Slow posting ahead

I am pretty maxed out with stuff and will be on the road soon touring parts of the confederacy.

I'll try to post as time permits, but regularly scheduled winger meanness will not resume until the first week of June sometime.

Wingnutology and Civil Rights and The Solid South

 How do you get to a Solid GOTP South today when for 100 years after reconstruction, the South was solidly Democratic without talking about Race?

Here is a pretty good example of thinking on Race and the history of Political Parties in right wing counter-culture.

NRO Guy Williamson:

That Republicans have let Democrats get away with this mountebankery is a symptom of their political fecklessness, and in letting them get away with it the GOP has allowed itself to be cut off rhetorically from a pantheon of Republican political heroes, from Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass to Susan B. Anthony, who represent an expression of conservative ideals as true and relevant today as it was in the 19th century.

Perhaps even worse, the Democrats have been allowed to rhetorically bury their Bull Connors, their longstanding affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, and their pitiless opposition to practically every major piece of civil-rights legislation for a century. Republicans may not be able to make significant inroads among black voters in the coming elections, but they would do well to demolish this myth nonetheless. 

Even if the Republicans’ rise in the South had happened suddenly in the 1960s (it didn’t) and even if there were no competing explanation (there is), racism — or, more precisely, white southern resentment over the political successes of the civil-rights movement — would be an implausible explanation for the dissolution of the Democratic bloc in the old Confederacy and the emergence of a Republican stronghold there. 

Race is not an implausible explanation for the transformation of the GOP from the Party of the Union to the Party of the old Confederacy.   While the GOP did include African Americans in their voting coalition from the end of the civil war until the 1890s and RINOs support was important  to pass Civil Rights laws, today's GOTP and yesterday's GOP are two different animals. The former version had more progressive views, shall we say, than the current version.

Taking the mythology in order, we see that Abraham Lincoln came from the same family as Old Line Clay Whigs who supported the American System, i.e., high tariffs (taxes), public works projects (financed by taxes) and a National Bank (scary).  Douglass was repulsed by southern conservatism. There is no reason to believe that he'd feel at home in a religiously driven political party controlled by southern conservatives.  Also there is no evidence that Anthony was an abortion crusader. Susan B Anthony and her partner in advocacy, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, produced thousands of pages of text documenting their political views.  Absent are any references to Anti-abortion activism that contemporary wingers now claim as Anthony's legacy.

Next folks are not afraid to state that Woodrow Wilson was a racist or that the Klan and other like groups like the Red Shirts were the military arm of the democratic party. The re-emergence of the Klan in the 1910s and 1920s corresponded with reaction to progressive era reforms. When folks compare the Klan to today's teahadists, this is what they mean.  Maybe it is unfair as history does not necessarily repeat -  it does rhyme however.   And nobody disputes that Southern conservative democrats held civil rights legislation back for many years. 

The South had been in effect a Third World country within the United States, and that changed with the post-war economic boom. As Clay Risen put it in the New York Times: “The South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the GOP. Working-class whites, however — and here’s the surprise — even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats. This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.” The mythmakers would have you believe that it was the opposite: that your white-hooded hillbilly trailer-dwelling tornado-bait voters jumped ship because LBJ signed a civil-rights bill (passed on the strength of disproportionately Republican support in Congress). The facts suggest otherwise.
... 

The Republican ascendancy in Dixie is associated with the rise of the southern middle class, the increasingly trenchant conservative critique of Communism and the welfare state, the Vietnam controversy and the rise of the counterculture, law-and-order concerns rooted in the urban chaos that ran rampant from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and the incorporation of the radical Left into the Democratic party. Individual events, especially the freak show that was the 1968 Democratic convention, helped solidify conservatives’ affiliation with the Republican party. Democrats might argue that some of these concerns — especially welfare and crime — are “dog whistles” or “code” for race and racism, but this criticism is shallow in light of the evidence and the real saliency of those issues among U.S. voters of all backgrounds and both parties for decades.  

New Deal Reforms and the Post War Boom lifted the American South out of third world status. It is not surprising that as suburbs started replacing dirt farms, that voting patterns started to change allowing for some GOP inroads. The economic argument as stated by the NRO guy has some validity but is not the proximate cause behind the shift of a solid democratic south to the GOP. If you want a proximate cause, if  there is such a thing, 1948 is as good a place to start as any.

In the Democratic Convention in 1948, tricky northern state liberals were successful at adding a civil rights plank in the party platform. This led to the formation of the third party Dixiecrats committed to states' rights, jim crow and other such bullshit and it also opened the way for Southern Conservatives to migrate to the GOP.  And the migration happened over time - first with the Dixiecrats then with Nixon's Southern Strategy onto Reagan's welfare queens.  When a RINO today or a old timey Southern Democrat says "I didn't leave the party, the party left me" he is referring to the switch from the post civil war period where political parties had both liberal and conservative wings to the current period where the Democratic Party represents liberal ideology and the GOP represents reactionary ideology.

There are also other factors. Just go back to the merger of the GOP with religious conservatives 20-25 years ago. Under the Southern Strategy, if the GOP could obtain a supermajority of the white vote it could secure victories at the polls. While it initially produced electoral gains, by the late 80s and early 90s, the Southern Strategy risked bringing declining returns at the polls. By this time, appeals based on race could backfire. But if your electoral strategy is based upon supermajorities of white folks, how do you motivate enough white folks to vote GOP? The answer obviously was to bring in Religious Fundamentalists, Evangelicals and other Religious Conservatives into the fold to maintain a sufficient share of the white vote to win elections. This occurred throughout the 1990s. It was an explicit part of the First Bush Administration campaign.  There is a reason that Bush chose Dan Quayle as VP and a reason that Quayle declared war against the fictional TV character Murphy Brown. It was an appeal to white evangelicals and to help shore up the GOP base.

Today's Teabagging Movement, based on right wing populism, may be a recent component of the crumbling Southern Strategy intended to bolster White Vote in advance of the 2012 elections. However the data does not exist at this time for Political Scientists to evaluate this hypothesis.

