We’ve been waiting to see how the GOP would eventually tackle this particular, inevitable political messaging problem: At some point, they would decide to ditch “Obama is Jimmy Carter II” — Jimmy Carter, of course, having been the original History’s Greatest Monster — in favor of Obama is worse than Carter. But they can’t explicitly say that “Obama worse than Carter” — because that would imply that Carter was good enough, in some way, to surpass Obama. That can’t be true, because Carter never did anything even remotely good in his entirely life. And so, a quandary. Hmm… ah, here we go, Kentucky turtle Mitch McConnell has come up with something, because that’s what Mitch McConnell does.
Campaigns are a pretty robust discussion about the future. I do think it’s interesting to note that the whole notion of earned success and capitalism seems to be under attack by this administration across the board. Not just in the campaign, but through the actions of the government itself. They seem to have forgotten what made this country great, and what has lifted literally millions of Americans out of poverty for a long time has been a robust capitalist system. I think the view of this admin is that if you’re making a profit you must be up to no good. You must be either mistreating your employees or cheating your customers or both. They’re here to help us. Of course their ever-helpful approach to this is the reason we’re having such a difficult time coming out of this economic slowdown. This is certainly the most anti-business administration since the Carter years, and at least you could say this for President Carter: he was largely incompetent. This administration has actually done a lot of damage to the country. We hope we can begin to clean up the mess and repair the damage after the election.
But but… but, yes, here’s the thing, so Obama has been more damaging and thus worse than Carter, yet this would mean that Obama has been competent, so does this (a) render the concept of “competency” a useless metric of presidential performance or (b) cause the universe to implode?
Here’s another framing to work with: Of the last three Democratic presidents, Republicans impeached the one they hated the least.
[TPM]
{ 134 comments }
Does anyone in the GOP remember some guy named W?
Who? Cindy-Lou Who?
W….W….W….no, can't seem to….
How do you spell that?
DUH b ya?
Dubya. 'Double-ewe' if you don't speak Texas Moron.
You must be mistaken. That's a Kenyan name. We would never elect a Kenyan.
I'm impressed you got that edit in, btw
He doesn't know, either.
Wasn't he the guy that served with Vice President Cheney?
Nope. Its like when a spouse gets caught cheeting and a few weeks later the other spouse moves in and they dread to talk about it so don't.
Fritz Peterson always was the strong, silent type.
I shit you not, a FB friend earlier today "liked" several W pages and I foolishly clickity-clicked over. Both of the pages have mulitple millions of fans.
My incredulity bone is permanently sprained.
Been noticing that with the Mittster. Who likes the Mittster??
Nope. There was no President between Clinton and Obama.
He was a liberal wasn't he?
So Obama may be worse than – the best President withing my lifetime. That's not really very bad.
No, no, no. You're missing the whole GOP narrative:
Jimmy Carter – Bumbling boob who meant well. Just couldn't help himself. Good, White Christian fellow to boot.
Barack Obama – EVIL GENIUS KENYAN MUSLIN COMMUNIST MASTERMIND!
Right, the claim seems to be that unlike Jimmy Carter, Obama is destroying America on purpose.
You know, like the Republicans are doing in real life.
Former President Carter was unavailable for comment, as he was busy building some poor person a house.
Burn!
Obama isn't anti business.
Romney and Boehner want to offset the loss of revenue from extending school loan interest rate discounts with lower taxes. Let me see if I understand their logic … increasing the deficit by lowering student loan rates is countered by increasing the deficit by lowering taxes? Since when do two negatives numbers add up to a positive number? How about if we tie lower taxes to job creation … a 1% tax cut for the wealthy for every 1% reduction in the unemployment rate.
But don't you see how swingeing across-the-board (except for military, of course, military is off the board) cuts will avoid austerity?
Crap, I forgot snark in my post.
Testicle ballz!
HAH!
-1 * -1 = +1, therefore we have to multiply the student loan interest by lower taxes!
Eureka!
Barb, I like that idea!!
Thanks!
It's your 1-1-1 plan!
But that would require the Job Creators to create jobs!
Now you are using their own logic and turning it around to say "look at me I'm Barb and I have a stupendious plan that blows away the Laughing curve". Just like a liberal. Unfair with your making sense.
Meh, I'm sober Baconz. This will soon change.
Needs more Reagan tax hikes.
Indeed it does.
"They seem to have forgotten what made this country great, and what has lifted literally millions of Americans out of poverty for a long time has been a robust capitalist system"
Uh, no, it was a robust system of government services and aid, first put in place by FDR – you know, the greatest President of the 20th Century – that lifted literally millions of Americans out of poverty. The system that protected them from poverty created by capitalism. You fail history forever!
