The Bloodbath
Apparently some conservatives are planning a bloodbath of deviationist types:
Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin’s critics as “cocktail party conservatives” who “give aid and comfort to the enemy”. He told The Sunday Telegraph: “There’s going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?”
I’m actually one who thinks that the occasional ideological purge can strengthen a movement, but this would be a seriously odd basis for conducting such a cleansing exercise. Nuzzo is talking about a blind test of loyalty, not any kind of substantive demarcation of conservatism.
58 Responses to “The Bloodbath”
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October 27th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
But does he have a board like Colbert? ‘Frum, you’re dead to me!’
October 27th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
What happens to the “maverick” platform being touted by the McCain and the RNC Campaigns? Isn’t breaking from the ranks and file what maverick means? This in itself is enough to drive some extra nails into the coffin of the Republican Party in the last week of the race.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
But who is the “Fearless Leader” going to be? You can’t have a good Fascist movement without one. Palin? Maybe, but I just… somehow doubt that.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I actually think (hope) it’ll be the other way around. Maybe some semblance of reason will win out and purge the extremists from the GOP. It can be the same test – if you think Palin would make a good President, you’re obviously useless for real governance, so go home.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
As Kurt Vonnegut observed a few years back, “…ideas were merely badges of friendship or enmity; their content didn’t matter.”
October 27th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Sure they’re having a purge based on loyalty to a candidate, but it’s actually the Democrats who have the cult of personality.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Since my desire for a healthy opposition party to keep things level is far outweighed by my desire to banish these menaces to society to the wildnerness, I wholeheartedly support such a purge.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I try to avoid feelings of schadenfreude (I’m more of a mudita guy), but I think I’ll make an exception for the coming GOP bloodbath.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Ah, the real Bush Doctrine…You’re either for us or against us.
Or as he would say, “Yer fer us or yer agin us.”
October 27th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Great! Brooks and Noonan are hacks, but they’re among the very smartest of the rightwing hacks. If the Republicans want to simultaneously excommunicate some of their smartest people, and also make it clear to any intelligent up-and-comers that independent thought is not allowed in the conservative movement, then go right ahead. Intelligent people who think for themselves will be welcome in the Democratic party.
It would be good to have a serious and constructive opposition party sometime, but for now the Republican party isn’t it – not even close – and the sooner they tear themselves apart the better. Maybe by 2012 sanity will prevail, and they’ll find a way to be something other than the party of old white men, racists, and ignorance.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Let the Dow drop another 2000 points and Nuzzo may find out what a “Bloodbath” is.
The WHite House just put up President Bush’s Remarks today in his meeting with President Lugo of Paraguay:
“I’m impressed by the fact that you want to take a strong stand against corruption. There’s nothing more discouraging than to have the government of a people steal their money. ”
———-
Tell me about it.
Ref: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081027.html
October 27th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Although if you trace back this story, it came from a British Daily Telegraph story filed by “Tim Shipman in Durango, Colorado ”
Someone may just be experimenting with the peyote.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
“I want you to get this fuck where he breathes! I want you to find this nancy-boy Eliot Ness, I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!”
October 27th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Excellent distinction! We really are in a banana republic when the ruling party’s big “litmus test” for loyalty relates to a personality, rather than an idea. But this is natural when the personality in question doesn’t present a single idea larger than the advancement of her own political fortunes.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I thought the David Frum quote from the Telegraph article was odd. Speaking of Obama, Frum said
“With this huge new role for federal government in the economy, the possibility for mischief making is very, very great. One man should not have a monopoly of political and financial power. That’s very dangerous.”
