Why Do Young People Have Such Contempt For The Republican Party? That's Easy

Last month Paul Ryan's corporately funded, sleazy SuperPAC ran thousands of dollars of really nasty radio ads beating up on progressive Democrat Kara Eastman for having been in a punk band, Pieces of Fuck, when she was in college. Ryan's PAC is desperate to save the Omaha congressional seat-- which is quickly slipping from their grasp-- for failed Trump rubber-step Don Bacon. That's why they've dug up something inocuous from when Kara was in school. What clowns they are-- and they pulled they same sort of silliness on Beto O'Rourke yesterday, in both cases to get voters' minds off the issues that contrast Kara with Bacon and Beto with Cruz.



Today, Philip Trapp, at Alternative Press, wrote about the GOP's rock'n'roll problem. The Texas Republican Party must have thought they were helping their pathetic U.S. Senate candidate-- and former mime-- Ted Cruz, by "tweeting photos of O’Rourke skating, rocking and just generally appearing relatable (as opposed to being a two-faced morality robot) in what seems a misguided effort to discredit the congressman and save Cruz’s [rapidly shrinking] lead."

Failed mime failed U.S. senator, Ted Cruz

Conservatives from both parties have always feared young people and feared and hated everything to do with young people. I remember spending too much time fighting with right-wing asshole Joe Lieberman when he started attacking one of the artists on my label, Ice-T. But it's usually Republicans who are the culprits. Now, they seem to believe that Beto can't be a senator from Texas because he was in a popular El Paso emo band, Foss, that started when he was in high school. One of his bandmates, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, became famous as the lead single for Mars Volta and At The Drive-In. Beto will be even more famous when Texans send him to the U.S. Senate. Here he is, more recently, playing with Texas music icon, Willy Nelson. Anything you want to say about that, Ted Cruz?

And it's not like Beto is the first politician-- or even first member of Congress-- to have been in a band. Probably the only nice thing that anyone can say about Dana Rohrabacher (R-Moscow) is that he was too. And when I asked someone in Palm Springs, some years ago, why they elected a goof ball like Republican Sonny Bono to the House, he said it was because everyone hoped Cher would show up in town sometimes. She didn't.



A few years ago, Blue America backed John Hall for Congress in upstate New York-- and he won. The fact that he had been a member of the band Orleans didn't play much of a part in the race but, if anything, it helped him with name recognition running against an entrenched Republican incumbent. People still love his song, "Still the One," which music-hating conservative Joe Lieberman tried appropriating as a campaign song, forcing Hall to serve him with a cease and desist order. It's still being payed on the radio today-- over 4 decades later. It had a positive impact on people's lives, more than you can say for most politicians.



I'm pretty sure Orrin Hatch was in a band too. He's definitely a serious songwriter. Here he was (below) at a recording session for one of his hit songs, "Eight Days of Hanukkah." It looks like he's trying to be the producer. Maybe he was. He definitely was eager to show everyone he was wearing a mezuzah, at least for the session.



Not my cup of tea but I'll give equal time to another well-known senator who served with Hatch, John Kerry whose 1960 high school band, The Electras has songs all over YouTube. Kerry was the bass player. Give it up or "Guitar Boogie Shuffle":



Back to Utah for a minute-- former governor (and serial presidential hopeful) Jon Huntsman dropped out of high school in the 1970s to join a Salt Lake City band called Wizard. He sported a mullet and played keyboards while they did covers of REO Speedwagon and Led Zeppelin.

In 1978, Senate majority whip Robert Byrd released an album called Mountain Fiddler with covers of folksy West Virginia standards like "Rye Whiskey" and "Cripple Creek." Like Beto and Kara, he was proud of his musical roots regardless of what assholes like Ted Cruz have to say. Here he was on TV-- fiddlin' and singing while he was already Senate Majority Whip. Audience loved it too!



Republican senators Connie Mack (FL), Larry Craig (ID, later caught trying to blow an undercover policeman in a public toilet), John Ashcroft (MO), Jim Jeffords (VT) and Trent Lott (MS) were in a barber-shop quartet, more of a Republican thing than a rock band. They released an album, Let Freedom Sing in 1998. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) is always trying to jam with anyone and he was in a band called Capitol Offense, a band that mostly covered Boston songs, until Tom Scholz had him served with a cease and desist order for fucking up "More Than a Feeling" so badly. A video of them playing "Mustang Sally" can still be found on YouTube. Unfortunately, neither Mack Rice nor Wilson Pickett ever made them stop performing it.



Florida congressman-- now MSNBC host-- Joe Scarborough fronts-- to this day-- an eponymous nine-piece band, Scarborough, mostly performing covers of Prince and Eagles tunes.

I can't remember, but did the Texas GOP complain when Kinky Friedman ran for governor of their state? He sucked up 13% of the vote too. Others elected to office include Jon Fishman (Phish) who was elected a selectman (like city council member) in Lincolnville, Maine; Martha Reeves-- from Martha and the Vandellas-- who was elected to serve a term on the Detroit City Council; and Jerry Butler, the longest-serving Board Commissioner for Cook County, Illinois.




And still threatening to run for something or other every now and then are three somewhat crazy Republican crackpots, Ted Nugent, Kanye West and Kid Rock. Look, in the course of writing this, I was listening to a lot of songs and when I heard this song just below I literally could.not.keep.myself. from jumping up and dancing my ass off as if I was back at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater waiting to give Maxine Brown a kiss backstage.