Sure there are other factors such as when you turn dirt farms into middle class suburbs, you see changes in demographics. But to leave Race out of the discussion and pretend the Dixiecrats and Nixon's Southern Strategy never happened only tells your NRO readers comfortable tales that they want to hear. 

You can't leave out this side of the story as one Republican strategist tells it:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N*****, n, n*****." By 1968 you can't say "n*****" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N*****, n*****." [edited text-mine]

Nope nothing about race here.

UPDATE: There are lots of pixels on today's right wing counter culture from the NRO.

Here is a good riff:

As V.O. Key demonstrated in his classic study, Southern Politics, the most race-sensitive white southerners, centered in the Black Belt regions of the Deep South, stuck with the White Man's Party even as other southerners defected to the GOP in 1920 (over Prohibition) and 1928 (over Prohibition and Al Smith's Catholicism). In 1948, these same racists heavily defected to the Dixiecrats in a protest against the national Party's growing commitment to civil rights. They mostly returned to the Democrats after that uprising, until 1964, when they voted almost universally for Barry Goldwater, purely and simply because Goldwater had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Four years later most of them voted for the race-centered candidacy of George Wallace, and four years after that just about every one of them voted for Richard Nixon. These were not people attracted to the GOP, when they were, because it was "pro-civil rights," as Williamson asserts, or because they favored that party on any other issue. It was all about race, which is why, for example, the GOP percentage of the presidential vote veered insanely in Mississippi from 25% in 1960 to 87% in 1964 to 14% in 1968 to 78% in 1972.

Nope, Race had nothing to do with Mississippi's voting pattern.

Newt Gingrich is a shameless DOUCHE BAG part 74,219

From Lamestream Media figure Piers Morgan;

MORGAN: You know, I'm fascinated, gripped in fact, by what you're about to tell me about what you make of the Bain Capital fury, given of course you yourself hammered Mitt Romney in the ground over this. What do you think of what Cory Booker said?

GINGRICH: Well, I think Booker is telling the truth about how the American people feel. I am very surprised that President Obama went down this road for two reasons. First, we found out when we got in a fight with Mitt Romney over this that it didn't work. That people understand free enterprise. People understand realized sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail. But they refuse to take a one-sided view of it. 

Actually bashing Romney as a corporate raider worked quite well for Newt in the South Carolina primary.  Polls and such showed that working class folks were turned off by Willard's dark past.

Newt's momentum was only ended when Willard affiliated Super Pacs started dropping down gazillion dollar ad buy in Florida highlighted Newt Gingrich's shameful past.  All they had to do was tell the truth about Newt.  While this would be easy for most to do, telling the truth is always a challenge for Willard Milton Romney. But he pulled it off.

 Once Newt's unfavorables were driven back to his normal level of disgrace, Willard was able to Weasel his way to victory setting up the third tier Santorum as the conservative alternative last crazy candidate standing.

Newt knows this all. He just such a douche bag that he can pretend that he never said what he said and never did what he did. 

Is it not yet time for Newt to retire to a farm.

Wingnut Welfare Operation in Disarray

It's the Heartland Institute an outfit that turns tricks in the climate denial circuit:

The first Heartland Institute conference on climate change in 2008 had all the trappings of a major scientific conclave – minus large numbers of real scientists. Hundreds of climate change contrarians, with a few academics among them, descended into the banquet rooms of a lavish Times Square hotel for what was purported to be a reasoned debate about climate change. 

But as the latest Heartland climate conference opens in a Chicago hotel on Monday, the thinktank's claims to reasoned debate lie in shreds and its financial future remains uncertain. 

Heartland's claims to "stay above the fray" of the climate wars was exploded by a billboard campaign earlier this month comparing climate change believers to the Unabomer Ted Kaczynski, and a document sting last February that revealed a plan to spread doubt among kindergarteners on the existence of climate change. 

Along with the damage to its reputation, Heartland's financial future is also threatened by an exodus of corporate donors as well as key members of staff. 

In a fiery blogpost on the Heartland website, the organisation's president Joseph Bast admitted Heartland's defectors were "abandoning us in this moment of need". 

Over the last few weeks, Heartland has lost at least $825,000 in expected funds for 2012, or more than 35% of the funds its planned to raise from corporate donors, according to the campaign group Forecast the Facts, which is pushing companies to boycott the organisation.

Wingnut Welfare are programs instituted by wealthy patrons of the conservagencia to foster the dissemination of ideological bullshit repackaged for the larger world.  This is done by funding ideologues and hacks through think tanks and ideological institutions.  This allows the further dissemination of wingnuttery by means not otherwise not available due to the competitive realities in the market place of ideas.  Heartland Institute is a Wingnut Welfare outfit.

One of the bad things about the Wingnut Welfare is that it creates a cycle of dependency where the winger is forced into ever more virulent rhetoric in order to please its benefactors. Call it a cycle of Pavlovian Madness whereby the winger is rewarded only after he descends into the throes of an ever-increasing cacophony of extreme rhetoric. He becomes ensnared in this perverse cycle until ultimately he is lost; unable to separate reality from the truly absurd. The cycle can only be broken when the victim hits bottom. 

What is happening to Heartland is an example of this vicious cycle. The Virulent Wingers at Heartland were unable to understand that their Unabomber campaign would backfire spectacularly.  They simply had descended so far into fathoms of wingnuttery that many had started to accept their own lies as reality. 

Some day we will defeat the wingnut welfare and free those trapped in its cycle of dependency and free these folks to understand the dignity of hard work under the conditions of the free market . But this day is not here yet.  Perhaps it is one day closer for the wingers that work at Heartland.

The Second Year in a Row Foxnews Viewers Most Misinformed

A year ago, some overeducated eggheads at some Elitists University cooked up some study using books and found that Foxnews viewers were the most systematically misinformed people in the country.  I don't know where Farleigh Dickinson College is, but it is a safe bet that it ain't in Alabama. It is probably on the coast line where the most elitist universities tend to be found. 

