Donald Trump To Endorse Newt Gingrich? Champagne Flowing At Romney HQ

Posted by on February 1, 2012 at 11:12 pm. NO Comments :

[Editor’s Note: This article has been superseded by this one]

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 Newt Gingrich. This is further affirmation of Trump’s political acumen as he casts his lot with the fastest sinking ship on the sea.

Trump’s support, if it pans out, would follow the endorsements of Wrangler Rick Perry and pizza magnate Herman Cain, as well as the plea from fading Tea Hag Sarah Palin, who made it clear that she just wants to keep the hamster wheel spinning. None of these epic losers were able to boost Gingrich’s showing in the Florida primary this week.

As it turns out, no one should expect Trump’s seal of approval to have any better effect on Gingrich’s 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 is almost certain to lose, Trump positions himself to step in as the savior that he envisions himself to be. And all I can say about that scenario is “please, please, dear God, please!”

In the meantime, it would be useful to recall the planks in the Trump platform. When Gingrich accepts Trump’s endorsement and praises him for stepping forward to grab some Newt-mentum, 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 Gingrich is boosted by burdened with the curse of Trump love. But the one thing we know for sure is that the Romney camp, now in Las Vegas in advance of the Nevada caucuses, will be exhausted by the time Trump has delivered his announcement. They will have been celebrating all night in Sin City. With all the vintage champagne flowing in those luxury casino suites, who knows, Romney may have a couple of new wives by morning.

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The Wall Street Journal Uncovers Obama’s Enemies List

Posted by on February 1, 2012 at 3:46 pm. 4 Comments :

When Rupert Murdoch bought Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, most observers were properly concerned about how he would go about destroying the paper’s legacy. The speculation leaned toward obvious predictions of more overt bias inserted into the news pages, as well as dumbing down the articles by shortening them and diluting the journalistic content with tabloid sensationalism and a reliance on dubious sources. But I’m not sure anyone predicted this:

Today’s issue of the Journal contained an article purporting to reveal President Obama’s “Enemies List.” The author, Theodore Olsen, paints a disturbing picture of a vengeful White House bent on destroying innocent, patriotic Americans who want nothing more than to run a business, create jobs, and bring energy to America.

The ominous list that has Olsen so upset seems to have only two names: Charles and David Koch. And coincidentally, Olsen, an attorney, represents the Koch brothers. So the Wall Street Journal handed over their editorial page to the Koch brothers’ lawyer for the purpose of accusing the President of carrying out some sort of vendetta against them.

For a lawyer, he doesn’t try very hard to make his case. The article alleges several times that the President has personally, or via his direction, made the Kochs “targets of a campaign of vituperation and assault.” However, he doesn’t provide a single example to support his claim. The article begins…

“How would you feel if aides to the president of the United States singled you out by name for attack, and if you were featured prominently in the president’s re-election campaign as an enemy of the people?”

The only problem is that that never happened. If Obama ever uttered the name of the Koch brothers, I can’t find it. It would not surprise me if they were mentioned by aides, but most likely while defending the President against attacks on him. I challenge Olsen to present his evidence that anyone in the White House ever characterized the Koch brothers as enemies of the people.

On the other hand, the Koch brothers created and bankrolled the Tea Party, an AstroTurf, corporate funded, pseudo-movement, that incessantly disparages Obama as a communist, a Nazi, a Muslim, an atheist, a Kenyan, and a Manchurian agent whose mission is to deliver America to its enemies and/or Satan. The Kochs are also the money behind numerous think tanks and organizations whose purpose is to destroy the presidency through propaganda or outright manipulation and suppression of the vote. One such organization is the American Legislative Exchange Council which drafts bills and then pays GOP legislators to carry them in state houses across the country.

Olsen attempts to inoculate the Kochs from criticism by portraying them as merely private citizens going about their business. The absurdity of that depiction is downright surreal. To suggest that because the Kochs do not hold public office, that they are not an integral part of the political landscape in America, is akin to suggesting that because Charles Manson did not hold a weapon, that he is not guilty of murder. The Kochs are the masterminds and financiers of the most prominent attack groups on the right that are trying to bring the Obama administration to a crashing end. It is a role they assumed voluntarily and enthusiastically.