One last thing-- this tweet by Dayna Steele, east Texas congressional candidate, absolutely owning the Republican Party of Texas:

UPDATE: Kara

Kara Eastman's Communications Director got me this statement, which is worth reading: "The Congressional Leadership Fund was quick to villanize Kara's membership in her college's performance art band, Pieces of Fuck. In high school, she was in a singing group called the All Americans (but you don't see the CLF talking about that band name). We find it ironic that the opposition would want to attack Kara, and Beto, for doing something many American teens do - join a band, sing songs about issues that matter to them, and express themselves through music. Congress would be a better place with more musicians, and while we were joking about a College Band Congressional Caucus, Kara is looking forward to working with politicians like Beto who lead with heart-- and music."

If you like music and free expression, you can contribute to Kara's campaign here.

Does Rush Limbaugh Still Run The Republican Party?

Penny Nance is an unhinged fanatic from the dark fringes of the American Taliban. She heads the hate group Concerned Women for America, which is only concerned with a kind of cultish extremism that has no place in America. She would however have felt right at home as a leader of the Bund Deutscher Mädel (the League of German Maidens), the Werk Glaube und Schönheit (the Belief and Beauty Society), the Frauenwerk or any of the organizations that made up the Nazi Women's League headed by the Penny Nance of her day, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink. When Hitler insisted that for the German woman her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home" he was perfectly in tune with the Taliban-- the one in Afghanistan, the one in Saudi Arabia and, of course, the one right here in America.

Wednesday Nance was savaging Michael Steele and demanding he resign as head of the RNC. She argues that "The new RNC chairman needs to be both a fiscal and social conservative, and must represent the party in a professional and engaging way... There is simply too much at stake for the Republicans to keep Michael Steele as the RNC chairman. If the party wants to maintain its gains among conservatives and independents, the GOP needs to start gearing for the 2012 election now. There is no time to waste on party politics and the crisis communications that have been commonplace at the RNC since Steele took over."

While the GOP picked up historic numbers of seats in this past election, it was in spite of, not because of, Michael Steele. In an unbelievable, and oftentimes comical, reign of just two years as RNC chairman, Steele managed to embarrass his party through his gaffe-prone media appearances.  He was specifically tasked with helping to bring African-Americans into the party, but when asked if there were any good reasons why they should vote Republican, Steele said they don’t really have a good reason. He also flip-flopped on his opposition to abortion during an interview with GQ Magazine and slammed conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, resulting in an embarrassing showdown (which Steele lost).

It wasn't as stinging towards Steele as the resignation letter from his own former political director, Gentry Collins (real name) but then again, Nance isn't running for RNC head the way Collins is (not to mention ex-Michigan GOP leader Saul Anuzis, Maria Cino (one of Boehner's favorite lobbyists), Ann Wagner, Norm Coleman, Wisconsin GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, former RNC Chair Mike Duncan, Connecticut GOP Chairman Chris Healy, California GOP Chairman Ron Nehring, some KKK leader from South Carolina and half a dozen other kooks and nuts).

But it's funny that Nance brought up the Rush Limbaugh incident. Remember how the feisty Steel reacted when someone pointed out on CNN that Rush Limbaugh is the de facto head of the Republican Party? Steele went nuts, insisting: “I’m the de facto leader of the Republican Party... Let’s put it into context here. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it’s incendiary. Yes, it’s ugly.” You probably remember what happened next, since it has been repeated ad infinitum by Republican toadies who forgot someone might be listening. Dave Neiwert and John Amato captured it in their most recent book, Over The Cliff:

The next day, Limbaugh launched a brutal verbal assault on
Michael Steele:

"I’m not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don’t want to be. I would be embarrassed to say that I’m in charge of the Republican Party in a sad-sack state that it’s in. If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it’s in, I would quit... Republicans and conservatives are sick and tired of being talked down to, they’re sick and tired of being lectured to. And until you show some understanding and respect for who they are, you’re gonna have a tough time rebuilding your party."

Steele, too, abjectly apologized, telling Politico in a telephone interview: “My intent was not to go after Rush-- I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh... I was maybe a little bit inarticulate...There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.” Meanwhile, there were whispers from anonymous “Republican advisers to Congress” that unless Steele shut his trap, there would be a special session of the RNC to remove him. Steele said no more about Limbaugh, other than to praise him.

And as Amato and Neiwert pointed out, Steele is far from the only Republican politician who grovels in front of Limbaugh. There was a really funny dust-up between Limbaugh, Boehner and one of Boehner's lackeys:

Representative John Boehner of Ohio, in an interview with right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt, denied that his ideas came from Limbaugh: “I like Rush, but, he’s a talk show host, and I’m in the policy-making business.”

Limbaugh responded by blasting him as weak: “He’s [Obama is] obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell.

He is more frightened of me than he is of, say, John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.”

Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia came to Boehner’s defense in these remarks to Politico:

I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of thing.

The next morning, Gingrey issued a retraction, declaring that he saw “eye to eye with Rush,” and that afternoon was on Limbaugh’s show, abjectly apologizing:

"Rush, thank you so much. I thank you for the opportunity, of course this is not exactly the way I wanted to come on... Mainly, I want to express to you and all your listeners my very sincere regret for those comments I made yesterday to Politico... I clearly ended up putting my foot in my mouth on some of those comments... I regret those stupid comments."

I wonder if they'll run all the bills they try to pass by Limbaugh before they introduce them. I just ran across this wonderful old video from a couple years ago that seems to be as relevant as anything right now, especially on a nice quiet Black Friday like today: