GARRISON KEILLOR: Republicans' rewriting of history could work a treat for all of us

[DogPoundPup]

SO THE Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling: “Throw the bums out!”

They’ve been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And former mayor Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.

They are coming out for “Small Efficient Government” the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 or (pick a number) billion go floating out the treasury door.

Hello? Do you see us out here? We are not fruit flies, we are voters, we can read and write, we didn’t just fall off the coal truck.

It is a bold move on the Republicans’ part – forget about the past, it’s only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be – and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to.

Paste a new face on my Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louis the 32nd, the rightful heir to the throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the royal fleur-de-lis.

They will cure neuralgia and gout and restore marital vigour.

John McCain has decided to run as a former POW and a maverick, a maverick’s maverick, rather than George W Bush’s best friend, and that’s understandable, but how can he not address the $3 trillion that got burned up in Iraq so far? It’s real money, it could’ve paid for a lot of windmills, a high-speed rail line in Ohio, some serious RD.

The Chinese, who have avoided foreign wars for 50 years, are taking enormous leaps forward, investing in their economy, and we are falling behind. We’re wasting our chances. The Republican culture of corruption in Washington hasn’t helped.

And a former mayor of a town of 7,000 who hired a lobbyist to get $26 million in federal earmarks is now running against the old-boy network in Washington who gave her that money to build the teen rec centre and other good things so she could keep taxes low in Wasilla. Stunning. And if you question her qualifications to be the leader of the free world, you are an elitist.

This is a beautiful manoeuvre. I wish I had thought of it back in school when I was forced to subject myself to a final exam in higher algebra. I could have told Miss Mortenson: “I am a Christian and when you gave me a D, you only showed your contempt for the Lord and for the godly hard-working people from whom I have sprung, you elitist battle-axe you.”

In school, you couldn’t get away with that garbage because the taxpayers know that if we don’t uphold scholastic standards, we will wind up driving on badly designed bridges and go in for a tonsillectomy and come out missing our left lung, so we flunk the losers lest they gain power and hurt us, but in politics we bring forth phonies and love them to death.

I must say, it was fun having the Republicans in St Paul and to see it all up close and first-hand.

Security was, as one might expect, thin-lipped and gimlet-eyed, but once you got through it, you found the folks you went to high school with – farm kids, jocks, the townies who ran the student council, the cheerleaders, some of the bullies – and they are as cohesive now as they were back then, dedicated to school spirit, intolerant of outsiders, able to jump up and down and holler for something they don’t actually believe.

But oh Lord, what they brought forth this year. When you check the actuarial tables on a 72-year-old guy who’s had three bouts with cancer, you guess you may be looking at the first woman president, a hustling evangelical with ethics issues and a chip on her shoulder who, not counting Canada, has set foot outside the country once – a trip to Germany, Iraq and Kuwait in 2007 to visit Alaskans in the armed service. And who listed a refuelling stop in Ireland as a fourth country visited.

She’s like the Current Occupant but with big hair. If you want inexperience, there were better choices. – (Tribune Media Services)
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0911/1221039054813.html

[Berry Cool]

1. Keillor sure knows how to cut to the chase.

That's exactly what the RNC convention reminded me of...it was like seeing most of the people I went to high school with, all grown up, having a ball dancing drunkenly and enjoying the opportunity to collectively hate people not like themselves.

[ladym55]

2. And because so many Americans don't know their history

It isn't too hard for the Republicans to rewrite it. It is so very, very frustrating that so many Americans will buy the garbage being sold in the hate-filled sound bytes.

[creeksneakers2]

3. Really funny!

Thanks for posting.

[mzmolly]

4. I'd love to see him be a surrogate for the Obama campign.

He's brilliant.

K and R.

[pnorman]

5. "The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling:....

.....“Throw the bums out!”
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

pnorman

[farmboxer]

6. Rove's lies have worked for so long, but the lies are getting old

All Obama Campaign needs to do is show McCain's voting record

over and over and over again, proves McCain is a damned liar over and over and over again! McCain's voting record makes him look like a lying piece of fecal matter, which he so is! Show McCain lying, show his voting record on paper, really shows what McCain is all about, lies, cheating and just anything dishonest. Show voters proof that McCain is a liar! McCain's lies will destroy him, esp. if the MSM will come clean about their man McCain, but then, how can they get out of it?!

McCain is against healthcare, social security, medicare/medicaid, VETS, education, free speech, peace, unions & all working people, McCain is against the truth, issues, against lower gas prices, against solar energy, all alternative energy. McCain is FOR the military industrial complex, oil companies, billionaires/millionaires, war profiteering. big drug companies, ad infinitum, so saith the Pope!

Way too much to post, could go on all night! It is a no brainer! I have been changing people's minds in doctor's offices, at the gas pump, etc. Just show them the truth. There are some hard core idiots who will always vote Republican because their parents were such, etc., but..........SICKO at the doctor's waiting room works. People who go to the doctor hate America's health care system, many have to wait for hours, they want it to change ASAP. Always remember, the Republican corporate owned mainstream news media is for McCain and so many have not gotten the truth. I also leave a copy of "The Nation", etc., tell them to visit DU. Some still believe that Obama will not face the US Flag! They need to hear the truth! McCain is Bush!

[Sherman A1]

7. Great Post

Thanks!

[groovedaddy]

8. I like the way he puts it...lightens up my day a bit. n.t

[Uncle Joe]

9. The Republicans only believe this because the corporate media have carried their water for so long.

"It is a bold move on the Republicans’ part – forget about the past, it’s only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be – and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to."

Just as surely as John McSame, Dick Cheney, John Edwards and countless others have used the lipstick on a pig analogy long before Palin came on the scene to contrive some lipstick pit bull quote and suddenly the term lipstick on a pig becomes off limits to Obama when used against McSame's record.

It wasn't the Republicans that magnified or gave power to this, it was the corporate media in an attempt to change the debate and misdirect the American People from the critical issues to hocked up superficial fiction while simultaneously giving credit to McSame for changing the debate as if this were a brilliant political move and could have been done without the corporate media's acquiescence.

The real threat to the American People's deliberation doesn't come from the Republicans rewriting history, the real threat comes from the corporate media rewriting history for them. The Republicans can be expected to try such tactics, the corporate media with their one way megaphones running in to hundreds of millions of American Homes should be held to a higher standard.

Nonetheless this is a good column by Garrison Keillor, thanks for the thread, DogPoundPup.