Olsen’s article drops names of some historical villains that he asserts have something in common with Obama. He cites Richard Nixon, who actually did have an enemies list and abused the power of his office in order to punish the people on it. But Olsen cannot seem to find even one example of Obama doing anything similar. He just brings up the Nixon name to deceitfully tie it to the President. Then Olsen does the very same thing with Joe McCarthy, who orchestrated a campaign of red-baiting that ruined the lives of countless innocent people. Again, Olsen offers nothing to show any connection to Obama. He just likes to use their names in the same sentence in the hopes of having the infamy rub off.

The article continues with ad hominem use of contentious rhetoric like “the exercise of tyrannical power” and “stand up against oppression” to falsely convey the impression that Obama is attempting to “demonize and stigmatize” the Kochs. But nowhere does Olsen justify such language.

Like many conservatives, Olsen holds a perverse definition of free speech wherein conservatives are permitted vast leeway to spew any and all slander that they like, but if the other side seeks to respond they are guilty of stomping on the rights of the right-wingers. If the Kochs want to play the political game, and by the evidence of their prodigious spending they obviously do, then they cannot complain when the victims of their assaults fire back. The Kochs are not waifs who wandered unaware onto a battlefield. They know what they are doing and they have vast resources to plot their designs on society. They even have the support of the Wall Street Journal who will publish the screeds of their attorneys on the editorial page as if it were there personal diary. What more do they want?

Message to the Kochs: Either stop disseminating self-serving propaganda and fomenting hostile division in America, or be prepared if your victims decline to roll over, or STFU.


NO KIDDING: Mitt Romney Says He Doesn’t Care About The Poor

Posted by on February 1, 2012 at 12:30 pm. 3 Comments :

File this under “Tell Me Something I Didn’t Know.”

Mitt Romney appeared on CNN this morning and told Soledad O’Brien something that was already known by anyone paying attention:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich. They’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

Romney’s qualification about the safety net is a weak argument for ceasing to care about people who are struggling to find work, to feed their children, and to pay for housing and health care. This is a statement that could only be made by someone so utterly lacking empathy and experience with anything outside of his millionaire bubble.

The poor in America are all too familiar with the safety net’s shortcomings. A politician can reasonably choose to focus on middle class issues, but to say aloud that they don’t care about poor people reveals something fundamentally amiss in their character. Especially if that politician is a multimillionaire.

Romney’s statement also asserts that he isn’tconcerned about the very rich. But if that’s true, then why is he struggling so feverishly to give them (him) additional tax cuts and federal benefits? For the rich people he doesn’t care about, he fights to increase their wealth. For the poor, he might try to fix some holes in the safety net if he determines it’s needed. That’s the perspective of a selfish elitist who has no idea what the nation is going through. And it’s a perspective that will make it very difficult for him to ever become president.


Fox Nation vs. Reality: Obama’s Empathy Exposed

Posted by on January 31, 2012 at 2:33 am. 9 Comments :

During an online town hall with President Obama a woman asked a question (video below) regarding her husband’s difficulty finding work despite having an engineering degree and ten years of experience. She wanted to know why the country continues to issue H1B visas when there are Americans looking for work? Fox Nation editorialized on Obama’s answer saying that he “came off sounding totally baffled and out of touch.” The Fox Nationalists described it in their headline story as “Not Obama’s Most Empathetic Moment.”

Fox Nation

The negative interpretation by Fox Nation could only have come from a seriously prejudiced viewer. Obama’s response was both caring and helpful. He told the woman that there is a huge demand for engineers around the country and that her husband should not be having trouble finding a job (depending on his particular specialty). He noted that H1B visas are only available for companies that have been unable to find Americans to fill their job vacancies. Then he asked her to send her husbands resume and he would see to it that it gets to people who are hiring. The woman then tells the President that she appreciates his response and that she will take him up on his offer.

How the Fox Nationalists saw that as lacking empathy would be a mystery if you were unaware of their desperate determination to see everything Obama does as either evil, incompetent, uncaring, or un-American. But you have to admire their gall in publishing such a biased opinion along with the video that proves their opinion is bullshit.


The End Of The Romney Campaign, Courtesy Of George Soros

Posted by on January 30, 2012 at 12:09 pm. 1 Comments :

The Tea Party contingent of the right-wing Republican set has long regarded George Soros as the mastermind of every evil they imagine has been perpetrated in America for the last half century. It is full-on fixation that connects Soros to everything from the Holocaust to Global Warming. And, like most psychotic fixations, it has no basis in reality.

