Election

Is President Obama A Christian? Santorum? Gingrich? Romney?

Posted by on February 21, 2012 at 10:53 am. 4 Comments :

It’s always comforting to know that there is someone you can turn to who can provide answers to the perplexing spiritual problems that we all face on a daily basis. Someone with wisdom and insight and experience in the ways of the Lord.

Such a person is Rev. Franklin Graham, at least in his own mind. He is the son and heir to the Billy Graham evangelist empire, and he appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today (video below) to discuss the personal faiths of some national leaders. Here is what transpired:

Willie Geist: Do you believe that Pres. Obama is a Christian?
Graham: You have to ask Pres. Obama.

After that dodge, Graham spent several minutes evading the question by repeating the excuse that he doesn’t know what is in another person’s heart. Throughout the segment he pointedly refused to simply say that he believes that Obama is a Christian. However, he does say that he thinks Obama bends over backwards for Muslims and he finds it significant that some Muslims regard him as one of their own.

So what about Rick Santorum? Is he a Christian? Geist posed that question to Graham and got this response:

Graham: Oh, I think so. Because his values are so clear on moral issues. No question about it.

So he cannot answer the question about Obama because he can’t see into another person’s heart, but apparently he can see into Santorum’s heart. And that’s not all. Graham then volunteered this about Newt Gingrich:

Graham: I think Newt is a Christian. At least he told me he is.

Well, Obama also told Graham that he is a Christian, but that didn’t seem to stick. Graham said that what matters most is not what people say but how they live their lives. So of course he would be suspicious of an assertion of faith from Obama, a devoted husband and churchgoer, but he would accept Gingrich’s testimony, despite being a thrice-married, admitted adulterer who left his congressional post in disgrace for ethical violations.

Which brings us to Mitt Romney. When Alex Wagner asked Graham if Romney is a Christian, Graham wiggled this out:

Graham: I like him. He’s a Mormon. Most Christians would not accept Mormonism as part of the Christian faith.

Nevertheless, Graham praised Romney as a candidate. So there you have it. According to this Christian leader, being a serial sinner or a practitioner of a false religion is not an impediment to either the White House or Heaven. But God has much stricter standards for heathens like Obama who are faithful to their families, charitable to others, and ethical in their profession. It really makes you want to sing the praises of whatever brand of Christianity Graham is peddling.

Sarah Palin’s Top Seven CPAC Hack Attacks And Lies

Posted by on February 12, 2012 at 12:00 pm. 7 Comments :

There is no better example of the right’s embrace of idiocy than the rise of Sarah Palin. Conservatives take great pains to refudiate attacks on her intelligence (or lack thereof), but the very fact that they have to rush to her defense so often is evidence of her stupefying ignorance. You never see conservatives forced to defend Karl Rove on those grounds. Liberals may strongly disagree with him but they don’t doubt his IQ.

Palin, on the other hand, is a walking fountain of embarrassing witlessisms. And her keynote speech yesterday at CPAC contributed another mother lode of lunacy. As was to be expected, the bulk of her bluster was aimed squarely at Barack Obama, whom she can only see in terms of evil and strident anti-Americanism. This approach is well received by the simple-minded audience at CPAC that regards cracks about community organizing as worthy of a standing ovation. Surprisingly, the crowd was unfazed by Palin’s use of Satan’s own speaking device: the TelePrompTer.

Sarah Palin at CPAC

However, Palin saved some of her bile for fellow Republican Mitt Romney. She did not mention him by name, but it was clear to whom she was referring when she said that she hoped the nominating process would continue, even to the convention. And it was likewise obvious that Palin was smacking Romney when she said that…

“Our candidate must be someone who can instinctively turn right to constitutional, conservative principles. It’s too late in the game to teach it or spin it at this point. It’s either there or it isn’t.”

But the real entertainment was spread throughout Palin’s address. While there was virtually nothing of substance, there was an abundance of blatant applause lines that fed the Pavlovian lust of the CPACers. Here are just a few of the most mentally deficient snippets from her harangue:

1) [Obama] promised to transform America, and that’s one promise he kept, transforming a shining city on a hill into a sinking ship.
Remember how shiny America was in 2008 when the McCain/Palin ticket was so soundly defeated? The economy was in free fall, we were bleeding jobs, and there were two wars in progress. Obama took command of this ship after Bush and the GOP had already run it into an iceberg, and he has managed to keep it afloat and steer it back into safer waters.

