I don’t like Republicans. I never have. I was raised to think of them as the social and political enemy of my kind, the Democrats, but just because I’m not fond of all Republicans in general, doesn’t mean I extend a blanketed tolerance to all things and all people Democratic.

Sometimes, the Big Tent can become claustrophobic to the point that I want to smack someone, like this morning.

Charlie Pierce writes in his Politics Blog:-

There was great trembling abroad in the land on Sunday when the Des Moines Register published its latest poll of the various Bible-banging rubes, Grant Wood zombies, and other caucusing Caucasians that the country has to pretend to take seriously once every four years.

He was talking about the home stretch of the time before caucus/primary time begins for the Republican Party, of course; but Pierce’s choice of words literally made me vomit in my mouth. This is a guy who sits on his reputation (literally) as a clever and incisive sports-cum-political journalist, but for such a savvy wordsmith, his choice of vocabulary in referring to the people who happen to live in Iowa was neither clever, cute nor constructive.

It was insulting in the worst kind of way, and – more than that – it was endemic of the sort of snide, superior, Coastal elitism for which the Democratic party and the Left are often derided.

Pierce is not the only person guilty of this. People of his ilk (read Joan Walsh, Bill Maher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Keith Olbermann and assorted others) often speak derisively of people who live in rural neighbourhoods and small towns found in the agrarian Midwest and the South, areas otherwise known to them as “flyover” or “shitkicker” country.

Yes, we’re all Bible-thumping, fundamentalist, shit-kicking inbred, racist, homophobic Caucasian rubes.

Except, mostly, we’re not, but it’s a pity and a shame that we all can’t be East or West Coast Irish Catholic sophisticates, especially the variety who either consign President Obama to the realm of the racist comment thinly disguised as comedy as Pierce has done, as well as those sophisticates, Bill Maher and Michael Moore. It’s pretty sad that none of us rubes can even pretend to impart such common sense rhetoric as Joan Walsh, even though we don’t resent people of colour, although it behooves the Walshes and Pierces of this world to think as much. They prefer to think of us as having sprung from the loins of George Wallace’s Democratic Party, when they would excoriate us for even assuming that they burst forth, fully clad in Celtic armour, from the forehead of Father Coughlin.

People like Pierce need to remember that rube-haven Iowa recognises same-sex marriage, like his hallowed ground of Massachusetts. People like Pierce want to remember that Douglas Wilder was the first elected African-American governor in the United States, in Virginia, when Derval Patrick was still in school someplace, and that, in the Commonwealth (of Virginia, mind you), when we speak of “the Governor,” we don’t mean Sponge-Bob-Square-Pants McDonnell, who’s part of Charlie’s tribe. People like Pierce really want to remember that Bill Clinton’s Scots-Irish (as in PRODDY, Charlie) antecedents hail from rube-seeded, shit-kickin’ Hope, Arkansas; and that if Charlie’s and Bill’s people hadn’t left the Old Country, they’d have grown up lobbing rocks and other more dangerous objects at each other down the Falls Road, in Belfast.

Sometimes the Big Tent gets do damned claustrophic and over-heated, that it’s mete some people take a walk outside for a breath of fresh air; and since my claim to America starts with Pocahontas, I reserve the right to tell Charlie Pierce to fuck off in his prejudicial assumptions.

Scott Lilly of the Center for American Progress on a new study of Republican job destruction:

Most of the nearly 14 million people across our country who are currently unemployed can blame their situation on the inability of Congress and the White House to sufficiently cushion the economy from the financial crisis that began in 2007. But a growing number of unemployed Americans today are the victims of actions taken by the current Congress aimed deliberately at eliminating jobs. (Emphasis mine)

So how do Republicans get away with it? Why, obfuscation and dishonesty, of course. They figure we’re so dumb and resentful they can keep right on breaking America while we thank them for it. Their economic theology has been tried and found utterly wanting, but the GOP knows it can win just by sticking to its story, no matter how ridiculous that narrative becomes, as long as they keep calling police and firefighters “union government workers.”

planning to roll out a jobs plan that amounts to a conservative’s dream agenda: targeting labor and environmental regulations, enacting a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, lowering corporate and individual tax rates, encouraging energy production and expanding free trade, according to a draft obtained by POLITICO.

None of that creates jobs. None of it is about creating jobs. It is about finishing the job of turning American workers into slaves.

On Tuesday, aides to Mr. Ryan and Mr. Boehner blamed Democrats’ failure to pass the regular appropriations bills for fiscal year 2011 for forcing Republicans to reduce their goal to perhaps $50 billion to $60 billion.

“House Republicans will continue to work to reduce spending for the final six months of this fiscal year — bringing nonsecurity discretionary spending back to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels — yielding taxpayers significant savings and starting a new era of cost cutting in Washington,” said Conor Sweeney, communications director for Mr. Ryan.

Get that? Democrats not finishing the budget somehow prevents Republicans from making cuts. Just say “stimulus” and “bailout” and presto, it’s all Obama’s fault. Meanwhile, the White House is about to announce $100 billion in Pentagon budget cuts. And there’s this chart, via John Cole, that says we could be almost back to “pre-stimulus/bailout” levels just by not extending the Bush tax cuts Republicans worked so hard to preserve.

Young, inexperienced, and often drawing their first paychecks, enlisted men and women are easy marks for sleazy car dealers, insurance scammers, predatory lenders, and identity thieves. So pervasive are the rip-offs—and so troubling the debt incurred by military personnel as a result—that U.S. Department of Defense officials recently labeled the situation a threat to national security. “You don’t want them distracted while they’re out on the front lines,” says Clifford L. Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. “But they will be if they’re worrying about what’s going on at home.”

