We're analyzing the Republican Meltdown way too much. It's simple to understand

[kpete]

Remember those days in Grade School or Junior high when the "in crowd" came up against the "geeks, freaks, losers " etc. Yeah remember that...

...............

I was in Marching Band in high school and of course the cheerleaders and us did not get along. I remember we used to have Senior Slave Auctions ( ok , I know not a PC term but it raised money for the Senior class stuff) and the band got together and bought all the most popular cheerleaders and made them wear the oldest, ugliest band uniforms we had. Plus they had to wait on us hand and foot all day. Booooy if looks could kill.

The Republicans are just like those old cliques. They really don't think they can lose because it's beyond their scope of reality. I was not really all that surprised when the meltdown started, come on folks they OWN whole arms of the meda, it's a positive feedback loop, just like back in school, the popular kids had their minions that fed their egos. What better way to feed your own ego than to have entire radio stations, TV stations and papers tell you how awesome you are.

What's happening to them now is that it is the 20th year class reunion and they're realizing that all their good looks and popularity from high school did not translate into the real world. Those geeks and losers are now Drs, and Lawyers and civil engineers and such with happy lives that could give a shit about high school. The Republicans are the ones who at that reunion will get drunk and try to relive old memories while everyone else pities them. After all it really was with Reagan's election that the Rep party started drifting so far off the rails. They had their heyday and now as they sit among the ruins of plastic cups, old 80s songs, in dresses they lost weight to try to squeeze into harsh, cold reality is imposing on them. They know it was all truly meaningless in the end and they can't stand it.

Chaos

MORE:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/16/1162212/-We-re-analyzing-the-Republican-Meltdown-way-too-much-It-s-simple-to-understand

[rurallib]

1. I don't know - as long as they have truckloads of money and

own most of the media I would say they will still be competitive.
Don't let your guards down, folks.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. But analyzing it is fun.

Personally, I've been reading a book on cognitive dissonance & finding myself amazed at how well the theory accounts for all the different forms of teeth-gnashing the Republicans are currently engaging in to resolve the clash between their absolute certainty of victory and that one harsh reality, of ignominious defeat, that even they can't manage to cover with denial.

Cognitive dissonance theory began when a group of psychologists infiltrated a flying saucer cult that was expecting the Space Brothers to come & save them alone when the Earth came to an end. In many ways, the cognitive contortions of the cultists very much paralleled the mental gyrations the Republicans are now so nicely demonstrating for us.

[Protalker]

3. Vengence is Mine

The exquisite joy that the 47% tape that was so precise in defining the Mittster brought forth by James Carter IV is nothing but Divine justice.

[WinkyDink]

7. Indeed.

[marions ghost]

8. the 47% video

you know that somewhere the James Carters are high-fiving. If they're not, I'm sending them one anyway.

Karma, Divine Justice, Zen Slap, Payback Time--whatever name you want to give to this brilliant serendipitous flash of Truth.

It was critical.

[kydo]

4. go band!

Band is so under rated especially marching band. Yep I marched in high school and college, and both my kids marched one marches in the drum corps. God I wish the super bowl would ditch the aging rockers and just have the dci champ do the halftime the show would be so much better.

Sadly some of those same high school clicks are still there football is king cheer leading is queen band is for jokers. Funny thing is and especially from my area, the stands are empty except by the bands, that part is always full. Plus after high school band peeps go on to high paying jobs as we are usually also good at science and math plus an appreciation of the arts to boot.

[Cracklin Charlie]

5. That's a good analysis.

But I have a confession...I can't stand cheerleaders. Every time I go to a youth sports event, the first thing I do is try to figure out where the cheerleaders set up, and then sit as far away from them as possible. It's not that I hate or dislike them as a person, it just doesn't seem like they add much to the event; and, their constant cheering gets on my last nerve.

Making them wear disgusting, smelly old band uniforms is really kind of funny.

