Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Sunday, March 6, 2011

Will - O - Wisp

Commentary By Ron Beasley�


Poor George Will - not entirely clueless but not quite comprehending the current state of the Republican party.  He recognizes there are snake salesman like Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich who are influential in the Republican party and that they could have a negative impact.



Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon - Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.


So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons.



I'm not sure why he left Sarah Palin out of his discussion - has he forgotten Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle?  I'm not really sure that Will's "plausible candidates" are all that plausible - Haley Barbour, the redneck lobbyist is plausible?  I suspect that George Will is smart enough to realize that the lunatic fringe that shows up for the primaries is quite capable of nominating a Huckabee or a Palin and that's what he is really worried about.  Yes George, the GOP has been taken over by the snake oil salesmen that appeal to the lunatic fringe that the Republican party has been courting since lee Attwater's "southern strategy"  and now the chickens are coming home to roost.



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2 comments:

  1. WmDoorMarch 7, 2011 at 1:59 AM

    He's saying "plausible" when he means "acceptable to the Washington establishment media as a 'moderate' president".

    ReplyDelete
  2. HyperIonMarch 7, 2011 at 6:32 AM

    I think "southern strategy" is a term more-closely associated with Kevin Phillips.
    I associate Lee Attwater with proving that "karma is a bitch".

    ReplyDelete

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