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Showing posts with label Republican Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republican Party. Show all posts

Friday, February 12, 2016

And Then There Were Six

Jim Gilmore has just suspended his campaign. I realize this comes as shock to three people in the United States but they're just going to have to muddle through.

This leaves us with Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Kasich, and Carson.

Sunday, February 07, 2016

The Contrast

Juxtapose the Democratic Debate last Thursday with the Republican Debate last night. See any stark differences? The former showcased two adults having an intelligent and vigorous debate that spoke to the ideological core of the Democratic party. The latter looked like a food fight at a middle school with Marco Rubio being the kid that everyone picked on.

As Steve Benen and Tegan Goddard recently noted, the big winner of the Democratic debate was...the Democrats.

“The real winners were Democratic voters,” Goddard wrote overnight. “Anyone who watched learned a lot. It made the Republican debates look like over-produced game shows.” 

I think that’s both true and important. I don’t doubt that Clinton’s and Sanders’ backers can make spirited cases why their candidate prevailed, but I hope they won’t miss the forest for the trees: for two hours, Americans saw two very capable candidates engage in a deeply substantive, engrossing discussion that mattered.

I'd add that Bernie Sanders has been exactly what the Democrats needed at this moment in time and he knows it. For too long, Democrats have succumbed to a sort of faux compromise where the Republicans (really, the Tea Party...now fully absorbed into the GOP) stake a claim so far on the right side of the field that any consensus inevitably ends up being a conservative (see also: non functional in objective reality) solution.

Now with Sanders on the scene, he pulls the party in the far left direction and any sort of compromise ends up where it should be...in the fucking middle. 

He makes Hillary a better candidate and so does the press...beating up on her from everything to her emails, to her Wall Street speeches, to her "lackluster" campaign and especially to her honesty gap. I say get all that shit out there now so she can get her game together for the fall. Force her to go farther left on some issues that she may feel comfortable with so the nation can benefit.

Because it's pretty clear the nation isn't going to benefit from any of the GOP candidates. Take a look at how the debate started off.


What a fantastic metaphor for the GOP in 2016. It only got worse from there.

Marco Rubio has been rising the polls these last few days but he really looked out of his league last night, repeating himself over and over again.


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Wow.

The rest of the night showed 7 little boys sniping at each other that honestly reminded me of my 8th graders. Actually, I take that back. My 8th graders are more mature than these guys.

I'll have my predictions for New Hampshire on Monday night.



Friday, January 09, 2015

Good Words

From my most recent question on Quora...

The Southern Strategy is overwhelmingly the biggest reason for the shift in American politics, and that strategy DOES have its roots in the opposition to the Civil Rights movement in this country. There were residual issues from that era that bled into the '70's-notably Affirmative Action, Busing/educational issues, urban issues, etc. All of these issues essentially had a Black face. 

In addition, other movements were making their mark as well-Cesar Chavez in the '70's started the labor movement among Hispanic/Mexican immigrants, and Stonewall (beginning of the gay rights movement) occurred in the later part of the decade. Hispanics and gays are also next to blacks on the Republican bullseye. All of these things changed America from a white dominated culture to a more multicultural country-and the most conservative, racist individuals in the South reacted by using racial coding to give aid and comfort to a white population that was uncomfortable with the changes. 

You have to remember: after the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was passed in the US, many Southern Democrats-called Dixiecrats-left the Democratic party for the Republican party in protest. They were vehemently against the concept of equal rights for blacks. That spirit of the Dixiecrats is still alive thanks to the "Southern Strategy". Starting with Nixon, Republicans took that spirit and fanned the flames of the anti-Civil Rights act movement for political gain. Prominent Republicans have confirmed that the "Southern Strategy" was part of their election strategy. 

And here is an example of the famous "black hands" ad for a Republican Senator in the '80's:RNC Adviser Alex Castellanos Admits That His Infamous Jesse Helms Ad Hurt Race Relations 

There are more examples of race based strategies, coding, baiting, and slips of the tougue as well. One can turn on any right wing media outlet and hear it for themselves. And of course, in the present day, the most notable recent example of the residue of this strategy is one Steve Scalise, who was caught speaking to a white supremacist group, and labelling himself "David Duke without the baggage (whatever the hell that means). 

So, yes, it is not an exaggeration to say that racial animus on the part of conservatives, specifically Southern conservatives, was a huge reason for the shifting of American politics to what you see now. And this history is why nonwhites in this country don't trust conservatives, and don't vote for them in such large numbers.

I'm wondering if any of my five commenters are courageous enough to respond to this and engage in a much larger forum than here:)

Thursday, September 04, 2014

Nothing Is The Matter With Kansas

The withdrawal of Kansas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Chad Taylor spells big trouble for the GOP's chances to take back the upper chamber in November. Independent candidate Greg Orman is polling much higher than Pat Roberts and is running a very effective campaign that appeals to both Democratic and Republican voters. When asked who he would caucus with if he was elected, Orman replied that he would work with whatever party wanted to fix the problems our nation faces.

Hmm...I wonder which party that is?