I would like to point out that the greatest prosperity (the '50s) in this country came on the heels when we were closest to Socialism (WWII- with the rationing for the war effort).
Not to mention a 91% top marginal tax rate.
But who's counting.
Oh, yeah. And the largest participation rate in labor unions, too.
Also: capitalism and Wall-Street rent-seeking are not the same thing. Capitalists build stuff—by saving either their own funds or by extracting surplus value from workers, or both, they make construct factories, build railroads, manufacture airplanes. Wall street croupiers just shuffle the money back and forth amongst themselves.
Capitalism creates wealth, sometimes at terrible social cost. Finance just moves it around, sometimes at terrible social cost.
CORY BOOKER LIBEL!!!
The Whore of Wall Street, Cory Booker
Oh, god. This can not be said, enough! I also hate when "the economy", "finance" and "capitalism" are all used interchangeably and in such a way as a warning to not question the system. This most recently happened after the whole Booker debacle where the criticism has gone beyond "why does the president hate private equity" to "why does the president hate free enterprise".
"…what has lifted literally millions of Americans out of poverty for a long time has been a robust capitalist system."
Correction: what has lifted literally millions of Americans out of poverty for a long time has been a well-regulated capitalist system.
Or, alternatively: what has kept literally millions of Americans in poverty for a long time has been a robust capitalist system.
the other, let's say, 290 million… we'll lift you out… later
The lifting will be done at the rate of 16 tons a day.
And what do you get???
I am pretty sure I will owe my soul to the company store.
Capitalism has only been robust when bolstered by government action to meet the needs the unfettered profit motive has no interest in addressing, and to protect the people the unfettered profit motive would happily leave for dead.
Let's let the Republicans destroy unions and see how many people slip into poverty. Experiments are fun!
So Mitch, exactly when did you stop beating your wife?
"Stop"?
I think the more appropriate question for Mitch would be "So Mitch, exactly when did you stop sucking rent-boy cock?"
There it is.
I think youo mean "exactly when did you stop cutting your beard?"
What this country really needs is an out-of-touch rich white asshole with an ivy league MBA to fix all our problems — just like the last one did.
At least GWB seemed like the sort of guy you could snort a line of coke with.
And Dubya was pro-business/anti-regulation which didn't seem to cause any fucking problems whatsoever. Take your annoying turtle head and shove it up your turtle ass–oh wait, it's already there.
I seem to remember being able to find a job a lot easier during the Carter years than during the W years.
The GOP's platform relies on the fact that govt. can't get out it's own way to do anything positive for 'Merica. Competency is not only frowned upon – in fact, incompetency is applauded, as it reinforces GOP dogma that govt is destructive and needs to be shrunk to the size where it can be suffocated in Mitch McConnel's coin purse. or whatever the metaphor of the week is.
Hey wingnutz, two words for you. RICHARD NIXON. And don't you fuckers forget it!
I want some of the drugs that these fuckers are on. Listening to them makes my head hurt
Wow, that is some champion-grade spinning.
I'm really impressed. No, I'm serious! I haven't seen someone two-step through a minefield so deftly since the American version of "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" did the rape-vengeance scene.
I saw the original and it was so powerful, excellent and CREEPY that I flat-out refused to watch the 'merikanized one even though it had Mr. Double-O-Dreamy in it.
Good decision. The wife and I watched the original and it was awesome!!!1! Then we watched the other one — shitty!!!111. But I will give the American version this: They really fleshed out the whole part where she steals the criminal syndicate's money well, better ending, mebbe.
What lifted millions out of poverty? I will give you a hint… it starts with U and ends with NION.
Nionu? Is that some kind of code for "Taft-Hartley Act"?
Addendum: if you want an example of how important it is to resist the Republicans' upcoming efforts to force through radical legislation before any election might derail them, I urge you to go back and read Truman's speeches against the "Do-Nothing Republican Congress", where he says he needs a Democratic congress to repeal the Taft-Hartley act, which he rightly savages as anti-worker, etc. But somehow it never got repealed. And it's been an albatross around the neck of American labor for nearly 3/4 of a century.
The existence of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney pretty much disproves the whole notion of "earned success" in the Republican party.
Going to the B-School* = earning it. What part don't you understand?
And what is the mechanism for perpetuating this system? It's very simple. B-School alums recognize each other, and hire each other, and show each other the way to the Sacred Money Trough, over which they stand each day, scooping out more money than anyone could ever need.