2) When I listened to his State of the Union last month, I was really struck that he barely mentioned unemployment.
Which State of the Union was she listening to? It certainly wasn’t the one Obama delivered where he mentioned “jobs” 33 times. Her dreadful comprehension skills may explain why she was unable to answer a gotcha question like “What do you read?”

3) He’ll invest your money in bullet trains to nowhere, but he’ll stop Boeing from building airplanes anywhere.
It takes balls for Palin to reference the “bridge to nowhere” that was a boondoggle she supported in her home state of Alaska. And it’s no less ballsy to berate initiatives like high-speed rail that would create jobs and improve the infrastructure for commerce. Also, The NLRB decision to oppose Boeing’s plan to to move their facilities to South Carolina was intended to save the jobs of workers that Boeing proposed to abandon in Washington state.

4) We have a better job plan and it’s called the free market. And it worked before this president, and it will work again after this president.
Well, except for this:

Job Creation

5) He says that we need more of his financial regulations. We say go ask MF Global customers how happy they are with his regulatory agencies. Where were they when Jon Corzine lost $1.2 billion of customer funds?
Exactly! Where were Obama’s regulatory agencies? They were tied up by Palin’s Republican pals in Congress who refused to pass the bills that would create them or to confirm the department heads who would manage them. And isn’t Palin thoughtful for showing her concern about a billion dollars lost by wealthy hedge fund investors, but no such concern for hundreds of billions lost by average American homeowners?

6) We’re gonna put our confidence in the strength of our armed forces, not the hollow promises of our adversaries and not the cleverness of our diplomats and our bureaucrats.
So Palin advocates only military solutions to foreign policy disputes. She just can’t abide clever diplomats that could defuse an international crisis and avoid putting American lives at risk, not to mention saving billions of dollars that would be spent at war. Something tells me that even our armed forces would rather rely on diplomacy first.

7) We’ve suffered massive job losses out there. But Washington is hiring.
Actually, there have been 3,000,000 jobs created in the private sector in the past two years. Government jobs, however, have declined by 2.6% during the Obama administration. That’s a record. Obama has done more to shrink government than even Ronald Reagan.

Sitting through Palin’s speech was an excruciating ordeal. Her screechy whine was itself torturous, but the ignorance infused with every sentence, and the cheers it elicited from the undiscriminating crowd, was like aural tasering. Imagine my relief when she came to the obligatory “God bless America” and the end was in sight. However, the final punch line was her selection of Shania Twain’s “Not Just A Pretty Face” to accompany her exit from the stage. It’s amazing that the ego that approved that song can fit into her miniaturized brain.

Andrew Breitbart At CPAC: I Have Videos Of Obama In College

Posted by on February 11, 2012 at 4:11 pm. 7 Comments :

Andrew BreitbartAs if Andrew Breitbart’s performance before some Occupy protesters wasn’t pathetic enough, the terminally choleric pundit delivered an incoherent rant from the CPAC podium. He spent much of the time rambling in sentence fragments, struggling to make sense. But one portion of his speech teased what may be his next video crusade. And, no, I’m not talking about the hilariously twisted “Hating Breitbart” documentary that was announced at the conference. I’m referring to Breitbart’s tantalizing claim to have unearthed videos of President Obama in college.

“I have videos. This election we’re going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008. The videos are going to come out, the narrative is going to come out, that Barack Obama met a bunch of silver ponytails in the 1980s, like Bill (Ayers) and Bernadine Dohrn, who said one day we would have the presidency, and the rest of us slept as they plotted.”

OMG! Obama in college plotting with Ayers to become president. That’s blockbuster material. I can just picture it: A twenty year old Obama meeting with the middle-aged Ayers, drafting a scheme that would see Obama elected to the presidency thirty years later. What foresight and commitment they must have had. Especially since they never met until long after Obama graduated from Harvard Law and eventually moved to Chicago where Ayers lived.

It is also interesting that Breitbart would characterize his comrades on the right as sleeping through the eighties. You know, the eighties when Ronald Reagan was president and conservatism was at its peak. That would explain a lot, like how Reagan got elected president in the first place. Little did they know that liberals were holed up conspiring to take over the free world – thirty years in the future – by electing a black man with no birth certificate to the presidency. A brilliant plan that couldn’t possibly fail. It makes you wonder if there might not be a young, undocumented, Mexican atheist currently putting together a plan with billionaire drug lords to occupy the White House in 2040.