During WWII, Congress gave service members credit and debt protection while the nation was in conflict. Teh War on Terrorz™ has been no such bipartisan commitment from Republicans — either in charge or in the minority. All a soldier will find in the Grand Old Party anymore are chickenhawks and buddy-fuckers.

By beating the conservative drum the way he does — demonizing conservatives who he says aren’t conservative enough, helping nominate candidates more interested in throwing grenades than in passing legislation and belittling compromise in a country built on political compromises — DeMint makes it easier for Democrats to paint his own party in an unflattering light.

A Senate Republican Conference filled after November with DeMint-like ideologues, troublemakers and self-righteous conservatives is a caucus that is sure to sound rigid and uncompromising, arrogant and doctrinaire. Style doesn’t matter to true believers, but it does to the American people.

And that’s why Obama is smiling.

How long have I been saying this about the GOP? A long time. America’s middle will reject a movement built on the demented quicksand of paranoid politics. The more DeMint and Rand and Angle talk, the less likely a Republican comeback becomes.

Let’s review: according to a major daily, the House Minority Leader wants to push retirement age back so we can pay for wars. After po-mouthing the president on everything else,

Boehner had praise, however, for Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan and stepped-up drone attacks in Pakistan. He declined to list any benchmarks he has for measuring progress in the nine-year war, at a time of increasing violence and Obama’s replacement of Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus. (Emphasis mine)

That’s the modern GOP in a nutshell. Victory is unimportant for Republicans; war itself is the object. The price in blood and treasure helps promote their anarcho-Randian domestic agenda. It would be nice if the Tribune-Review put the entire quote online so we could all see it ourselves. It’s already going to be a source of explosive controversy, and ought to be. Such a quote deserves to become campaign ad fodder.

I really hope the newspaper isn’t holding back out of some Lara Logan-like concern for their access.

Senator Lindsey Graham explains his holdup of the bipartisan climate bill:

“Moving forward on immigration — in this hurried, panicked manner — is nothing more than a cynical political ploy,” Graham said. “Let’s be clear, a phony, political effort on immigration today accomplishes nothing but making it exponentially more difficult to address in a serious, comprehensive manner in the future.”

Holding up a climate bill in the face of melting ice? Not a phony political effort to stop reform. Because comprehensive immigration reform might actually address the issue in a serious, comprehensive manner, and Republicans cannot allow that to happen.

Mind you, they know it’s important. Graham and the Republicans also know how bad the optics of the issue are right now, with Arizona jailing brown people who don’t have a copy of their birth certificate with them:

Abdon was told he did not have enough paperwork on him when he pulled into a weigh station to have his commercial truck checked. He provided his commercial driver’s license and a social security number but ended up handcuffed.

An agent called his wife and she had to leave work to drive home and grab other documents like his birth certificate.

Jackie explains, “I have his social security card as well and mine. He’s legit. It’s the first time it’s ever happened.”

Both were born in the United States and say they are now both infuriated that keeping important documents safely at home is no longer an option.

Jackie says, “It doesn’t feel like it’s a good way of life, to live with fear, even though we are okay, we are legal…still have to carry documents around.”

Republicans know all this, but don’t care. The Grand Old Party simply cannot allow Democrats to be the ones who actually, y’know, do something about it. They had their chance to do something under Junior Bush, but chose inaction; if the immigration bill under discussion resembles the one Bush failed to get through a Republican Congress, they’ll denounce it as un-American anyway.

It’s just normal Republican reactionary behavior. The GOP also knew that health care spending was bankrupting families, business, and government; they just didn’t want the Democrats to succeed in doing something about it. But the uglier truth is that a right-wing teabagging base will crucify any Republican who votes for immigration reform, and that has the GOP terrified.

They know the demographics are changing and they could lose the southwest for a generation. But they also know the racist right-wing authoritarian warmongering teabagger fringe will crucify any Republican who votes for reform. Their solution for this dilemma is…nothing. Down the memory hole again! Graham wants to quash any discussion of the issue — and no doubt most Republicans in Congress would really, really like that to work.

They’d rather be free to demagogue in home districts without being on the record in Washington, which is a pretty good argument for Democrats bringing up immigration reform ASAP. It’s also an example of the GOP painting itself into rhetorical corners that guarantee minority status.

The Washington Post reports that Harry Reid will hold a cloture vote on financial reform Monday. GOP intransigence on the bill began to collapse on Monday and has now disintegrated. From WaPo last night:

Key members of both parties said Wednesday that they are close to agreeing on the main elements of a bill to overhaul the nation’s financial regulations, raising the prospect that the Senate could begin formal discussion of the landmark legislation early next week.

It appeared McConnell would not get every Senate Republican in line to block financial reform.  Then he trumpeted the magic 41 number last Friday, but by Monday even hardliners in his membership were changing their minds. Major Republicans started voting “yes” in committees, even on tough derivatives reform.

They’re being constructive. To what end?

Minority members may not care about promises its leader made to Big Banking. Perhaps they’ve actually begun to realize that “no” has consequences, and won’t let Democrats claim all the credit for fixing the country, after all. From TPM:

Key Republicans, sincere about passing new rules for Wall Street, but intimidated by the notion of blocking financial regulatory reform, let it be known to their leadership that, at some point, they would side with Democrats to break a filibuster. Maybe not on round one, or even round two. But eventually.

[...]

“This issue is not philosophical,” Corker told TPMDC this afternoon. “It shouldn’t be… This is the place where the Senate can function like it’s supposed to. Maybe this is a beginning point towards us actually moving away from the dysfunctional place we’ve been.”

Whatever the GOP needs to tell itself in order to say yes…I really don’t care.