CT Blue

Well, the fact is that we no longer have a television, but could watch on-line if we really cared to do so. But gone are the days when the Republicans let people like Pat Buchanan let the world see what the Republican party is really all about. Unlike Democrats, Republican’s learn their lessons, at least when it comes to manipulating perceptions. Democrats are hardly past the days when people actually believed you could manipulate by appealing to reason.

Since we can’t expect any dust ups (though there’s always hope) inside the convention, I prefer to spare myself. Why rant at my computer screen in response to a Republican lie when I can sit quietly reading a book?

No, this year the Republicans will not hang themselves by allowing any loose lips at the convention, but they may do so by what comes out of their pens, which are presumably made out of goose quills as the founders intended. For lo and behold, the sheep may be looking up and noticing that the Republicans are planning on shearing them:

Scratching my head on this one: a majority of voters are actually interested in learning more about the Republican Party platform during this week’s convention. That’s more than care about Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech. As for that platform, there’s a lot there Team Romney might prefer voters didn’t pay too much attention to.

(via Hard To Figure | TPM Editors Blog)

Indeed. The Obama folks might seriously consider simply running ads with quotes from the Republican platform. They can start with the part where the Republicans promise to deliver on Ryan’s plan to end Medicare, or their endorsement of the Akin world view. That would be just for starters. There’s gold in them thar clauses, though it may take miners more skillful than Democrats to exploit it.

Okay, put this in the category of thing I’m glad to be wrong about. Looks like the Paul loonies aren’t going quietly into that goodnight. 

What a strange country this is. We have a political party, whose members claim some sort of inside track to God. They speak in moral absolutes, yet they are, at times, oddly willing to "defer" to someone else's moral (if one can call it that when speaking of Romney) position. Consider Paul Ryan:

Ryan, of course, is against the exceptions for rape and incest, but says he’ll defer to Romney's views — which are frankly bizarre in light of the fact that he’s in favor of "personhood" which would render any abortion murder. But then he’s not exactly known for his philosophical consistency.

(via Hullabaloo)

Deferring to another’s views. That sounds like “compromise”, an anathema to Republicans when dealing with a large (the major, actually) portion of the American populace. Ryan has insisted on imposing his views on everyone, no exceptions, but seems to feel it is perfectly proper to defer to, and even adopt, the views of a single person, when it suits his purposes. Last I heard, the Randian Ryan was calling himself a devout Catholic. What, one must ask, do the Bishops think of this craven outsourcing of his moral convictions to a feckless Mormon?

The fact is that Ryan’s former position was at least intellectually coherent, even if it was Medieval. The exceptions for rape and incest make sense only if one rejects the “personhood” of the fertilized egg. Once one accepts that premise, the “no exceptions” policy follows as the night the day. If one adopts the “rape and incest” exception, than one implicitly rejects that premise, and implicitly accepts that the question of whether an abortion is proper in a given circumstance is a matter of judgment, and the argument for individual judgment is compelling.

On a related point, this entire controversy does illustrate that on these issues, due to our weird media, even when the right appears to be losing, it is actually winning.