Where Do We Go From Here? (wringing hands gag alert)

Newsweek ^ | 11/18/2002 | Anna Quindlen

[Utah Girl]

Pundits who suggest that this enormous victory could be bad for the Republicans because now they'll have no one else to blame-oh, please!

I am pleased and proud to live in the people's republic of the Upper West Side, a Manhattan neighborhood so historically liberal that one day I arrived at the supermarket to find a fierce young woman handing out leaflets on the horrific treatment of factory-farmed chickens. Luckily, I myself was looking for a nice piece of brisket.

THIS ABERRANT SLICE of America was predictably unhappy the morning after the big election. But along with the anger there was shame. Heard on the street-and in the gourmet store for which a friend says the motto ought to be "Why pay less?"-was an unthinkable whisper. Some of our neighbors had gone Republican for the first time in their lives.

...The Republican Party's historical hostility to the rights of women and the welfare of immigrants, its favoritism toward big business and big contributors, Richard Nixon's unwavering willingness to trade integrity for victory and Ronald Reagan's cheerful indifference to the disenfranchised: all conspire to leave liberals nowhere to go.

With this election result, they (the Republicans) will try to give estate-tax relief to the wealthy, to despoil the Alaskan wilderness by drilling for oil and to load the federal bench with judges who approve of the death penalty and are hostile to abortion.

...Lest we forget, the alleged left-wing positions of years past are now the bedrock of democracy: the franchise for black Americans, the equality of women.

[Paul Atreides]

It has its spot, right up there with "the children."

[Paul Atreides]

I guess all of those "disenfranchised" didn't know what they were doing when they helped Reagan achieve a landslide victory.

[madprof98]

By contrast, I scarcely know where my own party stands any longer.

Hopefully, Nancy Pelosi will make it clear for you and others too. Hopefully.

[Utah Girl]

Yes, we followed the Mass governor's race pretty closely here in Utah. Romney will always hold a spot in our hearts. We wanted him to stay here, but it is good to have such a competent person be a governor and leader in states that need them.

[Utah Girl]

I get really tired when I hear the word "disenfranchised" anymore. It used to mean something, when African Americans and others weren't allowed to vote. Now it means that the stupid voters can't read a ballot properly to vote.

[Paul Atreides]

This would all make a great comedy skit! I cannot fathom any group of people being so clueless. "Our solution is to be even more rabidly anti-American." Honestly, do they even know that there is an America outside of NYC, L.A., San Francisco, etc.? Please, let us encourage them to keep it up. Everyone, no letters challenging their ideas. Let them think that they are right by moving even more left.

[Dems_R_Losers]

I was all ready to get pissed off by reading the whole article, but I'm not! It sounds like Unconditional Surrender to me!

[Nick Danger]

...The Republican Party's historical hostility to the rights of women and the welfare of immigrants

Is it just me, or is this stuff starting to sound comedic to everyone now?

There was time when I worried that someone might read one of these New Yawk Tawking Heads and believe this kind of stuff. But now I find myself laughing at it. It's like these people have diminished to the point where there is now just a little clique of them in New York and Hollywood, and they talk themselves into believing weirder and weirder things. Like some inbred royal family, they're slowly going nuts.

To hear Quindlan talk, or Moyers over in that other thread, unspeakable horrors are about to be unleashed on the populace by crazed right-wing fanatics. You'd think George W. Bush, who gets booed all the time around here for not being conservative enough, is about to establish the American Taliban. Do they really believe this stuff, or is this part of the denial-and-anger phase of the hosing they took last week?

Whatever it is, they sound more and more like paranoid crazy people every day. And to think, they used to be "mainstream journalism." Now they're just a trickle of liberal looneytoons, singing ever-crazier hymns to an ever-smaller choir.

[stevem]

Every once in a while it's good for conservatives to read something like this nonsense, then sit back and recall what it is that liberals really need for life to be grand. It really never had anything to do with leveling playing fields or providing the good life or any such things.

Liberals want AND NEED people to be helpless without them. They need people to avoid self reliance at all costs. They like the idea of providing sustenance, barely. It's best if this sustenance saps desire for self improvement, for we can't have people thinking they can improve themselves without government help.

Liberals need to be able to tell people where and how to live. They need this because they know...KNOW...what is best for you. Your ideas on the subject are quite irrelevant, for what do you know after all, you of the great unwashed.

It's vitally crucial that if you are an independent thinker, that you be squashed like a bug, because independent thinking is as anathema to a liberal as it was to Ho Chi Minh or is to Fidel Castro.

For liberals, you can't properly drive any car you like nor should you be permitted to smoke without tripling you tax nor hunt or shoot trap for that matter.

For liberals if you make minimum wage, you already are a winner in life's lottery, so just plan to send it in...we'll send you what you need...that's our job..and WE know what you need.

For liberals, if you harvest renewable resources, you are the devil incarnate. If you find nonrenewable resources, you should plan to leave them right where they are. The earth doesn't need you and your resources are not there for your betterment or anyone elses, for that matter.

If you don't work for the government, you are sub-human. Oh, and don't bother negotiating any employment contract on your own, that's a liberals job. Never mind that many of we liberals have never really produced anything, what's important is that we know what's best for you.

