I don't get talk radio at all. Listening to it feels like getting bludgeoned with a stupid stick to me.

A stupid and mean stick.

Call me a pansy but the sheer meanness of conservative talk radio, the hosts and the callers, is what makes it difficult if not impossible for me to absorb.

Oh, I think we should keep it, and I'll tell you why.

Every time I hear one of those motherfuckers on the radio, I get this mental image. An image of a diapered infant. As Limbaugh slobbers on about the Obama recession or Hannity tries to find his asshole with a flashlight, I see this mewling retard stuff a hand down the back of his diaper, then grab a fistful of putrid yellow babyshit and brandish that fist at the world, joyfully squeezing the shit between his fat little fingers with a look on his face that commands you to tell him how smart and clever he is.

Then, during the ad break, he crams that shitfist into his toothless mouth and positively gurgles over how fantastic it tastes.



So keep up the good work, you subhuman cretins.

I'm very interested in what's going to happen to the Republican party because it seems like there is such a marked ideological divide. Until this election "Talk Radio" has seemed the de facto voice of the new GOP, leaving the more moderate conservatives (what I actually consider true conservatism - it's right there in the word, duh) and conservative thinkers/intellectuals out in the cold, which I guess was considered an okay tradeoff as long as Americans were feeling comfy enough at home - but when people actually start demanding competence, skill, solutions and attention to bread and butter issues, the holes in that strategy begin to look a whole lot bigger. They have been systematically alienating those in the party who could provide that sort of leadership and shed a whole lot of voters along the way. Was it worth it? Will it remain worth it? I hope not.

I actually want a strong, sane, and literally conservative Republican party, despite the fact that I will probably be in ideological opposition to them on almost every issue. The Jesus-guns-and-Armageddon-kill-the-homos bunch that has swarmed all over the party has both precipitated the current crises (the real crises facing the nation, as well as the GOP crisis), and rendered the party ineffectual to address them, because it has shunned those of its own who were already anticipating these problems and are capable of wrangling with them. If the GOP strategists are smart, they'll try to woo them back, but who's left to be that smart, I wonder? And how successful can they be if they remain unwilling to lose the fundie baggage? I don't think Talk Radio killed conservatism - I think radical right wing elements and theocratic pandering killed conservatism (within the GOP), and Talk Radio was its spokesperson. It will be interesting to see where they both go from here.

(What seems most logical to me: the Republican Party becomes the right wing Christian party > the Democratic Party becomes the moderate conservative party > the Green Party gains force and numbers as the new liberal party. Actually, this is sort of how it already is, except the Green Party isn't viable yet.)

This election was (I hope) the end of the GOP's Southern Strategy -- that heinous Frankenstein's monster of (usually racist) southern social conservatives and laissez-faire business-first free-marketers. They spent a generation cobbling this alliance together, and it fell apart literally overnight. Lee Atwater and his ilk made a Faustian bargain: they got the single-issue voters ("DON'T KILL UR BABBY!") onboard, but to do so they drove the party from its intellectual foundations and alienated right-leaning centrists and moderate conservatives (you know, the people who might have voted for John McCain had he not kowtowed to Falwell and Hagee and Dobson). And what comes of disdaining "intellectuals" and sneering at "organizers" for so long and so vehemently?

Sarah Fucking Palin, that's what. A proudly ignorant evangelical who believes in witches and that God speaks directly to her. Yeah. Good luck with that. PLEASE run Sarah Palin in 2012, GOP. It'll kill your party on a national level for the rest of my lifetime.

I'm with taz -- I'd actually LIKE to see a sane conservative party: a fiscally disciplined, suspicious-of-government, pro-business party that could serve as a counterweight to a progressive leadership. A GOP that actively seeks to obtain those things that the current party claims to espouse but really does not: balanced budgets, low taxes, devolution of federal authority to the state level (I'm not saying those are all good things -- but they are valid political goals). A REAL GOP would be agnostic on issues like gay marriage and reproductive rights -- that would be, they'd argue, outside the purview of federal authority.

For the past THIRTY FUCKING YEARS the Democrats have been mired in the arguments of the last generation, and it's cost them (and the nation) terribly. Well, those wheels just got some traction. And the GOP are now the ones stuck in the mud. Hopefully it'll take them just as long to mend their party, but as long as Hannity and Limbaugh and the rest of those clowns keep bloviating, it'll just extend the rift. Hallelujah!

I see this mewling retard stuff a hand down the back of his diaper, then grab a fistful of putrid yellow babyshit and brandish that fist at the world, joyfully squeezing the shit between his fat little fingers with a look on his face that commands you to tell him how smart and clever he is.

Wow, nice image. Almost as nice as Meatbomb's anecdote about the old lady grabbing his wang-dang-doodle.

MetaChat's been putting a lot of great images into my head this morning.

I think it's time for a New Libertarian movement in this country. Separate the fiscal conservatives from the Jesus freaks, because that's the schism in the republican party right now. We need a party with a sane stance on civil rights (including gays), drug policy, and censorship. But also one that's sensitive to the economy and the environment. To hell with the Randroids and "I got mine" assholes. Good comment on MeFi yesterday about fringe loonies and extremists ruining political parties.

"it is, in a nutshell, why conservatives don't win elections anymore."

To be fair, this is a bit flimsy of a claim. They've won less than 50% of the elections in the past two years on the national level (and some of those were lost by quite slim margins). That's hardly a streak. If the conservatives have a problem with looking for truth, the liberals need to watch out for groupthink.