Wonkette
The RNC is considering making all Republican politicians take a ten-question Ronald Reagan-themed purity test! According to Daily Intel, “If someone disagrees with three or more of the policies, the resolution’s supporters want to withhold party money and endorsement. The 80 percent threshold comes from a famous Reagan quote: ‘The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.’” Valid, but: Couldn’t Michael Steele have also, in theory, said those words in that order? So it’s unfair to call it a “Reagan” quote when, technically speaking, it’s potentially a Michael Steele quote. See, here’s your credit baby! Anyway, let’s play Michael Steele’s new politics quiz game, right now!
Say, aloud, whether you agree or disagree. No cheating, no go-backsies:
(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership
Yahtzee!/Everyone loses.
9 and 2 contradict each other. As do 1 and 6, 1 and 7, 1 and 8, etc.
Hahaha I like how those are all about what they oppose.
And the death penalty for women who elect to have an abortion (I mean is it really murder if the accomplice to murder isn’t punished?)
Hate the gays, kill the muslims, screw the poor til they turn 65 (and then keep your govmint hands off their medicare). I smell a winner!
To we get to watch the people who fail the Purity Test get beheaded?
11) Domination of American politics by opposing the Republican party
12) Puppies? Puppies. And hip-hop.
Only question needed:
Would you fuck Ronnie Raygun in the ass if he demanded it?
No [] HELL’s YA! (I’d GO HOMO For Ronnie) []
I thought a “purity test” was what a hot young republican blossom had to undergo before her betrothal.
That wacky GOP - more Stalinesque every day!
You know, I took a purity test back in college but the questions weren’t much like this.
*sniff*sniff* Is that double-digit inflation I smell? I think so, you betcha.
I half agree with one of their points (4). That’s far more common ground than I thought I had with them.
@WarAndG: I like to ask the “harass/kill abortionists” types why they don’t do the same to the women who have the abortions. Shuts them up most of the time.
I like the specific mention of Obama in the first couple of questions. Maybe they should change their name to the Obama Hatin’ Club.
Oooo, ooo! I’ve got one. How many mules were on that borax team that sponsored him?
Where is the ACORN question?
Just more evidence that all of these types are clinically insane.
Reagan was one of the worst goddamn presidents that the U.S. ever had, his administration was corrupt from top to bottom, including Reagan, they did nothing for poverty, the homeless, social services, the needy, education, health care, the environment, housing, natural resources, and they lacked progress or success in hundreds of other fields, also–and that is a fact. If anything, the Reagan administration set this country back 50 years–as did the Nixon administration and both of the Bush administrations.
All four of those Republican administrations stand as four of the worst damn presidencies in the history of this country, on hundreds of levels. They did absolutely nothing to help this country.
soon to be a major motion picture
Apropos of nothing, every time I see Mara Liasson on Faux News at the gym, I think of these imags:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/33968/thumbs/s-MARA-LIASSON-large.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RRIGqzPDF00/SYT60NPcjWI/AAAAAAAAD9M/lFmXRgvVj9Y/s400/BALOK+smiling.jpg
Those is the worst Sarah Palin photo ever. The fresh new face of the Republican party looks like an orange-haired geezer.
[1] ? - I really thought that the Government grew a shit-ton under Raygun? I guess history has a lib’ral bias?
Let’s grade a specific dead president, let’s call him RR, on the scorecard:
1) Increased the national debt, rescinded many of his early tax increases. Fail.
Gay marriage not an issue at the time. N/A.
2) Expanded Medicare and Medicaid; required ERs to service everybody. Fail.
3) Expanded Clean Water Act and Superfund; but also rescinded Carter’s energy-savings policies. Tie.
4) Fired striking workers. Pass.
5) Passed amnesty for illegal immigrants. Fail.
6) Pulled troops out of Lebanon after just one suicide bombing. Fail.
7) Sold weapons to Iran. Fail.
9) Gave lip service to opposing abortion, but didn’t really do much about it. Conditional Pass.
10) Once again, lip service without action. Conditional Pass.
So that’s five fails and just one unconditional pass. Yep, even St. Ronnie wasn’t conservative enough for these people.
You know who else had a purity test?
