Rethug Rebranding, Southern Strategy Edition

Jelani Cobb has an article in the New York Times looking at Rethuglican / New Confederate Party attempts to peel off African American votes from the Dems.  Here's his conclusion:

"An honest appeal to African-Americans would start with the admission that Republicans didn’t lose the black vote but forfeited it. The Republican Party now faces the same dilemma as the mid-20th-century Democratic Party: whether its interest in black voters might ever outweigh its investment in the reactionary politics of race."

The "Southern Strategy" pursued by Nixon and his GOP successors starting in the 1970s effectively ceded the black vote in exchange for Southern white /"Dixiecrat" votes.  Recall that in 1980, St. Ronnie of Hollywood opened his campaign for the White House in Philadelphia, Mississippi, not far from where 3 young civil rights workers were killed by the KKK, and spoke approvingly of "states' rights" -- code for segregation in the South.  Nearly 35 years later, his party has grown, if anything, more exclusionary in its policies that ignore minorities and women and bitterly hostile to the first black President.  It looks like they're sticking with "the reactionary politics of race."

Rethug Rebranding: Nullification Edition

During the years leading up to the Civil War, southern slave states pushed the notion that they could "nullify" Federal laws that impinged on their system of slavery.  That notion ended with their defeat in the Civil War….or so we thought, until recent babblings by members of the Rethuglican / New Confederate Party surfaced.

Case in point:  Rethuglican candidate for Senate in Iowa and castration enthusiast Joni "The Castrator" Ernst, who was recorded in 2013 advocating the "nullification" of Federal laws: 

"You know we have talked about this at the state legislature before, nullification. But, bottom line is, as U.S. Senator, why should we pass laws that the states are considering nullifying?"

The idea that states can pick and choose what Federal laws to obey or not is the root of secessionism, and has no basis in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution that these idiots often claim.  The political irony, of course, is that this is what the first Republican President Abraham Lincoln fought against, and gave his life for.  His latter-day party, festooned with Confederate symbols and talk of secession, would be unrecognizable to him.

UPDATE:  Then there's this Rethug secessionist clown who thinks that the national anthem is "Dixie."

UPDATE II:  Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has the list of some pretty significant laws that were passed that wouldn't have if The Castrator's "ground rules" had been in play.

Rethug Rebranding, Hispanic Outreach Edition

Texas Governor and future reverse mortgage spokesman Rick "Hair" Perry has decided the best way to the 2016 Rethuglican Presidential nomination is to wear glasses to make himself look smart get some teabagger cred by sending 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to the Rio Grande valley.  The intellectually-challenged Governor, who makes Dumbya look like Stephen Hawking, apparently thinks images of National Guard troops confronting Latino women and children at border crossings will go down well with not only the teabaggers but also the public at large.  He's still smarting from being booed during the 2012 Rethug primaries for saying "I don't think you have a heart" to the nativist right who bitterly opposed educating children of illegal immigrants.

We await the photo opportunities of Commander Hair and his deputy commander and winner of the Yellow Heart with chicken feather cluster, Sean "Heil" Hannity, firing rounds over the heads of the women and children at the border.    Hopefully, they won't hit either them or the National Guard troops they're using as props in their political theatre.

UPDATE I:  Businesses in south Texas are opposing Commander Hair's deployment of National Guard troops.  The Rio South Texas Economic Council wants Hair to reconsider the move, saying it would "only create an inaccurate image that our safe and viable border region in the Rio Grande Valley is dangerous, and that the problem is not presently being managed, which is not the case." (emphasis added).  Hat tip to P.E.C. for spotting the story.

UPDATE II:  It looks like sheriffs in counties along the border aren't crazy about Commander Hair's plan either.  Support your local sheriff.

(photo:  Hair 'n' Heil pose for the camera)

How's That Republican Rebranding Coming Along? Libertarian Populism Dept.

A big hat tip to Greg Dworkin at Daily Kos today for doing all the legwork collecting opinions on the re-brand du jour Rethuglicans would have us buy into, "libertarian populism" (our emphases):

Matthew Yglesias makes short work of the inherent contradiction:

I've been meaning to write a deadly dull low-traffic blog post on the subject of "libertarian populism" for a while now, and I think my bottom line is this—economic populism can (and probably should) become more libertarian, but libertarianism can never be populist. 

Roy Edroso has a longer piece detailing the right-wing blogosphere's infatuation with the concept, along with skeptics in the neo-con wing:

The phrase seems oxymoronic, but the idea is to make conservatives and their agents in the GOP walk the walk on libertarian issues -- excepting, naturally, the social issues that always seem to disappear when such discussions take place. From the arguments on offer, the result seems the worst of both worlds.

As we have said repeatedly, libertarianism is a niche brand of conservatism, and in these parlous times for conservatism there are a lot of rightbloggers who want to more overtly associate libertarianism with the parent brand, in hopes of exciting the interest of voters.

  And, as if more derision were needed, Paul Waldman adds:

Libertarian populism isn't doomed just because it's silly, but because it's fighting against so much history. The GOP's image as the party of the wealthy wasn't created in a week or a month or a year, it was built up over decades. Decades of advocating for tax cuts for the wealthy, decades of attacks on welfare moochers, decades of opposing any labor protections, decades of advocacy for freeing corporations from the burden of regulation. If there's anything even the least attentive voter knows about the Republican party, it's that that's where the rich folk are. Changing that is an almost impossible task, particularly if that's where the rich folk are staying.

Why attempt the impossible?  Why not just stick with a truth-in-advertising approach,  i.e.,  the Rethuglican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party?  That seems to cover the right bases.

How's That Republican Rebranding Coming Along? A Progress Report

Today's Cartoons: Republican Rebranding FAIL (Cont.)

(click to enlarge)

(Ben Sargent, via gocomics.com)

(Mike Luckovich, via gocomics.com)

Another Republican Rebranding Fail

Frequent blind squirrel Dana Milbank done found himself an acorn in today's once great Washington Post Kaplan Daily:

Republican leaders had scheduled a vote in the chamber for Wednesday on a plan to help people with preexisting health problems get insurance — part of a broader scheme by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) to make Republicans appear to care about the little guy. But the conservatives lunching in the Rayburn House Office Building weren’t biting. [Snip]

“We can talk about flex time, we can talk about bills on Obamacare that are going nowhere,” Huelskamp said. “We can talk about messaging. . . . But in August, we’re going to hit the debt ceiling and we can’t avoid that. We’re running out of money, and as Republicans, we have to get ready now and talk about the vision of what we have to do to get our country on a 10-year plan to balance the budget.”

That budget-cutting theme, he said, “is the kind of message that gets lost in little things.”

So helping workers and the sick are “little things”? Cantor can forget warm and fuzzy for now; he has enough trouble just making his colleagues sound humane.

Huelskamp is crackpot Randian social Darwinist Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.  If any of these peckerwoods does show any compassion towards another human being, as Milbank says, it's "to make Republicans appear to care about the little guy" (our emphasis).

How's That Republican Rebranding Coming Along? (Cont.) UPDATED

In Kansas?

In West Virginny?

In Arkansas?

In Maine?

In New Hampshire?

In New Mexico?

How's That Republican Rebranding Coming Along? (Cont.)

In Texas?

In New Hampshire?

In North Carolina?

In Iowa?

In Louisiana?

How's That Republican Rebranding Coming Along?

In Georgia?

In North Carolina?

In Illinois?

In Maine?

In Texas?

In Michigan?

At the Republican National Committee?

The Browns, They All Look Alike

The latest manufactured "controversy" that's stirred the mouth breathers on the far right is Google's use of migrant labor icon Cesar Chavez's image on their site to commemorate his birthday on Easter Sunday.  So the same God-botherers who annually rail about another manufactured "controversy" in the "War on Christmas" took to their keyboards. Sadly for them, but humorously for the rest of us, they can't tell one Latino from another.   Many wing nut commentators confused Cesar Chavez with the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.  Much hilarity ensued before the wingers scrubbed their websites to correct the error.

Hey, rebranding the Rethuglican / Stupid Party is hard work,  there's not time to check facts before launching an attack on the wrong Latino.

Rebranding Cartoon - Lipstick on an Elephant

(click to enlarge)

(Tom Tomorrow, via Daily Kos)

BONUS:  As a companion piece, please have a look at Frank Rich's article, "Lipstick on an Elephant."

Sunday Reading: Rethug "Facelift Follies," Cont.

Here's Leonard Pitts, Jr., in the Miami Herald:

"Then there is Bobby Jindal. The Louisiana governor, widely considered a rising star of the GOP has, since the election, been preaching with evangelistic zeal that Republicans must 'stop being the stupid party.' [Ed. Note: thank you for the gift that keeps on giving, Gov. "Kenneth" Jindal!] Which could be a reference to Herman Cain, presumably still poring over a map looking for 'U-beki-beki-beki-becki-stan-stan.' Or to Michele Bachmann, perhaps still searching out terrorists in the office of the secretary of state. Or to any of a series of GOP candidates who made statements on rape so spectacularly ignorant they would stun even the men in those dusty places where wives are bought like cattle.

"So yes, signs are plentiful that something is afoot among the Republicans. But what does it mean?

"One might hope it signifies the party’s decision to abandon its alternate universe, offer reasonable alternatives to those voters not convinced that any one party or ideology has all the answers. One might hope it means an orderly retreat from the hard edge of coded racism, gay bashing, Mexican electrocuting, anti-intellectualism and fact avoidance that have been passed off as wisdom in recent years. One might hope it means a return of grown-ups, pragmatism, reason — and reasonableness.

"One might hope."

Steve M. over at No More Mister Nice Blog thinks he's seen this movie before, and that we shouldn't expect the Rethugs to be less radical -- only that they'll choose their targets for obstruction carefully:

"I think 2013 and 2014 are going to be a semi-rerun of 2009 and 2010. Reporters are being distracted by the shiny object of moderate-sounding pronouncements from presidential wannabes, and by Fox News dumping Sarah Palin and Dick Morris (never mind the fact that Fox is still welcoming the likes of Ann Coulter and Donald Trump, and offering a platform for the tirades of Ted Nugent).

"The biggest differences between 2013 and 2009 seem to be that the right isn't sending an angry army out into the streets, and that the GOP feels it can't be quite so blatant about its efforts to render Obama incapable of governing."

That sounds about right to us.