Couldn't agree more. The biggest problem for D & R candidates is the primaries. To get elected, they must pander to the extremes. Once they get to the general election and try to moderate their rhetoric, I can only ask "were you lying then or lying now?"

The canyon is full of Americans center right. Do what you can to convince yourself a simple phrase can change a voters mind. That may be enough for your friends to be influenced one way or another, not mine! Your party jumped the shark, you know it, and I know it.

I would raise two points.

First, I disagree about the "center". Rather than being persuadable by extremism, I would argue that their inertia characterizes them best.

Second, I insist that the root of unproductive extremism is our simple 50%+1 magic vote system, as opposed to a parliamentary one. Extremism can be very good; a side experiment that may produce fruitful results. But, because all data gets reduced to won/loss, if an extreme point is to get a hearing, it has to be the only point. There are a lot of examples everyday that you think, "that's a really important day-on-day issue; I wish there were dedicated political support for it", but you would not vote for a party that reduced all of life to that one issue. So, we have thinktanks and PACs and such to address the void, and then complain that they function as pseudo-governmental entities.

Here's a simple case in point. 4% of the electorate have consistently supported Ralph Nader's policies and approaches. They have become an irritation to Dems and progressives on occasion, by then expanding that to address all issues, and running against the major parties. If we had proportional representation, they would have 25 seats in the House, and would have for the last 40 years. That allows for a constant backbeat of policy interest, without having to ignore it for 30 years, then all the sudden have a major party announce, "we're pro-consumer; we're green!" Doesn't that account for most flip-flopping on issues? If you're in a close race, and you're before a group of people that take a different stand on one of your planks, you find a way to ameliorate the differences, IF you're looking for that one magic vote. If you're looking for 4% and you know you have that locked up, you don't change your spiel.

We're becoming "Canadian". We know what we don't like, but aren't sure what we stand for. That's why the center is filling up. To my mind, that's what people do after they make the judgment that no one else in the race resembles themselves very closely, and are more interested in what might get screwed up than what might get done. If that's the contingency, it's no wonder why legislative gridlock is more and more the norm. It's a kind of prisoners dilemma game. If you're going to play it as a pure game, there are certain contingencies that favor certain behaviors. In our system, all the noted abuses work to some extent. They work at least more than the nice alternatives. Jimmy Carter shows you what the nice alternatives can accomplish in our system.

At least, for starters, could we get as or more concerned about the tone of our world affairs as we do our domestic politics? The US position in the world is obscene, rude, ill-considered, physically threatening, based on ignorance, and pandering to monied interests. That is precisely the criticism of the TEA protesters. All empires breed this kind of internal shadow clone, and all empires address the tone of the debate as the evil to be addressed. 9 times out of 10 that just keeps the obscenity from being discussed and it usually goes on long beyond because language's relationship to the world has become more important than behavior's relationship to the world.

As far as criminal behavior goes, I guess you're just wimps. I called for civil disobedience and shutting down the system as a response to the criminality of the Bush Administration for many a day, and was generally regarded as no better than the TEA protesters. Now that you have a bunch of scared, stupid, nicotine addicted, corporate sheep doing the same thing- barely- you get really brave. Their cognitive facilities may not be terribly impressive, but at least they're making a modest effort to try. I have not seen that among party animals from either of the majors.

Now...for you TEA partiers, I have only one thing to say. Thank you. I really, really thought that the Weathermen Underground, Black Panthers, The Students for a Democratic Society, Earth First, The Worker Student Alliance and the Progressive Labor Party had been in vain. I thought Klonksy's "Toward a Revolutionary Youth Movement" had been a pipe dream. Not so. While Dems and Reps cannot envision real action, you have accepted these principles in a way that no major American movement has, since they were proposed. We do believe what goes around comes around, and, while you might be making lots of learners' errors, you are bringing stale ideas into everyday American political discourse. Don't know if you've noticed, but you're a minority. When gen Y unconsciously incorporates your good examples of civil disobedience, rekindling those theoretical, liberal principles? The benefit to society will far outweigh having to watch your growing pains. So, thanks. At a time when "good Dems" were telling us to "break out of that 60s mentality", we really needed this. Fair dinkum. Honest mates someday.

The day that the bills for not purchasing health insurance comes in the mail to the politically indifferent will be the day the death knell sounds for any hint of a jackass majority for some time to come.

Oh geez-louise, why are Republicans always so convinced they're the majority? Anyway, I agree completely with Paulie's original article (minus the "everyone really hates Obama and you libruls" comments that followed). Not only do the teabaggers routinely reveal themselves as far worse racist, ignorant hillbillies than we ever suspected---but the Republican'ts strategy grows more desperate, juvenile and pathetic with each passing day.