Consequently, what could be a more damning allegation against a Republican than that they are allied with Soros? It’s the knockout punch. It’s the death blow. It’s the Newtron bomb. And it’s what Mitt Romney is staring down this morning. In an interview in Davos, Switzerland, Soros finished Romney off with these words:

“Well, look, either you’ll have an extremist conservative, be it Gingrich or Santorum, in which case I think it will make a big difference which of the two comes in. If it’s between Obama and Romney, there isn’t all that much difference except for the crowd that they bring with them.”

That settles it. Romney is toast. How could he possibly survive such a wound?

But there must be more to this than what is observable on the surface. After all, if Soros is the evil genius the right believes him to be, then to what end would he make such a comment? He certainly knows how his opinions are magnified through his web of media minions. There can be only one possible answer. Soros is deliberately sabotaging Romney. He wants Gingrich to be the GOP nominee because he knows that Gingrich will not only lose the race for president, but he will also likely cause the loss of the GOP control of the House and much of their power in the states.

It’s a devious plot that has already taken in Gingrich, who quickly jumped on the story and is excitedly pushing this quote to the press. It will probably become a part of his stump speech, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it featured in his next TV ad. It’s just too juicy a plum to leave dangling.

The Soros Fixation is so toxic that it causes hallucinations in those infected. For instance, conservatives are convinced that Soros commands a media empire that blankets the planet despite the fact that he has zero interest in any prominent media enterprise. He may have donated large sums of money to Media Matters and NPR, but he has no editorial authority over them, and they are not exactly the equivalent of Time Warner or NBC News. That is starkly distinct from the influence of a mogul like Rupert Murdoch who is directly in charge of a worldwide criminal … I mean media conglomerate.

The depths of the Soros fixation are nearly immeasurable. Cliff Kincaid, the director of the right-wing Accuracy in Media actually argues that Soros is pursuing an acquisition of Fox News and that he is “getting his way.” Kincaid believes that it was Soros who pressured Fox to dump Glenn Beck, and he is now trying to launch an effort to force the network to rehire Beck. Says Kincaid…

“It’s time for Glenn Beck, now on Internet TV, to return to the cable channel so that he can continue his investigative journalism into the rapidly expanding influence of the Soros network of organizations.” […He continues…] “Fox is moving to the left and filling its ranks with the kind of shallow commentators we have come to associate with the little-watched cable channel MSNBC.”

That quixotic fantasy reveals just how severely the fixation has damaged some sufferers. When someone can seriously portray Beck as an “investigative journalist” and Fox as “moving to the left,” you know it’s time to increase the dosage. And the notion that any of the brass at Fox want Beck back is belied by the fact that, in their separation announcement, they said there would be specials and documentaries from Beck, but none have materialized.

The question is: Will the right be fooled by this attempt by Soros to deep-six Romney and, subsequently, Republican hopes for retaking the White House? And the answer is: Of course they will! Once the name Soros has entered their psyche they lose what little cognitive ability they had. For Romney to recover from the devastating impact of this blow will take superhuman strength (which Romney lacks) or buckets of cash (which Romney bathes in).

Either way it affirms the mental and strategic superiority of George Soros who is capable of upending his enemies anytime he wants. Other political players could learn from this example. Nancy Pelosi, for instance, could doom the career of any Republican she chooses by simply endorsing them. And if President Obama were to come out against raising taxes for the rich, there would be a GOP drafted bill to do just that on his desk by the next morning.


Battlefield America: GOP Confederate Allen West Declares Civil War

Posted by on January 30, 2012 at 9:35 am. 7 Comments :

Allen West is representative from Florida’s 22 district with a unique vision of America. It’s a vision that permits only his interpretation of what constitutes American values. Stray from West’s dictatorial creed and you are not fit to be an American and must be banished. Never mind free speech and other Constitutional guarantees of liberty, it is West’s proclamation of patriotism that counts and nothing else. In that spirit West told his comrades at a Republican Party event (video below) that…

“This is a battlefield, that we must stand upon. We need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and my dear friend the chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain’t on the table. Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.“

In that short paragraph West has expressed a perverted view of Constitutional liberties, denied the freedom of expression to elected representatives, and asserted what amounts to a declaration of civil war. This beacon of intolerance cannot grasp the the fact that his disparagement of his perceived political enemies in Washington, extends to the millions of Americans who voted for them. He might as well be telling half the nation to get the hell out of the nation.

