Conan O'Brien Quotes
I can't wait for the Republican debates to start and there's literally 65 guys on one stage.
O'Brien, Conan. Conan. TBS, 2015.
In 2012, the Republican party had shifted to the right and was split between two factions. None of the 4 leading candidates had the support of a majority of the activist Republicans who vote in Primary elections. The then started to vie with each other for the most conservative elements of the party and did so by attacking the other candidates, making moral pronouncements and attacking President Obama. None of them offered any positive programs or solutions to the problems they claimed existed, and the attacks on the others were always that they were “really not conservative” and “could not get elected.” The result was that all the candidates negatives rose.
The Republican candidates were campaigning for the Primary election in Illinois. Lincoln was the first and the greatest of the Republican Presidents and a great liberal. The Republicans used to be the more liberal of the two American major parties and even referred to themselves as “radicals.” However the political parties flip flopped over time and in the 2012 primary campaign the Republican candidates were outdoing each other to show who was the most conservative and could trash liberals the most. Pointing out this contradiction between the politics of the first and most popular Republican President and the then current crop of contenders was a little embarrassing to some Republicans and a powerful anti-current Republican message to independents and Democrats.
In 2011 and 2012, there were several candidates vying for the Republican Nomination for the Presidency. The contest was close, and the candidates unleashed on each other the negative advertising and outrageously false accusations which they had previously only reserved to attack Democrats. They were so good at it, that they all drove up each others’ negatives—so much so that the potential Republican Candidate would be permanently scarred in the minds of the public. More mature and senior Republicans like McCain urged an end to the face to face confrontations of debates.
Electioneering had reached the point that there was almost no rationality left in the major elections in America. Appeals to emotions and hatreds, attacks on personality, scare tactics, lies, and false promises where characteristic of almost all candidates’ campaigns.
Conan Christopher O'Brien is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He is best known for hosting several late-night talk shows; since 2010, he has hosted Conan on the cable channel TBS. O'Brien was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and was raised in an Irish Catholic family. He served as president of The Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, and was a writer for the sketch comedy series Not Necessarily the News.
