Northerner, here; very liberal on social issues, committed fiscal conservative.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1239783069/program/1154485580

Note also the county commissioner, Gary Hall, a conservative Republican is called a communist and other names. The point is, he and others want to work through the problem constructively with other members of the community. The radio talk show host doesn’t really have anything to offer but baseless accusations and anger but he fuels the resentments.
Even if I agree that forests should be thinned etc this sort of hatred should be avoided. However, you will immediately see the parallels to the Graham/DeMint story.

The other position would be to reject her solely because it was a Blue admin that nominated her . . . and that’s just shameful. It might not technically qualify as treason, but to me its damn close. Their job up there is to govern, and they all swore an oath to do just that.
There is a difference between “reaching across the aisle” and doing what I pay them for. To me, “reaching across the aisle” means voting for policies I disagree with. Someone may not like Sotomayor, but she WAS a qualified candidate.

I now the article is decrying that exact mindset, but it also seems like a bit of the mentality is flavoring the critique.

Ideological purity or moderation can be hatched out later, stopping Progressives should be the ONLY mission right now.

Who cares IF we lose elections? PURGE, PURGE, PURGE…it’s those stupid right-wingers who are making us lose!

Time to get back to the philosophy of the GOP when they were in the minority for all but a couple of sessions for 70 odd years. The slogan, “we can manage the Democrat ideas better than the Democrats”.

Regards,

Fear of what, exactly? Fear of a public option health plan? Please. It’s ludicrous on its face.

Fear of taxes? I’m willing to bet the average tea partier doesn’t pay 5% of his income in federal income taxes and won’t be paying any more any time soon.

Fear of 34,000 troops to Afghanistan instead of 40,000? What?

Fear of a poorly-executed bow?

Fear of what exactly?

Fear of a Harvard-educated black man in the highest office in the land. That’s what. Fear of the change that he embodies and symbolizes. Fear that the southern white male is at last losing his privileged position and more importantly his inflated sense of his own special importance.

This is tribal, it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with issues. This is the same population that 150 years ago sent their fathers and sons to die for rich slave owners. The same people who wave Confederate flags today. It’s partly just raw racism, but it has morphed into a broader sense of victimization. The forever aggrieved southern and rural white male.

Look at the people they admit to despising: urban, educated, secular. As you have rightly observed, they have now a will-to-stupidity, a deliberate embrace of ignorance, a wild rejection of even those ideas and individuals who might advance their agenda.

These are the losers of a long-running socio-economic and ethnic revolution. They are enraged because they sense — quite accurately — that there is no place of privilege for them in the modern world.

In this they are psychologically identical to the Taliban: defensive primitives clinging to the old and the dead for fear of the new. They want to retreat to the small farms and the sleepy southern villages with their resentments, their simplistic religion and their guns. They are political nihilists because they actually get it, they know, they are right that their core identity is being lost. They are right, and that’s why they don’t listen to people like you.

So, as always, Rick: why exactly are you in the same party? These are not your people. They will never be your people.