Owasso State Sen. Randy Brogdon campaigned to the Far Right—the full Tea Party express—a strategy that went down in flames today.
Two hours after the polls closed, Rep. Mary Fallin was well ahead of Brogdon in the Republican race for governor in today's GOP primary.
Brogdon's Wingnut campaign and "Tenther" arguments proved no match for Fallin, a bad sign for Birthers and others on the conservative fringes.
As AltTulsa has previously noted, if the Right's zanies and crazies can't carry Oklahoma, you have to question the value of the movement.
9 comments:
Under the header of
"'Wingnuts' and 'Zanies' and Proof Positive of Darn Near Total Ignorance,"
our buddy, MotW, complains about this AltTulsa item on his own blog:
"You know, I can handle the local lib blog crowing over Randy Brogdon's loss to Mary Fallin. They crow because they see it as a defeat of 'Tea Party' ideas, including what they call 'tentherism.'"
and
"It just astounds me that anyone could be so fantastically ignorant. Mr. Brogdon's ideas on the subject are perfectly in line with those of the Founding Fathers, as anyone can see by reading The Federalist Papers."
and
"And frankly, it bugs me to see the grossly ignorant act as though they were intellectually superior to the likes of Randy Brogdon."
*******
From a writer at Reason Magazine who does not dismiss Tenth Amendment concerns:
"I'd add that it was the Supreme Court's five most liberal justices—plus Justice Scalia—who ruled that the federal government could impose its own drug control laws on the states, even where the states' voters had expressed a desire to allow sick people to smoke medical marijuana. They couldn't even find in the Tenth Amendment (or for that matter, the Ninth) a state power to allow a dying woman to grow a few plants in her own basement for her own use if doing so would contradict federal drug policy.
"It is true (and unfortunate) that the Tenth Amendment, "states' rights" mantra (a misnomer for federalism—governments don't have rights, only powers) has over the course of U.S. history been appropriated by slavery and segregation apologists. Of course, that's why we have the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.
"The smearers are right in one respect. Tenth Amendment supporters need to harbor a sort of quaint detachment from political reality to still seriously advocate that the federal government roll back to its constitutional limitations. That cat has far outgrown its bag. And to be fair, most of the Republicans invoking the amendment on the stump today had no problem with a leviathan federal government during the Bush years."
******
I think it is more than clear that Mr. Brogdon and practically all of his supporters do not represent a hitherto untapped contingent of Constitutional scholars in Oklahoma.
Their newly-passionate interest in "states rights" stems directly from dislike and distrust of Obama, and has the same psychological root as "birtherism."
By the way, Brogdon proved with his respectable numbers that his Tea Party-friendly sentiments have a relatively broad acceptance in this state. Too bad.
I'm glad, though, that the Tea Party seems to be causing more harm than good for the GOP. They aren't the best poster children.
I asserted above that the interest of teabaggers in the Tenth Amendment stems directly from dislike and distrust of Obama.
MotW says today that he was attracted to the book, "The Manchurian President," by its blurb:
"Tens of millions of Americans sense there is something very wrong with the president of the United States, but they don’t know what."
He goes on to apply his intellect to this conundrum for several long paragraphs, arriving finally at this sentence:
"Whatever the reality is, somethin' for darn sure ain't right with this guy."
Boy, oh, boy. I wonder what the heck it is that is so disconcerting, yet so elusive to one of even MotW's gifts?
If he can't figure it out, I'm sure I can't.
Living rent-free in your skull, am I, Tulsan?
:)
But you're going to have to get the junker on blocks off my lawn and keep the dogs penned up.
While MotW is on or in my mind, here's one more.
He provides a timely illustration of the workings of the right-wing media machine in his latest post:
"Hmmmmm. Interesting:"
(Here follows a partial regurgitation of Jonah Goldberg's selective regurgitation of a Time Magazine article by Michael Grunwald that pooh-poohs the environmental impact of the massive BP oil spill.)
"I have not taken the time to fact-check Mr. Goldberg's bird and mammal figures, but by now, I think everybody's seen the 'They can't find the oil!' headlines. Like I said, interesting. A month or so ago, you'd have thought the world was coming to an end."
(Goldberg is the "brains" behind a faux scholarly propaganda book equating liberals to fascists that MotW is much taken with. His mother is Lucianne Goldberg, a literary agent who was heavily involved in flogging the Monica Lewinsky story.)
The lazy, bottom-of-the-food-chain right-wing bloggers pick up and parrot whatever support their presuppositions and political narrative.
The impact of that quantity of oil spilled at depth is unknown, as even Grunwald's interviewees would admit.
The article says that the spill doesn't appear to be as bad an environmental catastrophe AT THIS EARLY DATE as most people had feared it might be.
It does not say that the spill is not an environmental catastrophe, and it acknowledges that the long-term effects of both the estimated 184,000,000 gallons of oil and the 2,000,000 gallons of chemical dispersants are completely unknown.
See the rebuttal article in Time for the other side of the story.
At any rate, scientists do not know what all this will do long-term, and certainly party hacks like Goldberg and Limbaugh don't know. They simply treat it as they would any other world event: as grist for their partisan mills.
As for MotW, his leading lights appear to be Goldberg, Coulter, Limbaugh, Buchanan, Schlafly, i.e., the shrillest and most partisan voices out there. Doesn't speak too well for him, but there are many like him.
While MotW is on or in my mind, here's one more.
He provides a timely illustration of the workings of the right-wing media machine in his latest post:
"Hmmmmm. Interesting:"
(Here follows a partial regurgitation of Jonah Goldberg's selective regurgitation of a Time Magazine article by Michael Grunwald that pooh-poohs the environmental impact of the massive BP oil spill.)
"I have not taken the time to fact-check Mr. Goldberg's bird and mammal figures, but by now, I think everybody's seen the 'They can't find the oil!' headlines. Like I said, interesting. A month or so ago, you'd have thought the world was coming to an end."
(Goldberg is the "brains" behind a faux scholarly propaganda book equating liberals to fascists that MotW is much taken with. His mother is Lucianne Goldberg, a literary agent who was heavily involved in flogging the Monica Lewinsky story.)
The lazy, bottom-of-the-food-chain right-wing bloggers pick up and parrot whatever support their presuppositions and political narrative.
The impact of that quantity of oil spilled at depth is unknown, as even Grunwald's interviewees would admit.
The article says that the spill doesn't appear to be as bad an environmental catastrophe AT THIS EARLY DATE as most people had feared it might be.
It does not say that the spill is not an environmental catastrophe, and it acknowledges that the long-term effects of both the estimated 184,000,000 gallons of oil and the 2,000,000 gallons of chemical dispersants are completely unknown.
See the rebuttal article in Time for the other side of the story.
At any rate, scientists do not know what all this will do long-term, and certainly party hacks like Goldberg and Limbaugh don't know. They simply treat it as they would any other world event: as grist for their partisan mills.
As for MotW, his leading lights appear to be Goldberg, Coulter, Limbaugh, Buchanan, Schlafly, i.e., the shrillest and most partisan voices out there. Doesn't speak too well for him, but there are many like him.
While MotW is on or in my mind, here's one more.
He provides a timely illustration of the workings of the right-wing media machine in his latest post:
"Hmmmmm. Interesting:"
(Here follows a partial regurgitation of Jonah Goldberg's selective regurgitation of a Time Magazine article by Michael Grunwald that pooh-poohs the environmental impact of the massive BP oil spill.)
"I have not taken the time to fact-check Mr. Goldberg's bird and mammal figures, but by now, I think everybody's seen the 'They can't find the oil!' headlines. Like I said, interesting. A month or so ago, you'd have thought the world was coming to an end."
(Goldberg is the "brains" behind a faux scholarly propaganda book equating liberals to fascists that MotW is much taken with. His mother is Lucianne Goldberg, a literary agent who was heavily involved in flogging the Monica Lewinsky story.)
The lazy, bottom-of-the-food-chain right-wing bloggers pick up and parrot whatever support their presuppositions and political narrative.
The impact of that quantity of oil spilled at depth is unknown, as even Grunwald's interviewees would admit.
The article says that the spill doesn't appear to be as bad an environmental catastrophe AT THIS EARLY DATE as most people had feared it might be.
It does not say that the spill is not an environmental catastrophe, and it acknowledges that the long-term effects of both the estimated 184,000,000 gallons of oil and the 2,000,000 gallons of chemical dispersants are completely unknown.
See the rebuttal article in Time for the other side of the story.
At any rate, scientists do not know what all this will do long-term, and certainly party hacks like Goldberg and Limbaugh don't know. They simply treat it as they would any other world event: as grist for their partisan mills.
As for MotW, his leading lights appear to be Goldberg, Coulter, Limbaugh, Buchanan, Schlafly, i.e., the shrillest and most partisan voices out there. Doesn't speak too well for him, but there are many like him.
Sorry once again for the repetition. Seems to be a Blogger.com glitch. AT, please remove the dupes.
Late-breaking bulletin for Jonah Goldberg:
"The word 'Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'"
(George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946)
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