Their latest ploy is to implement some obscure senate rule and leave every day at 2PM. Yes, they've gone from the party of no to the party of no work, no here. Somehow I don't think persuadable voters will take too kindly to a senator paid with their tax dollars refusing to do the job they were hired to do. Especially in this current economy.

Sorry puggies, holding your breath and taking your ball home is about to backfire, big time

Center right nation? It's a widely accepted CW 'fact.' but in reality a minority of Americans. I think if you scratch beneath the surface of people who call themselves conservatives and really pin them down in terms of real world situations instead of dealing in talking points and bumper sticker platitudes, I'd bet you a bushel of pears that you'd find the vast majority harbor some decidedly progressive values. (although they would not call them such)

In the past forty years conservatives have used the power of advertising and marketing to sell their brand....... successfully and effectively. Think "Mad Men." The brand of the elite, the brand of winners, the patriotic brand...... just like selling Lucky Strikes or Nike.

"Be like Mike." "Death panels." "Where's The Beef." "Pro-Life." "Up or Down Vote." "Less Filling, Tastes Great." "Morning in America.""Shock and Awe." The list is endless but it's all just advertising. Really effective advertising. It short circuits the brain so you don't have to think too deeply.

Conservatism: It's their brand. It's their team. Hell, it's their religion. They worship the myth of a man who, if he were alive today would be considered a RINO.

And now that Health Care Reform is law their acting like a bunch of drunken soccer hooligans.

You might ask Greg Walden since he was one of those House members on the balcony egging the crowd toward even more deplorable behavior.

"The candidate who is prepared to have a serious discussion of issues without partisan talking points flying like sharp arrows meant to wound will be listened to like never before.

There will be a sizable role for voters in the middle and I'm betting the reasonable serious candidate has a real shot at winning like never before."

I agree and would add one thing.

In legislative discussions, it would be smart to study what St. Sen. Frank Morse said and did in the Feb. session.

I saw on Oregon Channel the joint Revenue Comm. hearing the day the revenue forecast was delivered.

When the discussion came to the next possible kicker, he asked a simple question.

"How long will we continue to do this to ourselves?".

Once upon a time, Democrats asked such questions, and educated the public about the issues involved.

As the late Molly Ivins once said on a congressional topic, "Breathes there a Democrat with soul so dead that they don't recognize an issue when it bites them in the face?"

If there are swing voters (not straight party) who are asking each other when the legislature is going to get around to openly discussing the kicker---in this election year or are they afraid of alienating someone--and they hear there is a legislator who asked that question, and if (as I recall) kicker reform/rainy day fund is one of the ideas competing at Rebooting Democracy for volunteer support, wouldn't it be smart for candidates to start discussing the issue at neighborhood coffees and town hall meetings?

That is, candidates and legislators who believe voters are intelligent and deserve such intelligent discussion.

Yes, I think the legislature is better off with Dem. majorities, but also with intelligent Republicans like Sen. Morse.

"Here's a simple case in point. 4% of the electorate have consistently supported Ralph Nader's policies and approaches. They have become an irritation to Dems and progressives..."

In my mind and the others in the 4%, "they" are the progressives.

Pelosi: Health Care Bill a Conservative Bill (Time to Go Back Under the Bus, Veal Pen)

Soon after it's inception, the Tea Party movement was quickly co-opted as a political tactic of corporate America. The dishonest and ignorant in the Democratic Party saw this as a propaganda opportunity to rationalize their immoral efforts to demonize and denigrate the honest and decent people in the Democratic Party who called "bullshit" on this intentional, immoral, corrupt effort to pass what was nothing more or less than a corporate welfare bill for the private insurance industry.

What we are seeing now is just the continuation of a propaganda tactic to deceive and distract us as we discover in the next few months and years how they were duped, and to further damage and pervert the Democratic Party for their own selfish ends. The Tea Party nutcase fringe is a politically impotent, and the biggest danger to progressives, the Democratic Party, and honorable efforts to mitigate the damage these selfish, incompetent, morally-bankrupt corrupters are shallow, dangerous demagogues like Kari, Carla, paulie, Hoyle and her disgusting pack of hyperventilating trolls inflaming the situation for their own selfish purposes.

An LT, we all should be looking forward to your endorsements because if your comments bespeak your criteria, it's clear the politicians you endorse will be pandering, incompetent, sleazeballs.

Pushing back, by all means let us know who you support.

LT - Pushing back, by all means let us know who you support.

<h2>Not a chance in hell.</h2>