For Breitbart to make these allegations involving Bill Ayers is curious since he just attended a dinner party thrown by Ayers a few days ago. Breitbart was invited to the party by Tucker Carlson who paid $2,500 in a charity auction to have dinner with Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn. Breitbart, ever the gracious guest, told Eric Bolling on the Fox Business Network (whose show was just canceled) that Ayers was a great conversationalist, an incredible chef, and a sociopath.

Another guest for dinner, Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard, posted his recollections of the affair with a distinct and buoyant whine about not having had enough time to harangue his hosts. He ate their food (personally prepared by Ayers), drank their wine, and enjoyed a scrumptious desert of apple pie topped with Ben & Jerry’s AmeriCone Dream (the flavor inspired by Stephen Colbert). But apparently two hours and a free gourmet meal is not deserving of appreciation. How rude of the Ayers’ not to take a seat in the dunking booth and allow their rightist guests to harass them for another hour or two about things they did forty years ago.

Which brings us back to the videos that Breitbart claims to have in his possession. If they are anything like the videos he has released in the past, we can be assured that they will utterly lack any truthful representation of events. Like the ACORN videos that were deliberately edited to create false and negative impressions of people who were unselfishly helping low income citizens to vote and find housing for their families. Like the Shirley Sherrod video that was cut to make her look like a racist when the the whole, unedited video proved just the opposite. Breitbart’s history with video exposes is a cavalcade of conscious deceit.

I have doubts that any videos of Obama’s college years will ever actually be released, but if they are it seems unlikely that they will have any relevance this many years later. Breitbart once famously declared that he would “take down the institutional left” in three weeks. That was two years ago. He’s a radioactive bundle of bluster and petulant anger. And even though he has threatened his liberal enemies saying that “We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns”, I’m not losing any sleep over it.

Fox News Poll: Obama Shines, Tea Party Whines

Posted by on February 10, 2012 at 12:33 pm. 5 Comments :

There are a number of uber-conservative commentators who have arrived at the conclusion that Fox News has slithered down the rabbit hole to a Hades-flavored Wonderland of liberalism. They have convinced themselves that Fox has become as liberal as what they perceive the rest of the media to be. For example. Cliff Kincaid of the far-right Accuracy in Media sees the recent hiring of Fox contributor (and out lesbian) Sally Kohn as evidence of the network’s rightist apostasy. If that bothers him, wait until he sees this: According to a new Fox News poll…

“Barack Obama bests each of the Republican presidential candidates in hypothetical matchups. In addition, the president’s job approval rating hits its highest point in over six months.”

The poll reveals that voters prefer Obama over Romney (47-42), Paul (48-38), Santorum (50-38), and Gingrich (51-38). [Note: A Fox News poll two years ago had similar results] On questions of enthusiasm and integrity, Obama also outpolled all of the Republican hopefuls. Twice as many voters say they are “very” confident in Obama’s ability to fix the economy as say so about Romney. And a majority (61%) of voters approve of the administration’s position on requiring all employer health plans to provide coverage for contraception.

Rupert MurdochThat settles it. Obviously Rupert Murdoch has either succumbed to the will of the Kenyan dictator occupying the White House, or he has converted to Islam, or he has employed a polling firm owned by George Soros. What other explanations can there be for Fox News suddenly reneging on it’s obligation to publish only GOP-friendly press releases dressed up as news?

There are some other notable findings tucked away in the internals of this poll that unveil interesting realities about the Tea Party. First of all, validating my long-held contention that there is no Tea Party (it’s just the farthest right flank of the Republican Party) is that 72% of the so-called Tea Partiers vote Republican. They are even more Republican than other Republicans. For instance on the issue of contraception coverage, Republicans oppose the administration by 57%, but Tea Partiers oppose it by 71%.