This year these so-called Researchers did another study and guess what? The same result [pdf].

 the study concludes that media sources have a significant impact on the number of questions that people were able to answer correctly. The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly — a figure which is  significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all. On the other hand, if they listened only to NPR, they would be expected to answer 1.51 questions  correctly; viewers of Sunday morning talk shows fare similarly well.  And people watching only The Daily Show with Jon Stewart could answer about 1.42 questions correctly

Foxnews came in dead last. 

It is safe to say that it is a defective product. The more you use it, the more confused you get.  And you don't have to misuse it to become confused. You can become miserably confused just by following the recommended dosing instructions. It really is a product liability suit waiting to happen.

As such, it should at least come with a warning label like the warning on a lawn mower depicting what would happen if one were to place his foot under the lawn mower.  Hint: don't do it because it will hurt. That is the kind of warning the should be shown during Foxnews programing. 

At one level you want to make fun of the Foxnews viewer.  They are stupid. They are rubes. They are this or that.  But is it fair for the average news viewer to have a full grasp of the complexities of the US Health Care system or the intricacies of monetary policy so that they can tell the difference between partisan slant (i.e., lies) and factual reporting?  

I don't think it is. These are very difficult subjects to understand and people do not have the time apart from work, family and survival to learn the subject matter's finer points. That is why they are watching the news.  In this regard the Foxnews viewer is a product of his/her environment and is accordingly corrupted by eternal stimuli, such as the bullshit found on the Foxnews.  This is why a warning label is crucial and should be mandatory on all Foxnews programming. 

For example: 

WARNING----Foxnews is Not Actually News---It is Just Bullshit.

WARNING ---- the Foxnews Program you are about to watch may contain material misstatements, errors or other factual inaccuracies.  Watch this program at your own risk.  Foxnews assumes no liability for the content of this program.

WARNING --- Daily consumption Foxnews has been shown to cause adverse health effects such as confusion, bewilderment, excessive rage and a systematically misinformed world view.  Experts urge viewers to limit consumption of Foxnews to once a week. 

These are just suggestions.  In a perfect world, Foxnews would be shut down as a public nuisance. It is not a perfect world however and a Product Liability suit, a class action suit on the legions of systematically misinformed viewers may be the best we can accomplish.

Campaigning with a Romneybot

"This week Mitt Romney started giving speeches while standing in front of a giant US debt clock. When asked what it was like campaigning with a large electronic object, the debt clock was like, 'Not bad.'" 

- Jimmy Fallon

I feel for the debt clock

If only there were more deregulation

The real estate Bubble and resulting crash has bitten New Utah Senator and Tea Party Darling Mike Tea Bags Lee.  Bubbles, like the recent real estate bubble or the South Sea Bubble, historically happened from time to time  with some frequency in capitalist economies.  With modern economies one way to deal with the boom and bust cycle is regulation. An opponent of Market Regulation is Mike Lee: 

 Less than two years into office, Sen. Mike Lee was forced to sell his dream home in Alpine with his mortgage bank taking a significant loss — up to $400,000 — in a "short sale" as the housing bust in his neighborhood drained his house’s value.

Lee purchased the home for around $1.1 million in January 2008, at the height of the housing boom and when he was working as a private practice lawyer. But as home prices dipped and he was elected to the Senate, Lee found himself underwater in the home and without the means to pay off the difference.

The home eventually sold for around $720,000, according to Utah County records, after J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to write off the loss in the value and Lee forfeited his "significant" down payment.

Irony aside. A deregulator and defacto advocate of allowing more bubbles to arise and burst, is bitten by a bubble.  If Mike Tea Bags had his way, Bubbles would occur with regular frequency just as in the past. 

I an also wondering if there was a quid pro quo here. A big Wallstreet Bank and a Tea Party leader doing business in this manner seems a little fishy.  I am not accusing Tea Bags of anything, other than there is an appearance issue here where the deregulator and the Wallstreet bank are doing business in manner that limits the losses of the deregulator.

Standing athwart history, yelling BACKWARDS….GO BACK I SAY!

From the Wingnet:

If I understand it correctly, the thesis of William Voegeli’s book Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State is that left-progressives are national busybodies. No matter how big government is or how much it spends, there’s always something else they’re going to find wrong in the social order and then, naturally, seek an even more expansive state.

 On its face, this posture had struck me as somewhat childish. Why should we expect anyone, left or right, to hold to a predefined notion of ideological terminus — some Calvary-like moment when it might clearly be declared that “It is finished”? Couldn’t the question just as easily be asked of conservatives: How much should government be shrunk? To pre-New Deal levels? Pre-Civil War?

This is actually easy.

For Grover Norquist it is 1900. He has said so:

    Question: You are known for saying that you want government to be “the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Can you elaborate on this?   

[Norquist]: I want to drop the government in half over the next 25 years, and then drop it in half again. The government’s about 33 percent of GDP, 33 percent of the economy. We want to take it down to 16 and a half percent, then take it down to eight percent, all of which would take us to where we were at the turn of the century.

For Paul Ryan, it is the 1870s or 1880s. I don't have a quote from him pining for the good ol' days. But this period is the heyday of Social Darwinism and he's an old line Darwinist. So I think 1880 is a good pick.

For Ron Paul, it is 1861. I say this because of his outrage at the Morrill act of 1862, i.e., Land Grant Public Universities. If I were kind, I'd say that Ron Paul would prefer to turn the clock back to 1850, i.e., the year of the Fugitive Slave Act . The Fugitive Slave Act marked an expansion of Federal Power, ironically demanded by so-called states' rights slave holding south, to use the Federal Government to help capture runaway slaves. If Paul is against the Morrill Act, he's likely against the Fugitive Slave Act.  But since he has not spoken out on the immorality of the Fugitive Slave Act and because I am not kind, I am going with pre-civil war 1861 instead.

For Various Teabagging Outfits, I think the date they'd prefer is 1781. That is the date of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation which created a very weak central government that was later replaced by the Constitution in 1789. It has all been downhill from there so their complaints go.  Today's Teahadists claim to love the constitution, but it seems to me that the better comparison would be with the Anti-Federalists of the old days.  Anti-Federalists, if one recalls, also wore tri-cornered hats. So this one works too.

