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Beck is making far too much money to want to take the kind of pay cut that political office would require. The only high-income people entering the political arena are those with mostly passive incomes or those who can't get a CEO job anymore (see Fiorina & Whitman in California). The only media animal of any ideology to seriously and successfully run for office in the last few years was Al Franken and that was because Air America totally screwed up his talk radio career while screwing up their network (in a way, I'm thankful to them for that). And now that the Paris Hilton of politics has gotten onto the media gravy train, I don't think she will either (unless her income severely drops in the next 6-9 months); she'll act like she does, but that's just further playing her 'followers' for fools. And the need to continue to play the underdog for their non-thinking audience means the right-wing talking heads won't know what to do with a Republican congress and might just engage in some serious sabotage, because deep down, it's not about the politics, it's about how much money you can make.
Interesting note: Mike Huckabee, one of the few potential Republican candidates I respect (and fear), is going to be doing a 6-week 'trial run' of a daily talk show for Fox ... NOT on Fox News, but on the Fox-owned broadcast stations for future syndication. I suspect that even he may be more tempted to replace Oprah than Obama.
Not fun. Too likely to succeed. I mean, you do realize that she was almost VP, right?
Living in a state that's poised to send tea-baggers to both the senate and the governor's office, I'm not really finding this stuff funny lately. Toomey makes Rick Santorum look like a centrist and Corbet thinks that the unemployed are just lazy and we should cut off their benefits to force them back to work. And both of them are killing in the polls. Makes me want to scream.
I've been half wanting to post this widely-circulated article, with a "Surely, THIS..." tagline, but have resisted because even though a lot of the reporting is groundbreaking, the basic concepts are familiar to the MetaVerse already, and the resulting thread is pretty predictable. But I found it fascinating to truly realize that things would be in a very different place without twenty=plus years of abundant funding twisting the ideas of the public to this ill-thought-out Tea Party BS.
Not fun. Too likely to succeed. I mean, you do realize that she was almost VP, right?
That was because she was on the Republican ticket, where she got both the crazy fundie vote and votes from the die-hards who would vote Republican no matter who or what was on the ticket.
If she runs in 2012, it'll be a different matter. She'll have to run as an independent. And yes, she might still get the crazy fundie vote, but the die-hard Republicans will still vote Republican. I'm actually all for it because a) it'll be incredibly entertaining and b) it'll siphon votes from the Republican, ensuring a win for Obama.
The Republican Party probably is just smart enough not to nominate her again, though it's hard to believe. She thoroughly alienated a big chunk of the base, especially the ones with money.
That Fresh Air story was INCREDIBLY eye-opening. I had no idea these assholes had bought Georgia Pacific. (Which wasn't a hugely ethical company to begin with, but now... ugh. You have to worry that buying a roll of paper towels is funding this kind of anti-government bullshit.)
Wait, why would she have to run as an independent?
The Republican party isn't going to put her on their ticket again. They were pretty quick to distance themselves from her and discredit her once the '08 election was over.
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