Imagine if it's 50-49, GOP, on the morning after election day. Greg Orman will be the most popular man in the country!

Meanwhile the last two polls from Georgia show Michelle Nunn ahead of David Perdue. The Republicans can't lose either of these states if they hope to take back the Senate. They already have to sweep Iowa, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Real Clear Politics has them doing that with razor thin leads but much of that polling is old, summer numbers. It's going to be interesting to see what polls we see in the next few weeks.

One thing we can definitely glean from all of these tight numbers is that it's very unlikely to be a wave election. Politico's LARRY J. SABATO, KYLE KONDIK and GEOFFREY SKELLEY all agree.

So where’s the wave? This is President Obama’s sixth-year-itch election. The map of states with contested Senate seats could hardly be better from the Republicans’ vantage point. And the breaks this year—strong candidates, avoidance of damaging gaffes, issues such as Obamacare and immigration that stir the party base—have mainly gone the GOP’s way, very unlike 2012. 

Nonetheless, the midterms are far from over. In every single one of the Crystal Ball’s toss-up states, (Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina), the Republican Senate candidate has not yet opened up a real polling lead in any of them. Democratic nominees have been running hard and staying slightly ahead, or close to, their Republican foes.

The reason is quite simple. The voting public dislikes the Republicans more than the president.

So, now we starting to see stories like this one.

Why Democrats will keep the Senate: A contrarian analysis of the 2014 midterms

Or this one.

How Democrats Can Hold Their Senate Majority

Here's another cool site for all you statistics and polling nerd.

We're in the home stretch, kiddos. Buckle up for a crazy ride!!

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Epistemic Closure Summary

I forgot to put this piece up by Bruce Bartlett last year but it's obviously still relevant. Bartlett used to work for Ronald Reagan as his chief economic adviser and has since sworn off of supply side economics as well as admitted how he wrong he was on many things. I wonder if this will ever be the case for some of my regulars here...

He makes several good points in this column, among them are these:

Until that moment I had not realized how closed the right-wing mind had become. Even assuming that my friends’ view of the Times’ philosophy was correct, which it most certainly was not, why would they not want to know what their enemy was thinking? This was my first exposure to what has been called “epistemic closure” among conservatives—living in their own bubble where nonsensical ideas circulate with no contradiction.

Contradiction is treason!

Among the interesting reactions to my book is that I was banned from Fox News. My publicist was told that orders had come down from on high that it was to receive no publicity whatsoever, not even attacks. Whoever gave that order was smart; attacks from the right would have sold books. Being ignored was poison for sales. I later learned that the order to ignore me extended throughout Rupert Murdoch’s empire.

That's because you were disobeying their will...oops, VILL!

The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.

Huh. Now who has also said that before?

So here we are, post-election 2012. All the stupidity and closed-mindedness that right-wingers have displayed over the last 10 years has come back to haunt them. It is now widely understood that the nation may be center-left after all, not center-right as conservatives thought. Overwhelming losses by Republicans to all the nation’s nonwhite voters have created a Democratic coalition that will govern the nation for the foreseeable future.

But they don't care, Bruce. As long as the win the argument and/or make money off of rubes.

At least a few conservatives now recognize that Republicans suffer for epistemic closure. They were genuinely shocked at Romney’s loss because they ignored every poll not produced by a right-wing pollster such as Rasmussen or approved by right-wing pundits such as the perpetually wrong Dick Morris. Living in the Fox News cocoon, most Republicans had no clue that they were losing or that their ideas were both stupid and politically unpopular.

They still don't have a clue as is evidenced by my comments section. Of course, none of this could be their fault, right!?

I am disinclined to think that Republicans are yet ready for a serious questioning of their philosophy or strategy. They comfort themselves with the fact that they held the House (due to gerrymandering) and think that just improving their get-out-the-vote system and throwing a few bones to the Latino community will fix their problem. There appears to be no recognition that their defects are far, far deeper and will require serious introspection and rethinking of how Republicans can win going forward. The alternative is permanent loss of the White House and probably the Senate as well, which means they can only temporarily block Democratic initiatives and never advance their own.

Yet they still believe...

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Yes. Yes I Am


























Rooting for America to fail since 2008.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Yay For Them

You really have to hand it to the Republicans sometimes. There are moments when they can really be quite clever.

Take, for example, yesterday's contempt of Congress vote for Eric Holder which spurred an executive privilege order from President Obama regarding the "remaining documents" that the GOP led committee is claiming must be produced. Either way, they win on this one.

Now they can run around, stomp their feet, and  foam at the mouth about how the president and the AG are hiding something. If they end up releasing the documents....documents which certainly contain sensitive law enforcement information...they can point and laugh and say that the Obama administration truly doesn't know what it is doing and are bumbling fools. Yay! It's a pretty ingenious plan but will it work? 

Perhaps not. To begin with, no one (save for gun bloggers) really cares about this issue. And someone who really doesn't care is Mitt Romney who considers this a distraction from his central message on the economy (yes, we are the ones who dumped rats, bugs and other assorted pests in your house to fuck it all up but now here we are four years later as exterminators who promise to clean it up). The Romney campaign knows that this is the best way to beat the president and, with the monumentally low approval rating of Congress, this whole thing could backfire.