Did Romney Actually Say this?

"During a speech yesterday in Ohio, Joe Biden criticized Republicans for not understanding the middle class. In response, Mitt Romney was like, 'That's ridiculous. Some of my best friend's gardeners are middle class.'" 

- Jimmy Fallon

I sounds like it could be true, but somehow I think Fallon may be funning with Willard.

Classic Willard Milton Romney in Action

He could probably use this line more often:

I'm not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was."

-Willard Romney, explaining his position on tying the President to Reverend  Wright

I guess this is why his handlers are trying to keep him away from reporters.  Obviously he is not ignorant like Palin. But rather he has so many counter positions on the issues that he can't keep them all straight.

The Grand Teahad Comes to Texas

From Lamestream Media Figure Erick Erickson:

It is a sad time for the Republican Party. The base must treat its leaders as if they are Soviets — trust but verify their statements. And lately, it is harder and harder to verify their statements. The work of the Tea Party must continue or within a decade I honestly do not believe the GOP will be one political party. [ed note -what is wrong with that]

In both Indiana and Nebraska, the Tea Party has continued to make gains. People have flat out rejected the establishment favorites for U.S. Senate – Dick Lugar and Jon Bruning, respectively – in favor of candidates who offer a challenge to the status quo.

Will Texans prove what they’re made of and do the same?

 The next Teahad is on Baby! It is time for all good wingers to line up behind Ted Cruz for Senator instead of the establishment pick.

Ted has a track record of fighting for conservatism. He has fought against ceding U.S. sovereignty to some unaccountable, leftist World Court… he has fought for religious freedom by successfully defending the placement of the 10 Commandments on the Texas Capitol grounds… and countless other efforts as a lawyer and a fighter for conservative principles.

Most importantly – Ted has sent a clear signal that he will work with conservatives in Washington to fight the establishment. Dewhurst not only will join the establishment – he is the establishment personified.

 Texans have a chance to actually do something to change the direction of this country. They should do it, or perhaps we should stop looking to Texas as a leader of conservatism…

Let's face it. The current crop of Texas politicians are extremely lame.  The GOTP House delegation makes Rick Perry and George Bush look like Wise Statesmen.   

And as bad as the current cast is, picking a Teadahist as your senator may feel good, but it won't confuse anyone for leadership. It will do the opposite. Running on the 10 commandments in the 21st century and against scary leftist World Courts are exactly what the country needs right now.   It sure worked well for Tea Party visionary Dan Maes in Colorado in 2010.  His campaign caught fire after he warned of a UN plot to take over Denver.  By fire, I mean it burned to the ground.   

A similar fate would be fun to watch in Texas this year if life was fair. But life is not fair, so I won't get my hopes up. I mean the GOTP can only nominate so many Christine O'Donnells, Dan Maes, Ken Bucks, Sharron Angles and Joe Millers, right? I'd like to see more of them, but there have to be limits.

The Climate is Always Changing, so I am told

The Australian Government Joins the Great Global Warming Conspiracy:

The last 60 years have been the hottest in Australasia for a millennium and cannot be explained by natural causes, according to a new report by scientists that supports the case for a reduction in manmade carbon emissions.

In the first major study of its kind in the region, scientists at the University of Melbourne used natural data from 27 climate indicators, including tree rings, corals and ice cores to map temperature trends over the past 1,000 years.

"Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1,000-year context is highly unusual and cannot be explained by natural factors alone, suggesting a strong influence of human-caused climate change in the Australasian region," said the study's lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis.

The climate reconstruction was done in 3,000 different ways and concluded with 95% accuracy that no other period in the past 1,000 years match or exceeded post-1950 warming in Australia.

The study, published in the Journal of Climate, will be part of Australia's contribution to the fifth Intergovernmetal Panel on Climate Change report, due in 2014.

It has to be tough being a wingnut climate denier.  Not only do you have to fight the sandal wearing liberals at home with their organic green tea and sustainable living schemes, but you also have all sorts of foreign governments aligned against your cause.  And nobody seems to get the real truth.  Instead people trust the tall tales told by science yielding elitists.  

It is all a goddamn conspiracy designed to force real americans into agenda 21 hobbit style homes …..but nobody has this figured out …. except the wingnuts.

If we can bolster the mental health wellness benefit under medicare, maybe we could help some of these wingnuts.  I think it may be worth a shot.

Time to Mint Some Platinum Coins, Baby

With John Boehner Threatening another Debt Ceiling Kamikaze Mission against the American economy, it is time for counter measures.  And since FEMA run camps are all but imaginary outside the fever swamps, it may be time to do this now!

Sovereign governments such as the United States can print new money. However, there's a statutory limit to the amount of paper currency that can be in circulation at any one time.

Ironically, there's no similar limit on the amount of coinage. A little-known statute gives the secretary of the Treasury the authority to issue platinum coins in any denomination. So some commentators have suggested that the Treasury create two $1 trillion coins, deposit them in its account in the Federal Reserve and write checks on the proceeds.

The government can also raise money through sales: For example, it could sell the Federal Reserve an option to purchase government property for $2 trillion. The Fed would then credit the proceeds to the government's checking account. Once Congress lifts the debt ceiling, the president could buy back the option for a dollar, or the option could simply expire in 90 days. And there are probably other ways that the Fed could achieve a similar result, by analogy to its actions during the 2008 financial crisis, when it made huge loans and purchases to bail out the financial sector.

The "jumbo coin" and "exploding option" strategies work because modern central banks don't have to print bills or float debt to create new money; they just add money to their customers' checking accounts.

Of course the Teahadists in the House would vote to impeach President Obama if this were done, but the odds are fair that they'll vote to impeach him for something  else later.  Might as well get on with it. Drop the Platinum coin bomb on 'em.

Mitt Romney's Secret Weapon

Could it be George W Bush:

Mitt Romney has the support of George W. Bush.

“I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home — the White House. 

Bush’s endorsement isn’t a surprise, given that Romney is virtually the Republican Party’s nominee. But the 43rd president has been absent from the 2012 campaign and hasn’t made any public comments showing his support for Romney.

Why wouldn't Romney want George W Bush to campaign for him?  Bush has that whole "Protect Traditional Marriage from the Gays" attack line down cold from 2004 election.  Bush could pull this off without breaking a sweat. When Willard starts talking about Marriage, folk start thinking about his family's polygamous heritage. Sure this ain't fair, but life ain't fair - just ask some of the folks that used to work for Romney.

And besides, Romney's economic plan has been stolen from the Bush Administration.  Why would you want a wishy washy pretender like Romney making the case for returning to economic policies of the Bush Administration, when you could have the real deal doing it himself?

And who can forget, just like Bush, Romney was a big backer of the Bailout.  George  could remind folks of Willard's bravery and that Willard was there for Bush when he needed him.

I say give Bush a chance.

A Public Service Announcement

Advanced Lessons in Wingnutology by Brad Delong:

The basic problem is that there are three Hayeks: 

1. the--absolutely brilliant--price-system-as-information-aggregator Hayek.

2. the--absolutely bonkers--business-cycle "liquidationist" Hayek.

3. the--absolutely wrong--social-democracy-is-evil Hayek. 

The first was a genius. The second was a moron--his could never make his arguments cohere either conceptually or empirically, but he kept doubling down on them and wound up in infinite reputational bankruptcy. The third was wrong--I would say blinded ex ante by ideology, others would say proved wrong ex post by events. 

The problem is that the modern-day Hayekians are by-and-large uninterested in the good Hayek (1), and interested only in the bad Hayeks (2) and (3)...

Sounds about right - ignore the inconvenient stuff and use what reinforces your current beliefs.  That fits in nicely with all the tinfoil hat stuff on global warming denial.

Palin Backed Teahadist Storms to Victory in Nebraska Primary

Big Money Played a role, too:

In a dramatic, come-from-behind dash to the finish line late Tuesday evening, state Sen. Deb Fischer of Valentine laid claim to the Republican Senate nomination. 

Her late surge, perhaps unprecedented in modern-day Nebraska political history, upended a Senate race that appeared to be settled as recently as 10 days ago with the GOP prize within the grasp of Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning. 

Fischer suddenly gained momentum with late endorsements from 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Lincoln, then rode the momentum of a weekend TV ad blitz mounted by Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and his political action committee. 

The super PAC ads purchased by Ending Spending supported Fischer and roughed up Bruning with attacks on his character and ethical behavior as attorney general.

It is almost not fair to go the character assignation route in a GOTP primary.  It was what eventually did in Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary.  There however, all the Romney Superpac had to do to trash Newt was just to talk truthfully about Newt's past.  While talking truthfully may seem like an easy thing for most folks to do, it was not an easy task for Team Romney which had absolutely no experience talking truthfully.  Nevertheless it worked.  It may also have worked for the Palinista Fischer.

One can't help but to take some satisfaction that after years of selling the rubes (the base) bullshit while promoting party loyalists who do not believe in the bullshit, the strategy is backfiring on the Party.  The rubes want candidates who believe in bullshit and now their voting for them.

Teahadist Insurgency Simmering in Nebraska

Call out the National Guard:

Could Nebraska be the next state to select a conservative underdog in a Senate primary? Sixty-one year old Deb Fischer, a Nebraska state senator, had been a long-shot candidate for the GOP nomination for Senate against the better funded state attorney general, Jon Bruning, and the more well known state treasurer Don Stenberg. 

But a poll released last week showed Fischer just four points behind Bruning, while Stenberg--who has the support of Tea Party favorites like Senators Rand Paul and Jim DeMint--had fallen back to third place. The Tea Party and conservative leaders, in fact, has been split on the candidates, with Herman Cain and Sarah Palin supporting Fischer (a fellow "Mama Grizzly") and Bruning earning the endorsements of Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Santorum. 

Via the Weekly Standard (which was once named after a brand of toilets).

The lamestream polls shows a close race between the Teahadist Insurgent candidates and the guy chosen by the Fat Cats on K-Street.  

Personally, I don't know how you take a poll in Nebraska. It is not like people live there by choice. Omaha is a decent place, but the rest of state could be turned into a giant FEMA camp and I don't think anyone would notice.  Well, people would probably notice during college football season, but other than that  nobody would notice if Nebraska outside of Omaha was turned into a giant FEMA Camp. 

On second thought, didn't we have to fight the Commies in Vietnam in the 1960s or fight them in Omaha in the future? Maybe that was Wichita. It was somewhere, anyway. We had to fight them or else.  Which begs the question of why we didn't just let the North Vietnamese take Wichita or perhaps Topeka or where ever it was if they wanted it so badly? Would the Commies do a worse job running parts of Kansas than the natives?  It is hard to imagine that they'd be worse at it.

And what is the deal with Sen. Mike Tea Bags Lee (R-UT) supporting the establishment pick, here?  This douche bag would likely be writing screeds for right wing legal blogs today if it were not for the baggers.  Seems kind of dirty to me, but teabaggery is a filthy endeavor. 

Of course the best result would be for the eventual winner to have dabbled in witchcraft or blown the whistle on a plot by scientist to create mice with fully functioning human brains or be a masturbation activist.  That would be quite entertaining.  One can hope. 

John Hinderaker finds a New Wingnut and other Thoughts on making the World a Better Place

We have another climate denier:

"Because of climate’s high complexity, reliable prognoses just aren’t possible. Nature does what it wants, and not what the models present as prophesy. The entire CO2-debate is nonsense. Even if CO2 were doubled, the temperature would rise only 1°C. The remainder of the IPCC’s assumed warming is based purely on speculative amplification mechanisms. Even though CO2 has risen, there has been no warming in 13 years." 

- Klaus-Eckart Puls, a German physicist and meteorologist according to Powerline Blog, stating that that one cannot predict future warming while predicting that future warming will only be at the low end of the predicted range of increased temperature based upon a doubling of CO2 and also repeating the 1998 myth.

