Comedians, artists and certainly political cartoonists tend to possess an anti-authoritarian, skeptical, irreverent streak. This makes the staunchly conservative cartoonist an especially odd bird. Flipping the traditional journalist ethos of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, rightwing cartoonists tend to ridicule the disenfranchised and excuse the abuses inflicted by the powerful. In some cases, their pieces literally spout the latest GOP talking points, revealing the cartoonists to be not independent voices, but merely members of the vast GOP echo chamber - not wits or critics as much they are hacks and shills.

Last week’s installment focused on the midterm elections. For this week’s installment (covering cartoons from 11-12-06 to 11-18-06), rightwing cartoonists had to search a little harder for their subjects - and largely settled on habitual bugbears.

Spinning the Republican Loss

Henry Payne’s cartoon is fairly funny and straight-forward.

While Chuck Asay - oh my - actually - sorta - criticizes the GOP! Although you’ll notice the elephants all seem surprised and bewildered by all this corruption, when in fact they’ve instigated it.

Glenn McCoy takes a similar tact. However, the GOP has not really been a party of fiscal responsibility for about 30 years now. It was Clinton and the Democrats who balanced the budget and created a surplus.

Nowak also goes with the pork angle. Of course, pork is only one aspect of larger, much more insiduous corruption. Iraq and corruption were the chief causes cited by voters in rejecting the GOP, despite the GOP memes. Not surprisingly, Paul Nowak only condemns GOP pork now, when he’s trying to spin the GOP loss. He certainly hasn’t targeted it in the past two months (and I don’t think he’s ever acknowledged problems in Iraq).

Michael Ramirez seems to suggest that the GOP has strayed from its saint. Maybe. It’s certainly strayed from Barry Goldwater, who without changing at all now would be a conservative Democrat! But let all the false excuses keep coming. It’ll make things all the easier for the Democrats in 2008.

Meanwhile, why put unfamiliar effort into self-reflection, when really, conservatives should be…

Attacking the Democrats

Remember that spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation Bush and his aides have been talking about? Surely rightwing cartoonists will offer an olive branch or two!

The majority of Americans are very happy Congress will not be following Bush’s lead.

As for cooperation, why has Bush pushed again for Bolton, and re-nominated already rejected, far-right judicial candidates? Why has Cheney promised this will continue? Why have they picked a man to oversee population issues whose ideas on sex are conjured out his own fantasies and desire for social control?

This Henry Payne cartoon is one of my contenders for most offensive of the week. The voters rejected the Republicans, while the Democrats have for some time been the party of fiscal responsibility. Nice try.

Sure, the Republicans are bad, but what about that Carl Levin? He’s really bad! So bad that the majority of Americans agree with him!

Sure, those Republicans are corrupt, but you know who’s really corrupt? John Murtha! (Murtha has nothing to proud of regarding Abscam, but it’s funny how conservatives keep on bringing up Democratic scandals from over 20 years ago, be it Murtha, Studds, or Ted Kennedy.)

Murtha and Pelosi - I’m telling ya, they’re worse than the combined corruption of Delay, Frist, Hastert, Ney, Cunningham, Lewis, Foley, Abramoff, Gingrich - man. Do I really need to go on?

You know when pork is really bad? When Democrats spread it! (I have no problem with anyone criticizing Byrd on this count, but Allie never leveled this charge against Republicans. Even here, he’s criticizing Byrd, not Stevens.)

And gosh, does a Democratic Congress mean we’ll have to listen to California liberals and their alarmist rhetoric about global warming again? We all know it’s a myth! John Stossel told me I didn’t need to watch that Al Gore movie!

Eric Allie thinks it’s a horrible thing the Dems will be in power, since in his opinion Bush and the Republicans have done such a bang-up job.

Bob Gorrell goes with a similar theme.

(The Republican version involves forcing an innocent detainee’s hand into the socket.)

The Democrats have always been, and still are, the big tent party. Meanwhile, the GOP wants African-American and Latino votes, they just don’t want to do anything for them as constituents.

(The central shell game of the Republicans for the past 30’some years has been to convince average citizens to vote against their economic self-interest (among other things!) because of social issues the GOP typically doesn’t deliver on either.)

Asay is a scared man. But he also thinks the war in Iraq is the same as the “Global War on Terrorists.” Perhaps his thoughts have wrinkled from keeping his head under the water in that jihadist bathtub too long.

This cartoon is just disturbing. Doesn’t it seem as if those donkey kids are scared Daddy Hoyer will get drunk and lay into them with the belt again?

Bush and Pelosi

Chip Bok delivers a fairly funny cartoon, critical of Bush.

…As does Jerry Holbert.

But hack Paul Nowak blames Nancy Pelosi for a lack of bipartisanship? Never mind the unprecedented division that Bush, Rove, Delay and the GOP have sown for the past six years. Never mind Bush’s far-right nominations. Never mind that Pelosi isn’t in power and hasn’t done anything yet! Just blame the Democrats.