[wiggs]

6. A party with poor positions on issues and poor candidates is likely

to lose. The only things keeping their heads above water are media control, state of the art Luntz deceptive messaging, 40 years of think tank propaganda, citizens united, corporate lobbying, and willingness to use hate/polarization/fear/lies in campaigning. That's it...and that's not enough in many parts of the country anymore. 81% of the campaign's dark money was from conservative sources...and 90% of talk radio is conservative...free GOPTV (Fox) in every home and office...yet they couldn't overcome a 'severely' challenged candidate and platform

It worked in 2000 and 2004 with a terrible candidate...and in 2010 with media and money creating a fake strawman Obama to scare half the nation with.

Don't know where they go from here. More money and more fear? More investigations? More minority and women candidates continuing to shill for poor, backwards policies? Or better, more rational positions AND reasonable candidates (in other words, dems and moderates who can think as though the real world is real)? They aren't in a good spot....

[wiggs]

10. from Andrew Sullivan

'But that's not the debate the current GOP wants to have. Because they are not actually interested in government so much as in politics. And rather than figure out why they have strayed so far from sanity, and lost the support of an entire generation, they wallow in paranoia and conspiracy.'

[GeorgeGist]

9. trite

[HopeHoops]

11. We had a couple of cross-overs (cheerleaders who were also band fags...

...me who was a band nerd crossover, and a strong crossover between bandies and chorus people).

For the most all of our groups got along. We did NOT get along with the jocks or the "Izod Docksiders" yuppies. The burnouts were just sort of, well, their own thing. They were the ones who did a whole lot more than just pot. Pretty much all of the bandies, chorus-geeks, cheerleaders, and nerds partied together with weed, beer, and sometimes harder things. I think the jocks were mostly pissed that the cheerleaders hung out with band fags.

On a related note, at our 20th year reunion, all but one person who attended was NOT a former band, chorus, cheerleader, or nerd member. Invitations were sent out to everyone in our graduating class who could be located. The loner was just as welcome, but he wasn't in his element and sort of hid in the back with his SO. That made me sort of sad.

IMPORTANT Note: Use of the word "band fags" has nothing to do with LBGT - it's just the term that was in use in the late 70's and early 80's - the term we used for ourselves as well. The terms "nerds", "yuppies", "jocks", and "geeks", while arguably also offensive, were just the words we used to label the cliches. They've got new terms now, but I forget what my daughters call most of them, but "goths", "freaks", and "trash" are currently in the lexicon.

[WCGreen]

12. I read a description of what happened on election day...

Or rather what didn't happen with their poll watchers. They had a great program, from what I understand, but they had so many young people who wanted to be boss instead of worker that they had to rely on older folks who weren't trained or didn't get their packages.

The workers didn't want to do the work and the software package was too complicated for volunteers.

We had a similar program to keep control of finances and that program also had a GOTV package which I looked over. Now I am pretty good at navigating around programs and I was able to self-discover how to run the finance part but the GOTV, that was complicated.

So if the reports are true that the package was delivered right on top of the election and was complicated, I think that was a major problem for GOP's GOTV plan.

I was in on helping coordinate a GOTV program in Cuyahoga County back in 1998 for the statewide ticket.

We did all the work starting about two weeks before the election and was able to send out to the targeted precincts two people with two cell phones so we could id people who hadn't voted and contact them to offer a ride and one person to stand at the poll to greet every voter and handed them a sheet made for that State House district.

We also did a complete sample ballot for each State House District that was sent out to absentee voter as they requested for a ballot. We then crossed those people off the GOTV lists and focused on getting our people to the polls.

It was a lot of work, but we got it all done and felt as if we bumped up the gubernatorial turnout by at least 5-7 percent. Sadly, the turnout in the rest of the state overwhelmed us.

The point of all of this rhetoric is to show how worker intensive even with the computers GOTV truly is. We had the EAGER people on the ground and I suspect that the GOP had a whole lot of kids that wanted to be the boss and felt calling people or knocking on doors was "beneath" them. We had a few like that but fortunately, we had enough who were willing to do the work.