In a desperate attempt to re-brand themselves as somehow relevant to America’s political future, a number of Rethuglican leaders have taken to the road on a “listening tour,” eager to convince voters that they aren’t the Party of No Ideas, that they have something to offer than just their eternal agenda of tax cuts for the very wealthiest 5%.
Not all Rethugs are on board, however. Rush Limpbot derided their efforts, sneering that “listening” to the needs of the great unwashed is really “pandering” not “leading”:
I’m weary of the same people who drove us to this point telling us what we have to do now. I’m not including Jeb in that. Jeb was not part of the campaign last year,” said Limbaugh. “But everybody else on this bus tour — for the most part — is responsible for where we are. We did it their way in 2008. We did it with the candidate and approach that they thought would work. Pandering. ‘We got to listen to the American people.’ I maintain that when a politician says we have to listen to the American people and learn, we are pandering. We’re not leading.
Leading party intellectual Samuel “Joe the Unlicensed Plumber” Wurzelbacher did his best to resist the re-branding effort too, offering his thoughts on homosexuality to Christianity Today:
I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.
I guess that’s what passes for tolerance in Joe’s mind– that gays are actually people, though he can’t seem to shake the vicious stereotype that they are, by definition, pedophiles.
But the award for resisting Rethuglican re-branding efforts has to go to Alberto Torquemada Gonzalez who in an exclusive interview with MSNBC’s Dan Abrams, bravely stayed the course on torture. Asked what he thought of Obama’s decision to release the Bush Administration‘s memos on “enhanced interrogation techniques”, Fredo replied:
They may be necessary in the future. And by disclosing it, means you take them off the table and they can never be used again.
As David Waldman over at Congress Matters observes:
It’s not just that torture has become an acceptable tool to Republicans. It’s that it is now a tenet of Republican political philosophy that illegal and unconstitutional practices can be sterilized by order of the President.
Attaboy, Fredo. You obviously have Condi Rice‘s back who, echoing Richard Nixon, helped educate some young Stanford U students the other day about how when a president does something, it’s not illegal.
So if you see Marty Feldman’s Eye-Gore character driving a clown cart into your town, you’ll know that the Rethugs’ Magical Mystery Tour has arrived.
Just don’t ask him about the hump…
I always enjoy posts about brains. :o)
Looks like this whole Rethug re-branding thing is really an experiment in the reanimation of dead tissue.
I can hear Gene Wilder screaming now:
“Life! Give my creation life!”
Won’t be a pretty sight, whatever gets up off the slab…
Medical Student: Isn’t it true that Darwin preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case until, by some extrordinary means, it actually began to move with voluntary motion?
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Are you speaking of the worm or the spaghetti?
Medical Student: Why, the worm, sir.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Yes, I did read something of that incident when I was a student, but you have to remember that a worm… with very few exceptions… is not a human being.
there certainly are exceptions!
i am beginning to think that rushbo is on the bush family payroll. i wish i was kidding.
Blücher!