Five Days On The Right - Is This Any Way to Attract Voters?

I just think it is unacceptable that half our political spectrum has, as its signature, brutish stupidity.

How revealing into the mind of a liberal.

Conservatism = "brutish stupidity" = bottom half

Liberalism = "enlightenment" = top half

He is, AT BEST, a center-right moderate.

...based solely upon some sort of ideologically pure notion of conservatism that exists only in your mind. The American conseravatives, on the other hand, have spoken on the matter of George W. Bush. Bush was perhaps the most popular president among conservatives in the history of pollling, and he maintained that popularity right to the end (he'd only started to bleed a little of it among conservatives because he'd become an electoral liability). The ABC/Washington Post poll asked respondents in January, as Bush was leaving, to offer an overall rating of his administration: A whopping  82% of conservative Republicans rated him a success; 53% "strongly." That's conservative Republicans, the faction that has been doing everything in its power to drive from the party anything that could even be construed as "moderate." The judgment of Bush offered by these ideological zealots: Resounding Approval. So while Bush may not meet some abstract purity test based on a version of conservatism that exists nowhere outside the mind of chemjeff, the actual, flesh-and-blood conservatives of the United States adored him.

Chemjeff,

You are seeing only one side of Bush and I see the other. It was the glorification of tax cuts at all costs. We saw 8 years of it and it was borrowed money to give back to the people. It was doing little (laissez-faire) in seeing our  jobs leave the country and with that, factories closed and cities and states are losing revenue. We also saw the neglect of the infrastructure while Iraq was more important. We saw the attitude of the right wing with arrogance and ignorance. And we saw a social conservative relying on God for his guidance. 

I am only looking at balance in what we have to do to be a good country and I fail to see how we can send our jobs overseas, send our money to Iraq, and neglect our own country. While there was a day we had to spend on the military to fight the Soviet Union, these days are a little different. We still have Al Qaeda to fight and am very much aware of Iran and North Korea. All of which has been pretty much been messed up under Bush with his preoccupation of Iraq. But it is also an economic war we are in with 3rd world countries. If we are losing our manufacturing base and we have been for years, don't you think we should fix the problem? If cities and states are seeing the factories close, don't you think we should fix the problem? Tax cuts alone will not solve this problem and that is where the policies of republicans fail. It takes more than tax cuts. It takes an investment in your country, in your people, and in the future. You can sight the constitution and you can claim tax cuts, but that does not solve problems. Just when will the republican party solve a problem? And do we leave it up to the states? Is casinos the answer? Is extension of unemployment benefits the answer? What are states supposed to do? And what widgets can be made here that can't be made in China. What industry will be next to go to China or India, and what will replace them? And just as much as cutting spending is important, having more revenue from employed people is just as important.

No, we saw laissez-faire at its best. And this has been done cycle after cycle and it always leaves the population down. The trickle down theory does not reach the bottom 20% to 30% of the population. And I want to know, what is your (the republicans) answer. I hear about tax cuts and we have been through 8 years of it. It is proven, with each cycle of disappointment , you need more than this, so I ask again, what is the republicans answer? 

And furthermore, as Bush neglected our country, as Limbaugh and Hannity remained mum on Bush and his policies, they still bragged on how good the deficits were, and how good things were. Now, I live in an area where we lost jobs with 8 years of tax cuts. You are going to have to convince me that it works, because it did not work here with policies out of Washington and a president saying "free trade is good" when people lost jobs. And if you think I have hate built up in me, you are darn right. We see this too often with political parties caught up with their ideologies and you throw people right under the train. Since we lived under this disaster for 8 years, tell me, outside of tax cuts and cutting spending, what you can do to make this country better. 

Well, you did cite thinkprogress and alternet (which cites Huffington Post).  With no prompting from me!  Not exactly unbiased news outlets.

And, BTW, I don't own a TV.  So I don't have the opportunity to watch your delicious Jon Stewart for my daily news.

So let's take your items on the list:

• Bill Kristol called for Nidal Hasan to be put to death without trial.

