GOP Will Shit Itself

[Mothra]

Pretty sure it's a crappy Onion knockoff.

[nosimpleway]

Poe's Law is ever a harsh mistress.

[Mongrel]

If it's a fake (and I'm not saying it isn't), they're putting a lot of effort in. That was the article that made me think "Okay yeah, this has to be a parody site." But then I saw that the embedded links all go to similar crackpot websites, which is a lot of sites to register and set up for just a gag.

Basically, what R^2 said.

[beatbandito]

They're definitely not trying to make it known, but the author information for Mothra's article convinced me.

Mr. Rubics has won numerous awards for journalism including a Peabody Award and a Pulitzer Prize. When he isn't spending time with his beautiful wife of fifteen years or playing catch with his two amazing sons, you can find Darius working to solve world hunger.

Oh damn they even have that thing where copied text includes a link to the site. They're good.

[Mongrel]

Yeah, it's basically an onion-skin Onion!

[Blossom]

It is, yes.

[Mongrel]

A couple of guys I know had an interesting thought.

I almost feel like instead of satire, it's just a page of borderline-believable right-wing idiocy to get liberal click-through outrage traffic.

Yeah, it's a good angle. Instead of waiting for legitimate Controversial News, they just make it up. It's faster, plus they have a monopoly on people searching for information on it.

I feel like that's probably overthinking it, but it's not impossible and there's no reason it can't be both a clickbait outrage engine AND a collection of satire websites at the same time.

Blurring that line would be so very "modern" and "internet!" after all.

[patito]

That's over thinking it, most of the headlines aren't borderline believable. Like if you see your one post with just the headline on its own it might be borderline believable, but once you actually step into the website it's pretty obvious it's not.

Like it seems to me you're not fully convinced it's fake? Which is just dumbfounding to me.

[Brantly B.]

Generating outrage for publicity is an idea as old as publicity.

[Mongrel]

That's over thinking it, most of the headlines aren't borderline believable. Like if you see your one post with just the headline on its own it might be borderline believable, but once you actually step into the website it's pretty obvious it's not.

Like it seems to me you're not fully convinced it's fake? Which is just dumbfounding to me.

Pretty sure we all agreed it's fake a while ago. Anything following that is just after-the-fact babbling.

It's more that a lot of effort is being put in for what should normally be a cheap fake and I was wondering if they're getting extra benefits that justify that effort. As Brent pointed out, a plan like that isn't anything new or even all that unusual.

[Thad]

Cantor loses primary.

On the one hand, this could well mean one more Tea Party jackass in the House.

On the other, it's hard for me to see how anyone could BE a bigger Tea Party jackass than Cantor, and at least he won't be House Majority Leader anymore.

[Mothra]

Oh wow.

Guess I'm glad overall but hoo lordy is this is going to be a shitshow.

I'm morbidly interested to find out if the Koch brothers are even cooperating with the GOP at this point, or if they've moved to actively work against them. I initially thought the Tea Party was just a Koch effort to win back republican voters.

[MarsDragon]

Guy who played Cooter on Dukes of Hazzard called for Dems to vote for Brat, possibly changed the election. Given the massive jump in votes from 2012 (47K vs 65K), which is very surprising for an off-year primary, this is actually a reasonable hypothesis.

And even if it's not true, it's hilarious to imagine.

[Thad]

I'm morbidly interested to find out if the Koch brothers are even cooperating with the GOP at this point, or if they've moved to actively work against them. I initially thought the Tea Party was just a Koch effort to win back republican voters.

It's tough for me to imagine that the Kochs are happy about things like the government shutdown or the repeated debt ceiling debates driving the US's credit rating down and actually affecting their bottom line.

Then again, their daddy WAS a founding member of the John Birch Society, so maybe they really DO care more about their wacky ideology than their bank accounts.

Guy who played Cooter on Dukes of Hazzard called for Dems to vote for Brat, possibly changed the election. Given the massive jump in votes from 2012 (47K vs 65K), which is very surprising for an off-year primary, this is actually a reasonable hypothesis.

And even if it's not true, it's hilarious to imagine.

Hm, could be. As strategies go I'm not sure I agree with it; this guy could still get elected.

Then again, he'll certainly have less power than Cantor and it's hard to imagine him being much worse. The "professor of economics" cred gives me just a sliver of hope but is greatly overshadowed by the "Tea Party" cred.

As I mentioned over in the Election thread, I'm planning on voting in the Republican primary and voting for moderate Republicans. On the one hand, this probably increases the likelihood of Republicans winning; on the other, if my primary vote's going to backfire, I'd rather it be with a moderate than a Tea Partier.

(Of course, it's more complicated than that; I'm in a liberal district in a conservative/libertarian state, so the sort of politician who wouldn't get elected in my district could very easily get elected to state office.

And of course there are districts that are MORE right-wing than the state as a whole -- Matt Salmon lost the governor's race in '06 but got elected to the US House in '94, '96, '98, and '12.)

[Blossom]

Well, here's the thing. Brat is a fucking loon, no question, and a big part of where he beat Cantor came from attacking Cantor for even being willing to talk about immigration reform. Even if he takes that district in the general, it doesn't matter - every Republican candidate is going to have to run anti-immigration now, and that's not going to work.

[Thad]

It is here.

Which is of course what the thread's about -- the GOP focusing on things that work regionally, at this moment, but that are going to kill them nationally and in the long term.

Doesn't help that the Democrats are enablers. Speaking of immigration, I'm pretty fucking livid at the Obama Administration dropping its suit against the "Papers, Please" clause of SB1070 in exchange for the state agreeing not to enforce the "harboring" provision, a provision which has ALREADY BEEN THROWN OUT by an appellate court. As usual, the Democrats give up the most important thing in exchange for absolutely fucking nothing.

It's Arpaio all over again, and the exact reason I'm now a registered independent debating which primary to vote in.



(Not that I was ever really much of a partisan Democrat anyway. I registered D in 2004 to vote for Kucinich in the primary -- in Arizona independents can vote in primaries for any office that's not President, due to a frankly baffling interpretation of the law by then-AG Janet Napolitano -- ; switching back to independent was merely a matter of waiting until the Democrats finally hit a point where I could no longer stomach having their party name on my voter ID card.)

[Mothra]

I like to believe most rational people of our generation identify as independents, even if they vote entirely along party lines. Maybe it's just a Boston thing, but when politics comes up in conversation, there's a certain shame in admitting you're a democrat or a republican.

[Thad]

Well, and I chose "conservative/libertarian" deliberately in describing Arizona; there are more registered independents in this state now than either major party.

In practice, Arizona still mostly votes Republican, and I mostly vote Democratic, for, I think, much the same reason -- there's not much choice and you go with what you see as the lesser evil. But that doesn't mean you don't resent the hell out of it.

[Bal]

I registered independent on my first voter registration form, and never looked back. I never even considered registering with a party, and I've never bothered picking a primary to vote in, though I do usually vote democrat when it comes to it, but neither party appeals to me personally, and frankly I think politics are more complicated than party lines. I have definitely voted for Republicans in more local elections because I actually read those big candidate mailers they send out, and the Republican, or Libertarian, has occasionally been the better option.

I'm always telling out of state friends that Arizona politics are weird, and that until recently, our Republicans weren't like your Republicans. That's less true now, but I think being an independent makes even more sense in Arizona than elsewhere.

[Thad]

If independents made a habit of voting in primaries, I think it would alter our state's politics on a pretty fundamental level. For the better, I'd like to think.

But I suppose that's true of virtually any fill-in-the-blank "if more people voted in more elections" statement.