What? No “Unitary Executive”? No “VP Dick Cheney”? someone set Frum up for a talk with David Addington.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I doubt Jim Nuzzo speaks for most Republicans, let alone the corporate money that underwrites their shenanigans and that would dry up overnight were Nuzzo’s ‘excommunication’ ever to come to pass. They aren’t stupid, at least not the fatcats, and will definitely be conducting an extensive audit over their political investments once the election is over.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I agree with Sean above. If there’s to be a GOP civil war, with Frum, Brooks and Noonan on one side, and Nuzzo on the other, I rather think Nuzzo misunderstands his future. The former group represents money; the latter, crazy people.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Anyone else concerned that Brooks, Frum, and Noonan are considered not right wing enough for The Party? Scary.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
God, I hope not. Then pencil skirts will be the new Hitler moustache, and I love pencil skirts.
You would think Frum’s random attack on Rachel Maddow the other night would be enough to shore up his bona fides (and I think was intended as such). But no!
October 27th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Actually, the Democrats should look into covertly funding the crazy factions within the Republicans — they’re a cancer on the country but they could be an excellent tool with which to disembowel the Republican Party.
Just make sure you have the means to kill them off once they’ve served their purpose. Don’t want to make the same lazy , expedient mistake we made in Afghanistan and create another Al Qaeda.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
With any luck, we’ll wind up with a Real Republican Party and a Rich Republican Party
Oh, and Don?
You haven’t worked out that McCain is a longterm Democratic sleeper agent, yet?
October 27th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
More wishful thinking from liberals. If this stuff were true then Bruce Bartlett would be in Gitmo by now. They shrugged at whole books written against Bush by former conservatives. And they’re going to draw their line in the sand at Palin skepticism of all kinds? The only people who were savaged over the past were former insiders. Pundits don’t matter nearly that much.
What’s more, when you don’t really control anything anymore, there’s nothing important to shut Noonan, Frum, and Brooks out of. Writing in the WSJ and the NYT is a lot cooler than the gigs that these dead-enders are going to have after the election.
“Where did you stand on Palin?” What a joke. Only in liberals’ wildest dreams would functional, sane people, conservative or otherwise hitch their wagon to such a loser horse so completely. Unfortunately for everyone, conservatives will have much more advantageous paths to trod.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Guy’s name is Nuzzo? With zz’s pronounced as in “pizza”?
Dude, give the satirists of America a frickin’ break already….
October 27th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
At one time I thought Peggy Noonan was a decent Republican. Her first column, after the 9/11 attacks, after we knew that hundreds of firemen were dead, and could predict that hundreds of soldiers would be dead, admired the courage of….news anchors.
If you’re part of the rich East Coast elite, and spend your time sipping cocktails with that elite, democrat or republican, you are out of touch. Noonan is out of touch.
The reasons Joe the Plumber both resonates and fails to resonate are 1) its what the average Republican thinks of the Republican party, and 2) its so clearly in conflict with what the Republicans in power (to include McCain, and Noonan, and Brooks, and Frum) actually are.
The democratic party is a strange blend of extremist groups and minorities. The Republican party is a strange blend of the lower middle class and a power/intellectual elite. Palin is representative of the mass of the Republican’s power: the lower middle class. The Noonans of the world, by rejecting her, are destroying their own reason for being.
Sk
October 27th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Actually, I knew Jim Nuzzo in college — he was a friend of my freshman counselor (”RA” in most places). So I know it’s not pronounced “Nutso”; it’s short ‘u’ and no ‘t’ sound, not unlike the world “puzzle”. If anyone actually cares. I’m showing off my first-hand knowledge of something, because I can.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Re firefall’s comment “You haven’t worked out that McCain is a longterm Democratic sleeper agent, yet? ”
———–
Fuck ME! That explains a LOT, doesn’t it?
October 27th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
elle loco and don boy:
The Italian pronunciation should be long u with the t sound in the double z, thusly: Newtzo
October 27th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?
On her head.