This is not true.  Here is what Bill Kristol actually said:

They should just go ahead and convict him and put him to death.

AND CONVICT HIM.  Which means hold a trial, but a swift one.

• Mike Huckabee said of the 9/11 trials in NYC that the Obama administration will be as much on trail as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In a legal sense?  No.  In the court of public opinion?  Well, if the KSM trial turns into a circus, and if KSM is (gasp) acquitted - for which there is a nonzero probability -  then you bet there's going to be some backlash against Obama, whose decision it was to turn KSM over to the civilian judicial system.  I don't see how this statement is in any way improper or provocative.  In fact it's reflective of popular sentiment right now.

• The Danville Tea Party group in Virginia announced it was going to burn Rep. Tom Perriellio and Nancy Pelosi in effigy.

Already discussed.  They canceled the event.  But, even if they had held it, please tell me how much worse it would have been compared to hanging Sarah Palin in effigy.

• Glenn Beck says the government is raping the American people just like Roman Polanski

Well, you cite some leftwing blogger's opinion on Glenn Beck show so I don't know what Glenn Beck actually said.  But even if he said exactly what you claim he said, sure, it's a boorish opinion, offered in poor taste.  His larger point, though, is to complain that the taxpayer is being used & taken for granted for government schemes of which the taxpayer may not necessarily approve of.   I can't disagree with that sentiment, even if I find his analogy to be in poor taste.

• Bill O'Reilly predicts that Nancy Pelosi will be murdered by an angry mob

No he doesn't.  This is what I mean by the problem of citing leftwing sources.  Yes they give the audio of the Glenn Beck show where O'Reilly says "Nancy Pelosi's going to be bobbing in Boston Harbor."  (And, BTW, Glenn Beck says "that's not necessary" - are you going to give Beck credit for that?)  But thinkprogress' audio recording conveniently stops right after that point, depriving us of the opportunity of listening to the full context of O'Reilly's statements.  So I am instantaneously suspicious.  It could be that O'Reilly's next statement was to say "of course I don't mean that literally, but I'm telling you, people are angry!"  Or, sure, it could have been "yeah let's see Nancy murdered".  But I'm willing to bet it's closer to the former than the latter.  Thinkprogress, however, is not in the business of discovering the truth; instead they are in the business of making conservatives look as bad as possible.

• Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs have a non-ironic dicussion of whether or not Barack Obama is the devil.

Again: not true.  O'Reilly asks Dobbs a final, humorous question: "Barack Obama, is he the devil?"  Dobbs, of course, says that he's not, and says "but he is certainly a man who is right now not making it easy to understand why he's making the public-policy choices that he is."  This is criticism of Obama but certainly not what you allege as a serious discussion of Satanism.  This is the witty banter of two colleagues.  It's not like they seriously pondered Obama's alleged Satanic tendencies.

• Rep. John Shedegg taunts NYC mayor Bloomberg with the prospect of his daughter being kidnapped by al Qaeda.

Gee what a surprise - just as I predicted! - the video is provided courtesy of Media Matters!  First of all, Shadegg didn't "taunt" anyone.  Furthermore, Shadegg apologized (something you don't acknowledge).  And finally - hey, maybe he has a point!  When we turn dangerous jihadists over to the civilian court system, we put civilians at risk, and they aren't necessarily just the ones directly associated with the trial itself.  But you fail to see this point entirely, all you do is mock Shadegg.  So please tell me, genius, why you weren't able to see this point and instead all you saw fit to do was bash a Republican.

So to answer your larger question: were these comments helpful towards winning votes?  I don't know - first of all, these aren't people running for office, nobody is going to be casting a ballot for Glenn Beck.  But, based on what these people ACTUALLY SAID, instead of based on your (and others') mischaracterizations, I don't think it's all that dreadful to the conservative cause.  Shadegg actually has a point.  People ARE scared and angry at the vast expansion of government and the unsustainable level of debt that we have all collectively incurred.