Finding a so-called credible expert that believes that  Anthropogenic Global Warming is a Hoax is really, really hard.  The wingeratti star Scientist Lindzen is often quoted by wingers on global warming blog posts, but I believe that he does not deny that CO2 leads to at least some warming. And that is what this guy appears to also believe, too.  Sure there are people like Joe Barton who is hardcore into the global warming as hoax mythology, but Smoky Joe does not qualify as an expert on anything.  This guy probably doesn't either. But then again it is hard to find a good denier when you need one.

One thing I find humorous (and sad, too) is that the American Psychological Association and other Social Science outfits are starting to study wingnuts and global warming denial:

Among those who doubt global warming, a Stanford University poll last year found that their skepticism had grown even stronger: Those who are extremely or very certain that global warming is not happening rose from 35 percent in 2010 to 53 percent in 2011. But those skeptics are a minority among Americans over all. The same poll found that 83 percent of adult Americans believe that the world's temperature has been going up. An even larger proportion of scientists actively working in climate change have similar views: 97 percent of them believe human-caused global warming is under way, although there is plenty of disagreement about the details..... 

Academic pollsters, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists have been sorting through public attitudes about global warming for some time, but even though human behavior is central to the debate, the voices of social scientists are often lost in the din.

"In the end, all of the changes come down to what makes us behave the way we do and think the way we do," says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. "We need to understand us, not just the natural world."

Here, Here!

And that is where at least some stimulus funding should have been thrown.  There are large numbers of folks who need our help, i.e., wingnuts.  And here is a simple way to do it that I had not thought of yet.  Ecopyschology counseling could be added as a direct benefit under Medicare! It'd be like a wellness benefit.

Under this approach, as folks like Hinderaker turn 65 and quickly sign up for the kickass program known as Medicare, they'd start receiving periodic ecopyschology counseling about understanding the environment in addition to other wellness benefits.  While not as effective as a FEMA run anti-Obama dissident camp, ecopychology is certainly less invasive. I think you should not move these folks to a home if there are other options.

I can't see any downsides here.  You'd start the effort by funneling money to broke grad students to get certified in Ecopyschology. These newly certified eager beavers would then start providing the counseling sessions through medicare.

These grad students would spend the money immediately (because they are broke) circulating the cash back through the economy. The stimulated economy would lead to more jobs and economic growth.  More economic growth means more economic security which means less uncertainty and anger.  Less anger means greater health, which means better productivity, which leads to more growth. And since the electorate would be more educated (thanks to ecopyschology), the increased economic growth would like be in green jobs.  Again, there appear to be no downsides here.

Dispatches from the wingnut-O-sphere - It is 1862 again, (sigh)

Pat Buchanan:

Obama, by declaring that homosexual marriages should be on the same legal and moral plane as traditional marriage, just took command of the forces of anti-Christian secularism in America’s Kulturkampf.  And Nov. 6, 2012, is shaping up as the Antietam of the culture war.
[…]
The Supreme Court thus will tell us whether this issue is to be decided democratically by voters and their elected state and federal legislators, or dictatorially by themselves.

Four liberal activists on the Supreme Court — Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor — are probably ready to declare that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right, as their predecessors declared abortion to be a constitutional right.

But Obama needs one more justice. If elected, he will get it, and same-sex marriage will be forced on all of America. If Romney wins, the Supreme Court will likely leave the issue of same-sex marriage to be decided by the people and their elected representatives.

Thus everything is up for grabs this November: the House, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court and whether we still call the United States of America God’s country.

 Hopefully the South Loses this version of Antietam too.  

Recall that the Union victory at Antietam resulted in the bloodiest day in American History.  Also the battle of Antietam allowed Abraham Lincoln to take his draft of the Emancipation Proclamation out of the desk drawer and issue it from a position of Strength.  At once the war transitioned from a war to save the Union to a war to end slavery, and at that time any Confederate hopes of drawing Britain into the war on its side were over. The British would not/ could not enter the fight to save slavery.  The Battle of Antietam is largely credited for this connection. The rest is history. Slavery lost and Freedom, eventually, prevailed.

Fast Forward 150 years, and it is gay folks who are winning the argument on equal rights. Sure there are set backs here and there, but equality for gay folks has the momentum with lamestream media polls telling us that large majorities of Democrats and Independent favor equal right with only republicans as the last hold outs, bitterly clinging the days of yore.

 And, the Buchanan argument goes, if Barack Obama wins the next battle of Antietam and is re-elected in 2012, Emancipation for gay folks will be in sight. Problematically, this emancipation is seen as a bad thing by Mr Buchanan. But then again he does have that neo-confederate vibe going, so it is not that hard imaging him routing for Confederate victories in the Civil War, too.  

Letterman is MEAN

 "They're looking for a Vice President for Mitt and I said 'Forget the Vice President, you ought to be looking for personality for Mitt.'"  

David Letterman

Did Rick Santorum really say this

"Rick Santorum finally endorsed Mitt Romney at 11:00 at night. When reached for comment, Santorum said 'When I can't sleep I try endorsing Mitt Romney for President and it puts me right out.'"

Conan O'Brien

Sounds true enough for me. 

Foxnews Raising the White Flag on Scary Gay Marriage?

According to the Wingnet:

Fox News stopped covering marriage victories years ago. I personally noticed it during the November 2009 elections when CNN and MSNBC gave plenty of airtime to the Maine referendum where voters successfully repealed gay marriage — but on Fox? Nothing. Did not exist. 

(No, I don’t know why Fox News is so reluctant to provide fair and balanced coverage of a major development on marriage, unless it’s on the pro–gay-marriage side.)
But yesterday, Fox’s big news host Shepard Smith made it clear he’s pro–gay marriage, actually endorsing President Obama’s gay-marriage flip while reporting on it. 

The video is up over at HuffPo 

He’s entitled to his opinions of course.

Fox has an awesome business model.

Fox's entertainment wing pumps out programming aimed at pop culture. It's programming tries to reflect what is cool and trendy in a changing society. This form of media is a reflection of the culture.  If you are running a business, you have to give the people what they want to see.

Foxnews is of course bullshit aimed at fanning discontent and grievances over the fact that cultural change is always underway.  Foxnews essentially offers a forum to those who are uncomfortable with cultural change. In that sense, Foxnews is a critique on culture.