More interestingly, the Tea Party faction is a decidedly gloomy congregation. On the economy, 64% of Republicans hold the view that the worst is yet to come, but 72% of Tea Partiers are the hard core economic pessimists. And on almost every question where there was some judgment about Obama, the Tea Partiers were significantly more negative:

  • If Barack Obama were to be re-elected, respondents who said they would be “scared”:
    Republican: 55% / Tea Party: 68%
  • Respondents saying that Obama doesn’t have the integrity to serve:
    Republican: 66% / Tea Party: 75%
  • Respondents saying they are not confidant in Obama fixing the economy:
    Republican: 65% / Tea Party: 76%
  • Respondents saying that they are not confidant in Obama preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons:
    Republican: 48% / Tea Party: 63:

Perhaps the Tea Party could just be renamed the Knee-Jerk Virulently Anti-Obama Party. It is that sort of extremist, fringe positioning that has made the Tea Party anathema even to many loyal Republicans. It is why Tea Party candidates like Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Linda McMahon, Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck, Carly Fiorina, all bombed so miserably in the last election cycle. It’s why the GOP clown car was filled to the brim with characters like Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. And it’s why there is so little enthusiasm for their inevitable, empty suit nominee Mitt Romney

Americans are a generally optimistic bunch. They don’t have much in common with the doomsayers that populate Glenn Beck rallies. And for as long as the GOP allows such pessimism to permeate their ranks, they will be perceived as the party of despair and irrational hatred. But judging by the stump speeches of their current batch of presidential candidates, that may be exactly what they are aiming for.

Nancy Pelosi Launches Campaign To Stop Stephen Colbert And Super PACs

Posted by on February 9, 2012 at 3:49 pm. 6 Comments :

The Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has just launched a campaign to “Stop Colbert,” as in Stephen Colbert, the acerbic incarnation of right-wing blowhardism. The first shot in this battle, for which a brutal retaliation from Colbert can be expected after he gets back from vacation, is this video that Pelosi posted yesterday:

The issue is one that has become an integral part of this election year that has seen income inequality, corporate abuse of power, and fair elections, take precedence over almost every issue other than jobs. Pelosi sums up her position saying that…

“…House Democrats are reintroducing the DISCLOSE Act today to get unlimited, secret donations out of politics. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United opened the floodgates to unrestricted special interest campaign donations in American elections—permitting corporations to spend unlimited funds, directly or through third parties and Political Action Committees organized for those purposes, to influence Federal elections and opened the door for the emergence of Super PACs.”

It is Colbert who has succeeded in making Super PACs one of the most reviled political devices ever conceived. And he did it by starting his own (Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow) and demonstrating how easy it is to collect huge sums of money from secret sources and spending it on self-serving activities without any unaccountability whatsoever.

The issue made headlines this week when President Obama announced that he would not oppose the formation of Super PACs to support his reelection. Republicans immediately pounced on the announcement, portraying it as a flip-flop of his previously expressed position against Super PACs. Of course, Obama did not flip-flop at all. He is still against Super PACS, he has just resigned himself to the fact that they are a part of the electoral process as it currently exists and that abstaining from using them would amount to a unilateral disarmament that would permit Republicans to vastly outspend Democrats this year.

Obama and other Democrats still intend to pursue an agenda to bring an end to the practice as quickly as they can get support from enough members of the GOP to pass legislation like the DISCLOSE Act which Pelosi is addressing in the video above. It is only by the obstructionism of the GOP that the bill has not already become law.

Pelosi is firing both barrels at Colbert in the video. She hammers him for “taking secret money from special interests” and for being “out of control.” And she nails him for his hatred of kittens. As an aside, she zings Newt Gingrich with what could be a fatal blow by referring to him as her friend. If Gingrich’s campaign weren’t already dead, this would surely kill it.

Still, this campaign aimed at Colbert is a big step for Pelosi and company. It was not that long ago that one of Pelosi’s top lieutenants in the House was advising Democratic members to refrain from appearing on The Colbert Report. Rahm Emanuel was the Democratic Caucus chairman before leaving to become Obama’s Chief of Staff, and then mayor of Chicago. But back in March of 2007. while still a member of Congress, Emanuel told his colleagues to “steer clear of Stephen Colbert.” That advice was widely ignored, to the dismay of many congressmen with deficient senses of humor.

The DISCLOSE Act is an important first step in restoring the power of people over corporations and wealthy special interests. Pelosi’s efforts on behalf of this bill are welcome. But in this topsy-turvy world it may turn out that Colbert will wield more influence over the matter in the long run. His brilliant comedic sensibility and fearlessness in injecting his satire into the real world is having an impact that could never have been anticipated. And as Pelosi says, He.Must.Be.Stopped!

