Animal sex….

The GOP can start over by actually honoring the Contract With America. At some point, they’re going to have to be willing to fight for something other than the social issues if they’re going to win. It can’t be all religious right, all the time anymore.

RightOFLeft on April 11, 2009 at 2:51 AM

Obama will spawn new blood. It’s about time for some fresh faces anyway. I worry more about conservatism in general than the GOP handlers. Thats one reason I liked that Brit Daniel Hannon. Laser beam speak.

It would stand that their evasiveness(as opposed to mere dissent) towards their country might be close to treason.

sethstorm on April 11, 2009 at 4:51 PM

So, what? The sitting secretary of the treasury belongs in prison then, correct?

Or is this evasion only bad when “the other guys” do it?

Blind party loyalty completely undiluted by reality.

Hittler would’ve sold his soul for a million just like you!

And what have the Democrats done for that “Forgotten Man” over the past 30 years or so? I must’ve missed it. Oh yeah, they are the fervent champions of increasing the minimum wage…up to a point, of course. No need to get carried away.

The Democrats just look at those little forgotten people as a good voting bloc. Nothing more.

ddrintn on April 11, 2009 at 2:03 PM

But that is not the “Forgotten Man” referred to in the title of Shlaes book. The title refers to a quote from William Graham Sumner, a great 19th century social scientist and economist:

“The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.”

Pretty relevant to what is going on now, and that is the Forgotten Man that Batchelor fears the Republican Party will lose (and that it doesn’t have to be that way).

sethstorm on April 11, 2009 at 4:51 PM

You are absolutely insane. Your antipathy towards the notion of private property, from which all individual liberty is dependent on, is the sort of attitude that would have driven our Founders to have dealt with you harshly and permanently.

You are an embarrassment, just like your Precedent. Did you cry the day the USSR dissolved? That must have been very traumatic for you.

ddrintn on April 11, 2009 at 4:42 PM

Their citizenship is of this country, though.
Their taxes are paid to this country.

It would stand that their evasiveness(as opposed to mere dissent) towards their country might be close to treason.

Depends on if they’re being evasive to our country.

sethstorm on April 11, 2009 at 4:34 PM

Their money doesn’t belong “to the country”.

My fear: Even a corpse can bounce. As a good liberal I am ready to form a committee to cut off conservativism’s head, sprinkle it with garlic and roach powder, burn it’s morally bankrupt corpse, tie it to an old wooden door and send it over Niagara Falls.

It’s the only way to be sure.

Good grief.

Sometimes you have to remind yourself that Obama didn’t win 98.9% of the vote. Not even close.

Nah, more as individuals who are entitled to keep what they earn.

ddrintn on April 11, 2009 at 4:21 PM

Depends on if they’re being evasive to our country.

…while Republicans look at them as second class to H1/L1 interests.

sethstorm on April 11, 2009 at 3:42 PM

Nah, more as individuals who are entitled to keep what they earn.

The solution is not you complaining on HotAir… It is you running for city counsel, or State Assembly or congress. It is you marching in the street in protest… Most importantly, it is you getting out and VOTING…

ddrintn on April 11, 2009 at 2:03 PM

…while Republicans look at them as second class to H1/L1 interests.

And that the Republicans on one hand not doing enough to stop it, and at the same time are alienating the “Forgotten Man” by being indecisive, weak and too pro-Wall Street, letting the Democrats steal their natural constituency.
+1

sethstorm on April 11, 2009 at 1:14 PM

And what have the Democrats done for that “Forgotten Man” over the past 30 years or so? I must’ve missed it. Oh yeah, they are the fervent champions of increasing the minimum wage…up to a point, of course. No need to get carried away.

The Democrats just look at those little forgotten people as a good voting bloc. Nothing more.

And that the Republicans on one hand not doing enough to stop it, and at the same time are alienating the “Forgotten Man” by being indecisive, weak and too pro-Wall Street, letting the Democrats steal their natural constituency.

+1

I miss RR and his politics … even RR knew you talked with your enemies.

Monkei on April 11, 2009 at 9:54 AM

Unless they fell foul of some obscure part of Taft-Hartley.

With this piece he stiffened the spines of a couple of Democrats. At least Gingrich achieved more than that.

el gordo on April 11, 2009 at 6:36 AM

True. It would have been better to have heard about the flip side. Batchelor often has Amity Shlaes on his show and pumps her book “The Forgotten Man”, no fan of FDR or the New Deal there. It would have been put things quite a bit more in perspective to have included the shortcomings of the Democrats going back 75 years.

I think that is the basis of his rant, Batchelor thinks New Deal II is coming, and that it is going to screw-over the “Forgotten Man” more than New Deal I. And that the Republicans on one hand not doing enough to stop it, and at the same time are alienating the “Forgotten Man” by being indecisive, weak and too pro-Wall Street, letting the Democrats steal their natural constituency.

Or maybe he just drank too much Scotch, it’s a little hard to tell from that rant.

Georgia’s Newt Gingrich (born Newton McPherson in Pennsylvania to teenaged parents whose father immediately scrammed)
What kind of bigoted rant is this? John, you are better than this.

Fox News is a parade of wet-eared Republican office holders, yet there is usually just one each allowed of the categories the Democrats own in multitudes: a Jewish-American, an Asian-American, an African-American, a Hispanic-American. Then there is the beauty pageant of fast-talking, rude Fox blondes—if they are not all the same woman in mood swings—who stridently mock the Democrats, yet have almost nothing to say about the Republicans, as if the party was a disappointing ex or mother’s latest beau.
John is really over the top here. I have never heard Mr. Batchelor utter such stupidity before and I have to wonder what caused him to write this. It seems very out of character for him. John is usually a brilliant thinker and historian and there has to be more to this article than the simple tirade it appears to be.

huckleberryfriend on April 11, 2009 at 8:10 AM

I agree with you. Some of that stuff was totally unnecessary and over the top. And there were even internal contradictions in that piece, criticizing Red-baiting at one point, and then turning around and criticizing Nixon for detente with mass-murdering Communist regimes. It was a weird rant alright.

Get over the regional label superiority complex shit.

I have some ocean-front property in Valdosta, Georgia to sell ya.

DAMN THAT GLO-BULL WARMING!

Oh well, does the property have sea wall or pier? Is it zoned residential?

Cylor on April 11, 2009 at 11:06 AM

Batchelor can dish it out, he can take criticism.

I don’t want to re-read his rant to double check, but I thought he made the point of Republicans beginning as a Northern anti-slave movement becoming the Union’s force with Sherman’s march to the sea (nothing really to be proud of imo as Northerners suffer an ill founded superiority complex today) leaving Batchelor frustrated wondering WHY Hoosiers persuaded themselves to become Union Democrats during the 20th Century World Wars.

What remains to call themselves Republicans are baldly badly educated or just prankish Confederate re-enactors—chubby men in gray and butternut suits with gold buttons and feather-tipped hats, clanking down stairs with shiny sabers.
I hate to be the one to state the obvious, especially to someone with Mr. Batchelor’s credentials, but…Robert Byrd is a Democrat.

Cylor on April 11, 2009 at 11:06 AM

The GOP isn’t going to win without those chubby Civil War re-enactors (which is actually just code for those regressive Southerners). I want to see the GOP try to do that. Just once. Let’s have the GOP nominate an all-Northeast moderate ticket in 2012 and let’s see how far it goes. Oh God, please let it happen.