Notes On Teabagging. Really.

[Photo: Teabagging in Charlottesville VA, 15 April 2009]

Who gave this tax revolt the catchy name? Is she demanding royalties? Is she paying them to John Waters?

Where were the teabaggers when the last guy in office was bloating defense spending beyond reason or proportion and initiating the most expensive entitlement program in American history?

Teabagger is not an epithet I would self-apply. Anything-bagger is generally derogatory, e.g. "carpetbagger". Note to teabaggers: I vote for "Sons of Liberty," or "Mohawks".

Capitalism, like the sign says, is supposed to rock. If you believe that, you may console your bruised ego with the knowledge that you, and all of us, now own huge chunks of the American financial sector, theoretically valuable chunks, and that we bought them at closeout prices. If capitalism works, these chunks will, at some point in the future, be worth much more than 3 dollars a share. At that time, Treasury will be able to unload its stakes in the banks at a profit. Parti-nationalization would be good capitalism. Something any conservative worth his salt would applaud; buy low, sell high. This frisson between "defense of capitalism" and hatred of Tim Geithner's faith in that same "capitalism" is really the most interesting thing about teabagging, beyond the ballskin.

Of course, we don't have nearly enough nationalization, or the right kind, to recoup, much less profit from our national investment. Per the Geithner Put, the FDIC guarantees a profit for anyone who bids on bundles of troubled assets; barring unnatural occurrences -- such as every homeowner tied to a subprime mortgage suddenly winning the lottery -- the FDIC has no opportunity to profit. We are -- all together now -- privatizing profit and socializing loss.

I like the teabaggers' equation of fiscal dumbfuckery with treason. I especially like to see the advocates of less-to-no government espousing a penal ethic that would punish spendthrifts with beheading. I like the contradiction inherent therein.

I like the idea that Newt Gingrich will run in 2012. I see the teabaggers as his plutonium: there lieth power and radiation poisoning. I can see a future wherein the Republican Party boots its (presumed) Pawlenty-Steele-Romney wing, its paleo-conservative technocrats, in favor of sexier, wildfire hillbilly demi-movements. After all, Limp Bizkit is getting back together, so impotent white male rage might actually be a thing.

Pretty sure we'll all be speaking Chinese before we learn Teabagger.
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Future Star, Dead Giant

On the GOP Nova tip: today's NYT has a piece on a massive rise in viewership for Glenn Beck. This would be scary, if it mattered. NYT paints Beck as a Utah cryptofascist, hyping his talk of "surrounding" his "enemies," usw, which is not even the scariest genre of Beckism. That would go to his cri-de-coeur to the Salt Lake Tribune, May 11, 2007: "God stalked me! He had a baptismal rifle!"

Q: What's a baptismal rifle?

Anyway, NYT quotes David Frum on Beck's success: "a product of the collapse of conservatism as an organized political force, and the rise of conservatism as an alienated cultural sensibility.”

This is nice and succinct. It's not news. Check David Foster Wallace's Host for a chronicle of the rise of "cultural" conservatism on the radio. Beck is one in a never-ending stream of, put kindly, popularizers of the Goldwater movement. If I were a movement conservative, I'd be pissed too.

This officially conceded difference between "cultural" and "ideological" conservatism is phony, to my mind. Reagan was never so ideological as to totally sacrifice the welfare of the country: right after his tax cuts, he issued the largest tax increase in American history. The need to draw votes, or eyeballs, thereby cultivating a "sensibility," is just another way of saying "democracy."

So Q: How does Mitt Romney deal with it? What star emerges from the current cloud of gas and dust?

Revenge Via GoogleEarth

(photo: Wally Herger (R-CA) with a local beauty, as it were.) All blessings upon GoogleEarth's Congressional Districts layer for making sweet the meet assignation of blame...

Here are all the House Republicans whose districts contain MSAs with unemployment higher than 10 percent. Note the multiple nominations for California's Herger and Radanovich, and for New Jersey's Frank LoBiondo:

Connie Mack IV, FL-14, Fort Myers FL, 10% unemployment

Fred Upton, MI-6, Benton Harbor MI, 10.1%

Cliff Stearns, FL-6, Ocala FL, 10.1%

Ken Calvert, CA-44, Riverside-San Bernardino CA, 10.1%

Wally Herger, CA-2, Chico CA, 10.3%

Frank LoBiondo, NJ-2, Vineland NJ, 10.4%

Adam Putnam, FL-12, Bradley FL, 10.5%

Thaddeus McCotter, MI-11, Livonia MI, 10.6%

Patrick T. McHenry, NC-10, Lenoir NC, 10.9%

Nathan Deal, GA-9, Dalton GA, 11.2

Greg Walden, OR-2, Bend OR, 11.3

Peter Hoekstra, MI-2, Muskegon MI, 11.5%

Harry Brown, SC-1, Myrtle Beach SC, 11.5%

Jon Mica, FL-7, Palm Coast FL, 11.7%

Kevin McCarthy, CA-22, Bakersfield CA, 11.8%

George Radanovich, CA-19, Madera CA, 11.9%

Wally Herger, CA-2, Redding CA, 12.2%

Frank LoBiondo, NJ-2, OCean City NJ, 12.4%

Don Manzullo, IL-16, Rockford IL, 12.5%

George Radanovich, CA-19, Fresno CA, 13.2%

George Radanovich, CA-19, Modesto CA, 13.9%

Devin Nunes, CA-21, Visalia CA, 14.3%

Wally Herger, CA-2, Yuba City CA, 14.9%

You may, dear reader, assign asterisks, forgiving those Congressmen whose districts are historically depressed (Bakersfield), or which are beachfront communities during winter (Vineland, Ocean City, Myrtle Beach, Fort Myers), or which are economically OK until they get lumped into the MSA of a big derelict city (Livonia-Detroit-Warren).

I of course choose not to issue exceptions. The MSA is a great indicator of city fabric. To isolate statistically Narberth from Philadelphia would be to ignore the real economic ties between the poor city and its rich suburb. Also, as to beaches and other exceptionally depressed zones, you'd think apathy toward his constituents' employment prospects would get a guy fired, period.

Make the dream real...
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No Title, Just Revenge Via Mathematics

Quick backfill: the other day I wondered how Eric Cantor got House Republicans, some of whom must come from depressed districts, to vote in lockstep against the stimulus. I wondered, specifically, whose would be the heads to roll in 2010.

An Ohio blogger has a list of local 'Pubs who voted nay, along with the December 2008 county figures for each. So the Ohio Up Against the Wall List runs as follows, with a national average unemployment rate of 7.1, the winners are:

Robert Latta, 9.8

Steven LaTourette, 9.4

Jean Schmidt, 9.0

Jim Jordan, 8.5

...with special mention to the most outspoken Ohioan, Minority Leader John Boehner, whose district sports a national-average-beating 7.7 percent unemployment rate. Congratulations, Mr. Leader!

I'm slowly processing names and numbers for the National Up Against the Wall list, using the available numbers from BLS, broken down by MSA instead of county. By and large, it appears safe for Republicans to oppose the stimulus. Think for a second about the states conservative Republicans come from now. Utah, Idaho, Wyoming -- these places all have terrific employment rates, 97 or 98 percent.

But the numbers don't lie. And I don't care what your Cook PVI rating is. Come 2010, we will ice you. That means you:

Wally Herger, California-2, 14.9% unemployment.

Devin Nunes, California-21, 14.2%

George Radanovich, California-19, 13.6%,

et alia. You are Republicans from districts with higher unemployment than Detroit. You have something like 21 percent underemployment. To sit about like the Pasha in grand decline, while your people agitate, this is the peak of foolishness...

Just a warning. Republicans, don't be a statistic...

Cantor / Gingrich

NYT today has a profile of new minority whip Eric Cantor, flush from his first victory, i.e. convincing House Republicans in tight districts not to vote for middle-class tax cuts, rebuilding schools, refubishing dilapidated bridges, etc.

Leaving aside the false comparison (clearly meant to keep us liberals cautiously optimistic about Democratic power, ergo, to keep the dollars flowing next election cycle) of Cantor to Gingrich, in which no one but the NYT believes, since Cantor is "more demure," "an ideas man without ADD," etc., Cantor has a harder row to hoe that Newt did. BHO has 66% approval. More white people voted for him than did for Kerry, Gore, or Clinton. Newt, contrary to his automythopoesis, was never in the "extreme minority." Cantor is. And his solution is to lead the party further into the desert.

In 2010, we'll find out if that makes any sense, electorally. Politically, there's no reason why it shouldn't work, and this is what gives me the fear. Politics is not about meeting in the middle to get short-term work accomplished; it is about staking out the position you want, and drawing mainstream thought thither. The right has mastered the art, they've done it all my life. The tighter the quasar spins, the more gravity is gains, until it collapses on itself and starts sucking in everything...

Meanwhile, can we get a list of Republicans who voted nay on stimulus, ranked by the unemployment rate in each's district?
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Mad King George

I find this weird. George Voinovich voted against the stimulus in committee, then dropped feelers like he could get on board, at the same time as he was huffing out of the negotiating room.

He's not running in 2010, he has nothing to lose for being this sort of heedless obstructionist semi-literate revanchist principled pol...well, he could lose lobbying dollars.

(Also, his need for "shovel-ready" projects? Funny. Once again, dollars spent on anything but those guys with the orange signs evidently just vanish through a wormhole. We need a way to talk about research and design in "shovel-ready" terms. Or just start calling things like first human trials of Parkinson's drugs, exercises in new math, green design, etc. all "shovel-ready." "This here is a shovel-ready algorithm, Mr. Senator.")