West is serving his first term in the House, and maybe his last if his district has any sense. His brief time in public service follows a military career that ended in disgrace after he interrogated an Iraqi police officer (who was never found to have done anything wrong) by firing a bullet just past his head. Since becoming a congressman West has made an embarrassing spectacle of himself by hiring an aide who riled up a Tea Party rally by saying that “If ballots don’t work, bullets will.” And despite his collegial reference above to his “dear friend the chairman of the Democrat National Committee,” he previously said this about her:

“You [Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz] are the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the US House of Representatives.”

West also seems to have caught Nazi Tourette’s Syndrome from Glenn Beck. He can’t seem to stop using Nazi references almost every time he stands to speak. Here’s an example that Fox News was so impressed with they featured on their Fox Nation web site:

Fox Nation - Allen West Nazi

There many more examples at the link above. This is the character of Allen West. He is a disreputable purveyor of hate and an advocate of violence and suppression of free thought. The good news is that he is also a vulnerable incumbent who is likely to be a one-term congressman. You can help to affect that outcome by supporting the CREDO SuperPAC to Take Down the Tea Party Ten. Sign the petition and make a donation today.

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Retch Against the Machine: Sarah Palin vs. Stalinist Cannibals

Posted by on January 29, 2012 at 9:47 am. 7 Comments :

Now you’ve done it. Yeah you, you Republican presidential primary contenders. You’ve gone and made Sarah Palin mad. This is a day you will live to regret. After all, Palin is still the leader of a fearsome army of Facebook fanatics that worship her despite the fact that she hasn’t done a damn thing since she lost the campaign in 2008 and quit her job as governor half way through. That’s over three years as a professional slacker, leeching off of her PAC contributors and phoning in her insipid commentaries to Fox News.

Palin’s latest Facebook harangue is aimed squarely at her fellow Republicans vying for the GOP nomination. And she doesn’t like what she’s seeing. The tirade titled “Cannibals in GOP Establishment Employ Tactics of the Left,” commences with a blistering assault on the lack of civility that she has always cherished:

“We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.”

Yes, the Rogue Warrior is not about to sit still for the Republican establishment, which embraced the Tea Party so tightly, and has elevated Reagan to sainthood, as they sink down to the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent. The woman who charged that her opponent was “pallin’ around with terrorists” would never behave so abysmally.

Palin invokes the sacred creed of Reagan’s “11th Commandment” which deemed that Republicans never speak ill of other Republicans. To sane outsiders that always seemed to be a call for self-censorship, but to GOP partisans it was simply an edict to coordinate their propaganda and speak with one robotically undifferentiated voice. While Palin says that she has “no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a heated campaign,” she never explains how to tumble roughly in a campaign limited to reciprocal pleasantries.

Palin further asserts that she has never before seen the equivalent of this past week’s political brawl in a GOP primary race. For a woman who could not answer a question about what she reads, I suppose we can forgive her for not knowing about some famous incidents in the not-to-distant past. For instance when George H. W. Bush called Reagan’s economic plan “voodoo economics.” Or when his son George W. Bush spread rumors that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. Or when McCain likened Mitt Romney’s position on waterboarding to Pol Pot’s. Palin even resorts to the sort of incivility about which she is complaining in this Facebook post:

“What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque rewriting of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.”

Stalin-esque? Palin is comparing Republican criticisms of Gingrich to a brutal dictatorship that was responsible for the deaths of millions of its own people. And she wants to lecture others about the politics of personal destruction? Then she throws in an Alinsky reference for good measure even though there is nothing in her remarks that is associated with any “tactic” advocated by Alinsky. Right-wingers just like to say his name every few minutes. Following that they like to pretend that they are anti-establishment crusaders. Palin asserts that…

“…this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party.”

The poor pitiful Tea Party is being persecuted by the big, bad GOP establishment. You know, the one that created it, funded it, and pandered to it during the last election cycle. And it’s now up to Palin to defend the Tea Partiers who are nothing more than a widely disliked, far right faction of her own party. She expanded on that whining in an appearance on the Tea Party Network (aka Fox News) where she inexplicably connected herself to the leftist punk rock band Rage Against the Machine. And her manner of raging means “vote for Gingrich.” The former members of Rage are surely retching upon hearing this.

