Happy HUMP day, Everyone. It’s time to “CHILL OUT.”
-
-
Black Girls Rock!
Flickr Photos
-
Potus Takes Oath of Office
Flotus & Daughters at Great Wall of China
My Brothers Keeper
-
-
-
-
-
AFRO PUFFS
Most Adorable Shoe Stealer
Six Little Babies
Fatherhood
-
-
Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
-
3Chics Action Alert
Lets Make It Happen
3 Chics Trio
-
REALITY Blog Award
Recent Comments
Top Posts
Guard The Change
Vote 4 Democrats
-
-
-
Go to the polls
President Barack Obama
First Lady Michelle Obama
Obama Love
Your Vote Matters
President Obama & Bo
The Obama Family
-
-
-
-
Presidential hug
-
January 11, 2012
The GOP’s coming apocalypse
Only because I couldn’t haul my flu-riddled body out of bed this morning did I reach for the ease of the remote instead of slogging on foot to the papers, whereupon my further misfortune was twofold: Within just a few, sadistic minutes, on ‘Morning Joe,’ Chris Matthews droned on in a kind of diseased enchantment about the Mormon worldview and conservative nostalgia; then former governor and current Romney mouthpiece John Sununu — perhaps the wickedest, most devious political hatchet man ever — appeared on the show to straighten everyone out, about everything.
That’s not to suggest in a sarcastic way that Sununu is always brutally wrong. Indeed, this morning he was partially right: In New Hampshire, the media “missed the story,” hellbent as they were to make this second contest a horserace.
I’ll grant you some suspense in Iowa — first time out and all that; roaming packs of evangelicals; Romney’s amber waves of corn; Gingrich’s bombardment; Santorum’s serendipitous debut … and whatnot — Iowa, always a good circus. But it, too, wasn’t really one leg of a horserace, since pretty much everyone knew then, just as they know now, how the race will end.
The real — and, I should think, far more fascinating — story is, rather, at what precise velocity and electrifying moment the Republican Party will collapse, with Mitt Romney at the helm. “A near-panic has taken hold among some core conservative activists,” reports the Post’s Peter Wallsten and Karen Tumulty, because, in a word, they detest their party’s fated nominee.
It’s been nearly a half-century since we’ve seen anything like this in GOP politics; then, the radicals, alienating the moderates, embraced the nominee — and because of this, their electoral doom was ensured; today the moderates, alienating the radicals (those “two key GOP wings: tea party groups yearning for a pure small-government conservative, and evangelical Christians who want a loyal social conservative”), are embracing the nominee — and because of this, their electoral doom would seem to be ensured … especially since in attempting to shore up his exceptionally shaky base, Romney will alienate vast swaths of reasonable independents.
That’s the story, Mr. Sununu: your party’s coming apocalypse.
And with that, I’m taking my flu-riddled body back to bed.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/01/the-gops-coming-apocalypse.html
Tell the TRUTH, PM. I heard that fat fuck this morning on Moaning Joke, and Tweety spittle Matthews, having an orgasm over Romney’s Mormonism. The media is lapping up Romney; it’s pathetic, because they know there is no one, not even Romney who is as smart, principled, and exudes any form of leadership better than BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA.
http://www.webcasts.com/kingofbain/
WHEN MITT ROMNEY CAME TO TOWN.
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It
Posted at 03:56 PM ET, 01/11/2012
Axelrod: Romney doesn’t get the `central challenge of our time’
By Greg Sargent
Dems are pouncing on Mitt Romney’s appearance on NBC this morning, in which he said that questions about Wall Street excess are driven by “envy,” and suggested that we should only debate inequality in “quiet rooms.”
Obama adviser David Axelrod emails a response that’s short, but interesting in what it portends about the general election:
Not a gaffe. It’s what he believes. Last week he said “productivity equals income.”
But the point is, it hasn’t for the typical American worker over the last three decades, and, particularly, over the last decade.
This is the central challenge of our time, and he doesn’t get it.
If the Obama campaign intends to frame the campaign around the idea that inequality and economic unfairness are the “central challenge of our time,” and to base the case against Romney on what unregulated capitalism has wrought, this could be epic. The battle will be fought largely over two competing visions of capitalism itself, and of government’s proper role in regulating it, at a time when the public has been more focused on issues of inequality and economic injustice than at any time in recent memory.
Relatedly, the pro-Gingrich Super PAC has just released its long documentary about Romney’s Bain years, and it’s very hard hitting stuff. Remarkably, much of the footage in this video — it features Bain layoff victims talking about how devastated their communities were by Romney’s “job creating” investments — would be perfectly at home in Dem attack ads.
As I said yesterday, Romney’s claim that his brand of capitalism represents the American way has now been panned by bipartisan agreement — a very clear sign of which way the winds of populism are blowing in American politics right now. Indeed, even Frank Luntz is advising Republicans to stop defending “capitalism,” and is telling them to defend “economic freedom” instead.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/axelrod-romney-doesnt-get-the-central-challenge-of-our-time/2012/01/11/gIQAVWrWrP_blog.html
Senate Aide: GOP Will Try To Go Around Obama For Keystone Approval
An aide to Sen. Jon Hoeven (R-ND) has told Reuters that Congressional Republicans will attempt to eschew approval from President Barack Obama for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
Cross-border pipelines have historically required presidential approval, but Ryan Bernstein, an energy advisor to Hoeven, says that Republicans will draft a bill to approve the pipeline that invokes Congressional authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/3976
*dead*dead–DEAD*
OMG!
BWA HA HA HA And this was on C-SPAN, SG2. C-SPAN
The look on the guy’s face is priceless! LMBAO
**HOLLERING**
Breaking News: CNN reporting a judge ordered an temporary injunction to keep prisoners Haley Barbour pardoned behind bars.
WTF is wrong with Haley Barbour? I smell fish and it ain’t Friday!
This is damn madness. He pardoned 200 convicted murderers? But black folks sentenced to life in prison for a drug charge? GTFOOH Barbour!
POTUS speaking from Chicago
Live stream
http://www.ustream.tv/cbsnews
US President Barack Obama arrives at Anrews Air Force Base in Maryland on January 11, 2012 to board Air Force One en route to Chicago to attend campaign events. Obama sought to strike an implicit contrast with his most likely general election foe Mitt Romney on Wednesday, imploring big businesses to bring home US jobs outsourced overseas. White House officials insist that Obama has not yet started to focus on his bid for a second term in November, but is instead concentrating every day on his job, which he sees as reviving the economy and cutting unemployment.
Talking Points Memo:
This olympic ski jumper never had to navigate a slope as steep as Rick Perry’s drop in South Carolina: http://tpm.ly/yIFN8f
UPDATED: House Republicans Have Tried To Eliminate Up To 7.4 Million Jobs In 2011
http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/201112200002#.Tw37ExF3a9c.facebook
Despite a promise to focus on job creation after taking the majority in the House of Representatives, Republicans have spent little time on legislation to create jobs or boost the economy. Instead, they’ve focused on bills to curb spending, many of which would eliminate jobs. Earlier this year, Political Correction published a report detailing the total number of jobs House Republicans have tried to eliminate. Since then, the House has passed the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. With that addition, measures passed or introduced by House Republicans would, if signed into law, potentially eliminate up to 7.4 million jobs.
Daily Kos:
Elizabeth Warren kicks Wall Street’s butt, raises $5.7 million http://bit.ly/wLw2Ve
U.S. Government Files Lawsuit Against 17 Banks
http://www.housingpredictor.com/2011/us-government-sues-banks.html
This is why Romney & Co. are spewing the Euro-Socialist, Capitalist-hating POTUS crap about PBO
Defending Romney’s Role At Bain, Ctd
Readers push back against the others:
It’s very nice that Bain produced $2.5 billion in gains for their investors and that the company made great profits and high returns. But that’s not what Romney is running on; he’s declaring, again and again, that he’s an experienced JOB CREATOR, that he knows how to create jobs, and that in his time at Bain he created jobs. If he wants to run on how much money he made for his investors, then I agree that there’s no real reason to attack him for that – he did a hard job very well by that metric. But as long as he insists that he also helped people who were not investors in Bain Capital, and takes credit for creating jobs, it’s perfectly legitimate to look at the job-creation record. Especially since the supporting evidence his campaign provided is so laughable.
Another writes:
I’d like respond to your reader who asked, “Aren’t we mature enough as a country to acknowledge that sometimes companies need to let employees go in order help their bottom line?” We sure are. Everyone knows layoffs, bankruptcies and turnover are part of life. We deal with it on a regular basis. No one begrudges the local businessman who has to let an employee go because of tough times.
The problem with your reader’s point is that there is a difference between accepting that layoffs and firings are a part of life and admiring the people who do the firing, especially when those people don’t even run the businesses.
The reason Romney’s work at Bain is such a liability is that he is the guy who was brought in to do the firing. He didn’t build new businesses, he didn’t create jobs in the way a guy who opens up a local hardware store creates jobs, and he cashed in whether or not the business actually succeeded. Americans believe in fairness. Success is supposed to be earned through hard work and playing by the rules. To those of us who aren’t of the finance world, there’s something inherently unfair about an investor making a massive profit even as the business he invested in fails. It makes us feel like the game is rigged. That’s Romney’s Bain problem.