Henry Payne offers a pretty standard holiday cartoon.

But Mike Shelton dives into the gutter here! That ugly ghoul Nancy Pelosi - looking much like Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera - is into S&M! That’s them thar San Francisco values the Republicans warned us about!

Iraq

Is Lisa Benson advocating an abstinence-only approach to taking Bush’s advice?

In all seriousness, Iraq remains a real dilemma. Of course, how Bush got an aircraft carrier stuck in the desert is a good question - and a splendid metaphor.

Hey, Paul Nowak, the reason we invaded Iraq was to find WMD, remember? (As James Fallows observed, 18 of the 19 paragraphs in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech were about WMD and Iraq as a threat, not about freedom and democracy.) Bush has had over three years doing things his way.

Bob Gorrell goes with a similar concept. Again, Bush has had over three years, and the majority of Iraqis both want us out and have no problem with insurgents killing Americans.

Gary Varvel raises a real concern. But the choices in Iraq now run from bad to worse, and even one of the White House’s favorite hawks, Kissinger, who previously said “the only exit strategy is victory,” is now saying the war is unwinnable.

If only, Chip Bok.

I don’t mind this cartoon that much, because even though Asay is wrong as usual, he is trying to articulate a difference of opinion. However, also as usual, his metaphor is off. It should depict Bush holding Uncle Sam’s hand over an open flame, with a finger or two already scorched or missing, with Bush deaf to Uncle Sam’s cries, in the cross of Stanley Milgram’s experiments on authority and G. Gordon Liddy that sum up the Bush administration.

Wayne Stayskal uses a BS attack that the Democrats have no plan for Iraq…

…While Mike Shelton blames the Democrats for having too many.

Michael Ramirez typically delivers at least one really bizarre metaphor per week. Here, he compares Republicans leaving the Congress to the Americans leaving Saigon near the end of the Vietnam War. Umm, Mike, you are aware they were voted out, right? Perhaps he’s trying to say that Republicans shouldn’t lose their sense of fight, but I hope he’s not suggesting the Republicans shouldn’t leave as the law demands. This is an odd cartoon.

Meanwhile, Ramirez offers his same old tired attack on the Democrats. Anyone who doesn’t back the most extreme, violent approach is a coward!

And Gary Varvel goes with the same BS. Sigh. Well, as long as we’re waving the flag, never forget, Gary, the men who have fought and died for your right to draw this sort of crap that insists that more men and women should die needlessly. After all, pride and ego are more important than human life.

Iran

Well, honestly, Chuck, I’m most concerned about warrantless eavesdropping, especially if that eavesdropping is based on hearsay evidence obtained through torture. But the experts all agree that Iran is roughly ten years away from a nuclear bomb. Seymour Hersh and the CIA know it too, as noted by Questiongirl and Crooks and Liars. But sure, let’s see the Bush administration stovepipe and manufacture intel again. And let’s hear yet another chickenhawk neocon imbecile experience le petit mort as he calls for greater death in another unnecessary war: “We MUST bomb Iran.”

(”Think tank” is such a misnomer for both words - these bloodthirsty fools do not think, never learn, and have never seen military service, nor apparently have they even studied military history or firsthand accounts of war. “Drunk and delusional tank” is more accurate.)

Michael Ramirez at least doesn’t depict the nuclear threat as imminent. However, with his embarrassingly premature eruptions, he’s forgetting that there’s prophylactics called diplomacy and United Nations weapons inspectors.

Lisa Benson has a strong visual concept here, but the anxiety is unfounded. To hell with Iraq! On to war with Iran!

It’s never long before conservative chickenhawk hysterics have found themselves another Hitler. But how does the latest candidate rank on The Absolute Scale of Hiterosity?

Meanwhile, Paul Nowak urges us to BOMB IRAN! BOMB IRAN!

O.J. Simpson

Yes, some conservatives do have a sense of human decency.

Other

Boy, Chuck Asay just gets his storylines straight from the GOP talking points network. How about a minimum wage that, for a full-time worker, would not leave them several thousand dollars below the poverty line? How about real evidence versus the usual GOP fiction that raising the minimum wage hurts small business owners? Rather than your specious, BS $20 figure, why don’t we go the other way, Chuck, and eliminate wages altogether and re-institute slavery?

Mike Lester apparently has some anger issues.

One shudders to think what the Lester approach would yield on a tightass like Bolton.

Can anyone tell who Nowak is targeting here? It seems he’s criticizing the folks suing Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen), but it’s a bit unclear.

I have no problem with someone memorializing Friedman, but championing the callousness of laissez-faire economics is not exactly “free at last!”

Local

Chip Bok earns points for targeting a local Republican scoundrel.

As usual, feel free to vote on the most offensive cartoon of the week in the comments, and here’s your palate cleanser of cartoons from Bob Geiger’s weekly round-up.