This can go on and on. When you are dealing with liberals, recall that things are never either good or improving. They are always bead and getting worse...that's why a liberal was put on earth. It's a liberal job to slow the speed at which the world is going to hell in a hand basket. That's the best you can hope.

Finally, it's the lot of a liberal to be brain dead. If there was ever a liberal on earth that could read, he or she would see that Richard Nixon was exponentially more liberal than was Hubert Humphrey on the most liberal day of his life. You can look it up.

[another cricket]

Now it means that the stupid voters can't read a ballot properly to vote.

Or he couldn't find the polling place. Or he was speeding and got a ticket while driving there. Or he asked for a coffee with two sugars and a cream and got a coffee with two creams and a sugar.

When words no longer have any meaning it is sort of like Alice arguing with Humpty Dumpty.

I feel like Inigo Montoya sometimes.

a.cricket

[RightOnline]

"With this election result, they (the Republicans) will try to give estate-tax relief to the wealthy, to despoil the Alaskan wilderness by drilling for oil and to load the federal bench with judges who approve of the death penalty and are hostile to abortion."

......and the downside of this would be?????

[Slyfox]

Yiks, where's the gag alert for that photo? :)

Gag Alert = Slyfox

'nuff said.

[Savage Beast]

"...all conspire to leave liberals nowhere to go."

Want a suggestion, Anna?

[Jeff Chandler]

I get really tired when I hear the word "disenfranchised" anymore.

Didn't a bunch of McDonald's restaurants get disenfranchised recently?

[Utah Girl]

......and the downside of this would be????? </>

LOL, you read my mind. These things all sound good to me.

[Utah Girl]

Well said.

[Billthedrill]

Is it just me, or is this stuff starting to sound comedic to everyone now?

Oh, you're not alone. Anna's bleating that her "leaders" - surely as a nationally-syndicated columnist she qualifies as well? - have left them without fresh positions and messages and then in justification proceeds to trot out every decades-old cliche that got them into this fix in the first place. I think we can all, not just Republicans, see what the problem is here, Anna.

As for "letting the opponents set the terms of debate," she's equally at fault - how can the opponents do anything but, when your only political stance is "we're the opposite of them, whatever they're for." This isn't just handing the opponents the initiative, it's handing them your entire program.

Understand here that Anna's first two paragraphs dealt not with what she believed in, but that she was a Democrat by birth, upbringing, and environment. Anna, darling, those aren't the best of reasons for any intellectual conviction, and they constitute a lousy way to try to win an election.

[RugerM77]

>>>"With this election result, they (the Republicans) will try to give estate-tax relief to the wealthy, to despoil the Alaskan wilderness by drilling for oil and to load the federal bench with judges who approve of the death penalty and are hostile to abortion."<<<<

I reluctantly come down against drilling in ANWR-I could support it if we drill off California and Florida first-I detest the NIMBY attitude toward drilling in California.

[m1911]

Re: The Republican Party’s historical hostility to the rights of women

Which party was Wilson again?

Modern History Sourcebook:
The Passage of the 19^th Amendment

The New York Times

The Vote in Detail.

The roll call on the amendment follows:

FOR ADOPTION - 36.

Republicans - 36.

Capper, Cummins, Curtis, Edge, Elkins, Fall, Fernald, France, Frelinghuysen, Gronna, Hale, Harding, Johnson, (Cal.,) Jones, (Wash.,) Kellogg, Kenyon, Kayes, La Follette, Lenroot, McCormick, McCumber, McNaty, Nelson, New, Newberry, Norris, Page, Phipps, Poindexter, Sherman, Smoot, Spencer, Sterling, Sutherland, Warren, Watson.

Democrats - 20.

Ashurst, Chamberlain, Culberson, Harris, Henderson, Jones, (N. M.,) Kenrick, Kirby, McKellar, Myers, Nugent, Phelan, Pittman, Ransdell, Shepard, Smith, (Ariz.,) Stanley, Thomas, Walsh, (Mass.,) Walsh, (Mon.)

AGAINST ADOPTION - 25.

Republicans - 8.

Borah, Brandegee, Dillingham, Knox, Lodge, McLean, Moses, Wadsworth.

Democrats - 17.

Bankhead, Beckham, Dial, Fletcher, Gay, Harrison, Hitchcock, Overman, Reed, Simmons, Smith, (Md.,) Smith, (S. C.,) Swanson, Trammell, Underwood, Williams, Wolcott.

The 19^th Amendment was introduced to the Senate in 1878 by Senator Sargent, a Republican from California.

The first five women elected to the House of Representatives were women:

Chronological List of Members

MEMBER AND PARTY	STATE	YEARS OF SERVICE
Jeannette Rankin (R)	MT	03/04/1917 - 03/03/1919; 01/03/1941 - 01/03/1943
Alice Mary Robertson (R)	OK	03/04/1921 - 03/03/1923
Winnifred Sprague Mason Huck (R)	IL	11/07/1922 - 03/03/1923
Mae Ella Nolan (R)	CA	01/23/1923 - 03/03/1925
Florence Prag Kahn (R)	CA	03/04/1925 - 01/03/1937

So, Anna, why don't you do the 30 minutes of research it took me to find out the real deal on the Republicans history?

[m1911]

The first five women elected to the House of Representatives were women:


duh

The first five women elected to the House of Representatives were Republicans: