The lesson here is simple. At a deep ideological level, Republicans believe that federal bureaucracies are inherently inept, so when Republicans occupy the White House they have no interest in making the federal bureaucracy work. And it doesn’t.

Kevin Drum, making a point that I’d take even further: The GOP not only has no interest in “making it work,” they have a vested interest in the federal bureaucracy looking as ineffective as possible. That’s the only way to feed the larger narrative that government is bad in every instance, in every venture, and must never be tried as a potential solution for anything. Thus Mitt’s “just let industry clean it up” blather; he knows there will be no challenge, there will be no “so what’s the business model there, exactly and in detail?” question from an ever-pliant media. He can say it with impunity because the GOP has been peddling versions of this line for 20 years now and people have essentially stopped thinking about or even really hearing it.
This is also why the Post Office is being run into the ground with malice aforethought; no program major, minor, or indispensable can be seen to work. At best, government programs can only be tolerated. This is why there’s no interest in actually managing defense procurement (which would seem to be a GOP darling on its face). The GOP does want the weapons the better to kill people with; but any overruns are just excellent evidence as to the inability of government to do anything. So why bother actually reigning anything in? Forget those damnable statistics showing the decline in bureaucrats in military procurement exactly tracks the explosion in cost overruns and delays. That’s just numbers. They lie. Follow your gut and most of all your basest fears: government can do nothing and must be eliminated wherever possible. Therefore, more in sadness than in anger, the time has come to eliminate Medicare and Social Security.

Government can do nothing. Go die in the streets. This is who they are.

The trouble with moderate Republicans

John Chait looks at “moderate” Republican apologists and doesn’t like what he sees:

[Michael Gerson] wants a specific assurance that Ryan doesn’t plan to roll back government at the expense of the poor and vulnerable? We already have a specific, written assurance that it will come at the expense of the poor and vulnerable. That assurance is called “the Ryan plan.” It details absolutely enormous cuts to programs for the poor. And it’s not like Ryan was backing away from those cuts in his speech. The Ryan poverty speech was about how throwing poor people off their government-funded nutritional assistance and health care would force them off their lazy butts and make them go get a job, plus private charity something something.

It is remarkable how Republicans have managed to hold together a coalition of not only voters but leading public intellectuals who simply refuse to face up to what their party actually stands for.

Not only do the Serious People refuse to face up to their own blind spots; that would be bad enough but ultimately tolerable…just don’t bother reading them. Far worse, though, these self-appointed Serious Ones are group that provides the political oxygen for the increasingly right wing nutjobs that are standing for office around the country by painting them with an air of reasonability and acceptability.
If (to name but one example cited above) they would face the harsh, detailed in black and white reality of the Ryan Plan, and then call these folks out early and often on this kind of nonsense, it would end. You wouldn’t be able to talk about it in Serious company, because you’d know you would be called out nationally, explicitly, point-by-point, and painstakingly made to defend it all. Or, perhaps, the nation would collectively decide “yes, that’s what we want.” But this crap of pretending none of it exists, that there is no factual proof that this is the plan, or intimating that it isn’t what they’d really do when given the chance is the worst of all possible worlds. And, most infuriatingly of all, these fuckers self-aggrandizingly think of themselves as the Serious People in the room. They are nothing of the sort. They are, perhaps, the least serious people in all of American thought.

Intellectual honesty. Empirical reality. Rigor. None of these things are hallmarks of David Brooks, Michael Gerson, or any of these so called moderates. When are we or they planning to do something about that? Looking at you, New York Times.

How You Know it Landed

Mitt Romney: our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917.
Barack Obama: I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works.You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
Sean Hannity: Marines still use bayonets, so maybe somebody should educate the president about how the military works.

How Biden can win the vice presidential debate

“Did Romney call for well-off Americans to contribute nothing to deficit reduction — or for hard-working high school graduates to be deported, though they were brought here as children – or for millions of poor workers to be stripped of basic health coverage – because he really believes in this pinched vision of America? Or did he do it because he thought that’s what it took to win the nomination?

“I have no idea, my friends. And neither does anyone else.

“That’s the point. It’s impossible to know Mitt Romney’s real values. But it’s entirely possible to understand the conservative forces Romney has pandered to and empowered in his thirst for office. They’re the same extremists who will be calling the shots if you send him to the White House.

Just some of Matt Miller’s speaking suggestions to Joe Biden. Probably best to forward this to Biden’s boss as well. Read the whole thing

How Biden can win the vice presidential debate

It’s been unbelievable to see what Louis’ been able to do when left to his own devices.

John Landgraf Prexy of FX (because “President” is apparently far too long a word for your average linotyper to cast and print successfully in an online medium; best to shorten it in idiotic ways) comments on the success of Louis CK when left to his own devices. Other artists, of course, need to be ground down with notes and other suggestions liberally applied by the folks that know entertainments best: the network prexies and their staffs.

worship the glitch: “Louie” not returning until 2014.

Scott Brown’s Favorite Justice

Perhaps an ad should be made that superimposes Scott Brown’s self-professed man-love of Justice Antonin Scalia with these comments that Scalia recently made at the the AEI:

The death penalty? Give me a break. [The framers of the Constitution didn’t think it was unconstitutional and neither do I]. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state [and therefore it should ever remain thus].

Good ole moderate Scott Brown. Always willin’ to work across the aisle when it comes to restricting women’s rights, restricting who we sleep with, and (most of all) promoting government sponsored execution. I’m sure these and other positions he and his beloved Justice share poll very well here in the Commonwealth. It’s a textual thing, you wouldn’t understand.

Today’s GOP: Futile and Bizarre

This urge among conservatives to refight the 2008 election is as futile as it is bizarre, premised as it is on the existence of a secret video or document from Obama’s “hidden” past that will expose the moderate Democrat as the hardcore left-wing radical they already believe him to be. But as [FOXnews contributor Brian] Kilmeade pointed out, Obama’s actual policy record – the only thing that actually matters – provides no proof of that alleged radicalism. Thus conservatives are put in the paradoxical situation of relying more and more heavily on “secret” videos and documents from Obama’s past that become less relevant with each passing day of the Obama presidency.

But, but, but: Obama was never vetted. That’s the most important thing.

It’s as though the GOP collectively ignored just how fierce that Democratic primary in the run-up to the 2008 elections was. And, frankly, one of the wages of their epic epistemic closure is just that: inattention to just what it is The Democrat gets up to day to day.
So let’s recap: Anything and everything worth using against candidate Obama was used against candidate Obama back in 2008. Now, they’re always certain they’ve got the super-secret powder-keg that McCain either didn’t know about or wouldn’t use; mostly these arrive in the form of hyping years-old video that, in this case as in almost every case, is and was easily available on YouTube. Predictably, the dread Librul Media is somehow convinced to hyperventilate about each of these and “report” on the countdown to the latest nothing-burger’s release. Drudge is, after all, still the Village’s assignment editor.

But, as Media Matters sagely points out: Even if GOP operatives had found the super-duper evidence that in some past speech Obama admitted that he hates the whites, wants to take their guns, and plans to turn ‘Merica into a socialist dreamworld that would make Castro blush, how could that possibly be more important and/or relevant than four years of governing that shows trends towards absolutely none of these things. Quite the opposite, actually. Even in the most fevered of swamps, that’s one hell of a Bill Ayers plan; get Obama elected, govern center-right for four years (to better court the full fury of his original and most passionate base, apparently). Then, upon achieving some narrowly figured reelection, blow the doors off and reveal the super-secret socialist masterpiece of a plan that will pass a still uniformly intransigent Congress, uh, some way or other. Genius!

Sharia law, here we come. It’s what Reverend Wright has been preaching all along, I tells ya.

Today’s GOP: Futile and Bizarre