On one hand you give people want they want with the Ordinary Fox - sure it may be trash, but people like trash.  Always have.

On the other hand you use the foxnews to bash mainstream media and castigate it as an instigator of change when in fact it is merely a reflection of change.  It is a twofer - you cater to culture and bash it at the same time  - you hit 'em coming and going.  It is truly a beautiful racket they have going there.

As to the Marriage equality, I cannot confirm that the Foxnews is backing off on the Anti-Gay Marriage activism. But if true,  it may be that a sign that big wigs there realize that anti-gay marriage activism is on a losing downward slope and it is time to whip up folks about new boogie men.

BREAKING......LUGAR TEABAGGED IN INDIANA SENATE PRIMARY

Operation purity claims another victim.
No word at this time if the GOTP nominee ever dabbled in witch craft.

Operation Purity is About to Take down Another

This time it is Indiana Senator Dick Lugar who is about to be teabagged:

Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) pled with independent and Democratic voters to back his campaign in Tuesday's Republican primary as the six-term senator looks poised to lose his first serious political challenge in decades.

"Our party, at least in Indiana, is only 35 percent of the electorate. In order for anybody to get to the majority, they're going to have to get a lot of other people. So I'm appealing to all the people of Indiana, and I emphasize all, to ask for a Republican ballot today and vote for me," Lugar said Tuesday on CNN. 

A recent poll showed Lugar trailing Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who has the support of Tea Party groups, by double digits. But Lugar remained optimistic on the morning of election day that he would prevail.

It is funny because Lugar is a Senior Statesman in the GOP. However being a senior statesman from the GOP does not get you very far with today's GOTP.  As far as Dems helping him out, I imagine that there are more than a few Indiana Dems that remember his talk about Grandma and Death Panels. These folks may not be inclined to help him out.

Man on Dog to Endorse Willard

The radio is reporting that Rick Santorum will grudgingly accept Romney as his party's nominee for president this term. I suppose it was just a matter of time before he fell into line.

Believe it or not, the internets through various polls, is also reporting that Santo is a favorite amongst GOP voters for the VP pick.  However this will never happen as Willard will find some way to weasel out of doing this. Because if there is one thing that Willard Milton Romney is good at, it is weaseling.

Dispatches from the wingnut-O-sphere - A No Brainer when you think about it.

There is a Wingnut Shortage in Europe:

Europe is dying, right along with socialism and Obama-ism. The election results yesterday prove that Europe’s voters don’t know they’re committing suicide — or don’t care. The only pertinent question is what will take Europe’s place once its political union, and its worthless currency, both wind up on the ash heap of history.

Three times in the last century America had to step in to save Europe from itself — in World War One, World War Two, and the Cold War. Now we’ll have to do it again, as Europeans stumble dazed and broke from the rubble created by their EU bureaucrats, politicians, and unions. But this time it won’t be American soldiers, or arms, or even a nuclear umbrella that comes to Europe’s rescue. It’ll be American ideas and policies based on free markets, economic growth, and individual freedom.

...Who knows. Maybe at the end of all this, Europeans will discover their own culture buried under two centuries of socialist and Marxist garbage: the Europe of Adam Smith and Tocqueville, of von Mises and Hayek, of Aristotle and Aquinas. Maybe they’ll realize their birthright as the original home of liberty and freedom, at long last.

This is EXACTLY what I was thinking the other day.  Europe is in trouble and there is only one way to fix it.  And we can help fix Europe, yet again (sigh), by exporting our wingnuts to Europe. 

Hell, many of their ancestors likely came to America from Europe in the first place. In a sense, we owe Europe for this immigration. As everyone know, America has been enriched by the generations of immigrants who have settled upon her shores.

And since it is moral to pay the Country's debts, we should settle this score and return some of the people who know the solution to every problem.  It does not matter what the problem is, these folks have a simple solution for it every single time.  And these truly special people are the hardest core wingnuts around.

I say why spend money building Camp Bachmann, when Europe is suffering from a desperate shortage of Wingnuts.  This is a win-win solution. 

Some French Dude Elected President of France

The Coalition led by a Socialist Candidate defeated the Coalition led by Conservatives and Neo-Nazis over the weekend. 

Why anyone would root for Neo-Nazis is a mystery to me, but the right wing blogs were in quite a titter at the news that Godless Socialist France would be headed by a Socialist instead of his opponent. Lighten up people. It is just France.  They are supposed to do this.  This is how they roll, or so I have read many times before at sources like…...right wing blogs.

Oh well, ce la vive.

Andrew Sullivan is SHRILL, cntd

The levels of inequality we're seeing, along with what seems to be profound structural economic change weakening the middle class, are dangerous for political and social stability. Conservatives should be concerned about this. Because conservatism is about conserving the internal coherence of a society through prudential judgment. It is not, whatever Jonah Goldberg believes, an ideology. It is the antithesis of ideology.

Arch Libra-servative Andrew Sullivan

There are few conservatives left in the wild. Conservative Intellectuals are next to becoming extinct and are hunted without mercy by their rivals for dominance of the right side of the spectrum. In the harsh survival of the fittest type world we face today, these Conservative Intellectuals have been outcompeted by their rivals, a cadre of pseudo-intellectuals, hucksters, neocons and their useful idiots, all of whom seek a right wing utopia based upon (unregulated) big business, bullets, banjos and bibles (selected parts only).

This is a revolutionary movement disguised as conservatism. Ironically, the goal of this disguised conservative movement is to implement radical change which is required in order to preserve the American status quo. Yes, to preserve the customary internal norms of behavior in society, radical change is needed.

We are coming to a point where the Democratic Party may be seen by many as the conservative governing party. Do you like breathing Clean Air? Do you like safe Drinking Water? How about Clean Rivers and Lakes? Do you like having school grounds and parks free from hazardous substances? Do you like the fact that Grandma get Medicare and Social Security and that it'll be there for you someday? One party will protect this status quo while another one wants radical change.