WarAndG: Isn’t the fetus a co-conspirator in this scenario?
rev_matt_y: you do realize the “secret ballot” is so that the company can rig the vote right??? it’s not to protect the worker…the GOP could give a shit about the “workers’ right”…rights for workers is COMMUNIST!!!!
JMP: Gah, fuckin’ automatic smileys. Note that I would never, ever knowingly allow a smiley on one of my posts anywhere on the internet, and wonder why the hell the comments do this shit. Does anyone over 13 and under 50 like that crap?
The republicans seek to create their ideal master race by answering a few questions. But how can you turn trailer trash into zee master race?
All the Republican Party wants to know is whether its candidates “like” their policies or “like like” their policies.
PsycGirl: Actually, that should be the He-Man Obama Hater’s Club, if you’ve ever watched “The Little Rascals”…
The water-boarding will continue until Party Purity scores reach 100%.
Humpback: Mules are 4 Demoncrats. Them were jack-asses.
JMP: Gay marriage wasn’t a national issue during Ronnie’s administration, but AIDS and NEA funding for degenerate gay art was on the radar.
Hey! No math questions; I could ace this one…
Too many questions. Let’s get to the point. You like blowing things up, hatin on the gays, pissing off the planet, and making everyday Christmas for the super-rich — The GOP wants you.
Oh, and no Mexicans unless they make a 10 cents an hour cleaning my toilet.
How about sending weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons, to Iraq so its leader can kill Iraqis? Ronnie was really into that.
I agree with thefrontpage re: Ronnie Raygun being one of the worst presidents this country has ever had. I knew even while he was president that he was a disaster. So the current GOP brain trust is instituting Raygun-themed totalitarian purity test. How… original…
Still better than the World’s Smallest Political Quiz.
What a great list of straw-man evils! Why, I too oppose “rationing” of care, and support “military recommended” surges (by which I mean by consensus)!
Good to know the internal loyalty tests are basically the same as the surveys they send out to voters with questions like “Some say the democrats want to take away all your guns, and convert you to Islam”.
WarAndG: I think it would be conspiracy to commit murder, as in the woman is putting a “hit” out on her unborn child, and the doctor would merely be a contract killer. More importantly, the police must investigate every miscarriage, interrogating the woman and her family to make sure they didn’t commit murder and then disguise the evidence to make it look like an “accident.” This leads to the new hit TV show, CSI: Womb.
thefrontpage: Word.
The pitfalls of these bullet points all were refuted and ridiculed in Melly Mel’s last verse in “The Message”.
I think they left out a few:
#11. Do you favor shreadding the Constitution, ignoring the laws passed by Congress, and selling arms to Central American rebels?
#12. Do you favor the United States shooting itself in the foot by almost getting nuclear arms banned - but backing down at the last possible moment?
#13. Do you favor raising Federal deposit insurance to $100,000, deregulating financial institutions, and creating a financial debacle not seen since 1929?
#14. Do you favor having the most corrupt presidential administration since either US Grant or Warren G. Harding (depending on how you count)?
#15. Do you favor being a union president and selling out your membership, saving your career but costing those who voted you into office millions of dollars?
#16. Can you duck?
If I stick it in my butt, will I still pass the Purity Test?
What Fresh Hell is This?: Her Bullwinkle antlers are looking pretty beat as well.
Does Steele make a living doing this? I mean, how much is he getting paid for this crap?
If you pass the test, do you get to go to some sort of Purity Ball with David Vitter and John Ensign?
Reagan hated Obama before it was cool.
JMP: He mostly left intact his tax cuts for the rich and shifted the increases down the scale. I’ve been a tax payer for a long time and my very first tax decrease came this April, a whopping $40 a month. See? Trickle-down worked!
thefrontpage: You forgot ignoring AIDS (labeling it a “gay plague” when they discussed it at all) until it spread and became a national epidemic.
11. Free cheese.
freakishlystrong: Brigadier General Jack Ripper
JMP: Hell, Dubya doesn’t even pass this test — he fails at least on 1, 6 and 7. On the other hand, he always spoke out against the things he was going to do before and after he did them, so let’s call it even.