So who is Voinovich going to work for after his waiting period? Firms change with the tide, and, in case no one told you, Mr. Senator, being a Democrat is in. A willingness to compromise for the General Welfare would probably get you a job. Being a cantankerous old prick, not so much.
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Back to Basics

Watching right now the McLaughlin Group: would like to read the results of Monica's push poll that shows a mere 42 percent of Americans approving of this stimulus bill, or her Fox News poll that shows that "Americans prefer tax cuts to new spending." They also disapprove of handouts for the perverted arts, I hear.

And Johnny Mac is wishing a little too hard, methinks, when he calls House passage of any Obama bill a failure. BHO reached out, people know he reached out and all GOP soundbites make them sound like petulant prep school ninnies -- I'm looking at you, Paul Ryan. So who had the better PR week? The stimulus will come back, amended in conference, and everybody can get on board, or else lose in 2010. And we will get you Mike Pence.

But the GOP "rediscovered its manhood" and "got its groove back"? Not this week. Not after a "bruising five-way fight" for the RNC chairmanship gets you a doctrinaire laissez-faire conservative who warns his enemies that they will be "toppled." Policy matters. The face you put on it matters less. Americans will look at this Hoover-retread fiscal conservatism and turn up their noses. So much for the Tim-Pawlenty-big-tent theory of a return to dominance...and back to the drawing board...
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Seriously, Who's Got the 10 1/2? Pawlenty's got the 10 1/2...

The gift and the curse of Sarah Palin is in full effect as Republican governors retreat to Nixon's turf for their winter meetings. The gift is the unprecendented media attention given, by spillover, to dudes like Tim Pawlenty.

The curse is she had to speak. Beginning with "God Bless George W. Bush and I thank you Mr. President," is, I'm guessing, not what Americans want to hear. The GOP seems to recognize this. Politico's blind quote is indicative: She Is Our Britney Spears.

Pawlenty's remarks, on the other hand, are awesome. Listen to the whole thing on Minnesota Public Radio.

To start, he disses Palin before she even gets to town, saying it is not "fair and not complete" to just say "we didn't do that bad." He litanizes the ass-whupping, and I'm paraphrasing here: We cannot compete in the northeast, the great lakes, the west coast, the mid-atlantic [...] those are not factors that make up success going forward. For his money, the GOP can harmonize the Hensarling Quasar and the nameless "modernizing" forces within the Party (evidently those that recognize that non-white people can actually vote). I don't know if he's right, but Pawlenty is funny and thoughtful, and once again, I'm pretty sure that McCain called him up looking for a VP, and Tim said "No thanks, Air Pirate."

Big Government and Big Business coalescing to defend their interests! Tim! You sound like John Edwards! "Drill baby drill, by itself, is not an energy policy." To applause! There aren't enough Republicans around to be throwing people overboard! The party with a big-ass Welcome Mat! Why isn't this man a Democrat?

His closing anecdote about MJ's 56-point night was brilliant. He's buddies with Tim Kaine, which, you know, to my mind is a demerit, but to plenty of Virginians is a good thing. This is all gravy for the GOP. The question is, Can a voice of Reason, Probity and Temperance prevail against its own Hard-Ass Brethren? Can that voice then compete with an already-established Cool Hand?

Thinking a little bit longer on this, the brilliance of that Jordan story is that it makes up for the knocks against Palin scattered throughout Tim's speech. Pawlenty doesn't want to banish Palin to the Senate, he wants her front and center, making sure the voters of the family values fringe line up and vote hard. It's funny, self-deprecating (if we assume that by analogy, Pawlenty is the rookie who scores one point, and Palin Jordan with 56) and practical.

For the moment, I'm putting money on Hensarling leading a redneck-small-gubmint series of night raids. Pawlenty's Big Think is being done already, just by Democrats, and it will take longer than a couple of election cycles. So while Jeb and company focus on one half of Nathan Bedford Forrest's famous dictum, i.e., getting there firstest, Tim graciously takes the second half: getting there with the mostest.
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Always Trust Dark Steer, Readers, Always...

More evidence, Dear Reader, that you profit by the speculations of the Dark Steer: Caribou Barbie wants a piece of the action.

DS called this, including the passage about non-acceptance of Senators' credentials, here. DS also speculated on the analogous relationship between Palin and MacBeth here. Read how closely the AP hits DS talking points:

Even if he is re-elected, Stevens could be ousted by the Senate for his conviction on seven felony counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts, mostly renovations on his home. If Stevens loses his seat, Palin could run for it in a special election. She also could challenge incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2010.

Right on. Article 1, section 5 is Palin's best friend. Because she ain't going to beat Lisa Murkowski. End DS gloating.

Also, for the record, the press needs to quit burying the Republican Party. I feel like Cowboy in Full Metal Jacket, urging the platoon to keep moving because 8-Ball is wasted: "I've seen this before, man." The consensus that the GOP is dead is like snipers shooting into a corpse to lure unsuspecting/enraged soldiers in closer. Don't touch the corpse. Let's keep our distance, and see if we can spot where the revanchist fringe will retreat to. Signs point to here: a swath of counties running from the Ozarks to southern Appalachia wherein the population became 10-15% more Republican between 2004 and 2008.

Let's get on that nova thing. Peace
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