Another:
I work at a company owned by Bain and not far from another company owned by another private equity firm, so I have experienced and heard about much of what these firms do. Most Americans appreciate a free market system in which those that produce the best goods and services at the best value should be successful and become wealthy. However, when people become fabulously wealthy at the expense of others while producing nothing but investment gain for the investors, I think most Americans take pause. The company down the way is an illuminating example of this flaw in our system that firms like Bain take advantage of.
In 2004 this company was bought by a private equity firm. In order to fund the buyout the PE firm issued bonds. They then used the proceeds to pay themselves back. Essentially they leveraged the target company in order to fund their purchase of the target company. They then got back everything and left the take-over company with a mountain of debt. The interest alone on this debt is more than the company’s operating profits. The PE firm then fired the management, 1/3 of the workers, installed pay freezes and reduced benefits. The new management team that the PE firm installed were paid massive salaries (the new CEO made seven times what the former had). Obviously, the situation could not hold and the company declared bankruptcy. In order to get the bankruptcy approved, the company was forced, at the urging of the PE firm, to jettison its long-time pension plan. Now the company has about half the workforce it once did, lower wages relative to cost of living, worse benefits and no more pensions.
This is just one example, and I don’t know how the Bain takeovers were structured under Romney, but I don’t think calling what they do ‘looting’ is very far off at all. Investors and PE firm management make off like bandits in these cases. When they are taken over and stripped and laden with debt they are much more exposed to economic factors. The companies may survive and may even thrive given a favorable economy, but one hiccup can easily start them down the road to ruin.
Another:
Can we acknowledge that the party that started using this line of attack against Romney was not the Democrats (contra reader #2)? Newt went down this road weeks and weeks ago, trying to tap into his angry party’s populist fervor and reaping a weird bump from it. And most of the liberal commentaries I’ve seen have bent over backwards exploring the nuance of his “I like firing” moment, while still underlining the reasons it might hurt him (not to mention arguing him on the actual merits of the full comment: most of us can’t get rid of our insurance providers).
I guess we’ll have to wait to see the actual lines of attack the Obama campaign settles on, but this isn’t some left-wing anti-business smear happening. The call is coming from inside the house.
One more:
If Romney thinks he has a Bain problem now, just wait until this summer. The most anticipated summer film, and what will likely be the biggest film of the year, is The Dark Knight Rises. And the sociopathic villain is … Bane.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/i_once_caught_a_job_this_big034692.php
Romney Following in McCain’s Footsteps
by BooMan
Wed Jan 11th, 2012 at 12:31:59 PM EST
This is pretty astute.
“I’m thinking of a Republican primary. It starts with a candidate (John McCain/Mitt Romney) who ran once before, came in second place, and won over the party’s elite class without winning over its base. Other candidates, understandably unwilling to accept this, line up: An under-funded social conservative (Mike Huckabee/Rick Santorum), an elder statesman who’s walked to the altar three times (Rudy Giuliani/Newt Gingrich), a libertarian who wants to bring back the gold standard (Ron Paul/Ron Paul). The conservative base is displeased. In the year before the primary, it pines for a perfect candidate. At the end of summer, on (September 5/August 13), it gets him: (Fred Thompson/Rick Perry). The dream candidate immediately rises to the top of national polls, but collapses after lazy, distaff debate performances… The Republican base looks at the wreckage and shudders. It can never allow this to happen ever again.”
The rest of it continues with the same eerie sense of déjà vu. Which means that Mitt Romney will be looking for a running mate that can create the same kind of excitement as Sarah Palin without all the downsides.
He’ll want someone who is adored by the Tea Party but not someone with barely any experience. He’ll want someone charismatic but not with a checkered ethical past. Both of those considerations speak for and against Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
The problem with trying to appeal to the Tea Party is that anyone with much experience is going to have done things the Tea Party hates, like voting for TARP or Medicare Part D.
Another thing to consider is that McCain still lost even if Palin gave him a brief lead in the polls. Romney may feel the same need to shore up his base, but why would he want to repeat a strategy that didn’t work? Also, perhaps his primary weakness isn’t the same as John McCain’s. Perhaps he’s a bit of a lightweight in foreign affairs. He’s not a complete novice like George W. Bush, but he also lacks Bush’s swagger or McCain’s temper. He seems a bit soft, even when he’s talking tough. Maybe Romney’s biggest weakness is that he projects weakness. Should his running mate be a veteran with a rough and gruff exterior? Or would that only serve to highlight Romney’s lack of machismo?
Maybe Romney’s greatest weakness is that he’s the son of a governor who made a fortune as a vulture capitalist. Should he pick someone who can balance that out? Someone with a humble upbringing who succeeded against all the odds. Someone like a Mike Huckabee?
I don’t know how Romney will go, but he can’t do worse than Palin. Can he?
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/1/11/123159/685
GOP Establishment Rushes To Defend Romney’s Vulture Capitalism From Populist Backlash
By Zaid Jilani on Jan 11, 2012 at 10:55 am
In a potentially game-changing shift, Republican presidential candidates, including former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have tapped into the populist anger of the 99 percent, tearing into former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s tenure at the financial firm Bain Capital, which made billions while bankrupting a quarter of the companies it invested in.
Gingrich said Romney’s firm consisted of “rich people figuring out clever, legal ways to loot out a company;” Huntsman claimed Romney liked “firing people;” Perry said that Romney must’ve been worried that he would “run out of pink slips” to give people.
The attempt by these candidates to tap into the sentiments of Americans — many of whom are registered Republicans — who have been ripped off and mistreated by corporate executives like Romney is spawning a backlash from the Republican establishment. A number of prominent right wing individuals and groups rushed to defend Romney’s behavior at Bain Capital, saying that being critical of corporate greed is tantamount to betraying conservative values and being anti-capitalism. Here’s a roundup of just some of this conservative backlash:
– The Club for Growth: The Club for Growth called Gingrich’s critique of Bain “disgusting,” and said that “attacking Governor Romney for participating in free-market capitalism is just beyond the pale for any purported ‘Reagan conservative.’” [1/10]
– Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum: Santorum accused those criticizing Bain of playing by the Democratic Party’s playbook: “[I] just don’t think as a conservative and someone who believes in business that we should be out there playing the games that the Democrats play, saying somehow capitalism is bad.” [1/9]
– The National Review: The National Review’s Avik Roy said the attacks on Bain were indicative of “Romney Derangement Syndrome,” and defended the practices of his company. [1/9]
– The American Spectator: The Spectator took issue with Gingrich examining the effects of Romney’s vulture capitalism: “Gingrich’s words during Saturday morning’s debate that ‘I think it’s a legitimate part of the debate to say OK on balance are people better off by this particular style of investment?’ show less an attack on Romney than attack on capitalism itself, something that should be anathema to a self-described ‘Reagan conservative.’” [1/10]
– New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu: Sununu said the critique of Bain is part of an “attack” on “free-enterprise.” “Those attacks… are on the investment community of this country,” said the New Hampshire governor. [1/10]
– The American Enterprise Institute (AEI): AEI’s James Pethokoukis wrote that firms “like Bain disrupt the status quo for the betterment of most though not all.” [1/10]
– Radio Host Glenn Beck: Beck said that Bain is the “new Halliburton” — the “company that has done nothing wrong yet is completely vilified merely for being a company that attempts to earn a profit.” [1/10]
RedState’s Erick Erickson is one high-profile Republican who is not rushing to attack Bain’s critics — but not because he views them as correct. “The typical voter does not understand private equity, leveraged balance sheets, etc. They see it as some mystical black magic abused by greedy people on Wall Street,” he explains. “There are, frankly, a lot of Republican primary voters who view it that way too.” Erickson conceded that many Republicans are just as distrustful of the financial sector as the rest of America is a powerful concession — it shows that the right-wing blogger and conservative strategist understands that economic populism can appeal even to some of the nation’s most conservative voters.
While appearing on Fox News last night, public relations guru and GOP consultant Frank Luntz said that the antidote to the economic concerns of voters isn’t necessarily to change Republican policy solutions but simply change their political language: “Conservatives should not be defending capitalism. They should be defending economic freedom.”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/11/402271/right-wing-defends-romney-vulture-capitalism/?mobile=nc
Kris Kobach, Author Of Anti-Immigrant State Laws, Backs Mitt Romney In GOP Race
By Amanda Peterson Beadle, Marie Diamond and Ian Millhiser on Jan 11, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Following his win in the New Hampshire presidential primary, Mitt Romney announced today that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) endorsed his campaign. Kobach is the anti-immigrant official who drafted Arizona and Alabama’s harmful immigration laws, and who once wrote a book opposing the anti-Apartheid boycott of South Africa. “With Kris on the team, I look forward to working with him to take forceful steps to curtail illegal immigration and to support states like South Carolina and Arizona that are stepping forward to address this problem,” Romney said in press release.
Earlier in the campaign, Romney had sought the endorsement of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who eventually endorsed Texas Gov. Rick Perry. With Kobach’s support, Romney reinforces his anti-immigrant stances heading into South Carolina, where officials are facing court challenges to the state’s own anti-immigrant law. Kobach praised Romney in a press release:
“We need a president who will finally put a stop to a problem that has plagued our country for a generation: millions of illegal aliens coming into the country and taking jobs from United States citizens and legal aliens, while consuming hundreds of billions of dollars in public benefits at taxpayer expense,” said Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. “Illegal immigration is a nightmare for America’s economy and America’s national security. Mitt Romney is the candidate who will finally secure the borders and put a stop to the magnets, like in-state tuition, that encourage illegal aliens to remain in our country unlawfully.”
Kobach’s statement that Romney would actually “put a stop” to progressive state immigration laws which provide in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants is a great deal more radical than Romney’s previous statements. Romney has left no doubt that he thinks state laws providing this opportunity to the undocumented are wrong, but Kobach now appears to be suggesting that Romney would wield the full power of the federal government’s authority to preempt state laws in order to invalidate existing pro-immigrant laws in the states. This doesn’t just fly in the face of the GOP’s supposed love affair with the Tenth Amendment, it would strip many undocumented residents of states like Texas, who already pay in-state tuition to public universities, of a right they presently enjoy.
Moreover, Kobach’s endorsement marks Romney as well outside the mainstream on immigration policy. When Kansas voters elected Kobach — the chief architect of Arizona’s extreme anti-immigrant law SB 1070 — as secretary of state, state Democrats pushed legislation to stop Kobach from “continuing legal work for city officials and legislators across the country who want to crack down on illegal immigration.” But as secretary of state, Kobach helped with Alabama’s immigration law that was even more harmful that the one Arizona officials approved. And Kobach has promised to push for stricter immigration policies in his own state during the 2012 legislative session, like requiring workers to use the federal E-Verify system to check their workers’ immigration statuses.
Romney, facing criticism for not being conservative enough on several issues, has tried to outflank many of his opponents on the right when it comes to immigration.
Yet surprisingly, Romney’s harsh immigration stance has been largely overlooked in the press. After one GOP debate in November, Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom essentially conceded that his candidate’s position was to make immigrants’ lives unbearable to force them to leave. And last week the Obama campaign dubbed Romney the most extreme GOP candidate on the immigration issue.
Romney recently vowed to veto the DREAM Act if he becomes president, which would deny undocumented students the chance to come out of hiding and get a college education or serve in the military. In response, a group of six DREAM Act students recently confronted Romney at one of his events. He refused to respond to the students as he was rushed of the room by security.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/11/402550/kris-kobach-author-of-anti-immigrant-state-laws-backs-mitt-romney-in-gop-race/
Republican National Committee Files Brief Seeking To Allow Corporate Funding Of Campaigns
By Ian Millhiser on Jan 11, 2012 at 9:58 am
One of the few remaining limits on corporations’ power to buy and sell American elections is that corporations are not allowed to give money directly to federal candidates. Citizens United frees them to spend billions of dollars running ads or otherwise trying to change the result of an election to suit their interests, but corporations cutting checks directly to candidates or to political committees such as the Republican National Committee is one of the few things the Supreme Court’s conservatives have not yet imposed upon the country.
If the RNC gets its way, however, that will soon change. In a brief filed yesterday in the Fourth Circuit, the RNC argues that the federal ban on corporate donations is unconstitutional in large part because it applies across the board to all corporations:
Most corporations are not large entities waiting to flood the political system with contributions to curry influence. Most corporations are small businesses. As the Court noted in Citizens United, “more than 75% of corporations whose income is taxed under federal law have less than $1 million in receipts per year,” while “96% of the 3 million businesses that belong to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have fewer than 100 employees.” While the concept of corporate contributions evokes images of organizations like Exxon or Halliburton, with large numbers of shareholders and large corporate treasuries, the reality is that most corporations in the United States are small businesses more akin to a neighborhood store. Yet § 441b does not distinguish between these different types of entities; under § 441b, a corporation is a corporation. As such, it is over-inclusive.
This attempt to make mom and pop stores — as opposed to Halliburton — the face of the RNC’s argument is clever, but it does not change the implications of their argument. If a court accepted the RNC’s argument, it would have to strike down the entire federal ban on corporate donations — leaving Exxon and Halliburton free to give money to any candidate they’d like. Congress might be able to restore part of this ban by enacting legislation. But, of course, that would require any such bill disadvantaging corporations to survive John Boehner’s House and Mitch McConnell’s filibuster.
Moreover, if the court accepts the RNC’s argument, it will effectively destroy any limits on the amount of money wealthy individuals or corporation can give to candidates. In most states, all that is necessary to form a new corporation is to file the right paperwork in the appropriate government office. Moreover, nothing prevents one corporation from owning another corporation. For this reason, a Wall Street tycoon who wanted to give as much as a billion dollars to fund a campaign could do so simply by creating a series of shell corporations that exist for the sole purpose of evading the ban on massive dollar donations to candidates.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/11/402358/republican-national-committee-files-brief-seeking-to-allow-corporate-funding-of-campaigns/
GOP Strategist Frank Luntz: ‘Conservatives Should Not Be Defending Capitalism’
By Faiz Shakir on Jan 11, 2012 at 10:00 am
Last year, Mitt Romney told a Tea Party gathering, “I believe in free enterprise, I believe in capitalism.” Now, Romney’s practice of “vulture capitalism,” in Rick Perry’s words, is coming under attack. As Rush Limbaugh observed recently, “Here we have capitalism being attacked by Republicans, capitalism under assault by Republicans.” In the face of this assault, one of the GOP’s chief strategists is advising Republicans to stop defending capitalism.
Recall, just over a month ago, GOP pollster Frank Luntz offered strategic advice to Republican governors, in which he expressed concerns about the increasing strength of the 99 Percent movement, the Occupy protests, and the waning support for “capitalism.” Luntz told the group that the public thinks “capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”
Now, as Romney faces heat from within his own party, Luntz is worried about a “nightmare” scenario where conservatives will go “down the tubes” if they are forced to defend “crony capitalism.” Last night on Fox News, Luntz said the solution is not for conservatives to support a fairer tax system or rid corporate loopholes; rather, just change the language they use:
Conservatives should not be defending capitalism. They should be defending economic freedom. And there is a difference. The word capitalism was created by Karl Marx to demonize those people who make a profit. We’ve always talked about the free enterprise system or economic freedom. Suddenly, they’re trying to defend something that has only 18 percent support.
There’s more than a few problems here. Of course, the Republicans have been long-time defenders of the worst elements of unregulated capitalism. Moreover, conservatives have pilloried Obama for his “war on capitalism,” for wanting to put “capitalism on trial,” and for his purported lack of knowledge about capitalism. As Jeb Bush said succinctly, “I think President Obama has used the bully pulpit as a way to attack capitalism.”
Apparently, Luntz wants the public to believe that Republicans are both the defenders and the opponents of “capitalism.”
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/01/11/402342/gop-strategist-frank-luntz-conservatives-should-not-be-defending-capitalism/
January 11, 2012 12:35 PM
Clarence Thomas’ brand of justice
By Steve Benen
In 1995, a group of men burst into a New Orleans in search of money and drugs. They ordered those in the home to lie down and then opened fire, killing five innocent people. One man, Larry Boatner, survived the violence and identified Juan Smith as one of the assailants.
Boatner’s testimony was the only evidence presented at trial, and it proved persuasive enough to convince a jury. Juan Smith was convicted of murder.
There was, however, a problem. The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office decided to hide relevant information from both Smith’s lawyers and the jury: mere hours after the slayings, Boatner told police he could only describe the gunmen as black men, and five days later, Boatner said he never saw the intruders’ faces.
Smith’s conviction was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the conviction yesterday in an 8-1 ruling. The court majority found that the relevant evidence obviously needed to be shared with the defendant’s attorney as part of the discovery process. The question before the court was whether the disclosure of the evidence would have affected the outcome of the trial, and eight of the nine justices endorsed common sense and said it would.
As Adam Liptak reported, Clarence Thomas disagreed.\
Justice Thomas’s dissent, at 19 pages, was almost five times as long as the majority opinion. “The question presented here is not whether a prudent prosecutor should have disclosed the information that Smith identifies,” Justice Thomas wrote.
Rather, he wrote, the question was whether Mr. Smith had not shown a reasonable probability that the jury would have reached a different conclusion had it known of the undisclosed statements. Justice Thomas said a careful review of the balance of the evidence demonstrated that nothing would have changed.
Has Thomas never heard of “reasonable doubt”? Prosecutors had no fingerprints, no weapon, no DNA, and no physical evidence of any kind. They had one witness, who said he never saw the faces of the murderers.
A Supreme Court justice believes a jury wouldn’t have cared about these details at all?
How did this guy end up on the bench?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/clarence_thomas_brand_of_justi034689.php
Romney: Talking About Income Inequality In Public Means You’re Just Envious
57 minutes ago — Kate Conway
After an expected triumph in the New Hampshire primary last night, Mitt Romney used his victory speech to go on the attack, accusing President Obama of “divid[ing] us with the bitter politics of envy.” This morning on the Today show, host Matt Lauer confronted Romney about his language, wondering if Romney acknowledges that there are legitimate questions about “the distribution of wealth and power” — or if he’s content to paint all concerns about rising income inequality and the abusive practices of financial institutions with the broad brush of “jealousy.”
Romney was unequivocal: “I think it’s all about envy.”
LAUER: I’m curious about the word envy. Do you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country is envious? Is it about jealousy or is it about fairness?
ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. I think when you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus 1 percent, and those people who have been most successful will be in the 1 percent, you’ve opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country, which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.
