Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Overreach

Sully on the Right's overreach:
The Ohio law against collective bargaining rights for public sector workers did not just go down. it went down in a landslide. Yes, the unions poured money into the battle and outspent opponents. But the scale of the victory is hard to gainsay. In a critical swing state, the GOP is in full retreat. In Arizona, the recall of the official who had pioneered the anti-illegal immigration measures is another remarkable event. Ditto even Mississippi's rejection of a ballot initiative that is a theocon's wet dream (if theocons are allowed such things), and takes the concept of personhood at conception to new, bizarre heights and exposes the stealth theocon campaign against contraception as well.
See how quickly it has taken the Right to, as Whoopi Goldberg would say, "show it's ass."  No restraint, no brains, no thought at all. They've become the equivalent of white idiots in the South dumping eggs on black kids trying to sit at the Woolworths counter; if you just wait a few minutes, they'll do something so over-the-top asinine it's almost impossible to not have the masses of even quasi-normal people go "whoa-whoa-whoa...that's too much."  I mean, they pushed MISSISSIPPI into deciding life doesn't start with "how YOU doin'?" REALLY? Sometimes you need full-on insanity to remind you where sanity is.  As I wrote a few years ago:
In other words, we NEED these jackoffs on the air every day, spewing nonsense that repels the average person who doesn't lean extremely hard one way or the other. I would say these talk show hosts are akin to the people that brought violence upon activists during the Civil Rights movement. Some black people trying to sit at a lunch counter or walk across a bridge in 1965 isn't really gonna move the average white person who hasn't really thought about such things in anything more than a curious, just trying to get through the day, onlooker kind of way. But if jagoff lunatics start showing up and breaking eggs on heads or releasing dogs on black kids while swinging baseball bats, that white person might think "whoa whoa, that's too much...I'm can't be down with that." As awful as it was, the movement NEEDED this opposition of violence, and the bat-swinging racists et al played their part perfectly in prying loose the indifference of millions of onlookers. And that's what there is to gain from letting idiots like Rush and Seanzarelli et al spew their nonsense publicly every day.
Of course, in a perfect world governors such as Kasich/Walker et al wouldn't be elected in the first place, but hey.  It's a slow process.  If that.

9 comments:

Marley said...

"In 2010, the Democrats did not just go down. They went down in a landslide. Yes, the right poured money into the battle and outspent opponents. But the scale of the victory is hard to gainsay. In critical swing states, the Democrats are in full retreat."

Did the Democrats "show their ass" with The HealthCare Bill and thus, lose Congress in 2010?

I don't think so, any more than the GOP did in passing the Ohio bill.

You win some, you lose some, you pass what you think is good policy, and in the process, clever wags get to opine, "No restraint, no brains, no thought at all" and liken you to the forces of Bull Conner.

Marley said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/14/demolishing-the-democrats/

See. Lift, cut, paste and voila!

One overreach omelette (hold the "and the Democrats overreach reminds me of those racists who threw rocks at Freedom Riders" but add "new leftist emperor")

You and Sullivan are in good, conventional company.

Xmastime said...

Obama ran on healthcare, and then 63 million people voted for him. The majority of Americans want healthcare reform - large numbers of the people who are "frustrated" with Obama are because his HCR was LESS than what he promised.

i dont think anybody openly campaigned on "we're gonna take away collective bargaining rights/life begins at accepting a date" etc. Sorry, but sometimes they're not equal opposites.

Marley said...

Obama campaigned on a health care law, not a mandate ("A mandate means that in some fashion, everybody will be forced to buy health insurance. ... But I believe the problem is not that folks are trying to avoid getting health care. The problem is they can't afford it. And that's why my plan emphasizes lowering costs").

Overreach? NO, sayeth Xmastime.

Kasich campaigned on reexamining public employer bargaining rights (saying not so obliquely that he wanted to "break the back of organized labor in the schools" and "QUOTE") but not some of the specific forms in the final bill.

OVERREACH! Sayeth Xmastime.

Xmastime said...

"Youre the only one who gets me" - Freddy Prinze Jr, I Know What You did Last Summer

Marley said...

If not overreach, as defined by you, why did the Democrats undergo a shellacking in 2010?

a. racism
b. because people are stupid
c. the economy
d. tittays!

Simply puy, anytime a party undergoes a reversal, seven monkeys run to a typewriter to bang out an "overreach" column.

I'm waiting for the "underreach" column, but those damn monkeys are pretty consistent.

Xmastime said...

Voting people out isn't a sign of reversing radicalism as much as specific referendums.

Marley said...

That sounds like a fortune cookie. What does it mean in the context of this discussion? I've made two points.

First, the overreach argument is easy, conventional, and in the main, meaningless.

Second, to the extent you cling to it (as I cling to God, guns and the vote only for property holders), it would seem that the "overreach" of the health care mandate (a specific referendum?) resulted in the 2010 shellacking!

Xmastime said...

im saying there's a difference between the usual ebb-and-flow of elections re: congressmen and people going to the polls to retract legislation. most people dont bother voting for the president, for these people to work up petitions etc and then voting says something. if you're gonna say "nah, its the same!" there's prolly not much left to talk about here.