Why Is The Media Pretending That Santorum’s Victories Mean Anything?

Posted by on February 8, 2012 at 3:32 pm. 5 Comments :

Yesterday there were another trio of Republican primary contests. They were held in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado. The surprising thing about the results is not that Rick Santorum finished first in all three, it’s that anybody cares at all about these results.

There exactly zero delegates awarded last night. Santorum’s prospects for winning the nomination are no better today than they were yesterday. And for the record, yesterday he did not have a tea bag’s chance in Jello.

Nevertheless, the media is awash in speculation that this meaningless sweep of delegate-free states has somehow turned the election on its ear. They are openly challenging what they previously proclaimed was the inevitability of Mitt Romney. But come Super Tuesday they will see that Romney is just as inevitable as he ever was. Romney will be the GOP nominee. The only scenario in which that will not come to pass is if he makes a phenomenal mistake, or there is a brokered convention led by a conservative delegate revolt.

So why is the media carrying on this way? Because they are placing their priorities where they always place them – on money. Contested elections are a steaming swamp of melodrama. The only thing about these races that make them interesting enough for most people to follow is their entertainment value, and controversy = entertainment. Therefore, the networks do not want the race to be over because it would put an end to the reason that anyone is paying attention. They certainly are not watching to hear for the 47th time that Obama is an incompetent, Soros-funded, Muslim, Alinskyite. And they aren’t watching to learn the candidates’ positions on abortion or taxes.

The only reasons that viewers tune in are: 1) To witness a horrifying train wreck, or 2) To keep up with the horse race. Since no one but the candidates have any control over the potential for train wrecks, the media has to keep the fallacy of a fluid horse race alive in order to continue to draw an audience. Consequently, we have this pointless discussion of Santorum as a viable candidate with a real chance of winning the nomination. He doesn’t. Neither does Gingrich. Neither does Paul. And the media knows it.

The audience is being played by a marketing machine that is only concerned with how many impressions they can deliver for the next Appleby’s commercial. It is a pathetic rejection of the sort of honest journalism that should be informing people about the real issues in the race. The sooner that people stop being excited about irrelevancies like primaries that don’t award delegates and endorsements from clowns like Donald Trump, the sooner we can focus on what’s important and on what will actually have an impact on our lives.

The Mitt Romney Gaffe That Everyone Missed

Posted by on February 6, 2012 at 12:09 pm. 6 Comments :

Over the past few weeks there has been a lot of attention paid to some questionable remarks by GOP frontrunner, Mitt Romney. The tone-deaf nature of his candid statements repeatedly paint a picture of an elitist multimillionaire who is dreadfully out-of-touch with ordinary Americans.

A political candidate ought not to say aloud that he enjoys firing people. Especially one that has a professional resume of doing just that as a corporate raider. Romney can’t claim that he is unaware of the optics of such statements because he already admitted his consciousness of the potential fallout when he responded to a primary debate question about hiring undocumented workers by saying that he couldn’t do such a thing because he’s “running for office, for Pete’s sake”.

Despite his alleged sensitivity to what his words might convey, Romney still let loose a series of eye poppers including his business friendly “Corporations are people, my friend,” his lament that “I’m also unemployed,” and his unwholesome desire to hang Obama with a misery index. Even Republicans’ jaws dropped when they heard Romney tell Soledad O’Brien that he is “not concerned about the very poor.”

Romney’s Nevada victory speech sought to repair some of that damage by telling his exuberant followers that “I’ve walked in Nevada neighborhoods, blighted by abandoned homes, where people wonder why Barack Obama failed them.” If that’s true he managed to do it after having ditched the press and his own PR staff, because there is no documentation of such a stroll, nor of gathering hordes of unfortunates disappointed in Obama. And as if that weren’t enough, Romney celebrated his Nevada victory by repeatedly coming perilously close to referring to Obama as “The Help.”

“Four years ago, candidate Obama came to Nevada, promising to help. […] his help was telling people to skip coming here for conventions. […] Mr. President, Nevada has had enough of your kind of help. […] Mr. President, America has also had enough of your kind of help.”