When Lauer pressed Romney on whether there are “no fair questions about the distribution of wealth,” Romney suggested that perhaps there are legitimate concerns — but we’d better not talk about them in public.
ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like, but the president has made this part of his campaign rally. Everywhere we go, or he goes, we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach, and I think it’ll fail.
http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201201110002
Ron Paul Defends Romney’s Bain History
Posted on 01/10/2012 at 5:30 pm by JM Ashby
For some inexplicable reason, Ron Paul is the only candidate in the race who seems to have decided not to be the anti-Romney. Paul has labeled Romney as a “member of the establishment,” but has not mounted a serious effort to assail Romney’s economic or social record, both of which are a train wreck.
Paul could be under the mistaken belief that he may be chosen as a vice presidential candidate, however a statement from Paul today suggests he hasn’t attacked Mitt Romney’s economic record because he doesn’t see anything wrong with it.
Ron Paul has differentiated himself from his Republican rivals again, this time by opting not to join the chorus that is relentlessly attacking Mitt Romney. While Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have been more than eager to assail Romney for his much-publicized “fire people” gaffe and time spent at Bain Capital, Paul has thrown the GOP frontrunner a life raft. According to CNN, Paul decried Romney’s critics for “unfairly attacking” the former Massachusetts governor for remarks that were taken out of context. Paul added that those who are criticizing Romney for his time at the venture capital company “don’t understand” the free market.
We do understand. We understand quite well.
We understand that an unregulated and unchecked “free market” leads to the kind of financial manipulation firms Bain represents. Vulture capitalists who will do anything to make a buck because anything is legal.
We understand that an unregulated and unchecked free market lead to the 2008 financial crisis.
In Ron Paul’s wild west version of free market capitalism, Bain would be the rule, not the exception. And it would be up to you, the individual, to ensure you don’t get fucked by Corporate America. Because in Ron Paul’s America, no is going to watch out for you.
I can’t imagine a starker contrast than Ron Paul’s idea of absolute capitalism compared to President Obama’s recess appointment of a director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And any self-described liberal promoting Ron Paul as a suitable alternative to President Obama should take some time off and rethink their life.
http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/01/ron-paul-defends-romneys-bain-history.html
Romney’s Anticlimactic Victory
Posted on 01/11/2012 at 7:18 am by Bob Cesca
He’s from Massachusetts and he’s been campaigning in New Hampshire for five years. Of course he was going to win.
What continues to be remarkable to me is the ineffectual tea party. While Ron Paul was second, much of the tea party, and its far-right voices on the radio and blogs, are supporting Gingrich (before him, Cain and Perry). This so-called powerful movement in the party isn’t very powerful after all, as evidenced by the now-obvious nomination of a moderate Republican.
Oddly enough, Romney will go on to win in South Carolina, but with slightly narrower margins. When he does, he’ll be crowned the winner of the nomination. Meanwhile, Ron Paul will continue his ridiculous stunt, weakening the nominee.
And finally, regarding Romney’s red meat victory speech last night, if you think President Obama is some sort of progressive-hating center-right conservative, just know that half the nation agrees with everything Romney said last night. That includes the nonsense about the president being a weak appeaser — the same president who ordered a surge in Afghanistan (now over and withdrawing), the killing of Bin Laden, and participated in a NATO effort to oust Qaddafi who was eventually killed as well.
http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/01/romneys-anticlimactic-victory.html
COME ON….
YOU KNOW WHO THE ‘ ONE’ WAS…
GUESS…..
……………………………………
High Court Reverses Conviction in KillingsBy ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 10, 2012
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed the conviction of a New Orleans man, saying prosecutors there had withheld important evidence that his lawyers could have used in his defense.
The decision, by an 8-to-1 vote, was the latest in a series of Supreme Court decisions suggesting a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct in the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.
Tuesday’s case concerned Juan Smith, who was convicted of killing five people in 1995, when a group of men burst into a house in search of money and drugs. They ordered the occupants to lie down and opened fire.
Mr. Smith was the only person tried for the killings. He was convicted based solely on the eyewitness testimony of a survivor, Larry Boatner. Prosecutors presented no DNA, fingerprints, weapons or other physical evidence.
But Mr. Boatner’s testimony proved sufficient.
“He’s right there,” Mr. Boatner said at Mr. Smith’s trial, pointing at the defendant. “I’ll never forget him.”
It later emerged that prosecutors had failed to disclose reports of interviews with Mr. Boatner. In one, hours after the killings, Mr. Boatner said he could not describe the intruders except to say they were black men. Five days later, he said he had not seen the intruders’ faces and could not identify them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/us/supreme-court-cites-withheld-evidence-in-reversing-conviction.html?_r=2
January 11, 2012 10:05 AM
Department of self-defeating arguments
By Steve Benen
Congressional Republicans are still quite outraged by President Obama’s recess appointments last week, and plan to take up a resolution criticizing the move — just as soon as they return from recess.
Rep. Diane Black (Tenn.) and 71 other House Republicans introduced a nonbinding resolution today voicing concern over President Barack Obama’s recess appointment of four administration nominees last week.
“It’s astounding to me that the president is claiming these are recess appointments and within his authority, when Congress was not in fact in recess,” Black said. “These appointments are an affront to the Constitution. No matter how you look at this, it doesn’t pass the smell test. I hope the House considers my resolution as soon as we return to Washington so we can send a message to President Obama.” [emphasis added]
Jonathan Bernstein called this the “best self-refuting argument ever,” adding, “[W]e’re to believe that it’s outrageous for the president to call what’s happening now a recess, and the House intends to take it up as soon as they get back into town after recessing for the holiday.”
Exactly. The president decided lawmakers had left town for a congressional recess. Lawmakers effectively endorsed the line when they said the White House couldn’t submit a request for a debt-ceiling increase while they were on a congressional recess.
And now Diane Black and her cohorts want a resolution to complain that Obama thought they were on a recess, which they’ll vote on, just as soon as they get back from their recess.
I’d encourage Republicans to think this one through a little more, but I’m not sure they’d understand the problem even if they pondered the contradiction.
On a related note, Brian Beutler reports today that “the Obama administration is still operating with scores of vacancies, including an unexpected hole at the top of the Office of Management and Budget,” and unless the president is prepared to “dial his use of the recess appointment power up even further,” the vacancies will persist for the foreseeable future.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/department_of_selfdefeating_ar034684.php
January 11, 2012 10:35 AM
A tale of two speeches
By Steve Benen
After watching Mitt Romney’s speech in New Hampshire last night, I went back and watched Barack Obama’s speech in New Hampshire, delivered almost exactly four years ago. The contrast told me quite a bit about the two candidates.
Obama, who’d just lost to Hillary Clinton in an upset, delivered his “Yes We Can” speech. It made literally no mention of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, literally no mention of those seeking the GOP nomination, and it referenced Republicans only twice — each time to highlight the fact that Obama was prepared to work with anyone, regardless of party. In the same speech, then-candidate Obama looked at his competitors and said, “All of the candidates in this race have good ideas and all are patriots who serve this country honorably.” He also shared a vision, which included ending the war in Iraq and reforming the nation’s health care system.
Romney, with the benefit of a teleprompter, delivered a very different kind of speech last night. Within seconds of thanking his supporters, Romney began a lengthy condemnation of the president, who, along with “some desperate Republicans,” wants to “put free enterprise on trial.”
After mocking the president’s “lofty promises,” Romney also proclaimed last night:
“Our campaign is about more than replacing a president; it is about saving the soul of America.”
First, I’d prefer that pandering politicians leave our soul alone. Second, “saving the soul of America” sounds a little “lofty” to me.
And how, exactly, does Romney intend to save the American soul? As it turns out, he never quite got around to that. And that’s part of the problem I have with his candidacy.
It occurred to me, watching the guy deliver a series of cheap attacks that I doubt even he believes, that Romney has been running for president for more than five years straight, and I still have no idea why he wants the job or what he intends to do with these awesome responsibilities.
The Monthly has a terrific cover package in the new issue on what Americans could expect from a Republican administration in 2013, and it tells us a great deal about how the nation would change, but I’ve been kicking around a slightly different question: Why does Romney want the presidency?
I understand that he’d like power. I also understand that he might even feel entitled to it. In Romney’s mind, it’s likely his “turn” to be president, and if he can demonstrate his contempt and disgust for Obama to the satisfaction of his party, Romney seems to believe that should be enough.
But is it? Ask yourself: after five years of national campaigning, can you say what he strives to do as the leader of the free world? What grand vision he’ll pursue to “save the soul of America”?
“Repeal Obamacare” isn’t an answer, so much as it’s a negation of recent progress. “Create jobs” is a worthwhile goal, but it’s a vague platitude. Romney’s speech last night, and indeed all of his recent speeches, tell us practically nothing. We know Romney has an odd hang-up about Europe, and that he’s comfortable lying with a straight face about the president, but ultimately his agenda is thin and his vision is … small.
A combination of tax breaks for the wealthy, free rein for Wall Street, and less health care coverage for millions of middle-class Americans does not a saved soul make.
As the general election phase gets underway, I’m hoping Romney can start telling the nation less about how much he detests President Obama and more about what he’d do if he replaces President Obama.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/a_tale_of_two_speeches034685.php
January 11, 2012 9:25 AM
The relative meaning of ‘moderate’
By Steve Benen
Ezra Klein makes the case this morning that in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, “moderation is winning.”
Which is not to say Romney’s plans make him a moderate. On taxes, for instance, he is well to the right of George W. Bush. Where Bush proposed his tax cuts to spend down a surplus, Romney, in a time of massive deficits, is proposing to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent (price tag: $4 trillion) and then add trillions more in cuts that heavily favor wealthy Americans. On Medicare, too, he is well to the right of Bush: A more moderate version of Ryan’s plan is vastly more conservative than anything Bush ever attempted.
Nevertheless, he is, of the Republicans running for president, the least extreme in his policy proposals, and also the most likely to capture the nomination. If Huntsman counts as a moderate, then so does Romney — and so, in their presidential preferences so far, do a plurality of Republican primary voters. They have, after all, not only backed Romney, but they have decisively rejected Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann, the candidates aimed most squarely at Tea Party wing of the GOP.
I think that’s probably right, but it’s rather unsatisfying, isn’t it? It’s true that the candidates perceived as running furthest to the right have fared poorly, and that the radical Tea Party base has played almost no meaningful role whatsoever, but I’m still left with the impression that we’re talking about a Republican field separated only be degrees of far-right extremism.
Romney, to be sure, was a relative moderate for much of his career, but as has been documented ad nauseum, the current Romney bears no resemblance to the previous versions of himself. Indeed, he’s gone to almost comical lengths to repudiate every policy position he ever took before becoming a presidential candidate.
As Jonathan Cohn argued persuasively last week, “At least on domestic policy, Romney has taken positions every bit as extreme as Santorum.”
What, after all, is the Romney agenda? Tax cuts for the wealthy, replacing Medicare with a voucher scheme, privatizing Social Security, taking away health care coverage from millions, letting Wall Street do as it pleases, a more right-wing federal judiciary, slashing public investments that benefit working families, more foreclosures, and of all things, tax increases on those already struggling.
Romney thinks putting “country first” means putting country second — or perhaps third, behind ideology and party. If given a chance to work with Democrats on debt reduction, and they offered him a 10-to-1 deal on cuts to revenue, he thinks that’s not one-sided enough.
Ezra’s probably right that Romney doesn’t seem as extreme as some of his more unhinged rivals, but that says more about the state of the Republican Party in 2012 than it does about the limits of Romney’s ideology.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/the_relative_meaning_of_modera034683.php
Hey guys,
Why is the black media not defending our First Lady? Where are the black women in the CBC?
Their damn silence is deafening!
Take note haters
You’re not coming in here and think you’re going to bash/trash our President. GTFOOH!
There are many other nasty playgrounds that will welcome you. Free speech may be free but not here.
You can bite me hard!
Allen West: Tea Party rep says Obama will lose in ‘brutal bloodbath’
http://www.thegrio.com/politics/allen-west-tea-party-rep-says-obama-will-lose-in-brutal-bloodbath.php
From Huffington Post: Tea Party-backed Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) predicted in a recent interview that President Obama would lose in a “brutal bloodbath” to any GOP presidential candidate.
Despite his confidence in the electoral strength of the Republican presidential hopefuls, West singled out Newt Gingrich, telling Newsmax that the former House speaker is “the smartest person out there.”
West is nothing more than a bootlicking, shuckin, buckin, hankyhead lawn jockey!
Lawyer Defending South Carolina’s Voter ID Law Thinks DOJ Is Biased Against White People
Ryan J. Reilly January 11, 2012, 5:53 AM 194189South Carolina officials plan to file suit against the federal government because the Justice Department stopped the state from implementing a voter ID law that the state’s own statistics showed would have a disparate impact on non-white voters. Fighting on their behalf will be a former DOJ official who claimed that the Civil Rights Division is opposed to protecting the civil rights of whites and who defended the Bush-era politicalization of the division by Bradley Schlozman as an effort to “diversify.”
South Carolina has hired former Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates, who defied DOJ’s instructions and testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights during the Republican-led probe into the infamous New Black Panther Party case, a spokesman for the South Carolina attorney general’s office told The State newspaper.
Former colleagues said that Coates had an ideological conversion after an African-American woman was chosen over him as deputy section chief in July of 2000. Schlozman, who was found to have hired lawyers for their conservative credentials and referred to liberals as “commies” and “mold spores,” called Coates a “true member of the team.”
Coates signed off on the New Black Panther Party case, which was just the fourth known voter intimidation case brought under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act in its history, the second in defense of white voters (though, in the New Black Panther Party case, lawyers weren’t able to find any victims). The case became a political issue after most of the allegations were dropped, except against a member of the party who was holding a billy club. A DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility report found that the case was decided “based upon a good-faith assessment of the facts and the law” and found no evidence that race or partisan politics were a factor in the decision.
South Carolina has also brought on former Solicitor General Paul Clement, a face well known to the justices on the Supreme Court — he argued a Texas redistricting case there just this week — where the case could ultimately end up. Legal observers expect that South Carolina will mount a constitutional challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires states with a history of racial discrimination like South Carolina to have their election laws precleared by officials in D.C.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said the suit would be filed in D.C. court in the “next week or two.” He was joined by other Republican leaders at a press conference on Tuesday, where Gov. Nikki Haley called the voter ID law a “very important and pressing issue,” though, when asked, she did not name any instances where voter fraud could have been prevented by a law requiring a DMV-issued photo ID. Haley argued that if pharmacies require photo ID to buy Sudafed, the state should be able to require photo ID to vote.
“What are you scared of?” Haley said, addressing critics of the proposal who point to statistics indicate that the law will have a disparate impact on minority (and typically Democratic-leaning) voters. “We’re not going to take the time to figure it out. This is common sense legislation.”
“The Department of Justice made the right decision on the facts and law when it denied Section 5 preclearance to South Carolina’s photo ID law,” Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Executive Director Barbara Arnwine said in a statement. “We are confident that the D.C. Court will reach the same conclusion.”
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/lawyer_defending_south_carolinas_voter_id_law_thinks_doj_is_biased_against_white_people.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
Cry me a fuckin river, Chris Coates!
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz really nails Mitt Romney:
// “Mitt Romney may have won in New Hampshire tonight, but he can’t run from the fact that his support was rapidly eroding before any vote was even cast. Over the course of the last few months Romney had the support of as much as 45 percent of the primary electorate – at one point boasting a nearly 30 percent lead over the rest of the GOP field. But tonight he fell far short of meeting expectations – especially in a state where he’s a part-time resident, which is next door to his home state of Massachusetts, in the same media market. He fell short next to a state where he raised a family and served as Governor, and where he’s been running on and off for political office over nearly two decades and for president for seven years.
“But what’s more troubling for Mitt Romney is the fact that the premise of his candidacy is unraveling. He leaves here wounded by a series of episodes that made it clear to voters – both in New Hampshire and for those watching across the country – that he is completely out of touch with the concerns of America’s working and middle-class families. Romney disingenuously claimed just a few days ago that he once feared getting a pink slip when in fact his campaign can’t offer any examples of when that might have been the case. Yesterday, he went as far as saying that he enjoys being able to fire people. He continues to call himself a job creator, but his accounts of creating 100,000 jobs at Bain Capital have been knocked down across the board. Even worse, as one of his colleagues said, he never considered what they did at Bain Capital as job creation. What they did was make a profit while companies were sometimes driven to bankruptcy, workers were laid off, and jobs were sent overseas. These revelations have led to a precipitous drop in Mitt Romney’s support – and his failure to perform better in the Granite State is a significant setback for both his campaign and his candidacy for president.” //
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/3928
We’re All in Romney’s Great Adventure Together Now
By Charles P. Pierce
at 12:00AM
The country’s course through the presidential election of 2012 was decidedly set on Tuesday night. It will be a test of the country’s will. It will be a test of the country’s pride. It will be a test not only of the country’s guts, but also of the country’s capacity to stomach another eight months of preposterous public shamelessness. There is no longer any plausible scenario by which Willard Romney, the Piltdown Man of American politics, will not be the Republican nominee for president of the United States. Which means, among other things, we have nearly a flat year of Willard’s defending his lucrative career as a vulture capitalist and looter of old people’s pensions on the ground that he is a classic American up-from-the-bootstraps success story, and that he is only in this to make sure that other children like him have the opportunity to be born into wealth and make themselves wealthier. The way he’s going — and his staggering recitation of tinpot Reaganite banality after his win here was only the most recent indication of where he’s headed — by the middle of, oh, April, we are going to hear about how Willard was raised a poor black child.
(I fear for Chris Matthews’s health on this score, by the way. Trying to make this point on Tuesday night to former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, Sr., Matthews looked very close to having a Scanners moment on live TV.)
President Obama, Willard told his crowd, is practicing “the bitter politics of envy.” He warned them not to be seduced by the president’s “resentment of success.” It was a moment of almost transcendental meanness and fakery. Willard was explaining to his audience that he was just like them, and that they were the keepers of America’s promise, and that they would continue to be — at least until, for his own profit and that of his wealthy investors, Willard wrecked their companies, stole their retirement, and shipped their jobs to China, never to return. They were all in it together, Willard assured them.
It is an altogether appalling spiel. The old, iron millionnaires knew how to talk to the proles. They built libraries while they busted the unions. They planted trees and developed parkland while they bought the legislatures and sublet the courts. And out of all of that we got cars and planes and television sets and an ambitious middle class that demanded political power and succeeded in wresting it away. Now, we have a class of plutocrats who create nothing, but who move wealth around, and they are demanding a return to the days of unaccountable corporate royalism. Willard’s entire campaign is based on the notion that we are all in that effort together, even the people who are most likely to get ground up in it. A wink and a nod, and most of us become beggars to our own demise. It used to be that the corporate powers behind modern conservatism had to use misdirection to fool people into voting against their own economic interests. Willard doesn’t want to work that hard. Instead, he’s going to assert repeatedly that his interests and ours are the very same — that we’re all in this great American adventure together. Some of us just have to make the trip in steerage, that’s all. Sorry, sport.
But he’s going to be the nominee, so on we go. The conservative “base,” at least its social-issues element, has shown itself to be a spent force. They have squabbled among themselves, failed to coalesce around an alternative to Romney, truckled to him at the expense of each other in the pivotal debate last Saturday night, and now go into the sweetest of their sweet spots in South Carolina so hopelessly divided that, at this point, they probably couldn’t agree on Jesus as their favorite personal Lord and Savior. The Tea Party, which was supposed to supplant the religious right in political energy and power, is just as split and, therefore, just as neutered. Their corporate leaders want a winner, and they want one now, and they don’t particularly care what the folks in the tricorns with the Gadsden flags think about the former governor of the People’s Republic of Gay Marriage and Socialized Medicine.
Which leaves us with the fascinating question of Dr. Ron Paul. He finished a decent second last night, crushing the campaign of Jon Huntsman. He is in an odd place. He is not a contender for the nomination in any real sense. However, he can continue to move through the cycle, not seeking conventional success, but piling up delegates pledged only to him. (If the rumors around Manchester on Tuesday night are true, and Paul’s campaign has managed to raise $10 million over the past few days, then he can go on forever. That amount of money to his campaign is $100 million to a more conventional one.) This will give him a center of personal power with which Willard, and the rest of the party, will have to find some way to cope. Paul has stubbornly — and shrewdly — refused to state categorically that he will not bolt the party in the general election. He can string the whole business along, talking in his giddy survivalist code about “fiat money,” and nobody will be in any position to take him on. He is going to stay on his own hook; in 2008, across the river in Minneapolis, Paul set up his own convention in opposition to the Republican National Convention. He can do whatever mischief he wants from now until the end of the summer, and nobody’s in any position to make him stop. That is the only story left, save for the epic Horatio Alger saga of Willard Romney, Boy of the Streets, proud American, and proof positive that, in this great country, any son of an auto millionnaire and former governor of Michigan can grow up almost to be president.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/mitt-romney-new-hampshire-primary-results-6637018#ixzz1j9zjHKVU
MSNBC: While Mitt Romney tonight over-performed among the groups he struggled with in Iowa – conservatives, Tea Party supporters, evangelicals – he didn’t fare as well among middle-class and lower-class GOP primary voters.
According to the exit polls, Romney got 51% from those making $200,000 or more …. But among those making less than $30,000, he captured just 31%. And among those making between $30,000 and $49,999, he got 32%. And among those making $50,000 to $99,999, he got 35%.
What Hath Orly Taitz Wrought? The Rise of the Mitt Romney Birthers
By Allan on January 11th, 2012
Karma is a bitch.
ORLY?
Perhaps the most toxic legacy of the 2008 Presidential campaign was the emergence of the Birthers.
As Barack Obama’s campaign took off, a die-hard band of desperate reality-deniers, led by their cuckoo queen Dentist/Lawyer Orly Taitz, combined increasingly ridiculous conspiracy theories about the circumstances and location of Obama’s birth with a peculiar hard-core interpretation of the intent behind the Constitutional phrase “natural born citizens” into a (to them) compelling case that Obama was ineligible to be POTUS.
At first, they posited, Barack Hussein Obama was not actually born in the state of Hawaii, but was instead born in Kenya, then whisked into the US and records falsified to make him an American. Because Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. intentionally left the US while she was enormous with child so that she could give birth to her son in a third-world country instead of an American hospital, but anticipated that their bi-racial son born in pre-Loving v. Virginia America would someday be a shoo-in for the Presidency or something.
As people continued to point and laugh at their complex crackpot theories, some Birthers began to advance a second argument, which they found even more compelling.
Even if they conceded that Obama was born on US soil, he didn’t meet the criterion of “natural born citizen” because his birth father was not himself a US citizen, but a Kenyan. By stretching the Constitution just so and holding it over a candle to reveal hidden inscriptions in invisible ink, they determined that a “natural born citizen” could not be born to a parent who held citizenship in any other country, because that made the child a dual national, not a real American.
So even after President Obama was hectored and pestered by diehard racists and preening jackwagons like Donald Trump into releasing copies of the President’s original long-form birth certificate from its vaults, it was immaterial. To the Birthers, his father’s Kenyan citizenship meant that Barack Obama still wasn’t an authentic American.
Still with me? Good. Here’s where the fun begins.
Mitt Romney’s great-grandfather, faced in 1884 with arrest for the practice of polygamy, packed up his five sister-wives and progeny and high-tailed it south of the border to Mexico. Mitt’s father George Romney was born in Mexico, which conferred Mexican birthright citizenship to him regardless of his parents’ nationality.
http://www.angryblacklady.com/2012/01/11/what-hath-orly-taitz-wrought-the-rise-of-the-mitt-romney-birthers/
Mitt Romney: The Charlatan Who Should Never Be President
Every four years Americans witness a bevy of politicians boasting they are the best qualified candidate to serve as president and they spend enormous amounts of other people’s money to win the coveted office. The U.S. Constitution is specific about the qualifications to be president, but there is no previous experience in the military, corporate world, church, or political office required to serve. This year, the Republican field of hopefuls represents former politicians, businessmen, religious leaders and warmongers that on their own, appeal to different segments of Republican voters but one candidate fulfills all the roles.
Willard “Mitt” Romney, is a war monger, religious leader and former politician, but he touts himself as being best qualified because of his business acumen. Most Americans are unaware that Romney’s business experience is limited to destroying businesses to enrich investors and with all due respect to private equity investment firms; it is safe to say they are not representative of “businesses” and Romney is not a businessman as most Americans understand.
Private equity investment firms invest in companies using different investment strategies, and in return, receive periodic management fees, shares of profits, and then find ways to maximize those investments for the investors. It is not unusual for equity firms to leverage companies with debt and then sell them off allowing the equity firm’s investors to walk away with huge profits while the company languishes. Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, reaped outrageous profits for its investors, and the companies they invested in laid off workers, declared bankruptcy, or went out of business. As if ruining companies for profit was not bad enough, Bain Capital avoided paying taxes on the profits it made laying off workers by concealing their profits in tax havens. The companies Bain invested in were indebted to investors and 22% of them eventually were bankrupt or closed their doors sending employees to unemployment lines, lost their health benefits, and in some cases, needed the federal government to bail out their pension funds
http://www.politicususa.com/en/mitt-romney-charlatan
Rush Limbaugh Is Outraged That The Obamas Are Living Like Entitled White People
Wealthy elitist Rush Limbaugh is super mad that the Obamas are worming their way into living “high” on the “hog” like the white peeps. The nerve.
From the January 9 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Rush Limbaugh Show courtesy of Media Matters:
“I believe that whatever drives Obama and his party is the pursuit of money without having to work for it… If you look at the way the Obamas live, with Michelle and her separate vacations and not being concerned about how much it costs to take separate airplanes – an opportunity to live high on the hog without having it cost them a dime. They justify it by saying well we deserve this, we’re owed this because of whatever happened to our ancestors.”
See, you’re supposed to get all outraged and justify that Obama doesn’t spend that much and that Michelle has her own responsibilities as First Lady (much of which centers on her supporting military families but we know that doesn’t count for Rush) and that the Obamas pay for their personal trips, but that would be buying into the frame that Obama should have to justify his spending to a drug addicted white man who dropped out of college. Please.
It’s best to laugh at the petty racism of the far right while they hold their sweat slick, corpulent hands out for freebies and justify the millions of dollars in bonuses their friends give to Wall Street failures. After all, Rush wishes he were as powerful and important as the glorious and haloed Barack Obama. Rush also wishes he had the figure to be photographed body surfing in Hawaii.
It hurts Rush to want something a black man with a superb education earned, so he has to pretend Obama is being uppity because that implies he didn’t earn it. Heck, Rush came out and said Obama wants stuff he didn’t earn because of his ancestors. Don’t tell Rush, but Obama is not a descendant of the enslaved Africans who built America with no thanks from the white boys who took charge from their privileged perch. Yes, see, there are some Africans who are also Americans, but are not African Americans. This detail surely will not make any sense to Rush anyway so it’s best not to burden him with it.
But poor Rush does have a point. Nouveau riche tackiness is best left to white boys like himself, whose vulgar taste rivals Donald Trump’s (see the $44 million Palm Beach compound). See, you can’t buy class, but when you push your way into the clubhouse, it’s best to keep everyone else out — that way, even when they realize you have no taste and your manners belie your position, there won’t be anyone to replace you with.
It’s so obvious that Rush is really just jealous and feeling protectionist toward his precarious and unearned status as an elite. He’s afraid someone will ask him one day, “Hey, how in the heck did an uneducated drug addict get to be a national icon of hate and run the Republican Party? What did you ever do to deserve such privilege?”
Rush should relax, as the answer is as obvious as it is replete with conservative values of working for your cash. Rush got there because he got lucky; his brand of idiotic hate matched up perfectly with Reagan’s repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the two of them set out to destroy the Republican Party’s image as the party of ideas. Who else could do that so well, I ask you?
Now that Rush has arrived via the front door, he wants to slam the gates shut against anyone he doesn’t like, as a true American would. If only someone would knight him so he could take this to its full fruition. They knight uneducated drug addicts, don’t they? I mean, heck, nothing says “I earned this” like a title.
True conservatives (as opposed to those who make tons of money they don’t deserve by playing one on the radio) are outraged over this particular President spending any money because… you know… they care about frugality. Just look at George W Bush’s prudent use of money if you don’t believe me. No, not at Medicare D or the wars he left off of the budget. We all know bills are for Democrats. No, I mean his many, many vacation days, especially the ones he billed as working vacations. Gosh, how expensive would you say it was having an intellectually absent executive?
Way to stay relevant, Rush! Keep catering to the old, scared whites ‘cuz that’s a segment that keeps on growin’! Sure, the old man might be irrelevant, but isn’t he a great mascot for the modern day Republican Party? He is their base
http://www.politicususa.com/en/rush-limbaugh-is-outraged-that-the-obamas-are-living-like-entitled-white-people
January 11, 2012
Think Jon Huntsman is a “moderate”? Think again.
Republican Jon Huntsman comes across as the most reasonable of the presidential primary candidates. He is generally viewed as moderate, as well. This morning, Ezra Klein disabuses us of that notion, despite a confusing headline.
In the end, the polls were right. Mitt Romney took first, Ron Paul took second, and Jon Huntsman took third. Huntsman’s weak finish led many to suggest that the GOP was no place for moderates. But the truth is that Huntsman’s campaign didn’t prove that, or anything like it. For all Huntsman’s signaling and hinting, his policy platform is no more moderate than Romney’s. In fact, it might be less moderate.
Huntsman’s tax plan is more radical than Romney’s. It wipes out every deduction and exemption and then uses the savings to cut the tax on capital gains and dividends to zero. That amounts to a massive tax cut for the wealthy — and it comes at the expense of benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, which go to the poorest Americans, and the mortgage-interest tax deduction and the exclusion for employer-based health insurance, which go to many middle-income Americans. Romney’s plan, by contrast, only cuts the rate on capital gains and dividends for those making less than $250,000. The two candidates have mostly the same position on corporate taxation — drop the rate from 35% to 25% — but Huntsman adds a temporary tax holiday for overseas profits.
Similarly, Huntsman’s spending cuts are more radical than Romney’s. Though his entitlement reforms remain vague, he promises they will be “based on the Ryan Plan.” Romney, meanwhile, broke with the Ryan plan to preserve traditional fee-for-service Medicare as an option in his entitlement reforms.
Huntsman is a bit of a sheep in wolves’ clothing. I doubt he has a chance to win the nomination but it’s worth knowing what he’s all about.
Also, too, for all of Ron Paul’s apparent appeal, I can’t believe that Republicans will vote for an anti-war candidate. They’ll never support a candidate that doesn’t think we should bomb the hell out of Iran at the first available moment.
http://www.eclectablog.com/2012/01/think-jon-huntsman-is-moderate-think.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Eclectablog+%28Eclectablog%29
DNC Chair: Premise Of Romney’s Campaign Is ‘Unraveling’
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/3928
Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz released the following statement after Mitt Romney won Tuesday’s Republican primary in New Hampshire:
“Mitt Romney may have won in New Hampshire tonight, but he can’t run from the fact that his support was rapidly eroding before any vote was even cast. Over the course of the last few months Romney had the support of as much as 45 percent of the primary electorate – at one point boasting a nearly 30 percent lead over the rest of the GOP field. But tonight he fell far short of meeting expectations – especially in a state where he’s a part-time resident, which is next door to his home state of Massachusetts, in the same media market. He fell short next to a state where he raised a family and served as Governor, and where he’s been running on and off for political office over nearly two decades and for president for seven years.
Mitt Romney’s Auto Accident
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 | Posted by Deaniac83 at 3:28 PM
The Republicans hate Mitt Romney. Yet, unless something catastrophic happens, he is going to be their nominee for president. And when he is their nominee, there are few things likely to dog him more than his passionate plea a little over three years ago to let Detroit go bankrupt. President Obama’s administration has seen stunning turnarounds in this economy: an economy that was hemorrhaging 600,000 jobs a month (and a recession caused by George Bush and the Republicans that lost 8 million jobs total) has now created nearly 2 million jobs in the past year, and 212,000 private sector jobs in the last month alone. But nothing tells the real story of the economic turnaround under President Obama better than that of the American auto industry.
Let’s start with Romney’s big prediction. After all, he’s running on his business acumen. Let’s see how strong it is.
IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Well, guess what? The auto industry got that rescue, and then some. And not only are we not saying “goodbye” to the American automotive industry, the US auto-maker GM is once again on track to become the world’s largest auto-maker in sales numbers, and other US auto-makers also compete globally with increasing success.
What is it Romney said about the US auto industry’s course with the “bailout?”
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
Ah yes, restructuring. Detroit did do that, under Barack Obama’s uncompromising leadership and the administration’s impressive management abilities. Let’s go back to March of 2009, when President Obama used the leverage of taxpayer investment to fire GM’s CEO and demand that GM change its ways to become more competitive – that it dump its gas guzzlers, lethargic business model and concentrate on becoming a global competitive power house.
……………………………………..
Given that GM is poised to take over the lead as the world’s largest automaker for the first time since the Great Recession, I think we can safely say that the President’s leadership and the administration’s tireless hard work paid off. Mitt Romney’s contention was that in order to restructure Detroit and make the American auto industry competitive again, you must let it go bankrupt so its creditors can sell off its pieces. Sort of like burning down a village to “save” it. But hey, what do you expect from Bain Romney?
Not only does Romney has egg on his face on his overall position on the auto industry, every last one of his points were repudiated by reality. Declining market share? Last year, every American auto maker gained global market share.
What was the real problem Mitt Romney and Republicans had with the auto industry rescue, though? That, I submit, had nothing whatsoever to do with a company’s “restructuring” through bankruptcy (granted, Romney knows about bankrupting companies).
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/01/mitt-romneys-auto-accident.html
The Ron Paul Dixiecrat train and its excusers
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 | Posted by rootless_e at 8:05 PM
Glenn Greenwald’s and Matt Stoller’s embrace of Ron Paul can’t be separated from their multi-year campaign against Barack Obama. Here’s Stoller in 2008 fabricating a position for then candidate Obama and wagging his finger (by citing Krugman!):
Obama admires Reagan because he agrees with Reagan’s basic frame that the 1960s and 1970s were full of ‘excesses’ and that government had grown large and unaccountable. [..] It is extremely disturbing to hear, not that Obama admires Reagan, but why he does so. Reagan was not a sunny optimist pushing dynamic entrepreneurship, but a savvy politician using a civil rights backlash to catapult conservatives to power [OpenLeft January 2008]
Of course that was all made up, but now Stoller is perfectly happy to tell us:
But then, when considering questions about Ron Paul, you have to ask yourself whether you prefer a libertarian who will tell you upfront about his opposition to civil rights statutes, or authoritarian Democratic leaders who will expand healthcare to children and then aggressively enforce a racist war on drugs and shield multi-trillion dollar transactions from public scrutiny.
If anyone is a “saavy politician using a civil rights backlash”, it’s Ron Paul – who revived his political career and raised money telling his numbskull newsletter subscribers that “fleetfooted” black “thugs” were going to steal their meth labs or something. The only consistency between the two paragraphs from Stoller is that Obama is the bad guy. Similarly for Greenwald, who excoriates Obama for having the US military kill armed enemies of the United States but finds nothing to say about Paul’s proposal that the US charter mercenary bounty hunters to assassinate anyone the President names as an enemy. Consider Stoller’s argument in 2007 when he claimed that Obama was going to lose the primaries.
Obama isn’t one of us, and in his political career he has shown himself entirely unequipped to lead in a time of extremism. It doesn’t much matter than he worked as a community organizer in his twenties. At crunch time, Obama is almost always absent, or even on the other side.[ Open Left September 2007]
“Obama is not one of us”! That’s the key. Obama is not part of the little clique of “progressives” that Stoller is now trying to drag with him into the Paul camp and, as important, Obama is and has always been a pragmatist while Stoller and Greenwald and many of the “progressives” seem to want some rigid principles – no matter how hypocritical or how often they have to change them. Note that for Greenwald, Obama’s use of military force in the Middle East is an unforgiveable violation of principle, but Paul’s support for the Afghanistan war and his proposal that the government charter pirates is not a problem. Stoller and Greenwald don’t understand that liberalism is about increasing liberty and opportunity and it is supremely pragmatic about how to accomplish those goals.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/01/ron-paul-dixiecrat-train-and-its.html
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Commission Of Pat-ricide, Part 2
Posted by Zandar
Pat Buchanan triples down on his racism, complaining that evil brown gay people cost him his job at MSNBC.