Fox Nation

But Mama Grizzly isn’t through yet…

“[T]rust me, during the general election, Governor Romney’s statements and record in the private sector will be relentlessly parsed over by the opposition in excruciating detail to frighten off swing voters. This is why we need a fair primary that is not prematurely cut short by the GOP establishment using Alinsky tactics to kneecap Governor Romney’s chief rival.”

There’s Alinsky again. But more to the point, Palin is at once advocating prolonging the primary contest so that Romney’s record can be picked apart by Republican rivals, while lambasting the party for “crucifying” Gingrich. She really needs to pick an argument and stick to it. But the best part of Palin’s Facebook frenzy comes at the close:

“We will not save our country by becoming like the left. And I question whether the GOP establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama. I didn’t see it in 2008.”

If she didn’t see it 2008 it was because she was blinded by the right. Her campaign was amongst the harshest purveyors of attacks on Obama that ran the gamut of absurd allegations casting him as a communist, a Muslim, a Kenyan, and more. But now she questions whether the GOP establishment would ever employ such harsh tactics against Obama. Furthermore, she resorts to portraying Romney as the establishment’s favorite son and even uses the phrase “chosen one.” Hmm, where have we heard that before?

Finally, in this Facebook offensive Palin helpfully admits that Fox News is not the fair and balanced news enterprise it pretends to be. She reminisces wistfully about “a time when conservatives didn’t have Fox News.” I wonder if her boss, Roger Ailes, minds that she is spilling her guts about the intentional bias of the network that employs her. And I wonder if he minds that she is bashing the party that the network was created to promote.


Endorsement News: Herman Cain And Jon Voight Declare

Posted by on January 28, 2012 at 11:02 pm. 2 Comments :

The shape of the Republican campaign is getting more abstract by the day.

At a Newt Gingrich rally today in Florida, Herman Cain popped in to announce that he was “officially and enthusiastically” endorsing the former House Speaker. This was an entirely predictable event. Who else would Cain, a serial sexual harasser, endorse other than Gingrich, a serial philanderer? If Gingrich gets the nomination he could pick Cain as his running mate and be the misogynistic ticket. The Cain endorsement also produced one of the best headlines of the season in the Los Angeles Times: “Cain endorsement could boost Gingrich campaign.” Yeah, right. Gingrich said in a statement. “I’m honored to have Herman’s support, and I look forward to working with him to help put the American people back to work…” …delivering pizzas. In order to pledge his support for Gingrich, Cain must be revoking the endorsement he gave previously. He must no longer be in favor of “The People.”

Elsewhere, Angelina Jolie’s estranged and disturbed Tea Partying father, Jon Voight, gave his support to Mitt Romney. Voight praised Romney as “strong, honest and wants to bring the country back to its exceptional place where we have been for hundreds of hundreds of years, until President Obama decided to follow his father’s footsteps and take us to socialism.” Romney was actually on the stage with Voight as he delivered that lunatic screed that managed to lie about Obama and insult his dead father whom he never knew. That’s just what Romney’s campaign needs: more Glenn Beck inspired dementia to pull in the Tea Party crowd that isn’t yet convinced by Cain’s endorsement of Gingrich.

This is just too much fun, and we haven’t even gotten started yet.


Double Jeopardy: Rachal Maddow vs. Sarah Palin

Posted by on January 27, 2012 at 4:03 pm. 5 Comments :

The folks at NewsBusters think they have stumbled on the ultimate put down of one of the left’s favorite spokespersons. Last night on Jeopardy the contestants blanked out on the following question:

“This cable TV newswoman received a doctorate in politics from Oxford”

Accompanying the question was a picture of Rachel Maddow, but that still didn’t help the contestants come up with a correct response. The NewsBusters then opined that…

“This can’t possibly be great news to MSNBC execs given Maddow’s lead role in the network’s recent debate coverage.”

I’m inclined to agree. If I were an MSNBC exec I would be concerned that a panel of intelligent, well-informed players couldn’t identify the network’s star attraction. However, another star of the political universe met with the same fate last year when the Jeopardy answer was…

“Her latest book is titled ‘America by Heart: Reflections on Faith, Family and Flag.'”

