Comments | davidbcoe: Special Inauguration Week BOW Award

davidbcoe

Special Inauguration Week BOW Award

Jan 25, 2009 13:38

I'm still not ready to return to the full-length BOW (Buffoon Of the Week) Award entries I was posting during the political campaign. But I did want to give out this special Inauguration Week BOW Award, because it seems so richly deserved.

No, I'm not giving it to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, for his mangling of the ( Read more... )

obama, politics, bow award, bush, rush limbaugh

Comments 27

arhyalon January 26 2009, 02:22:17 UTC

>I thought George Bush and the Republican leaders of Congress for most of the last decade were conservatives.

You don't have many conservative friends, do you? Otherwise, you would know that...no, George Bush is by no means a conservative, and the conservatives have been despairing of him for years now. (He is a Republican, but there is a whole group of Republicans who are not conservatives. McCain is another, which is why he had trouble appealing to the conservative voting base. Before Palin, they weren't behind him at all.)

But, you are absolutely right...hoping the president fails is just vile and petty! I much prefer the attitude of Zo (Alonso whatever-his-name-is, the young, black, conservative who makes all those funny web casts) who hoped very much that Obama does well, despite his objections to him. He shows a much greater breadth of mind.

davidbcoe January 26 2009, 04:11:47 UTC

Conservatism knows many forms, I guess. George Bush's social views were and are deeply conservative. So was his approach to foreign policy, which ignored the UN and international diplomatic efforts in favor of military aggression and unilateralism. So was his approach to the environment. To my mind, the only thing that wasn't conservative was his profligate spending and refusal to face budget realities.

kmarkhoover January 26 2009, 14:13:11 UTC

I know many conservatives like to say GWB really isn't a conservative. (I'd be trying to distance myself and my party from him, too, if I was a member of the GOP.) But like it or not the old Goldwater brand of conservatism is long dead.

The modern day GOP has morphed into something Goldwater would find totally unrecognizable. So would T.R. So would Eisenhower. So would Lincoln.

THAT Republican Party -- one of true fiscal/economic/environmental conservatism -- is dead and gone. And it ain't coming back.

davidbcoe January 26 2009, 16:13:59 UTC

Mark wrote: "THAT Republican Party -- one of true fiscal/economic/environmental conservatism -- is dead and gone. And it ain't coming back."

And for proof of this, one need only reflect on this Presidential campaign. If there is a modern day Republican who comes close to this old ideal, it's the John McCain of 2000. And in order to win his party's nomination this time around he had to sell his soul to the hard-core right. Sad, but true. In my opinion, the closest thing to old-school GOP conservatism that exists today is the Democratic Blue-Dog Coalition.

Thread 6

kmarkhoover January 26 2009, 14:05:19 UTC

What amazes me is how he still has an audience when after the 2006 elections he admitted on air he was carrying water for the GOP. Think about that. Then think about the people who listen to his show, support and defend the pig vomit he spews on air daily, and don't see a problem with that ( ... )

arhyalon January 26 2009, 15:33:40 UTC

>What amazes me is how he still has an audience when after the 2006 elections he admitted on air he was carrying water for the GOP ( ... )

davidbcoe January 26 2009, 16:30:02 UTC

I utterly reject the notion that the media has a liberal bias. Yes, I know: there were studies that said the media ran more positive coverage of Obama than of McCain, except for a small period in September when McCain was leading. The problem with this study (which is reflected in that two week blip in McCain's favor) is that the study counted as "positive" and "negative" coverage any story that dealt with the horserace issue. So any story that cited a poll showing Obama ahead counted as "positive" coverage for Obama and "negative" coverage for McCain. The fact is that the media is biased toward whatever sells. When the Rev. Wright story broke the media beat it to death, hurting Obama the entire time. They never reported the John Hagee story with the same vigilance because it wasn't as juicy. This worked to McCain's benefit. In fact, for months people referred to the media as "McCain's base" because they loved him so much and shied away from negative stories about him. NOT writing a story doesn't show up in studies like the ( ... )

davidbcoe January 26 2009, 16:10:48 UTC

Can't argue with anything you say here, Mark. There are right-wingers I can understand and respect, even as I disagree passionately with their ideology. Rush is not one of them. He is a loathsome human being through and through.

(The comment has been removed)

Re: My Four Words: davidbcoe January 26 2009, 16:15:30 UTC

Beats mine: "Limbaugh is a gasbag."

Thanks for the comment!

crazywritergirl January 26 2009, 17:43:36 UTC

Somehow Mr. L doesn't realize that if our prez fails to lead us out of the wilderness, the country is fornicated. So in essence, he wants us to fail just so he can point and say, "See, I told you so!" Much like the idiot notion of burning the village to save it. Only this time the village in question the USA.

davidbcoe January 26 2009, 18:10:19 UTC

Well put, Jana. That's exactly what he'd saying.

arhyalon January 29 2009, 01:05:18 UTC

The list of things that the Conservatives are screaming about because the news media never touches them are long indeed ( ... )

davidbcoe January 29 2009, 01:38:26 UTC

Yeah, Jagi, I hear what you're saying, but I just don't buy it. The media stories that are "heartwarming" often involve traditional (and I think superficial) expressions of patriotism or "old-fashioned family values" that bear little resemblance to what many people experience in today's world. They are deeply conservative in the things they value and not necessarily "liberal" at all. But they sell. Modern conservatives, in my opinion, scream about the "liberal press" because their ideas are bankrupt. Complaining about the press is all they've got. I happened to listen in to today's White House press briefing, and you should have heard the "liberal press" hammering away at Obama's Press Sec. (whose name I've forgotten) about little piddling stuff. They're playing gotchya, just like the right complains about, but they're doing it to the Democrat now. The difference is, if they play gotchya with Obama he'll run circles around them, because he's way, WAY smarter than any of them. When they play gotchya with Dubya or Palin, or ( ... )