Look! Out in the right wing echo chamber! It’s a tax cut proposal?! It’s a birth control ban?! No! It’s another appeal to conservatives to seem reasonable without changing a God damned thing!

Yes, the “let’s all speak nicely about Latinos”: argument from a fantasy land far away, come to reality hoping to obfuscate, distract, and deceive the American people.

Katrina Trinko over at National Review writes, Huntsman’s Problem Wasn’t Just That He Was Perceived as a Moderate. That title gives you the wrong impression, however. Really what’s she’s saying is that Huntsman’s policies were mostly to the right of Romney. The problem was that he just seemed too damned reasonable!

Trinko goes on to note that Huntsman didn’t run a good campaign, but this is a minor complaint. He could easily run a stellar campaign next time. After all, if he had just stayed in the race, at some point, like all the others, he would have surged ahead in the polls. And given that he actually was a real politician, he might have stayed there.

What Trinko seems to be offering is the idea that if Republicans can just hold their noses and vote for a candidate who doesn’t pander to their vile ideal, they might get a really conservative candidate who can win. This all comes down to the argument conservatives have been making since the election: it is the style rather than the substance of their policies that are scaring minority voters away. But no: it’s really is the substance.

I’m not one of those who think that the Democrats are home free now. Republicans will continue to win low-turnout elections. But for the majority of voters, their ideas are toxic. And it doesn’t matter how much they dress up these ideas. Even in a Superman cape, they just won’t fly.

Matt Yglesias has been writing a bit about about these business owners who are whining that the ACA (Obamacare) is just going to destroy their businesses. In particular, he highlighted John Metz, owner of more than 30 Denny’s restaurant franchises, he said he was going to add a 5% “Obamacare surcharge” on all customer bills. Because he’s such a charming motherfucker, he added that the customers could take the surcharge out of the server tip, because after all: they’re “the primary beneficiary of Obamacare.”

These comments didn’t sit too well with the CEO of Denny’s. John Miller had a private meeting with Metz and afterward said that he was “disappointed” in Metz. Yesterday, Metz released a statement that he regretted his remarks. There is a proximate reason for Miller’s swift action, of course: people were talking boycott and were generally pissed off at Denny’s. But I think there’s more to this. So does Yglesias.

Matt Yglesias puts it this way:

I agree with all of this, but I don’t think this is the main issue—or at least this isn’t the way that I would put it. This is all about demographics. If everyone in this country voted, Democrats could win every election by a landslide. Everyone doesn’t vote, of course, so Republicans do okay. But everyone does go out to eat from time to time. What’s more, the people who go out to Denny’s tend toward the poor. These are people who are going to be most hostile to a partisan Republican stunt like blaming part of the cost of the mean on President Obama.

Yglesias is correct, that everything that Metz said is likely to offend everyone—even Republicans. But had he said nothing and just added the surcharge, it might have tickled the 30% of his clientele who are Republican. But the 70% Democrats would find it offensive and perhaps choose another of the similar low-cost dining choices.

But I’m still planning to boycott all Denny’s in Florida just in case the money might go to this fucktard John Metz.

Do you remember Jules in Pulp Fiction, when he’s talk to Big Brain Brett? “You read the Bible, Brett? Well there’s this passage I got memorized—sort of fits this occasion. Ezekiel four nine: take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side.” Don’t remember it? Well, that’s because he didn’t say it. He quoted Ezekiel 25:17, although most of what Jules quotes if not actually in the Bible.

Why do I bring up Ezekiel 4:9? And why would someone lie on his side for 390 days? Frankly, I have no answer to the second question—it has something to do with surviving a siege. But the answer to the first is: bread. Andrea told me she came upon some bread in the grocery store from a company called Food For Life with a product line named “Ezekiel 4:9.” That got me interested.

I figured the company must either be Jewish or right-wing born again Christian. If the former, I was okay about it. If it was the latter, I figured it was some company trying to make a point, and I was not okay about it. Does that make me anti-Christian? No. I’m just as much against literalist Judaism; it’s just that one doesn’t see such nonsense very often in modern America.

So I went over to the Food For Life website, and I found that I was probably wrong. If I had to guess, I would say that they are hippy Christians. They’re all animal, yeast, and gluten free. They specialize in foods so good for you that you could eat marble and still be able to set your watch by your bowel movements.

They also offer a product line called “Genesis 1:29.” (I’ll let you look up that one!) So these people are pretty serious about this stuff. Then again, they aren’t that serious about it: they’ve trademarked both Bible verses. And they have a dove as part of their logo. So I’m sticking with the hippy label. Of course, this doesn’t mean these are defenders of the poor. I know a number of hippy business owners and they’re are still, you know, business owners.

I won’t be buying any Food For Life products, however. It isn’t because of their religious beliefs. I once tried to be healthy by eating only sprouted wheat and all of that. It almost killed me.

Afterword

Isaiah 11:6 tells us:

The wolf will live with the lamb,
The leopard will lie down with the goat,
The calf and the lion and the yearling together;
And a little child will lead them.

That time has come my friends. Jennifer O’Connell has posted an email sent from R— (Do you feel like you are in the middle of a 19th century novel?) to Hasbro, the toy and game company. (I assume R— is O’Connell’s daughter, but I don’t know.) She sent the following email to the company regarding their game Guess Who?

I hope that this email causes Hasbro to change their game design. However, their initial response was not good. They said:

This doesn’t answer the question at all. I can see where they might only put mustaches on men. But there is no reason they couldn’t have 12 men and 12 women characters.