“Look, for a long period of time the hard left, militant gay rights groups, militant — they call themselves civil rights groups, but I’m not sure they’re concerned about civil rights — people of color, Van Jones, these folks and others have been out to get Pat Buchanan off T.V., deny him speeches, get his column canceled,” Buchanan said during a radio interview with Sean Hannity this afternoon. “This has been done for years and years and years and it’s the usual suspects doing the same thing again. But my view is, you write what you believe to be the truth.”
Right, because it’s a well-known fact that LGBT people of color control the airwaves and the majority of hiring/firing decisions in corporate America. They just put up with all of Buchanan’s bigotry prior to this as a test of character and to fool racist homophobes.
Asshat. Time for our first “Tools of 2012” entry.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2012/01/commission-of-pat-ricide-part-2.html
January 10, 2012 4:20 PM
The right’s new line: celebrate layoffs
By Steve Benen
Mitt Romney clearly wishes he could take back the line, “I like being able to fire people,” but since that’s not an option, it’s up to him, his campaign, and its surrogates to downplay the story’s significance.
There’s a perfectly sound response to this: explain the intended context and move on. But Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) appeared on MSNBC earlier and took a very different approach.
“Yesterday, [Romney] said something about firing people,” Grimm said. “I think it was a very good thing because it’s honest and it’s real.”
That’s not much of a defense. To hear the freshman Republican put it, Romney’s right to enjoy being able to fire people. Never mind the context and intended meaning, Grimm is blowing past the Romney campaign’s talking points and making the case that Americans should want a president who takes pleasure in layoffs.
It’s “real.”
Incidentally, Rush Limbaugh told his audience something similar today, arguing, “Don’t we want somebody who loves firing people” in the White House?
If Democrats are unrealistically lucky, the debate going forward will be over whether Romney is right or wrong to enjoy firing people.
Postscript: By the way, if Grimm’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the guy who based his congressional campaign on attacking health care reform, and then offered a hilarious response when asked if he’d be willing to give up government-subsidized health care for himself.
“What am I, not supposed to have health care?” Grimm said soon after getting elected. “It’s practicality. I’m not going to become a burden for the state because I don’t have health care, and God forbid I get into an accident and I can’t afford the operation. That can happen to anyone.”
Note to the Romney camp: this guy may not be the ideal surrogate for national television.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/the_rights_new_line_celebrate034672.php
January 11, 2012 8:00 AM
NH results should, but won’t, winnow field
By Steve Benen
Mitt Romney’s victory in New Hampshire wasn’t quite as big as expected, but it didn’t matter. The former governor, who led a neighboring state and lives much of the year in New Hampshire, did exactly what he set out to do: take control of the race for the Republican nomination. Romney is, as was mentioned last night, the first non-incumbent to win Iowa and New Hampshire in the same cycle — which means more than just bragging rights.
At this point, the question isn’t whether Romney will wrap this up, but rather, when his rivals will decide their efforts are pointless.
Indeed, the traditional value of the early nominating contests is that they start winnowing presidential fields. Candidates make concerted efforts to perform well in Iowa, New Hampshire, or both, and when they fail, these candidates invariably lose attention and fundraising before throwing in the towel.
But that doesn’t seem to be happening. Other than Michele Bachmann, who bowed out a week ago, the current Republican field is filled with candidates who’ve convinced themselves they’re doing just well enough to stick around. They’re deluding themselves, of course, while helping guarantee Romney’s eventual success.
Take Rick Perry, for example. The Texas governor spent $6 million in Iowa and came in a distant fifth. In New Hampshire, where he wasn’t making much of an effort, Perry didn’t quite get 1% of the vote. If there’s a path to the nomination for this guy, it’s a road only he can see.
And then there’s Jon Huntsman, who practically moved to New Hampshire and said for months he fully intended to win the primary. It was the only state in which he had any meaningful organization, making this contest a make-or-break test for his campaign. It was a test he failed — Huntsman ended up with 16.8% of the vote, less than half of Romney’s total.
Huntsman has picked up the undying love of the media, which provided the oxygen that allowed his campaign to breathe, but unless pundits and magazine writers create a 51st state, and that state quickly squeezes itself into the GOP nominating calendar before Super Tuesday, there’s simply no reason for the former Utah governor to continue with the charade.
Huntsman’s father is believed to be the financing force behind the campaign, but after last night, one can only wonder how much longer it’ll be before dad takes away the credit card.
So, now what happens? Attention turns to South Carolina, which will hold its primary a week from Saturday, and where polls show Romney leading. (That lead will likely increase with a post-NH bump.) Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who roughly tied for fourth yesterday, both say they intend to pull out the stops in the Palmetto State. They’ll have to — it will effectively be their last chance.
I doubt it’ll make a difference. With apparently no one dropping out, the right will remain divided, splitting the anti-Romney several ways, and Romney will use his considerable financial advantage to keep his rivals at bay. What’s more, after seeing the Iowa and New Hampshire results, the holdouts in the Republican establishment will likely swallow hard and coalesce around the frontrunner.
In the meantime, Democrats will continue to focus on Romney, and Romney will continue to focus on the White House, marking the beginning of a 10-month general-election phase, even while the Republicans primaries and caucuses continue.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/nh_results_should_but_wont_win034681.php
Michelle Obama: No tension with husband’s aides
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505270_162-57356770/michelle-obama-no-tension-with-husbands-aides/?tag=morningLeadStoriesAreaMain;thisMorningLeadHer
January 11, 2012 8:35 AM
The GOP’s turnout problem
By Steve Benen
Last week, underwhelming Republican turnout in the Iowa caucuses fell short of expectations and hinted at a listless, uninspired party. Yesterday in New Hampshire, it happened again.
Going into the first GOP primary, there was ample talk about the expected record turnouts. But as the dust settled, we learned otherwise.
Turnout in the early Republican nominating contests could be a warning sign for Romney: the participation rate in Iowa barely exceeded the state’s 2008 mark, when many GOP voters were disaffected and depressed. New Hampshire officials projected record turnout in Tuesday’s primary, but exit polls showed about two-fifths of the voters were non-Republicans who crossed over to participate.
Remember, Republican turnout was supposed to soar in these early contests. GOP voters are reportedly eager, if not foaming-at-the-mouth desperate, to fight a crusade against President Obama, and they had plenty of high-profile candidates trying to stoke their enthusiasm. For that matter, Romney actually lives part of the year in New Hampshire. These voters had a chance to vote for their neighbor.
This, coupled with the boost from the so-called Tea Party “movement,” suggested energized Republicans would turn out in numbers that far exceeded the totals we saw in 2008, when GOP voters were depressed and all the excitement was on the other side of the aisle.
And yet, in two contests in a row, that hasn’t happened.
The Romney campaign almost certainly won’t care, at least not publicly, but behind the scenes, the turnout numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire should give party leaders pause.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/the_gops_turnout_problem034682.php
New Hampshire GOP Narrative: Obama’s Not One of Us
—By David Corn
| Tue Jan. 10, 2012 5:12 AM PST
On the campaign trail, the Republican candidates attack each other but they do agree on one thing: the president is the Other.
The Republican presidential contest—as it has played out in New Hampshire during the days prior to Tuesday’s primary—has been a battle between anger and outrage. Mitt Romney, the front-runner, gets worked up—in a Brahmin style—that President Barack Obama, a nice enough fellow, is simply not up to task of leading this great nation and doesn’t quite understand the essence of American society. Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul are outraged, absolutely outraged, that Obama is purposefully leading the nation to ruin. The basic choice for Republican voters in the Live Free or Die state: be mad or be damn mad.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/new-hampshire-gop-obama-primary-attack
POTUS & FLOTUS Schedule for today
10:10: President Obama and VP Biden hold a roundtable meeting on jobs
12:15: PBO delivers remarks on jobs
12:30: First Lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks at a DNC luncheon in Richmond, Va
2:45: Michelle Obama delivers remarks at Virginia Commonwealth University
2:55: PBO departs the White House en route to Joint Base Andrews
5:00: PBO arrives in Chicago
5:15: Michelle Obama delivers remarks at a DNC reception in Charlottesville, Va
Sorry, Charlie
by mistermix
Charlie Bass (R, NH-2) tried to use Polifact’s “Lie of the Year” designation to yank ads claiming he “voted to end Medicare” when he voted for the Ryan plan, and he was denied (via):
[…] The Bass campaign sent letters to two New Hampshire stations — WMUR and WHDH — demanding the ads be yanked. Crucially, the Bass campaign repeatedly cited PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year designation to bolster its case.
Both stations refused.
“Our lawyers looked at the ad and concluded it’s within the bounds of robust public debate,” Jeff Barlett, the general manager of WMUR, tells me. “If Charlie Bass and his supporters disagree with this, they’re free to create their own ad and tell their side of the story.”
Am I wrong to so thoroughly enjoy how Polifact’s “both sides do it” attempt to validate its credibility completely backfired? Remember, they flushed twice: first when they named Democratic opposition to the Ryan plan “Lie of the Year”, and second when they doubled down with a post from on high accusing their critics of living in an echo chamber and failing to see how “dangerous” and “disruptive” Polifact really is. When two small market TV stations totally disregard you, a different word comes to mind: irrelevant.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/01/11/sorry-charlie/
I see MSNBC Moaning Joke crew is lapping up Mittens Roam-ney.
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning, rikyrah, and Everyone! :-)
Gail King’s interview with FLOTUS is airing now.
Howdy, Cowgir; thanks for the coffee. :-)