"(Wing-nuts) would rather burn this country to the ground than share it with you people"

[phantom power]

...House Republicans have not shown a bit of interest in the past three years of doing things like governing, passing laws, or anything silly like that. What they have done is mount a series of showdowns where they threaten government shutdown, resulting in the inevitable actual shutdown. That it happened after the elections is not a coincidence, and not just because Republicans didn’t want to take the electoral hits of forcing a shutdown in 2012. No, this is because they were “graciously” giving Americans a chance to take back our “mistake” in electing Barack Obama President, when they believe that office permanently belongs to a Republican.

I made a crack about this on Twitter this morning:



Unsurprisingly, this caused wingnuts to send half-literate rantings at me for hours—they’re probably still doing it—which suggests it hit a lot closer to home than I really even intended it to. Truth told, I think they would be throwing this temper tantrum regardless of the race of the Democratic President, because they don’t think a Democrat should be President. They did this to President Clinton and it was basically driven by the same underlying belief that’s endemic on the right that Democrats are always illegitimate when they take office because the people who vote them in don’t count as real Americans—and therefore our right to vote itself is suspect. That’s the sentiment behind the voter ID laws that are cropping up in the wake of Obama’s reelection. That’s why Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners that all Obama voters are on welfare, even though that’s statistically impossible. They have convinced themselves that they are Real America and that simply by being liberal—or even being persuaded to vote for a Democrat—you aren’t and really don’t deserve even basic suffrage. (Obviously, people on welfare deserve the right to vote, but I am fairly certain the majority of Limbaugh’s listeners don’t agree.)

That said, race is indisputably making the conservative temper tantrum over the fact that they don’t actually have permanent control over the White House all the uglier. They hated Bill Clinton, absolutely. They impeached him! (They want to do that to Obama, too, but the Benghazi thing just doesn’t have legs.) But the overwhelming anger and desire to punish the voters for putting Obama into office is much worse than I remember it in the 90s. The voter ID stuff is part of it. The increased attacks on abortion—and now contraception!—are part of it, since women voted for Obama more than men. The obsession with shutting down the government is absolutely part of it.

In other words, as far as the Republican base is concerned, they would rather burn this country to the ground rather than share it with you people.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/01/the-government-shutdown-demonstrates-gop-hostility-towards-democracy/

[PeaceNikki]

1. Fucking Ayn Rand worshiping selfish teabagging fucking assholes.

[roguevalley]

2. what you said, peacenikki. I wrote that in my diary last night. :D

[napkinz]

3. The Ayn Randian Crisis: America Held Hostage, Day 999

*In 1979, the Iranian government took 52 Americans hostage. President Carter called the hostages "victims of terrorism and anarchy," adding that "the United States will not yield to blackmail." Ted Koppel and ABC News started a nightly feature "America Held Hostage" including the number of days the hostages had been imprisoned. The standoff lasted 444 days.

On September 28, 2013, GOP anarchists took 316 million Americans hostage. On November 4, 2014, 499 days from Tuesday, October 1, 2013, we can vote the hostage takers out of office and free the American people. And on January 4, 2015, 463 days from today, the United States government will again be free to ... govern.

http://northcentralblogistan.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/america-held-hostage-tea-party-anarchists-vote-to-shut-down-u-s-government/