I encourage everyone to write to Hasbro at askhasbro@hasbro.co.uk or most likely askhasbro@hasbro.com, but I can’t find a direct email address—they want me to create an account, the bastards! If you do, tell them you’d like to see 12 or even 13 female characters in Guess Who? (because there are more women in the world than men).

Regardless, I have confidence that R— has it well in hand.

We need a bigger social safety net. Yesterday, Paul Krugman pointed this out by noting our modern economy where everyone is just supposed to get used to the fact that you will have a new job every three years and that insecurity is now normal so get over it. This kind of dynamism requires some kind of bedrock that we can all hold onto. And the only such bedrock comes from the welfare state.

I have a problem with the “new job every three years” idea, even though that has been my life. All this new economic dynamism has mostly been on the part of workers, not companies. It would be one thing if companies only lasted three years. But what happens is that companies that last 100 years no longer show any loyalty to their workers. (Even while they complain that workers don’t show enough loyalty to these companies.)

What has really happened in the modern world is that the government long ago declared open season on unions and all manner of other worker rights. So now workers are in the position of beggars, hoping that some company will take pity on them and employ them for a few years.

Of course, the people who want to destroy the social safety net are the same people who want to eliminate worker rights. I was amused earlier in the year when some conservative MP claimed that everyone should start their own businesses. This is absurd, of course. If that happened, there would be no businesses, just 7 billion private contractors. But what’s interesting in this context is that such a claim implies that people who complain about lack of work should just be able to start their own businesses. “Just take out a loan from your parents!”

I think we are past the point where we can reasonably claim that the right in this country (or just about any other) is an honest broker. They hate the poor. They think the poor are morally deficient. They would prefer that the poor just die off, but as long as they are powerless and hidden, fine.

Krugman is right of course: now more than ever, we need the social safety net. If companies are going to follow the Gordon Gekko model that profits are all and they owe nothing to society, the government needs to take over. But as long as these business owners have the power that goes along with their profits, they will fight hard to impoverish workers outside their business environment. The smaller the safety net, the more pliant the workers will be.

Eventually, this all ends in a feudal state, of course. So while we still have a democracy, we must fight to empower workers. And that means expanding the welfare state, not just protecting it.

There was an amusing bit on Real Time last Friday. The panel was talking about Romney’s recent conference call and how the adults in the Republican Party needed to take control. Maher said that one way they could do that was to stop all this nonsense about Benghazi. Given that Real Time is at base a comedy show, it is not surprising what happened next. The two “reasonable” Republicans, David Frum and Ana Navarro, got apoplectic. “But there is a cover-up!”

This is the problem with all of the talk about the Republican Party reforming itself. The Republican elite didn’t get into power by accident. The difference between the extremists and the moderates is the way that they talk about issues, not where they actually stand on issues. Like the rank and file members of the party, moderates are authoritarian followers. As much as I look for reasons to explain the conservative worldview, nothing fits better than John Dean’s authoritarian theory.

This gets to the heart of what is so frustrating about talking to Republicans. Most of the time they are incredibly reasonable. Yet in the heat of an election or on an issue that Fox News is pushing (e.g. Benghazi), they lose all perspective. This explains why they look back so fondly on Bill Clinton and how they will gush with praise over Obama in 8 years. These people are easily led by demagoguery.

The reason the most vile Republicans rise to the top is that they best pose the issues in a way that the conservative authoritarian followers can accept. The question is never do you want to protect everyone from potential global warming; it is: do you want to destroy the economy or believe in a liberal conspiracy theory? It is never how do we best help the poor; it is: do you want your hard earned money going to a bunch of loafers? It is never what is the proper role of government surveillance; it is do you want another 9/11?

When I talk to conservatives their answers are normally nuanced. But they can’t help jumping for the sloganeering of the party elites. And this is as true of the public “moderates” as it is for the rest. Both Frum and Navarro said reasonable things about non-partisan issues. But that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. In fact, it makes them more dangerous. They clearly have the capacity to see the complexity of the world but they choose to (following Stephen Colbert) let their guts lead them.

And this is why the Republican Party will not reform itself anytime soon. For all the reasonable talk from the moderates, they are as easy to get worked up in a froth as the rest of their party. The froth production masters are the crazies. When David Frum manages to not get excited by things like the Benghazi scandal, then the party will change.

Afterword

Read John Dean’s excellent Conservatives Without Conscience.

And look! Candy:

People don’t like movies as much as they like games. At least, that’s what I learned today at a matinee of Lincoln filled with old people. Most of them just go to see how many actors they can name. The people sitting next to me only got two names right: Hal Holbrook and Tommy Lee Jones. That’s not quite correct, though: it wasn’t that they only got two names right; they only got two names at all.

For example, every time Joseph Gordon-Levitt was on screen as Lincoln’s eldest, one would say things like, “Isn’t that the guy from…” And then he would trail off, allowing the other to say, “Yeah, he’s the guy…” I wanted to scream, “He’s the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun you idiots, now shut up!” But I feared this would cause them to ask me questions for the rest of the picture.

But for these people and so many more like them, let me clarify. Lincoln was played by the guy from My Left Foot. Mary Lincoln was played by the Flying Nun. Secretary of State Seward was played by the creepy pedophile in Dolores Claiborne, but he’s been in almost every movie you people have seen in the last 20 years. Sol Star from Deadwood and the prison guard from Minority Report played two of Republican operatives. And yes, Mark Twain (Or Deep Throat, take your pick!) played the leader of the conservative Republicans and U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard played Thaddeus Stevens.

Now if I happen to go see Lincoln again, will you all shut the fuck up?!