You can almost hear Romney adding, “If you want to help, Mr. President, bring out some more h’orderves, and give the Bentley a good wash and wax.”

The Help

Now It’s A Holy War: The Fox Nation Launches A Crusade

Posted by on February 3, 2012 at 1:41 pm. 7 Comments :

Notice a pattern here:

Fox Nation Holy War

Fox News has been at war against Democrats and liberals since its inception. The have declared wars on Christmas, environmentalism, community organizers, students, seniors, the poor, and on and on. The election season has seen a ramping up of their instigation of class war.

None of that has managed to pick up support from the American people who are the real targets of these invented wars. The class war, in particular, has been a resounding failure for Fox because the country has consistently sided with the 99% over the GOP (Greedy One Percent).

So the Fox Nationalists are upping the ante by sending their troops on a mission to invade the Kingdom of Heaven. This is no longer a battle of mortals, but a celestial conflagration that they are blaming on President Obama.

Once again, the rightist crusaders are demonstrating their rank hypocrisy by lambasting the President for daring to quote scripture. Conservatives have built a cottage industry of forcing their religious beliefs into the political arena. They demand that Christian dogma be codified into law. They insist that Christian fables be taught as if they were historically affirmed. They falsely assert that the nation’s founders were devout Christians who intended their faith to direct the course of the country. They complain bitterly that Christians are the only group that are discriminated against. They are, to be succinct, delusional.

So it’s onward Republican soldiers, and marching lockstep with them are the Murdoch Militia, valiantly defending America from DemonCrats and spreading their message of an imminent Armageddon. And all because they can’t abide the fact that a Democratic President shares their faith.

IT’S OFFICIAL: Trumpney Is Born

Posted by on February 2, 2012 at 3:10 pm. 4 Comments :

Today will be remembered in the annals of political history as the day a hybrid presidential candidate was unleashed on America. A candidate that incorporates the wealth and breeding of a political dynasty with the riches and elitism of a casino boss.

Trumpney

Mitt Romney and Donald Trump have much in common. They are both filthy rich. They have both presided over businesses that went bankrupt. They both like to fire people, as they have said:

Romney: I like to fire people.
Trump: You’re fired.

Perhaps the most significant of their shared characteristics is that they are both proud members of the GOP (Greedy One Percent). That affiliation has got to be the worst timing for a political campaign in a year when the abuse of wealth, corporate power, and the marriage of the two, has become such a volatile political issue.

Romney’s campaign is already hampered by the popular impression that he is an out-of-touch, elitist, multimillionaire. His previous comments about being one of the unemployed, defending the personhood of corporations, and casually making $10,000 bets, has already hurt Romney with middle-class and independent voters. And now, the day after he told CNN that he “doesn’t care about the very poor,” he hooks up with America’s prime example of extravagant excess. Couldn’t they have waited a week or two?

Not that that would have helped much. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, the Trump endorsement is toxic. The survey revealed that 20% of the respondents said that they would be “less likely” to vote for a candidate that Trump had endorsed. Indeed, the survey showed that Trump would scare off more voters than any of the other people tested.

Finally, Romney will have a lot to answer for. Some of the questions that should be put to him include:

  • Do you believe Obama’s birth certificate is real?
  • Do you believe Obama is a Christian?
  • Do you believe Obama wrote his own books?
  • Do you believe Obama earned his academic credentials?

Those are all issues that Trump has highlighted in his media escapades, and he has made it clear that he would answer every one of those questions in the negative. Where does Romney stand?

So Trumpney has been loosed on the world. And comedians everywhere are gasping for breath as they scribble feverishly in their notebooks. This campaign just keeps getting better. With the potential for endless hilarity, November will come all too soon.

Donald Trump To Endorse Mitt Romney? Gingrich Dodges A Bullet

Posted by on February 2, 2012 at 9:02 am. 2 Comments :

[Editor: If this article looks familiar, it’s only because everything in politics looks the same]

The InterTubes are buzzing with the news that tomorrow morning carnival barker Donald Trump has scheduled a press conference to make an “important” announcement concerning the presidential race.

Donald Trump

Some reports are already disclosing that their sources say that Trump will give his uncoveted and toxic endorsement to Mitt Romney. This is further affirmation of Trump’s political acumen as the gold-plated Trump casts his lot with the candidate who doesn’t care about the poor.