__________________________
*Except on scholarship
Campaigns are a pretty robust discussion about the future.
Um, no, actually campaigns are usually discussions that distort and demonize the other candidate. Case in point being Romney's attacks on Obama…
I used to love turtles. Now I fucking hate them. Timmy, Yertle, Donatello, McConnell–they all sicken me.
Go ahead- blame the (herp) victim.
Really GOP? When did Madame Tussaud become your stock photo provider?
Mitch McConnell makes me miss Billy Carter.
and Roger Clinton.
But not Neil Bush.
I think the most anti-business president was probably Teddy Roosevelt, and that was a good thing.
W. omney
Welease Womney!
Wewease Womney!
So, Obama is actively hurting the country by turning around the economy and creating jobs that we were losing at astronomical rates when he took over from a Republican President that Mitch McConnell supported.
Right. And, really, if you are going to make that argument, you should check this out:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rwnhwaFW-dY/T7iJ-vpzlsI…
NEEDZ MOAR BILLY BEER!!!
Is it even physically possible for the Right to be more to the right?
Shorter, Simpler McConnell for the Tea Party:
"Hey, at least Carter was white!"
When do the ads attacking Grover Cleveland drop? I'm sure that “We are Republicans, and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion” should work just fine.
HAHAHA Remember that time Jimmy Carter gave all our money to Billionaires then crashed the economy, or the time he read 'My Pet Goat' and did a doo-doo in his pants while America was being attacked, and that day he hung all those Mission Accomplished banners off a destroyer and flew in on a fighter plane like Tom Cruise, but gayer … oh, hang on a minute …
Yeah, and that time when W. got Sadat and Begin to sign that peace accord…
Sorry, can't quite agree wtih you. It is physically and mathematically impossible to be gayer than Tom Cruise.
Scooby Doo can do do, but Jimmy Carter is smarter.
I'm still waiting for socialist Muslin Fascist communist Mao Mao revolution that the GOPers promised when Barry took over.
See, Barry is such a crappy president he can't even do that right.
I seem to remember the GOP leading us into some poorly planned, poorly executed wars that bankrupted the country, I don't remember Jimmy Carter doing that.
In 1971, after Lt. William Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the My Lai massacre, Georgia's governor Jimmy Carter instituted "American Fighting Man's Day" and asked Georgians to drive for a week with their lights on in protest. This alone would be enough for conservatives to rank Carter above Obama in the pantheon of presidents
Ah yes, the notion of earned success. When some asshole inherits a great deal of money, then grows at the expense of the livelihoods of the poor and middle class and the environment, and then stores it offshore to avoid having to pay half the tax rate of people who actually work for their money.
Ah yes, the Republican belief in the myth of the deserving rich. They reject the obvious truth that it's possible, at the same time, for some people to have earned their wealth, and at the same time for others to have come by wealth without making any valuable contribution to society at all (e.g. through inheritance, luck, or out-and-out villainy)
From their false premise that everyone who's rich deserves to be rich, they apply the false logic that this means everyone who deserves to be rich is rich, and thence reach the false conclusion that everyone* who's poor deserves to be poor. None of these things is true, of course, but belief in them goes a very long way towards explaining Republican policy.
* Everyone except themselves, of course, they may not be rich yet but they deserve to be because FREEDUMB! so they will be because AMURKA!
[how tiresome it is to have to delve into the Cyrillic alphabet to be able to say 'outrіght']
"…and at least you could say this for President Carter: he was largely incompetent. "
Wow. Just wow. This framework: at least you could say this about [person X]: he was largely incompetent – this sounds like a line from a Brit sitcom. It is surely destined to become an InterWebzToobzNetz standby.
And I almost think they think that this is some form of compliment.
It does sound very much like the sort of thing Sir Humphrey might say on Yes Minister.
Baconz Ma always told me to say 3 nice things about places I think are full or dumb asses who vote for Mitch. God bless her, here I go….uhhhhh….mmmm OK.
Slint was from Louisville
…..uh….just a sec….OH
They've got good camping there
Mmmmmmmmmm……let me think… all right
No one from Kentucky ever punched me in the groin.
I distinctly remember my junior year history teacher saying "Yes, Jimmy Carter is our President now. We might not agree with him but we need to support him."
Even then I had that dog in the headlights look. Mrs. Pruitt, you actually had to say that after Watergate and all that courty-legally senate session shit we have recently been through??? She remains a sweet lady though.
She's not dead?
I still remember my first grade teacher doing an exercise about the '88 election and not so inadvertently getting us to support Bush just because his name was easier to say than Dukakis.
