A friend sent me today an email quoting some Wall Street Journal letters to the editor writers, who were clearly miffed at Markos for, among other things, characterizing their brand of patriotism as the proud-to-be-an-Amurikin but only if we're kicking overseas ass type (versus progressives' more mature love for their country, etc.).
Not quite sure yet what my friend was getting at, but regardless, the basic message of said wingnuts was that we should feel lucky that it all went off with such joy, and that Republicans' failure to protest or disrupt the inauguration on Jan. 20th was due to their patriotic, bipartisan support for our new president -- in contrast to the petty, partisan liberals, who UNpatriotically disrupted GW Bush's 2001 and 2005 inaugurations.
Right...
Markos' comment that set the wingnuts off:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
"Watching the celebration of America that is today's inauguration festivities, one thing strikes -- the difference between our version of patriotism and the Right's.
"For the Right, it's jingoistic 'USA! USA! WE'RE NUMBER ONE AND WILL KICK YOUR ASS!' It's alway us versus someone else. It's confrontational.
"Our version of patriotism is a celebration of what makes our nation great. It's the diversity, our people, our communities. Rather than confrontational, it's communitarian.
"We don't need to start wars and kick someone's ass to feel proud to be American."
WSJ reader comments in response to Kos, selected in a column by James Taranto, with implications straight out of the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders):
http://online.wsj.com/...
"Having lived in the D.C. area for the last few inaugurations, I think you missed the best argument that Moulitsas's comments on the Obama inauguration were unwittingly funny.
"Simply put, he's right about the atmosphere at the inaugurations. The Mall was a lot friendlier this week than during the past two inaugurations, so I did an anecdotal survey. Turns out most of my conservative friends who went to the last two Bush inaugurations (and are still in D.C.) also went to Obama's inauguration and were there chanting for the new president too. Because my friends were there cheering and decked out in red, white and blue (which liberals can now be seen wearing again), everyone thought they fit right in.
"Contrast that to 2001, when they had to tolerate screaming liberals protesting Bush's 'selection' by the Supreme Court's 'partisan decision to place him in the White House,' and 2005, when they had to put up with the CodePink and MoveOn.org protests.
And I love this one! Hilarious:
"When you cast it in that light, of course the atmosphere this week was nicer! Of course there were fewer people being divisive! And thus Moulitsas takes away the wrong conclusion, because he is completely oblivious to the fact that it is the generosity and patriotism of conservatives that allowed it to happen. Paradoxically, the intolerance of some liberals (and the responses by a minority of conservatives) made all conservatives look confrontational, but the patriotic unity of the conservatives who went down to the mall this week made all liberals look magnanimous and generous."
Where to begin?
"Allowed" it? What a pompous, threatening, jack-booted thug of an observation. So we should thank the magnanimous GOP for not fucking up the inauguration like they did the Florida recount in 2000 (courtesy of legions of GOP congressional office stormtroopers... er, staffers, sent down to pose as disgruntled local voters)?
Let's face it, folks: If these morons had been out protesting Obama's inauguration last week, it would have made them and their party look even MORE like a bunch of out-of touch assholes. They had no choice but to either keep silent or to enjoy the fun. So it's absurd that they "allowed" the event to go by unscathed, but as noted, their moral leaders on talk radio, television and many in Congress continued the naysaying they had been working up to both before and since.
Again, wishful thinking at best, post-traumatic delusional thinking at worst about the GOP.
Second quoted WSJ reader/letter writer:
"When a defeated political right doesn't try to score political points on every minor scandal..., when the right cheers and supports what is good for America with no regard to the president's political affiliation..., and when Republicans don't embrace their political fringe to raise money--well, until the next election..., then will Obama get the credit for changing the tone in Washington?
"My guess is yes, and the Republicans won't care.
"It's as if the teenage son finally turns down the volume on his bedroom stereo and then demands thanks from his parents for the peace and quiet. The parents are so happy to have a quiet home that they don't mind the teenage son patting himself on the back for something that was in his control in the first place."
Now that's comedy.
First, needless to say, Markos is dead-on in his characterization of the right wing's cowboy ass-kicking mentality. It was certainly true of the neocon leadership under Bush, and the public opinion polls clearly indicate that a hard core 20% of the country -- a majority of Republicans -- think that Obama will be a disaster. As noted previously on this site, more than 50% of Republicans surveyed said they had not watched the inauguration on television. Sure, there certainly are some, more moderate, Republicans who perhaps at this moment are joyously non-partisan and sophisticated in their view of Obama and their hopes for the country. But they are in a minority in their party -- again, if you believe the polling data leading up to the inauguration.
These WSJ writers/readers, like so many in the unreconstructed far right, are in various and sundry ways wandering around whistling through the proverbial graveyard, and trying to characterize their Party the way they WISH it were, not the way it is.
All one has to do is look at the right wing politicians and pundits who are taking a decidedly sour and even borderline traitorous view of whatever Obama is now doing (including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and O'Reilly, who have explicitly or implicitly said they WANT Obama to fail). Their hyper-partisan game plan is to set him up to be blamed no matter what the outcome, and to try to sabotage his efforts along the way.
And, needless to say, I shared MoveOn and their fellow organizations dismay when the election was stolen for GW Bush in 2000, and would say it's ridiculously naive of the WSJ commenters to accuse said protesters of petty partisanship after the Republican-leaning Supreme Court hypocritically violated their very own "principles" of judicial restraint, states' rights, and original intent, by handing Florida and the election to Dubya. Yes, the atmosphere was decidedly more joyful in 2009 than 2001 or 2005, but it's apples and oranges. We've finally got a president who actually cares about the constitution, is willing to govern as president for everyone, not just his narrow political base, and who will, most importantly, not be the most destructive, corrupt, and inept president in U.S. history. People are happy about that. At least 80 percent of them.
The harsh GOP reality is this, to repeat the much quoted treasonous positions of their standard bearer:
"... I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: 'Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.' Somebody's gotta say it... We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
This imaginary Harvey the Rabbit party the WSJ commenters invoke was never there (at least not since the 1970s). The GOP will not do any of the things the writer above predicts, of course, and thus Obama will not need to "take credit" for bipartisan cooperation that will NEVER occur.
As with many of you in the progressive community, I hope and pray there is a subtle, clever "judo" strategy at play among Obama and his advisers, and that they are indeed killing the conservatives with kindness, and in the process (to mix the metaphors), allowing them to make the rope to hang themselves.
GOP dead-enders have been raised since Reagan, Gingrich and Delay on the "go for the throat" style of knee-jerk, ends justifies the means hyper-partisanship, and they will not be able to help themselves -- despite having their butts kicked worse than any other time in the last 28 years (as Nate notes today, Obama won by double digits in the final, official tally -- with arguably a bigger mandate than Reagan).
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/...
Some on the far right may counsel, and even for a time practice some wary, tactical, temporary form of restraint, but given the lack of the same over even the last few days among the wingnut psycho-razzi and GOP leadership alike, the honeymoon was over before it even began.