Trump’s support, if it pans out, would follow the endorsements of lunatic fringers Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and Jon Voight. The good news for Romney is that none of these epic losers managed to dampen his showing in the Florida primary this week. That may prove fortuitous because a Trump endorsement is potentially far more damaging.

As it turns out, Trump’s seal of approval could be the most severe test yet for Romney’s electoral prospects. The Pew Research Center surveyed voters last month and found that 20% said that they would be “less likely” to vote for a candidate that Trump had endorsed. Indeed, the survey showed that Trump would scare off more voters than any of the other people tested.

However, we must not assume that Trump doesn’t have an ulterior, self-serving motive. In fact, we should always assume that he does. In this case it might have something to do with his oft-stated threat that he would consider launching an independent campaign for president if his preferred candidate did not prevail in the GOP primary. Thus, by endorsing someone who the establishment has embraced, Trump provides himself the perfect excuse to stay out of a race he knows he can’t win, and to continue to earn the only income he has as a television game show host.

In the meantime, it would be useful to recall the planks in the Trump platform. When Romney accepts Trump’s endorsement and praises him for stepping forward to support his fellow one-percenter, he should be called on to comment on these issues that Trump has focused on so intently:

1) Obama’s Citizenship: This is without a doubt the cornerstone of Trump’s campaign. He talks about it at every appearance – even those where he pretends to not want to talk about it. Obama has shown the only document that the state of Hawaii issues for births. If Trump wants to continue to believe that the Obama family (and assorted communists and Muslims) hatched a plot almost fifty years ago to raise a mixed-race, foreign-born child to become an illegitimate president, that’s between him and his racist, delusional followers.

2) Obama’s Religion: Despite the fact that the President has repeatedly affirmed his devout Christianity, Trump suspects that he is secretly a Muslim and the proof may be on his birth certificate. Never mind that any religious designation on a birth certificate would be irrelevant. Obviously the baby Barack did not select his faith, but the adult has been clear and consistent.

3) Obama’s Authorship: Trump has embraced the WorldNetDaily crackpots who believe that Bill Ayers was the ghostwriter of Obama’s autobiography “Dreams From My Father.” The evidence of this fraud is the observation that both used certain phrases like going “against the current.” Well, that settles that. Trump also believes that Obama was born Barry Soetoro and later changed his name, despite the fact that he was named after his father, Barack Obama, Sr., and it wasn’t until he was four years old that his mother was remarried to Lolo Soetoro.

4) Obama’s Academics: Trump is fond of questioning Obama’s academic credentials, insisting that he was too stupid to get into Harvard. He says he is investigating this (are they the same investigators he sent to Hawaii?). Of course it is documented that Obama had graduated from Columbia before getting a scholarship to Harvard where he became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude.

5) Foreign Policy: Trump has advocated declaring a trade war with China. He also proposed addressing the deficit by stealing the oil from Libya and Iraq. This is the sort of bravado that Trump likes to display with his own business enterprises, which have resulted in four bankruptcies. In addition he has expressed support for an actual shooting war with both Iran and North Korea. However, with international relations between sovereign nations with standing armies, he may produce even worse outcomes than he has with his failing hotels and casinos.

6) Economic Policy: While he doesn’t have a 999 plan, Trump has proposed a tax increase that might inflame the sensitivities of Grover Norquist and the Tea Party:

“I would impose a one-time, 14.25% tax on individuals and trusts with a net worth over $10 million. For individuals, net worth would be calculated minus the value of their principal residence. That would raise $5.7 trillion in new revenue, which we would use to pay off the entire national debt. […] Some will say that my plan is unfair to the extremely wealthy. I say it is only reasonable to shift the burden to those most able to pay. The wealthy actually would not suffer severe repercussions.”

That actually sounds pretty good. Too bad he has disavowed that plan that appeared in his book, and now thinks he can appropriate billions of dollars from other countries to pay down our debt (he doesn’t say how).

We’ll see tomorrow if the speculation proves to be correct and Romney is boosted by burdened with the curse of Trump love. But the one thing we know for sure is that the Gingrich camp, now in Las Vegas in advance of the Nevada caucuses, will be scrambling to explain to his Tea Party contingent why it’s really fantastic that Trump jilted him. Whether he knows it or not, he dodged a bullet, and Romney is the one who should be worried.