The white supremacist right is penetrating the mainstream right with increasing ease.
The Conservative Political Action Conference is the premier gathering of right-wing activists and politicians in America every year, and it serves as a bellwether for the direction of the conservative movement. This year Nazis showed up.
According to an NBC News report, “a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed ‘race science’ and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” (Hitler’s Nazi Party was officially called the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”) The reporter of the article has video of one of them giving a “heil Hitler”-style salute in the lobby of the hotel where the conference took place and of other members of the group reportedly used the N-word.
This is a critical frog-in-boiling-water moment for the right: The mainstream organs of American conservatism are apparently acclimating to Nazis in their pot. That this group was able to mingle with participants at a high-profile conference, wasn’t kicked out of CPAC, and wasn’t appropriately condemned is a sign of how contiguous mainstream conservatism has become with white supremacist politics today.
McCain is one of the old guard Republicans that went down fighting. His final vote thumbs down for the repeal of the ACA was legendary. I didn’t vote for him but I do have great respect for him.
Contrast that against all the limp dicks who are silently retiring instead of speaking out and trying to right the ship.
He slipped real hard during his presidential bid. Remember how his VP pick was Sarah Palin, for example.
The beginning of backroom concessions to the crazy wing of the party that are so very, very obvious.
If I remember correctly, he didn’t want to nominate her. He wanted Liebermann and didn’t even like Palin that much. She was just sort of forced on him.
Yes, that’s what I mean. Noone in their right mind would choose her. This was a forced choice and an indication that the lunatics were if not running the asylum, at least in charge of a big part of it.
Lieberman is entirely awful in different ways, though. Come to think of it, I’d forgotten he was Gore’s running mate.
I think that wasn’t quite the beginning of the end, but it was definitely a warning sign for what was to become of the Republican party. I think they saw how Dubya was a moron and that was appealing to a lot of voters, so they thought “there’s a recipe for success here.”
On a random note, that just led me to this video where the guy who floated Palin’s name to McCain said it was “the biggest fucking mistake of his life”.
https://youtu.be/ihrCtRCGTro
epic link, damn
She looks like a damned Rhodes scholar compared to what the GOP is putting up these days.
I’m not disagreeing with you, just a comment on how much farther they’ve fallen.
I think if you go back and watch her speaking she has a lot of gibberish with buzzwords as well. The only difference between her and Lauren Booblejuice or margery klanma is palin’s racism and conspiracy theories weren’t on full display.
Oh, I remember. She thought “which magazines and newspapers do you read” was a trick question. But Bobo and the Tuber are new levels of stupid.
She and other “tea party” imbeciles were very much the predecessor of the MAGA horror show.
That was an attempt to appeal to the crazies without directly appealing to the crazies. That never works.
McCain might have thought of himself as a responsible conservative, but he was still a part of the machine that has been a regressive force in America over the last 60 years. He did not fight for the heart or soul of the party, and this moment was an example of the flimsy lip service he paid to being a reasonable person.