At least they've given up hope of reaching anybody young enough to not know what "Gilligan's Planet" was.
You don't have Carter to kick around anymore.
The truth is Jimmy was just to good a person to be a President.F@ck them all !
Maybe we should judge presidents on how they spent their time after their presidency.
W: Cut his lawn.
Clinton: Rescued some people kidnapped by North Korea. Rebuilding Haiti. Stopped getting BJs from sluts.
Bush I: ???????
Reagan: Took a nap and died.
Carter: Jeezus Christ! Does this guy ever sleep? What hasn't he done?
My guess is that Bush the First has spent most of his time since his term in office saying "Yes, dear…"
But to which "dear"?
"Clinton: Rescued some people kidnapped by North Korea. Rebuilding Haiti. Stopped getting BJs from sluts."
NOW who's being naive?
I think I need to adjust my gamma or something on my monitor. Carter looks black face.
me personally, i often think business needs a swift kick in the ass.
Is "anti-business" code for anti-asshole? I can't tell if Mitch McConnell is writing for or against Obama's administration.
"Jimmy Carter: The Man Of Bronze" was the worst pulp adventure series ever.
Who in the hell is Mitch McConnell to call anyone besides the dumb ass he sees in the mirror every morning incompetent. Glass houses asshole.
Carter? Isn't he the one that done tried to convert us to a peanut-based economy and surrendered to Iran, which forced St. Reagan to beat him by raising taxes on Cadillac-driving welfare queens in Chicago?
Jimmy Carter hasn't been president now for over 31 years. Did John F. Kennedy run against Herbert fucking Hoover in '60? I don't think he did. Fuck these fucking fucks. The first vote I ever cast for president was for Mr. Carter, and I had the extraordinary fortune to shake his hand the night before the election after his final campaign speech in Flint, MI. It remains one of the proudest votes I have ever cast. Mister, we could use a man like Jimmy Carter again…
A perhaps little known piece of history: Carter had the courage to challenge our oil dependance as counter-productive even back in his day. You'd have thought others in gubmint would have seen the shit on the wall after that whole embargo mess. But so Carter gets it, right. He does everything he can to green up the whitehouse and make it as energy efficient as possible in those days.
So what does saint ronnie do almost immediately when he gets in the WH? Sneeringly rips every fucking bit of it out – and spends mondo muneez doing it – and increasing the WH energy suck to boot.
Fuck saint ronnie and all his ilk.
Skull fuck them.
Every last ilk.
Remember when Carter gave weapons to hostage takers, which increased terrorists taking hostages since they could score weapons out of the deal? Oh wait, that was Reagan. Carter sent the military to free our hostages, with a ultraconservative Republican at the helm of what surprisingly became a huge fiasco.
Carter was not in the top ten, but as someone cleverer than I observed, Jimmy Carter is the only person who used the Presidency as a stepping stone to greatness.
this one deserves an entry in the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AlOc…
Keep fucking that turtle.
In the sequel, an humble peanut farme from Georgia finds himself on an alien world, & in greeting the princess inquires, "Are you Jimmy Carter of DERP?"
I would love to see this administration behave in a way that us unfriendly to business. So far, I've seen nothing but corporate dicksucking in EVERY branch of the government.
I'll see yer Jimmy Carter and raise you one George W. Bush, assholes.
"This is certainly the most anti-business administration since the Carter years, and at least you could say this for President Carter: he was
largely incompetentwhite."[/Fixed]
"We hope we can begin to clean up the mess and repair the damage after the election." Irony doesn't enter here??
Time to flip this turtle on his back.
You'd have to hang out with him at a mortuary — just so Mitt wouldn't be the stiffest one in the room.
Carter fumbled dealing some of America's most intractable problems. W deliberately went looking for stuff to fuck up.
"Here’s another framing to work with: Of the last three Democratic presidents, Republicans impeached the one they hated the least."
Thank you for this. I find this strangely comforting. Somehow it makes them seem less racist. Still hateful assholes, but more hateful for it's own sake.
Luke, I could be your father.
No. Really. The 70s and 80s are nothing but a blur to me…
Stop making excuses. None of that ever stopped David Vitter.
My dad helped me write a letter to Amy Carter when I was five or so– I insisted, because we shared the same first name and all! I actually got a response back (not personal, of course) and it made my day.
How wonderful for us of a certain age that the first Prez we remember is fuckin' Reagan, huh?
Me too! But that's because of the drugs.
We need a 21st century version of that song with "company store" replaced by "fascist-pig bank".
Or "financier whore".
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