Not surprisingly, Congressman Bart Stupak has been the target of many of harsh words and threats aimed at Democrats over their votes on the health care bill. His office turned over some of his voicemail to CBS News.
Listen as these good, upstanding, life-honoring Christians calmly express their displeasure:
Via @matthickey
This kind of thing is just cheerleading for the lowered discourse. “Piece of shit” comments from angry voters are nothing new, and nothing remarkable. This kind of “look, look what hateful people our opponents are”, picking the ugliest nuggets out of the shit stew of blogs and voicemail and holding them up for everyone to feign horror at — this isn’t doing anybody any good. And it’s blunting our ability to defeat our opponents with actual arguments. IMHO.
One love! <3
I cannot wait until these are sampled into a song.
Hey Negativland! Did you hear that? 🙂
Can someone explain what he did wrong as far as “baby-killing”? He and similar conservative Democrats were responsible for:
“reaching an agreement with President Barack Obama for an executive order to ensure no federal funds would be spent on abortion.”
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/03/2…
I wasn’t a big fan of the man, but he did give them what they wanted. Or perhaps, the “baby-killing” is just a red herring and they just don’t want the reform under any circumstances. Anyway, I’m amazed at how hateful and sociopathic some so-called Christians can be.
@ 1 is right. If you really dig around you can find all sorts of liberal hate for W, including wishes for his death.
@1 – I see your point, but I think it’s important to point out the rank hypocrisy coming from these folks. Of course this kind of stuff is nothing new, but there’s no doubt that it’s taken on a more menacing tone lately. There are a lot of moderate conservatives out there, and I think the more of this stuff they see happening in their name, the more they move away from these people.
1 & 5, agreed. Things trend in the Democrats’ favor when the focus is on the lying and BS of Republican officials. When it’s on teabaggers, the polls trend confoundingly pro-teabagger. So leaving that head-scrather aside, it behooves our side to keep the focus on idiot politicians rather than idiot angry nobodies.
“There are a lot of moderate conservatives out there, and I think the more of this stuff they see happening in their name, the more they move away from these people.”
Think about polls during town-hall August. Think about the Palin bump a year prior. Think about all the screen time afforded to R congresspeople in February, and their subsequent poll collapse. About how Obama was concerned with cornering McConnell, above all, at the “summit” song-and-dance.
For some reason, anti-Obamaness increases with coverage of teabaggerry, despite its loathesomeness, and anti-R sentiment increases when elected R’s appear on TV. So where are D efforts better spent?
Yeah, I’m with Fnarf on this. Back in 2002 I used to hang out in right-wing blogs like asmallvictory.net and the Captain’s Quarters and all those guys did all day long was find stupid shit people said on the Democratic Underground and use it to bash the left. It got their base all frothy, but it didn’t change anyone’s mind about anything and it basically made intelligent debate impossible.
No really, it’s not at all important to point that out. Because, for one thing, that’s not what the release of these recordings is actually trying to point out. The release is intended to point out that that people on the right generally are murderous thugs, not that they’re hypocrites. And since any fool can see that the vast majority of people on the right — including a lot of teabaggers — would condemn these kinds of threats unconditionally, publicizing them just makes the Democrats look dishonest.
Second, your proposition assumes that the Democrats have some kind of moral high ground on the issue of hypocrisy. We don’t. We have moral high ground on other issues; regulation, Social Security, social and economic justice — we have the moral high ground on substantive issues. But on the hypocrisy issue, Democrats are every inch as venial and reactionary as Republicans so, again, calling the Republicans hypocrites — as if that means something — just makes us look like liars. It’s pointless, and damages our credibility with swing voters.
Teabaggers will destroy themselves in the media, given time. Any effort by Democrats to hurry that process along will actually make them more sympathetic, and ultimately keep their cause alive longer. Bad strategy, bad politics, bad idea.
Shorter Judah: When your enemy is really dumb, he’s not your real enemy, it’s his father. In this case, McConnell, Cornyn, and McCain. Palin is just the high-school fling who your dad likes but doesn’t know why (secret answer: an attractive young woman who parrots his thoughts and reactionary-ness, and is eternally subservient.)
Most teabaggers are VERY EASILY RELATED TO by swing voters (even my own “democrat” in-laws.) Therein lies the mindfuck to liberals, but the wisdom of Obama in shifting the definition of the enemy from the teabaggers to the R congresspeople.
