We'll know in a few days whether South Carolina Senator's Lindsey Graham's remarks made yesterday at the Newseum in Washington reported in this story in the Atlantic (via the ever-vigilant Brad DeLong) are truly noteworthy.
Up to now, Republicans have demanded apologies, backtracking, and self-flagellation from any of their own who has dared break ranks with the take-no-prisoners attitude the GOP has adopted. And they've been willing to excommunicate those who refuse to repent publicly. If you don't believe me, just ask CG&G's own Bruce Bartlett.
But in one presentation yesterday Graham criticized some of the Republican high priests, gods, and principles including birthers, Glenn Bleck, Rush Limbaugh, the GOP leadership, and the Republicans' continued insistence that everthing Obama proposes and does be opposed and ridiculed. If the current GOP practice is maintained, starting today Graham will be attacked until he relents. (Hint: Look for the phrase "My remarks were taken out of context.")
If the pressure to repent comes, Graham may well be sufficiently independent and poliically secure enough to tell those insisting on a apology to go to Hell. If that happens, or if the pressure isn't as intense on Graham as it has been on others in the past, this whole event could mark an important change that bears watching.
Crazy birthers, Glenn Bleck, Rush Limbaugh
The birthers, the tea baggers, the screamers, and the deathers continued extreme minority presence will become tiresome to mainstream America, if it has not already done so. To all the birthers in La, La Land, it is on you to prove to all of us that your assertion is true, if there are people who were there and support your position then show us the video (everyone has a price), either put up or frankly shut-up. I heard Orly Taitz, is selling a tape (I think it’s called “Money, Lies and Video tape”). She is from Orange County, CA, now I know what the mean when they say “behind the Orange Curtain”, when they talk about Orange County, the captial of Conspiracy Theories. You know Obama has a passport, he travel abroad before he was a Senator, but I guess they were in on it. In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while trying to take away the rights of those they just hate) and that’s who they need to extract from their party if they real want to win. Good Luck, because as they said in WACO, “We Ain’t Coming Out”. I heard that she now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC).
From David Brooks*
From David Brooks* http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/opinion/02brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
I like David Brooks and I like just about anything that ridicules misleading hyperpartisan media blowhards, and I'm glad Brooks adds the message to Republican players that it's not even to their political advantage to pander to those jack*sses and their dittoheads (whether that premise is correct or not).
* No relation to me. "Brooks" for me is a reference to "Brooks Robinson", my childhood baseball hero.