By "thing," I mean a whole lot of juvenile payback. The GOP is still smarting from all of the ethics investigations during the Bush Administration. Of course, back then, there was a lot more evidence as they really were breaking the law. So, when Darrell Issa took over the Oversight Committee, he promised "seven hearings a week times forty." This without any investigation having even commenced. Clearly, we know what the motivation is here.

As always, the Cult of Both Sides has already popped out and the people that are paying attention see the Democrats as being just as guilty as the Republicans even though that is completely false. Some of you might like Holder to release all the documents and pin the fallout on Issa and his goons on the OC.

But then would mean that more operations would be jeopardized and some people would likely die. I guess I'm pretty thankful that the adults are in charge and that won't happen.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Oops!

RNC Latino Site Features Stock Photo of Asian Children

Ah, they are all brown so what's the dif?

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Between a Rock and a...Rock

In so many ways, the Republican Party is fucked. As I have wondered previously, what are they good at? And why do people vote for them? They don't really have any solutions for the myriad of challenges our country faces and seem to only be capable of harnessing fear, hate and anger. A recent article demonstrates the problem is much deeper than that.

I've been thinking along the same lines myself since Election Day 2008. In essence, the Republican Party is in the same disaster state today as it was nearly three years ago. I may have been naive back then when I predicted their demise (I must remember to never forget about paranoia, racism, and greed) and certainly premature but honestly, I think their days are numbered.

While it's true that they did win elections in 2010 which resulted in them taking back the House, the only reason they did was because of the Tea Party. Take them out of the equation and the Democrats win every election. Put them into the equation and they primary candidates that aren't far enough right...candidates that can't win a general election because the country simply isn't that far right. This is why I say the Republicans are fucked.

This problem was illustrated quite clearly in the recent special election in NY-26. A Democratic victory in a district that has been largely a Republican stronghold for over 150 years. How did this happen? Blame Paul Ryan and his plan to privatize Medicare which further illustrates the fucked-ness of the GOP. Ryan's plan has now become a litmus test for conservatives. If you don't support it, your ass is going to be primaried by the only reason the GOP has a pulse...the Tea Party. Yet if you do support it, say goodbye to 70 percent of the voters. So, it's not really a rock and a hard place. It's a rock and a rock. Because the only way out of their dilemma is to admit that their party is, quite literally, over.

And we all know their track record on admitting defeat.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Are the Republicans are Turning Us into China?

For the past two years Republicans have been calling Obama a socialist and a communist, insisting that his policies will destroy the American economy. But if we look at the economies of the world today, who's doing the best?

Without a doubt, it's China. The country run by the Communist Party of Mao has a centralized command economy that has harnessed the capitalist plow horse under the socialist yoke. China has bought hundreds of billions of dollars worth of US Treasury bills, propping up the US economy. China dictates trade policy to the world, coming into their full power during the Bush administration.

So, how is this economic miracle possible? Well, the workers who build all those computers and TVs and iPads get paid dirt, and are treated like dirt. Unions are run by the Communist Party, which also runs management. China has essentially no environmental regulations: remember how they had to shut down all their factories for weeks to host the Olympics? They burn so much coal the skies over Beijing are a perpetual filthy brown. And, finally, American and European companies have turned their backs on their own workers, first shifting production to China and are now sending high-tech design centers to China. Companies like Walmart, with their insistence on constantly-decreased prices (and, incidentally, quality) have forced most of their American suppliers to produce their goods in China.

In other words, China has become what the United States and Britain were in the 1890s: a land where government and big business are one, and workers have no control over their own fates.

The old notions of communism and capitalism no longer make any sense. What matters now is how much control average people have over their own lives, and the quality of life (clean air, clean water, reasonable working hours, decent pay and housing, etc.).

China has reached the point where government has absorbed big business and the two have merged into one. The Republicans and their big business backers are doing the same thing from the other direction: big business is swallowing Republican politicians and therefore government, giving business a free hand to do whatever they please. Big business can spend unlimited amounts of cash to buy elections now; it doesn't always work (ask Meg Whitman), but in a close race it makes all the difference.

And it's not just me saying that this is what Republicans think: remember the heartfelt apology Joe Barton gave BP during the hearings about the Gulf oil spill? All the Republicans were saying the same thing he was, except he that he gushed as much as the oil well in his fawning over BP. And all throughout the election Republicans keep screaming about reducing regulations despite the fact that in the last nine years the lack of regulation and the lack of enforcement of existing regulations has resulted in some of the the largest financial and environmental calamities we've ever seen.

And don't get me wrong. Some Democrats have been co-opted by big business as well. They're too comfortable with Wall Street and Big Energy. But as a party and an ideology, the Democrats clearly want to maintain a healthy separation between government and big business, while the Republicans are running headlong into the government/big business/no regulation singularity.

The Republicans are leading us to the same place that China is today. Just from the other direction.