Fox Nation - Rachel MaddowNot one of the contestants knew that the correct question was “Who is Sarah Palin.” So if it is an indication of the irrelevance of Maddow that she was unknown to the Jeopardy panel, how much worse is that Palin, who had run for Vice-President and become a regular contributor on Fox News, was also unknown in the same venue? Palin has had far more media exposure throughout the media world than Maddow, who is mostly limited to appearances on MSNBC.

Not surprisingly, the right-wing media noise machine quickly pounced on this story and regurgitated it throughout the blogosphere. Of course that included Fox News whose Fox Nation posted the item with a snarky headline reading, “Rachel Who?” But don’t bother looking for their article about Sarah Palin’s turn on Jeopardy. Fox is not about to reveal the truth about their overpaid, irrelevant leading lady.


The New GOP Base: Rich, Philandering, Terrorist Symps

Posted by on January 26, 2012 at 9:22 am. 8 Comments :

This election, like any election, is a contest of persuading targeted blocks of voters to support your candidacy. It’s a deceptively complex game of identifying groups of people with characteristics that are in harmony with the theme of your campaign and getting them to the polls.

Democrats typically solicit union members, middle-income families, senior citizens, and minorities, and attempt to cobble together a coalition. Republicans have been known to make appeals to business people, the white working class, and evangelicals. But this year there is something happening that is curious and perverse. This new development is observable in a couple of recent comments by GOP leaders and media.

Newt Gingrich, in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, was asked about his his multiple affairs and marriages. He responded with a rather unique justification for why behaving like a rutting pig would make him a better candidate:

“It may make me more normal than somebody who wanders around seeming perfect and maybe not understanding the human condition and challenges of life for normal people.”

Apparently Gingrich thinks that cheating on your wife, and/or wives, is “normal” and humanizing. He actually believes that his moral indecencies make him a superior candidate. And conversely, that marital fidelity exposes one’s arrogance as attempting to pass off a facade of phony perfection. By Gingrich’s ethical standards Romney would be wise to shag a BYU cheerleader if he really wants to connect with America and win the presidency.

Another peculiar comment came from Sen. Jim DeMint (Tea Party, SC). He spoke with Neil Cavuto on Fox News in response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech and the issue of tax fairness and whether the wealthy are paying their fair share:

“Well, Neil, we’ve got a challenge in America because about half the country is getting something from government, and that message is going to appeal to them. Republicans have got to appeal to the half of Americans who are paying income taxes, who are working and know better. And it’s not a matter of kind of watering down our message to appeal to those who want more from government, we’ve got to unite that part of America that understands what makes us great. It’s not going to be easy, because it sounds good to say: Let’s tax the rich.”

DeMint is suggesting that the GOP disregard the portion of the electorate that he says are not paying taxes. First of all, he is regurgitating a false argument that people who do not pay federal income taxes are not paying any taxes at all. They do, of course, pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, and state and local taxes, in amounts that raise their effective tax rates to levels comparable to the national averages. But more importantly, the “half of Americans” that DeMint is writing off are, by and large, senior citizens, students, and the working poor, because that is who generally qualify for exemptions from federal income taxes. Perhaps he’d like to tax them more to make up for the tax cuts he has given to his rich pals.

Finally, Fox News chimed in with a segment on their business network. Regular contributor Liz Trotta was called upon to offer her impressions of the State of the Union speech. What struck her was the news released after the speech about the rescue of an American held hostage by Somali pirates:

“How many times is he going to use Seal Team 6 to get out of trouble?” […] “They are becoming political operatives. I don’t trust this guy at all.”

Seriously? Trotta is appalled that the President is sending elite commando squads to save the lives of American citizens. She is implying that it would have been better if the hostages had been left to rot in the pirates’ lair. And if her indifference to the suffering of the victims weren’t bad enough, she goes on to insult the heroes who risked their lives, freed the captives, and dispensed with the terrorists.

So yesterday was a day that saw the Republican Party cast aside vast amounts of voters who are average citizens and retirees. They rejected voters who dare to be faithful to their spouses. And they insulted heroic soldiers and the patriots who support them. Consequently, it appears that the GOP has staked out a claim for the upper-class, philandering, terrorist sympathizer vote. That’s a unique campaign strategy, to say the least. And if that’s the case, I say let them have it, and good luck in November.