Big tent party reduces size of tent

[james_davis_nicoll]

Suspiciously youthful McCain supporters forced to leave campaign event.

Nicked from theweaselking

Comments

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

woodardp keeps telling me he sincerely hopes after McCain/Palin crashes and burns as badly as it is going to be that the fiscal conservatives get a chance to take back the party from the hands of the neo-cons & the radical Christians and gets "the Republican party of my youth" back.

I continue to be quietly amazed how badly the GOP is handling this entire race, post DNC convention.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

the fiscal conservatives get a chance to take back the party from the hands of the neo-cons & the radical Christians and gets "the Republican party of my youth" back.

[Thinks about people's ages]

What, the party of Richard M. Nixon? Because I am pretty sure he wouldn't remember Eisenhower or Goldwater....

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

I think he's speaking 'Murkin, so the "republican party of his youth" was in fact a mythical version of the republican party who had all the same policies as JFK's democratic party, and this republican version of JFK invaded even more communist countries for no real reason and totally would have sent people to mars, on a rocket powered by laissez faire economics, if Jimmy Carter hadn't shot him.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

He could mean a state Republican party. There's 50 of those, lots of room for variation.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Not the California Republican party. The CA Republican party is the equivalent of that particular aunt you NEVER ask to speak at weddings.

[avram]

He could be thinking of the Rockefeller Republicans, who were basically the Clinton Democrats of the 1960s and early '70s.

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

Darlin', you're going to have to discuss it with him, as I sure as hell don't remember much of the 1960-70's US politics.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I will never forgive Nixon for pre-empting TV shows in the early 1970s.

[cantkeepsilent.livejournal.com]

I'm not particularly surprised. Dole/Kemp was just about this inept, and Ford/Dole wasn't much better. The Republicans have plan that can win for them, but it only seems to work if there is a George Bush to deliver it.

Hard to say what happens next for the GOP. If the circular firing squad winds up embracing Sarah Palin, I wouldn't be filled with surprise if the "elite" conservative wing took off and formed their own party. They wouldn't have the churches locked up, but I bet they'd be taking a lot of old money with them, and they could wind up being important for a coalition Senate majority through thick and thin.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess that's another batch of voters that just swung to Obama. Nice work, guys.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Some of them had already voted for McCain.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Well, one of the people who were tossed out (who said she hadn't started protesting at that time) said there was a crying Republican. I'll believe it when that girl steps forward for an interview.

This isn't as bad as four years ago, when Bush campaign staffers were telling potential campaign protestors that they had snipers nearby if they tried anything.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, the campaign didn't really have any choice. It looked like those kids were on McCain's lawn.

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

McCain is being Presidential. Echoes of 2005:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,153720,00.html

Even without a guaranteed audience of backers, the administration does have the right to try and prevent threats and disruptions from protesters, which is why people are often barred from Bush events, according to White House officials. The removal of individuals can occur before and after a disruption.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

I have zero sympathy for at least the person who's telling this story. She never denies that she was going to disrupt the thing (saying that there was nothing planned amongst the various people who were there who also got thrown out) and that she wasn't doing anything disruptive "at the time I was asked to leave."

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

In other words you have zero evidence that she was planning disruption, and you are basing your opinion on your prejudices.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

When people are accused of planning something and they don't deny it, they were planning it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Says the secret police.

[wdstarr.livejournal.com]

Can you point at an accusation anywhere in that news story?

[montoya.livejournal.com]

"it kind of became clear that they were kind of just telling people to leave that they thought maybe would be disruptive"

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

Paranoia can feed a self-fulfilling prophecy. Preemptively ejecting non-disruptive people in a manner upsetting to them, regardless of innocence or guilt, can result in the very type of disruption and negative media coverage they're seeking to avoid.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

People with hair that's too long, people of the wrong color, women wearing blue jeans...you know, people like that.

[wdstarr.livejournal.com]

If you want to hold that failure to make an explicit denial of the substance of somebody else's paranoia == "When people are accused of planning something and they don't deny it, they were planning it," go right ahead. I won't think well of you for it though.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I thought in this country, we were supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

Where have you been for the past eight years?

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

That was rather the point I was trying to make...

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

Bull. That's right up there with, "Nobody would object to surveillance unless they had something to hide."

[montoya.livejournal.com]

No. It's up there with someone from the FBI saying "We had no plans to coordinate with the CIA to put surveillance on you, and there was no surveillance on you at that particular time," and expecting you to believe that you're not being surveilled.

When someone very specifically and carefully fails to deny doing something, while at the same time denying something closely related, that's because they've done the thing they won't deny.

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

Isn't it also disruptive to cry after being ejected?

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Of course there's no such thing as young Republicans, so target aquisition for antiprotester sweeps is pretty simple. [/sardonicism]

No, I think the burden of proof is upon those who called for these people to be ejected. If they had specific grounds for suspicion, they'd be well-advised to disclose them fast or this'll be yet another toe shot off the elephant's foot.

-- Steve'd desperately trying to quash a "premature ejection" pun, but as you can see he's failed. Still, the goon squad would have had better grounds if the ejected folks been, say, carrying banners or placards or something.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how they targeted the people to eject, and they certainly could have gotten it badly wrong, but it sounds like they got at least one person correct.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

She never denies that she was going to disrupt the thing

Elborno said while she has protested at events before, no plans were discussed beforehand for a protest and she shouldn’t have been taken out because she was not causing a disturbance.

It's not 100% cast-iron, but close. The only other option is that she was going to disrupt it solo (which is why 20 people were thrown out...)

[montoya.livejournal.com]

That's precisely the quote I meant. She's claiming that a) there was no broadly orchestrated plan to protest, and b) she wasn't protesting at that point.

Nobody phrases things that carefully unless they're speaking around something.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

And well, if she wasn't guilty of this, she was bound to be guilty of something else! "Orf wiff er ead!"

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

To quote a friend, "These aren't the crazy years, these are the utterly barking insane years."

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

This.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not like the McCain campaign is running seriously behind in the polls, and couldn't afford any more bad publicity. I mean, they can afford to have a bit of publicity showing them as not quite having it all together, right? Right?