Friday, May 22, 2009

Republicans Continue to Elevate Level of Discourse



The Republican National Committee will conclude a special session with a much-anticipated vote on a resolution to re-brand the Democratic Party as the "Democrat Socialist Party."

ANP senior producer Harry Hanbury roamed the RNC meeting with a camera and spoke with committeemen and state chairs to hear their thoughts on the vote and their ideas about both parties.

Via Oliver Willis, via Crooks and Liars.


At this point, I might actually prefer them to call us the "Socialist Party" over the grammatically incorrect Democrat Party they've insisted on for the last century. It would still highlight their immaturity but without grating on the ear as much. I wonder if we can convince them to go with that.

I like Willis's take, too:
I should point out the equivalent of this would have been, in May of 2001, if the Democratic party convened and decided whether we would call the Republican party the Poophead Party or the Crappy Pants Party.


Funny, but it'd be more like if the Democrats got together and tried to pass a serious resolution "rebranding" the Republicans as the "Republican Nazi Party."

6 comments:

Ezzie said...

Aside from the stupidity in the first 35 seconds, what's wrong?

The rest basically seem clear that it's a distraction, the name-calling was dumb and was taken out, but they're still trying to demonstrate that this is Socialist-lite a la Europe and that's what the final draft says.

Basically, it's like a couple idiots said "ooh, let's call them the Socialist Party!", and everyone else said "Shut up, this is not a game."

Scott said...

Louis Pope said: "I think the resolution will still point out the differences between Republicans and Democrats"

Boy, I'd love to know what those are. They like to bomb different countries I guess.

E-Man said...

Democrats are more socialist leaning in the sense that they want more regulations and Government involvement. The Republicans (or at least what they are supposed to be) is less Government involvement. This all has to do with monetary issues like taxes and so.

There are also differences in reference to the military and other things. However, right now I think the focus is on monetary issues like socialized medicine and basically an overall socialized economy.

Geonite said...

I grew up in a socialistic state. There was nothing wrong with it.

C. L. Hanson said...

The idea that one would try to pass a resolution re-branding one's opposition is laughably idiotic. But I wouldn't say this is comparable to calling the Republicans (obviously negative) names like poopy or Nazi. In reality, lots of countries have a perfectly mainstream "Socialist Party", and -- given the state of U.S. education, health care, and other infrastructure these days -- it's not very clever of the Republicans to be dismissively and derisively looking down on how things are done in other countries.

If they succeed in re-branding the Democratic party as "the Socialist Party," it could easily backfire. If those clowns assume that "Socialist" is an insult, people might start asking themselves "Is it?" -- and think a bit about some of our (insular) assumptions.

See also Steal this idea!

Random said...

"Funny, but it'd be more like if the Democrats got together and tried to pass a serious resolution "rebranding" the Republicans as the "Republican Nazi Party.""

I call Godwin. C L Hanson nails why this sort of thing is absurd and counter-productive even while remaining unsympathetic to the Republicans. For that matter, even in your own link when one of the Republicans is asked what sort of Socialism he thinks Obama is engaging in says "Sweden, France, we're talking the milder forms of Socialism."- i.e. not massacring the kulaks or hanging bankers from lampposts.

One other thought. Neither your link nor your article at any point shows us the text of the proposed Republican resolution so we can judge for ourselves if the talk of "rebranding" is accurate -
here it is.
Basically, it says that the Democrats are adopting a range of policies that are socialist by any meaningful definition of the term, so if they were being honest with the American people they would label themselves as a socialist party. This seems to me to be normal political knockabout and well short of the accusation being levelled.

One final thought - assuming the truth of everything as portrayed for a moment. How is this any worse than the attempts of the Obama administration over the first few months of the year (when one would think they really had more important things to do with their time) to "re-brand" the Republicans as basically the political wing of the Rush Limbaugh show? If these tactics are unaccceptable (or at the very least a sign of a lack of seriousness) then they are justsas much so when indulged in by your side. Yet I don't recall any posts criticising Obama for wasting time on Rush.