They’ve been pushing the ‘America doesn’t like us because we are not conservative enough’ meme for about 3 years now and it hasn’t really worked for them.
I love how points 2 and 3 describe support for “market-based” reform of health care and the environment, but then immediately go on to describe firm, unwavering opposition for the public option and cap-and-trade, two programs that explicitly RELY on market forces to be effective reforms.
I hate to give the “re-education camps” Chicken Littles extra fuel, but everyone who claims that the public option and cap-and-trade will SUBVERT capitalism seriously needs to take a mandatory class on economics. A program that creates strong incentives for the market to behave in the way we all want it to, and then simply lets the market take care of the rest, is the death of capitalism how? In before Republican policymakers decry Economics as socialist.
To sum it up, the GOP is narrow minded enough to believe it can win a Presidential election by marginalizing Gays, environmentalists, union workers, people supporting health care reform, people supporting common sense gun regulation, progressive women, Latinos, and African Americans. I say bring it on bitches.
Cape Clod: But if we can keep that meme going for just a few more years, we might see widespread adoption of Burqas by Republican women, and then I would at least never have to SEE Sarah Palin again.
PrairiePossum: But they won’t HAVE to appeal to those demographics just as soon as they get them re-disenfranchised. Pandering solely to old white men will work beautifully, as soon as old white men are the only ones voting anymore.
I think everyone can agree on 6 and 7 depending on how you define ‘Victory’ and ‘Containment’ but I’d like some clarification on the ‘particularly effective action’. Does that just mean nuke em’ before they nuke someone else?
freakishlystrong: The Aryan Nation.
Humpback: 20
SayItWithWookies: Didn’t you hear? Turns out Dubya wasn’t a true conservative and therefore everything that went wrong was not their fault.
thefrontpage: Ronnie was the Repubs best fron man in the last 50 years. Eisenhower had a brain and a conscience, Nixon had a brain and an ego but Reagan was perfect He splendidly delivered the lines and had just the right touch for the “Mr. President” character while the party gleefully looted the treasury and set up the economy for their own benefit. We’re still stuck with the mess his supporters made in California while he was governor.
What I can’t figure out is the Stockholm Syndrome mindset that persists in many places. Reagan did more to undermine the middle class in this country than any leader since George III, yet he is idolized by those that suffered the most. The Stalin comparison is not just partisan rhetoric.
Reagan; father of the homeless, enabler of AIDS (who cares about “queers”,anyway) creator of the largest tax increase in americas’ history,up to that time, union buster, Quisling, liar, adulterer, victim of Alzheimers disease,beneficiary of an enormous legacy project, indolent press and apathetic populous, and THE GREAT COMMUNICATOR. He was a fraud, we all knew it, and allowed the deconstruction of the middle class, in part because he was old and as some European leader of the time said “an amiable dunce”.
Everyone who passes will get to wear these swell outfits with brown shirts!
betterDeadThanRed: Victory means supporting the troops, like, and as such.
If they used the 10 commandments as the test, there would be no Republicans.
I praise the GOP for exploring new ways to shrink their party.
Aspiring Gopers,
Please note. Opposable thumb and ability to walk fully upright are NOT required.
Interesting how the current crop of Repubs take a saying from Ronald Reagan and convert into Holy Party Scripture. This may be the first step in Reagan’s conversion to a deity.
Also, note that the Repubs current interpretation of Reagan’s Purity Law may be the exact opposite of the point he was trying to make — that there’s room for disagreement in the Republican Party. Kinda like how Jesus’s “love your neighbor as yourself” gets turned into Jebus’s “hate anyone who disagrees with you or I’ll drop a tornando on your sorry ass.”
Since the Republican Party seems to be basing all its policies on those (allegedly) of a dead man, has it become the US equivalent of the Peronists?
thefrontpage: Wait until Cheney/Palin 2012. I smell a winning ticket right there.
Dudes, Reagan only scores 60%, tops. Why do Republicans hate Reagan so much?
Flanders: That’ll be Palin/Cheney — Dick always wants to be the Man Behind the Curtain.
There is nothing politicans love more than answering yes/no to list of 10 wedge issues. It would be like showing up to gun fight w/ a plastic knife. On the other hand maybe this will allow us to shrink the GOP until, to paraphrase Mr.Norquist, it’s small enought drag it into the bathroom and drown it in a bathtub.
