leghorn voice* on this here Intarweb [/Foghorn] … are spelling Nazis and grammar Nazis just piling on. Gee, can’t Billmon can show a human wart every once in a while?!? 🙂
Besides, jonnybutter, I count three adverbs of yours in that quoted text and *wags finger* serious writters aren’t supposed to use adverbs, you know! Damn and blast myself, too, for I’m counting three instances where I’ve used the dreaded elipsis to go along with your three dreaded adverbs so *hic* perhapsh we should both *hic* shtep outshide and *hiccup* watch each other kick our own ashses, eh?!?
*falls off bar stool*
The grammar nannies have gone off half-cocked.
The Irregardless is an emblem of office worn by the Mammonite Supreme Pontiff. It is the equivalent of the papal ring.
[see Caligula Spoor, Insignia, Dignities, and Duties of the New World Order: a Handbook. Gedankenschrift Verlag 2003.]
Posted by: eftsoons | Oct 7 2005 6:24 utc | 15
IOW the licking of the Irregardless is now customary.
It is a tad feudal for moderns of a certain age, hence the grudging modification with the adjective you-know-what.
Posted by: eftsoons | Oct 7 2005 6:38 utc | 16
[yawn] ‘Irregardless’ isn’t a style problem (any number of which *I* have) or a grammatical error: it’s not a word. ‘Oh, that shit doesn’t matter, man’ is reverse snobbery, anti-precious preciousness, IMO. It’s as if, since we’re just simple rusticated Americans, we can’t help but have a passive-aggressive relationship with our own language. ‘Fight the power of the word police, man!’ For what? That very emotion (resentment) was vital in getting Bush re-elected (‘I’m gonna vote for him BECAUSE the rest of the world hates him, BECAUSE they think he’s stupid, BECAUSE..’etc). The real word police are the Great Euphemizers, pols and their toadies who fuzz-up the language as a matter of course.
I dunno…to me, good writing is like music, and a ‘clam’ or wrong note hurts – it happens, but it’s not good. Of course all this doesn’t really matter that much (I’m not the one who brought it up again), but it matters at all because Billmon is so good.
Posted by: jonnybutter | Oct 7 2005 19:53 utc | 17