The Looming Mormon Card, Ctnd

As a practicing Wingnutologist, I don't think there is a way around this. Willard Romney is going to need to address the Mormon Question at sometime.

In 2008 and even today, Obama was hammered of the question of "Place." He does not seem to fit into the culture landscape. As Kathleen Parker put it last election:

Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide. Who 'gets' America? And who doesn't?... It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically—and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century—there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity. We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants—and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

If this seems true to a conservative about Obama in 2008, it should equally apply to Willard in 2012.

At the bone, Parker statement echoes of an old timey Populist argument. It addresses entitlement. It goes like this - my group has been here a long time, we've worked hard, we've earned the right to do X, Y or Z. The GOP base is in a populist mood at the moment. Teabagging is basically an expression for rightwing populism. I think Romney will have to reconcile his Church's outsider status with the GOP Base sense of its insider status, i.e., being "Real America" as Sweet Sarah puts it:

SALT LAKE CITY — As 20,000 Mormons streamed from the church conference center, a ragtag group of protesters stood across the street shouting that the Latter-day Saints were going to hell. Mormon families, who had gathered here for two days of speeches and spiritual guidance called General Conference, ignored the hecklers or laughed and kept walking.

This, after all, is a church accustomed to much worse.

Yet, even with a resilience built over nearly two centuries as outsiders, church members are anxious about what’s ahead. Republican Mitt Romney is about to become the first Mormon nominee for U.S. president on a major party ticket. That will give them a chance like no other to explain their tradition to the public, but the church’s many critics will have a bigger platform, too. And the vetting will take place amid the emotion of what may well be a nasty general election.

And the church has faced much worse things in the past. Here is how the Mormon Card was played - Old School Style:

The Mormon Question

By National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States - 1889

In 1885 the convictions for polygamy, or unlawful cohabitation had been but thirty seven. In 1886 they rose to one hundred and twenty seven and in the succeeding year to two hundred and thirty six. At our last meeting in Chicago this good work had begun but the result was not yet clear. The convicts were martyrs and refused to accept amnesty by promising to obey the law. The law of the revelation received was more to them than the law of the nation. It was a serious question whether the legal machinery of a free country was sufficient to crush an institution however immoral which intrenched itself as did polygamy behind the bulwarks of fanaticism and religion. Force cannot reach the conscience and the mere passive resistance of a misguided conscience needs more power to overcome it than courts and armies can supply without absolute annihilation. But the war against polygamous Mormonism so vigorously and auspiciously begun by the civil power at the time of our last meeting was supplemented by other agencies of immigration and religion which we must also consider. Their combined assault has been so successful that we meet this year with hearts grateful to God that we can see an unhoped for progress. The victory is already assured and our friends who have been put in the front and who have led the fight in Utah itself are jubilant at the prospect. No one can visit Utah without perceiving that the Saints and their leaders are in full retreat and that the public sentiment of the people of Utah is being rapidly transformed under the religious and political influences that have begun to take possession of the Territory.

A great step in advance was taken by Congress when in 1887 the Tucker Edmunds law was passed under which cohabitation was made evidence of plural marriage. Women could no longer swear that they were not married to their Mormon husbands. This law not only made convictions simpler by defining the evidence that would be accepted, but it proved what was the mind of Congress and the nation and that we would not be diverted by the cry of religious persecution. This law also disincorporated the Mormon Church and the Perpetual Incorporation Fund Society which in violation of their own acts of incorporation were absorbing the business and wealth of the Territory and the Attorney General of the United States was directed to close up their affairs. This has been done. By the same act the public schools were taken out of the hands of the hierarchy by appointing a school superintendent and provision was made for redistricting the Territory in order that Gentile votes might have proper weight in elections. The moral force of this legislation apart from vigorous execution has been immense. As a chief result a long procession of apostles and elders have gone to the penitentiary others have fled to the mountains and others have promised to obey the law and have accepted amnesty.

Mormons have been here a long time. Like American Democracy, their religion started in North America, too. It has roots. It has history. You can say Mormon’s have earned the right to do X,Y and Z.

Like Obama did with his reverend wright speech on Race, Willard may need to replicate this feat with a speech on Place and describe of how his group fits into “Real America.”

That is my OPINION anyway as a wingnutologist.

Andrew Sullivan is SHRILL!

On a Billboard campaign from the Heartland Institute linking Global Warming to the UniBomber:

In some ways, this is an almost perfect illustration of what has happened to the "right." A refusal to acknowledge scientific reality; and a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses entirely on guilt by the most extreme association. Here's how the Heartland Institute describes this new campaign:

The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010). These rogues and villains were chosen because they made public statements about how man-made global warming is a crisis and how mankind must take immediate and drastic actions to stop it.

This is where the American right now is:

The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.

Mann and Ornstein are correct. Large sections of the American right are now close to insane as well as depraved. And there is no Buckley to rein them in. Just countless Jonah Goldbergs seeking to cash in.

Yep. That's the Wingnut Welfare in Action. When you get hooked on the Welfare, you have to blast out ever increasingly crazy shit until you are drowning in a firehose of bombast and bullshit.

In this instance, it's the heartland institute. It is a wingnut welfare outfit that turns tricks in the climate denier circuit while in bed with Exxon and others.

And though Heartland is a joke to thinking folks, Wingnuts will go ape if one were to mention that its connection to Big Tobacco research from yesteryear. But hey, out of work ex-Tobacco researchers need to eat too.

The "Evolution" of Paul Ryan's Philosophy

I say it "Evolved" from Social Darwinism of the late 1800s because that is the stuff Ayn Rand was jonesing on when she was young and impressionable. Of course to separate himself from charges of being a "Darwinist," Ryan has to distance himself from his hero.

But this ain't an easy task when the internets remember stuff like this at a Ayn Rand Society Shindig:

It turns out that the internets remember lots of stuff about Ryan and Rand. There is so much stuff about Rand being Ryan's role model and other such nonsense, that I think labeling Ryan as an Old Line Social Darwinist is totally fair.

My guess is that this is why Ryan is trying to distance himself from Rand these days. It is because he does not want folks to discover that HE IS A SECRET DARWINIST.