Reading RedState (So You Don't Have To)

It's been said before but always bears repeating: Conservatives are batshit crazy. And I've found no better collection of mainstream batshitty thinking than RedState (sorry, Free Republic, but your website is too weird to read).

I started on this when I saw, via Atrios, that RedState is wanting to upgrade their site, which will cost $25,000. But...they don't have $25,000. So what else can they do but start begging for money from their readers. Looks like somebody's business model isn't quite as successful as had been expected.

In fact, this follow-up post suggests that something named Eagle Publishing has already given them $55,000 to help pay for the upgrade, along with contributing an additional $20,000 in third-party software; even though Eagle doesn't get anything from RedState. So the $25,000 is just the extra amount they need to come up with themselves because Big Daddy Eagle won't pony-up all the necessary funds. Why does it seem that underneath the toughguy maverick exterior of most conservatives lies a sycophantic doofus praying for a free lunch? Oh that's right, because it's true.

Even funnier, is their use of a red Deathstar (pictured above), which I guess is meant to show us what "RedState 3.0" will be like. Odd, but I don't remember Vader having to pass around a hat to collect funds from the Storm Troopers. But perhaps that was in a deleted scene. And having watched Star Wars many times, it never occurred to me that some people would identify with the Empire. But it makes sense. Authoritarians respect authority always.

Blame Liberals First

And whose fault is it that RedState has to pay to upgrade? Who else: Liberals.

As they wrote:
The bad news: our liberal “friends” – you know, the ones who believe so strongly in free speech and open debate – have done what they can to prevent us from making these improvements, so that our influence will be minimized just as we head into the 2008 presidential primary season.

Bwa ha ha! Our plans are working like clockwork. First we woo the open-source programmers with our Marxist siren song, and then laugh mercilessly as the rightwing websites flail under growing piles of debt they incur by paying our programmers. And when all the weak-minded netizens compare our awesome blogsites to the paltry conservative offerings, they'll clearly prefer the leftwing sites and we'll win elections forever! All part of our plan to deny conservatives the ability to speak freely.

And why is it necessary to upgrade RedState? Why else: Liberals.

I quote:
I’ll be blunt: I hate asking you for money. But I hate even more to imagine what America will be like if someone like Hillary Clinton or Barack Hussein Obama wins the presidency in November. RedState can help prevent that nightmare from coming true – but only if we’re offering the best possible web experience to the widest possible audience.

You see, this isn't for the benefit of RedState and its founders. This is to prevent a liberal nightmare from destroying America. Why, it almost seems that the only reason conservatives exist is to combat liberals. Perhaps if we played possum for awhile, they'd just go away. But of course, that's not how it works. Extremists never tire of searching out infidels, and you can rest assured that you can always find some reason to exclude people from your group. And as we all know, there's no better way to empower yourself than by depowering someone else.

Anti-Liberalism

But it's not just this post. I decided to look through all RedState's posts for the day, and it's obvious that their main focus is on liberals. There were eighteen posts on January 7 (the day I started this), and ten of them were focused on liberals.

Of the few that weren't, one was an open thread, one was a fund-raising update, one attacked the Virginia Republicans for making it too hard for Republicans to get on the ballot, one repeated a Freeper post regarding a "professional undecided" in Frank Luntz's focus group, and two insulted Duncan Hunter for not dropping out of the race. And I put all six of these in the fluff category, as they contained no real substance.

While the Virginia thing might have been interesting, I didn't understand why it mattered and it seemed like the main intent was really just to diss Virginia Republicans, as a way of blaming them for the state's recent shift to the left (it was titled Why Is the GOP Losing Virginia? Blame the Republican Party in Virginia). As they say, conservativism never fails; it is failed.

And then there was a post on some omnibus spending bill which supposedly had 9,000 earmarks unconstitutionally added in conference, and which they wanted Bush to sign an executive order to invalidate the earmarks. And while this might be of substance, the post contained no details on this and I couldn't find anything about it in the two minutes I bothered researching, so I don't know if this is a liberal attack or not.

Interestingly, there was one post on RedState that actually contained policy substance and didn't attack liberals. It was titled What Huck Should Have Said, and was a suggestion to what Mike Huckabee should have said during a recent debate when Mitt Romney attacked him for raising taxes. According to this conservative, Huckabee should have defended his record by saying that he raised taxes in order to improve infrastructure and education in his state. So, one of the few posts of the day that didn't attack liberals, was to suggest that a Republican should defend himself in a Republican primary debate by sounding like a liberal. Interesting.

Ten Liberal Posts

Here's a summary of the ten liberal focused posts, in the order they appeared:

Here's a post from RedState chief Erick Erickson insisting that "red" states are growing faster than "blue" states because "Liberalism continue to cause people to vote with their feet and flee social and economic tyranny within our own country." That's right. Everything in this world is related to politics, and if Southern states are growing faster than Northern states, it can only be due to liberal tyranny. Oddly, the RedState commenters seem to be more intelligent than Erick, as some of them realize that some of this population growth is due to differences in birth rates; and seeing as how liberals have a lock on the education system, that some of these "red" children will be raised blue. Other commenters realized that some of these "blue state" people are taking their political beliefs with them, and are turning "red states" purple (eg, Virginia).