Could this be turned into a Psalm? I really want to sing it, so someone else will DIR.
I am also fascinated by how the GOP prefers cardboard Reagan to actual Reagan. He was a good deal more flexible a politician than his own followers seem to realize, (”never speak ill of a fellow republican”) and his great success (helping to wind the Cold War down peacefully) came about precisely because of his willingness to set aside right wing dogma when a real opportunity to negotiate presented itself. I’ve never seen a political movement so completely miss the point about their hero. Its like if Democrats insisted that every Democratic politician also had to be confined to a wheelchair in order to be considered a worthy heir of FDR.
S.Luggo: WIN! [Gen. Jack D. Ripper]
Sullivan has some comments on this. He concludes with:
“…I’m not sure how anyone could agree or disagree with this crapulous mishmash of rhetorical degeneracy. But as a sign of intellectual health, it is depressing. It’s a sign that denial is deep and a serious attempt to govern, as opposed to posture, is still far from the Republican psyche.”
PrairiePossum: and apparently, the GOP is also obtuse enough to splinter their very own party amongst moderate republicans . . . after marginalizing Gays, environmentalists, union workers, people supporting health care reform, people supporting common sense gun regulation, progressive women, Latinos, and African Americans.
coolcatdaddy: I, for one, give thanks every day for the fact that I won’t ever have to worry about the government financially supporting my art. I mean, think of the paperwork!God bless you, Ronnie. You and Jesse Helms, who sure knew a thing or two about smut.
“Listen, if you want to join the Grand Old Popular People’s Party, you have to really hate Obama.”
“I do!”
“How much?”
“A lot!”
“Okay, you’re in.”
Come here a minute: Is that anything like “The Jewish Question”? I think somebody came up with a solution for that one.
In Republican speak, the word “hypocrisy” has no meaning.
comicbookguy:
“How much?”
“Err… as much as a small pony.”
“Oh, that’s quite a lot, that is!”
RedHate.com’s suggestions:
(1) Punching hippies is a legal form of expression.
(2) The moon should be declared hostile and nuked.
(3) The average American should be armed like Neo from the lobby scene at all times.
(4) Nachos are awesome.
(5) The federal government needs to stop wasteful spending. Also, researching giant war robots and dinosaurs with rocket launchers on them is not wasteful.
(6) America owns Antarctica.
(7) It’s not good diplomacy unless the foreign leaders are kneeling before us.
(8) Vampires shouldn’t sparkle.
(9) The fact that we torture terrorists isn’t horrific and is actually kind of funny.
(10) Biggest problem facing our nation: Too many sissies.
gurukalehuru: Okay, the contest is over. We have a winner.
Lots and lots of these folks INCLUDING Mr. Steele should go back to school and learn that OBAMA does not write the laws nor pass them. That is congresspeoples! They need to understand more about how our government works (or doesn’t).
chascates: C’mon, who can’t get behind #8?
chascates: I know that Redstate==evil, and all that. But honestly? Vampires should not fucking sparkle. Bela Lugosi or go home. I would gladly form a legislative coalition with the ignorant, hateful Ericksons of the world when this issue is brought up.
D etermined
W orker
I ntense
G ood worker
H ard worker
T errific
I think that covers it.
Also, 20% of all Pareto analyses account for 80% of all bullshit statistical comparisons.
depraved indifference engine: Class II Fascists = Birther Teabaggers?
Only Bonzo could go to Bitburg…
Shorter GOP purity test.
1. Economics is stupid.
2. Health care is evil.
3. Science is stupid.
4. Unions are evil.
5. Mexicans are stupid and evil.
6. Blow up stuff.
7. Blow up more stuff.
8. Gays are evil.
9. See 2.
10. Shoot stuff.
Wait, Nancy’s paid-by-the-hour arithmancer was REAL?? Reagan opposed Obama’s stimulus package?
Call me when Obama doubles the deficit, THEN he can claim the mantel of Reagan/Bush. Until then, Yawnzies…
debt, debt, I meant debt. GAh. Do not post to Wonkette while late and durnk…