Listen To Your Elders
Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President and a rightfully well known writer and speaker. One of my favorite quotes is his paraphrase of Proverbs 17:28: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” This was his advice to new members of Congress, that should have been passed on over the years.
One of the people who would have benefited from that advice was Ayn Rand Paul Ryan whose first attempt at political office was US Senator from Kentucky. He won and decided that he was special and didn’t need to be bothered with the rules that bound lesser mortals. The Very Serious People decided that he was a contender, despite no experience and some very odd choices for his battles.
Recently it was noted that he had a habit of borrowing other people’s words and ideas, without bothering to mention that they were borrowed. If he had said ‘Oops, my bad, I’ll have to watch that’ everyone would have forgotten about it. But nooooo! He isn’t guilty, he is a victim of a hate campaign, and he doesn’t have to put up with it, he can go back and make spectacles for others, instead of himself.
A contender? Mitt Romney would have him in tears in a debate. Against the bully from Jersey it would be a TKO before the round started.
7 comments
Before Rand Paul attained high office, I thought it impossible for anyone else to be as big a goddamn fool as his father Ron Paul. But I was wrong, and Rand is intent on outdoing his father in the folly department. I hope he doesn’t have a child who in turn is interested in running for Congress some day…
the fact that Ron Paul had children shows that natural selection isn’t all it’s cracked up to be 😉 Ted Cruz is the only reason that ayn Rand Paul ryan isn’t a shoo-in as the strangest Senator. Imagine an ayn Rand Paul Ryan ticket in 2016, that would be such a disaster. I can’t see Christie winning in the Republican primary states, he just doesn’t have the necessary ‘cred’ with the whackoes.
This is the reason we should have euthanasia laws for political parties, watching them self-destruct is just a waste of time and resources.
“… a waste of time and resources.”
Ours… I don’t care about theirs!
“the bully from Jersey”… yeah, if the Repubs really wanted to win the Presidency they’d nominate him. He knows how to get sufficient Democratic votes to win. It seems that there’s a significant subset of Democrats who like bullies. But as you say, today’s Republican party appears to be about ideological purity, not winning.
But then, we both said that Mitt Romney could not win the Republican nomination because he wasn’t extreme enough — and then Mittens proved us wrong. So ….
Steve, the Democrats under the control of Zero keep throwing them life preservers and resuscitating them, that they are eating up our resources.
Too true about Mittens, Badtux, but the shutdown showed a nasty streak among the TP crowd that will motivate them to be very negative towards anyone not of their liking. I don’t know if the business Repubs can hold them off again. Rand Paul will probably have his father’s organization behind him, and they caused a lot of trouble for Mittster in caucus states.
They are so dysfunctional that it is probably wasted energy to try to guess what the GOP will do.
Of course their reaction to the loss of rMoney is instructive. Like Communists who claim that the failure of Communism occurred because Communism was not implemented in its most pure form and whose response to the fall of Communism world-wide is to state that the solution is to become even *more* extreme, their reaction to the failures of neoliberalism and to conservative but not radical conservative candidates who fail to be elected is to become even more extreme. In a way Communists and Teabaggers are fellow travellers. The ideologies differ but the mindset is the same — ideology 1, reality 0.
Ah, yes the old – “[insert ideology here] doesn’t fail, people fail [insert ideology here]” justification for continuing to claim that [insert ideology here] will triumph in the end.
There is no delusion quite as strong as self-delusion.
The problem with Communism is that only works in communes, and then only as long as the commune doesn’t grow. Usually it dies with the founders.
The TP believe that they represent the ‘true American values’, and are the only ‘real Americans’. There isn’t much you can do about true believers other than avoid them whenever possible.