Here's an attack on George McGovern (yes, that George McGovern) for daring to write an op/ed denouncing Bush and Cheney. And what critiques were leveled against McGovern's argument? That McGovern is "aging" and an "old man," and that he's "fighting yesterday's war" and "had his clock cleaned by Dick Nixon." Wow, pretty convincing rebuttal, I must say. Oh, plus McGovern thinks that Democrats are needed to fix Bush's mistakes. What an a-hole! As an added bonus, this post contains your non-sequitur for the day: "Because to be rational, one must not be ruled by anti-war passions which convert judgment into sneering." No, I don't understand that one either.

Here's an attack on the NY Times for an editorial suggesting that all the Republican presidential contenders look like they're living in the wrong century. And why did they say this? Why, because they're liberals, of course. RedState has the perfect rebuttal to their arguments, by ignoring them entirely and making blanket assertions praising Republicans and attacking Democrats. For example, we were reminded that Republicans "are the keepers of a great America," while "Democrats drive us the way of defeat though they wrap it in pretty sounding words like hope, unity, and change." Call me convinced. Oddly, the Times ends their editorial saying "Republicans have a long way to go to grasp the mood of the electorate in this 21st-century election," which would summarize their thesis that the GOP is in the wrong century; while Ericka at RedState chastises Democrats for telling people what they want to hear. It's as if she intentionally failed to understand what the editorial was saying as a way of demonstrating its accuracy.

This was followed by the Deathstar Fundraising post cited above, in which liberals are blamed for forcing RedState to upgrade their site as well as being the reason why RedStaters need RedState to upgrade.

Then, I learned that Rush Limbaugh was named Conservative of the Year by some wingnut site I'd never heard of. And why did Limbaugh win this great honor: Because liberals hate him. I wrote more about this, but decided to make it it's own post. But I'll repeat the first line from what Erick said summed up why Limbaugh is the man: "What is it about Rush that drives the left crazy (that is, crazier than they already are)?" That's right. It's not about Limbaugh. It's about what Limbaugh does to liberals.

Here's a post mocking Hillary for crying. Something I learned from the comments section: Hillary was "part of the group that invented the politics of personal destruction." I'm sure Nixon is stewing about that one.

Here's a guest-post by a former Bush-Cheney PR flack insisting that none of the Democratic candidates have the expertise to handle our international problems. And if anyone understands how dangerous it is to have an inexperienced person running the Whitehouse, it would be a Bush-Cheney employee. And I have no doubt that the person writing this once worked for the Bush campaign, as it's nothing but a giant non-sequitur attacking Democrats. It starts by referencing the upcoming New Hampshire primaries and ends with "For that reason, no matter how good a game they may talk, they must be rejected." So is she suggesting that RedStaters somehow nominate a Republican in the Democratic Primary, or what? I don't know. This makes no sense. How are they going to reject every Democrat in a Democratic Primary? Even worse, there was no reference to Republican foreign policy credentials (or lack thereof), and whether the RedStaters should support any of them. Someone needs to tell her that in order to strategize, you kind of need a strategy.

Here's a post where Erick mentions some liberal who is encouraging people to donate one penny to the RedState fundraiser, under the mistaken idea it will cost RedState thirty cents per donation. He then mentions how this will give him their personal info, and in comments, he seriously suggests he's going to give this info to mailing lists. One of the commenters cautions him against doing anything illegal, as it would give people grounds to sue him. Wow, that's a real morality system that guy's got there. He doesn't want the liberals hurt because it might empower them.

And then there was a post which I wasn't quite sure about whether it belonged in this category, but decided that it fit after all. In it, we're told that Hillary isn't likely to drop out of the race if she loses New Hampshire because "There is no way anyone surnamed "Clinton" whose first name is not "Roger" will give up power this easily." Because as we all know, funkmaster extraordinaire George Clinton is "in it to win it." I'm amazed by this ability to state the obvious while also turning it into a nonsensical insult.

And then we'll finish things off with with a post on Obama, where Pejman Yousefzadeh praises Obama for "trying to engage in dialogue with those who disagree with him on policy issues," but thinks Obama needs to express admiration for Iraq War Supporters, and admit that, perhaps, we need to stay in Iraq forevah. Oddly, the only two Obama quotes cited involved Obama addressing war-supporting Democrats (read: Hillary), and why they shouldn't be president. If anything, the basis of Pejman's argument seems to rest on O'Hanlon's assertion that Obama is dissing him. A commenter did quote Obama dissing Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Karl Rove; but as another commenter pointed out, those three are despised by all Democrats and many Republicans. Methinks political reconciliation is going to remain difficult until these people finally agree to join reality.

And there we have it. A day's worth of conservative blogposts, all of which were as worthless as the proverbial truckload of dead rats in the tampon factory. But again, it's so pathetic how the main focus is on liberals, but how they really never even covered that subject either. Specific arguments are countered with blanket assertions and nonsensical insults; all of which are forced to remain in the world of fantasy, because they can't actually be explained or discarded. Thus is the life of a modern conservative.