Fnarf @1,
The point you’re missing here is that this sort of shameful shit, which does indeed come from both sides, is part of why thoughtful political discourse has becoming so rare in this country.
It is important, every once in a while, to dredge up this sort of crap to remind people, regardless of their opinions, of the virtue of a cool head.
er, yeah, that was “…has become so rare…”
And, not to repeat myself, but the point you’re missing is that it’s not important at all. And you pretty much have to be either
a) rationalizing; or
b) naive enough to think there’s inherent probative value in “speaking truth to power [aka crazy teabaggers]”
if you think otherwise. Because it’s not like there’s some objective mediating force that notices this Slog post and says, “Oh, wow, thanks for bringing that to my attention. Those teabaggers are a bunch of dicks.” — and who then gives us ten seats in the House in exchange for our high moral standards. Raising these issues in a public forum only has meaning in the context of propaganda — ours and theirs. And, from our perspective, it’s bad propaganda.
Judah, yup. Basically their propaganda is: liberals are condescending, weird, and other. A LOT of indy’s agree with them about that. Accentuating that side of things by mocking them is foot-shooting. On the other hand: indy’s generally revile the R leadership, bc even though indy’s are simplistic, they can still smell the smelly.
There’s plenty of crazy people on the left. The difference is that they’re not in charge of the Democratic party.
I’ve seen a few anti-conservative/anti-teabagger comments on SLOG that make those threats sound weak by comparison. Not all commenters say that, but a few out of thousands do, and if you cherry-pick the most brutal and present them as mainstream, it’s incredibly misleading.
As Fnarf @1, and many others agreed, it’s nothing new and nothing remarkable.
What Stupak did wrong is “reach an agreement” with Obama. What they wanted him to do was just stand up in Congress and yell at Obama and refuse to participate in anything.
He could just as well have agreed with funding abortions with federal funds and they wouldn’t be any angier at him. That’s where it is now.
18, they’re mad at him for not being an asshole.
@19: Lol. Basically, yeah.
And 1, 5, et al are essentially right: you can find angry idiots on both sides. It’s not really worth arguing about which side is home to more angry idiots. They’re pretty equally stocked.
I think an argument could be made that the Tea/Republican Parties are by their very nature “reactionary” and fearful (see #16), but I’m going to let the people who understand it better make it. For example, here’s David Frum discussing the issue on Canadian TV.
Another argument that could be made – and that I think cherry-picking like this is actually more intended to allude to – is that the modern Conservative movement has become almost dangerously anti-intellectual; and its agenda is suffering tremendously as a result.
Frum talks about this in his interview as well. It’s rapidly turned into a movement that celebrates mistakes, lack of preparation, and failure as manifestations of core ideological principles; that embraces ignorance of basic facts and concepts as the only true populism.
Consequentially, they’re slowly getting out-maneuvered both tactically and substantively, and conservative anti-intellectualism is arguably becoming more of a weakening force for the movement than it is a strengthening one.
@1
You miss several points here.
Yes there were Democrats who said awful things about Bush while he was in office. Unlike Obama who is trying to fix our broken health care system, Bush invaded and occupied Iraq and pissed all over the Constitution. Even then I don’t remember people using rhetoric such as lynchings and hangings, as is occurring now.
Also, when was the last time there was a leftist domestic terrorist? Maybe the Weather Underground in the early 70’s. But remember the last time the right wing was out of power and all the angry anti government rhetoric was notched up? Timothy McVee was the result.
@21: Never mind McVeigh, how about Stack? Stack, luckily, did not get the body count he wished for, but the anti-government right-wingers are calling him a hero despite the fact that what he did was an entirely unwarranted atrocity!
doesurmindglow says:
“Consequentially, they’re slowly getting out-maneuvered both tactically and substantively, and conservative anti-intellectualism is arguably becoming more of a weakening force for the movement than it is a strengthening one.”
But for the reality of it ever having been a strengthening one (save a couple blinks-of-the-eye that were quickly neutered), you have to go back all the way to 2004. six years ago!!! Six years is a long freaking time in politics. The question isn’t whether the GOP’s tactics are working. Conventional wisdom has crystallized on that. The question is where invigorating, effective leadership on the right is going to come from, if at all.
The question for progressives is: do we want that to happen or not? I think we do. Fighting weak enemy makes you weaker in the long term. The “liberal” position will drift rightward as long as the GOP is the faction of total fools.
Lesson learned: angry people should really write down their statements before getting on the phone. Nothing ruins an angry rant more than a misspoken phrase or an inappropriate pause.