With soccer cleats on.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Enzo: I don’t doubt what you say, and that’s probably the way it was generations ago. I’m just telling you how this guy says his name.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I thought this was America. Republicans, either you are with us or against us. No disenting opinions. If the party truly feels this way, it needs to emplode. Since when did a party want to keep it members arrogant and ignorant and thinking totally alike? This is simply un-American. The republican party has forever proven, it is un-American. Republicans, it’s a whole new world out here, don’t be fenced in by ignorance and bigotry your party is forcing on you. You will be left behind.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
That’s what Reagan/Bush/Cheney said about funding Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan back in the 1980s! “What are the chances that will blow up in our faces? Never going to happen!”
Don’t play with fire! Leave the Rethugs alone with their ritual disemboweling. There are million better things to do with money than give it to wing-nuts!
October 27th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
yeah, it’s a bitch when the democrats have a candidate that the majority of the party can support.
i must say, i’m a bit surprised and a little disappointed in this thread. i thought there would be more people explaining, as sarcastro did, where they stand on palin.
when the voting is over on november 4, what’s left of the republican party will have to come in with spatulas to scrape the flattened palin off the floor.
October 27th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Please! Please! Oh pretty please!!! Please, let it be a bloodbath so long, so all-encompassing, so devastating that only Joe the Plumber could install a tub big enough to contain it. Or, not contain it. Let the (metaphorical) blood of the Republican party flow like a great Niagara across this land and drown out the ideology that has dealt such a terrible blow to the country. Let David Brooks’ Patio Man go down to his local Home Depot to buy the knife (made in China!) and let the (metaphorical) blood start flowing.
October 27th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
That has got to be a candidate for the most bizarre statement of the electoral season. How often do VP candidates of the losing party win a later Presidential election? Was FDR the last? And do they really think they can get the band back together again after that fight?
October 27th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
“ (I’m more of a mudita guy) [mudita]
Ooh. I’d not heard of that before. That is very cool.
“The democratic party is a strange blend of extremist groups and minorities”
That’s interesting to, whichever country it is where there’s a party called the Democratic Party that not only includes many minorities (like our Democratic Party), but also extremist groups. After all, our (center/center left) moderate liberal party is a little on the dull side.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
It would be odd to base their bloodbath on loyalty to Palin because if the Republicans lose — and they might win — I doubt that Palin’s fortunes will thrive much past November. Her future depends on the election. She’s got too much baggage to be a long-running figure not the least of which is that she’s very lazy for someone so ambitious. It’s said of her that she’s a quick study, but she had 15-20 years in public life to have gotten herself ready for the national stage and she did nothing. Not even after Bloody Bill let her know that he had plans for her.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Palin could never have gotten herself ready. That’s why she’s a Christianist fundie: she needs someone to tell her what to think and say. Unfortunately for the GOP, you have to tell her again and again, and there just wasn’t enough time this election cycle for Sarah to memorize all those darn buzzwords about all those darn issues.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
But who is the “Fearless Leader” going to be?
I don’t know, but I worry that he’ll control the arsenal of Anti-Anti-Missile-Missile-Missiles.
but it’s actually the Democrats who have the cult of personality.
Yeah right. Unlike the Republican meritocracy, where, until recently, a drunk, moronic prick intent on destroying the country whilst shredding the Constitution enjoyed the support of more than half of his party, just because he’s Preznit, and has his steely-eyed gaze and stuffed a flight suit. If I send you a buck via PayPal, could you please go out and buy yourself a clue?
Brooks and Noonan are hacks, but they’re among the very smartest of the rightwing hacks.
Inter caecos luscus rex? I guess if their IQ is 80 or so (Brooks/Nooners), they seem like geniuses compared to those pegging a 60 (Assrocket/Jonah/Instawanker/usw).
You haven’t worked out that McCain is a longterm Democratic sleeper agent, yet?
When he keeps saying “I need a nap”, it’s not the same as being a sleeper agent, ya know.
The democratic party is a strange blend of extremist groups and minorities. The Republican party is a strange blend of the lower middle class and a power/intellectual elite.
Or not. But thanks for parroting at least some of the RNC talking points. Next!
October 28th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Or with ice skates…
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