Archive for Presidential Race
Having It Both Ways
Posted by: | CommentsRepublicans want to fall in line, the saying goes, and Ann Coulter is falling in line now that Gov. Mitt Romney is back as Republican front runner. She even likes his healthcare plan: Three cheers for Romneycare — “a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles.” After paragraphs gushing about the individual mandate’s conservative roots in the Heritage Foundation, Coulter goes “tenther” calling the 2,000-page Affordable Care Act, not bad policy, exactly, just an illegal one: “If Obamacare were a one-page bill that did nothing but mandate that every American buy health insurance, it would still be unconstitutional…”
Of course, Heritage didn’t think so when in response to the Clinton health proposal, prominent Republicans in the congress included many of its ideas in a couple of health care bills, including the “Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993” (18 Republican cosponsors and a breezy 579-page read) and the “Consumer Choice Health Security Act of 1993” with multiple sponsors in the House. Or when Mitt Romney used the Heritage model in Massachusetts. Only when the Obama White House adopted Romney’s template did Heritage and Republicans balk, as Think Progress reminded them:
– Heritage On Romney’s Individual Mandate: “Not an unreasonable position, and one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” [Heritage, 1/28/06]
– Heritage On President Obama’s Individual Mandate: “Both unprecedented and unconstitutional.” [Heritage, 12/9/09]
– Heritage On Romney’s Insurance Exchange: An “innovative mechanism to promote real consumer choice.” [Heritage, 4/20/06]
– Heritage On President Obama’s Insurance Exchange: Creates a “de facto public option” by “grow[ing]” government control over healthcare.” [Heritage, 3/30/10]
– Heritage On Romney’s Medicaid Expansion: Reduced “the total cost to taxpayers” by taking people out of the “uncompensated care pool.” [Heritage, 1/28/06]
– Heritage On President Obama’s Medicaid Expansion: Expands a “broken entitlement program,” providing a “low-quality, poorly functioning program.” [Heritage, 3/30/10]
With Coulter singing his praises, once again it’s springtime for Mitt.
The SC Republican Primary: Eyes Wide Shut
Posted by: | CommentsPrimary voters just gave former Speaker Newt Gingrich the win in the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, “America’s most conservative state.” Reddest of the red. Buckle of the Bible Belt. CNN welcomed viewers to the Charleston debate this week with “Welcome to the South,” a place “where values matter.”
More there than anywhere else? What values mattered most to South Carolinians who gave Gingrich his win?
Not trust. Why should they trust Newt Gingrich? His three wives can’t.
Not “family values.” Gingrich is on his third marriage and committed adultery with his last two wives. In the soft-focused 1950s of conservative nostalgia, South Carolina Republicans would have dismissed Gingrich as a serial philanderer, and his third wife as a loose woman running for First Homewrecker. But not today. For the modern conservative, values compress to suit the flawed candidate most likely to win (with apologies to Cyril Northcote Parkinson).
“Nothing short of twisted”
Posted by: | CommentsAll things old are new again. Like red-baiting from the Red Scare period a half century ago. On the campaign trail in South Carolina, Gov. Mitt Romney got snappish with a questioner who asked what he — a member of the 1% — would do as president for the 99%. The Romney campaign thinks he did a good job responding this way:
Steve Benen at Washington Monthly disagrees. Romney’s vision, Benen believes, is a “Dickensian nightmare” for American workers:
The country deserves to have a meaningful, substantive debate about a generation of policies that have rewarded wealth while making conditions harder for working people. There are real issues that reflect real-world challenges facing Americans: rising income inequality, poverty, an unjust tax system, and wealth that’s increasingly concentrated at the top.
For Mitt Romney, those who even consider this a legitimate area of debate prefer, in his mind, communism.
This is nothing short of twisted.
No argument there. You’re either with the GOP or you’re with the commies.
Attack In B Minor For Strings
Posted by: | CommentsWasting no time, the “definitely not coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC” strikes:
The “Execution Cheer”
Posted by: | CommentsThe New York Times posts a rundown of commentary on the the “execution cheer” at the Republican candidates’ debate on Wednesday, reminding readers that the cheer went up at the Reagan Library in California. The “gasp within a gasp” was Perry’s untroubled defense — no moral doubts about having ever executing an innocent — of Texas justice. The “it takes guts to execute an innocent man” caucus burst into applause.
Andrew Sullivan writes on his Daily Beast live blog, “Here’s why I find it impossible to be a Republican: any crowd that instantly cheers the execution of 234 individuals is a crowd I want to flee, not join.”
The Atlantic ’s Ta-Nehisi Coates performs the obligatory “both sides do it” genuflect, noting that no Democratic candidate in two decades has opposed the death penalty. But only after writing, “The only thing that shocked me was that they didn’t form a rumba line. It’s a Republican debate. And it’s America … the country where we took kids to see men lynched, and then posed for photos.”
Several others trot out the readily available evidence that the death penalty has been used to execute the innocent, as well as evidence that Perry himself signed off on the execution of an innocent man. This, in spite of 41 exonerations from DNA evidence in the last decade in Texas alone.
Steve Benen of Washington Monthly points out Perry’s doubt-free lack of consistency about the value of evidence:
Scientists tell him, after rigorous, peer-reviewed, international research that global warming is real, and Perry responds, “I don’t care.” A deeply flawed judicial process puts potentially-innocent Americans on death row, and Perry responds, “Let’s get the killin’ started.”
The governor balks when presented with evidence on evolution, abstinence education, and climate change, but embraces without question the notion that everyone he’s killed in Texas was 100% guilty. The scientific process, he apparently believes, is unreliable, while the state criminal justice system is infallible.
Intellectually, morally, and politically, this isn’t just wrong; it’s scary. The fact that Republicans in the audience found this worthy of hearty applause points to a party that’s bankrupt in more ways than one.
Restricting Voting To Decrease Turnout
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We’ve watched the NCGOP work towards restricting who can register (banning 16 and 17 year olds), who can vote (VoterID), when they can vote (less early voting), and how they can vote (district elections, elimination of straight party option).
We’ll see how many of these efforts survive the Governor’s veto pen, but they all point towards a dangerous and disturbing trend. Raleigh Republicans’ choices will mean fewer people voting in next year’s presidential election.
This trend is not limited to North Carolina. Over at dKos, Georgia Logothetis has an excellent, thorough rundown of what’s going on across the nation. Limiting voter registration, voter access, and voter choice is fast becoming a staple of Republican leadership everywhere.
“For the most part, the recent changes represent a dismal outlook for voting rights advocates. Republican successes at the state level have empowered the GOP with the ability to craft and adopt even the most restrictive election laws. While voting rights groups and others are taking many of these fights to the courts, there’s no denying that enforcing these unduly restrictive laws is a cornerstone of the Republican 2012 strategy.”
Clinton Proved Taxes Balance Budgets
Posted by: | CommentsIn a remarkable display of vanity and mathematical ineptitude, yesterday on Meet the Press Newt Gingrich took credit for the fiscal 1998-2001 budget surpluses and ascribed the success to “cutting taxes”. Watch (apologies for the advertisement):
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Partial transcript at the 0:10 mark — Emphasis mine.
Gregory: You won’t raise taxes, you won’t consider it as part of a balanced budget at any point, raising taxes?
Gingrich: No
Gregory: Under no circumstances?
Gingrich: I believe this is a country which has overspent, not under taxed. And I believe every time you raise taxes, politicians use that as an excuse to avoid facing the real decisions that we’re confronting. We have a moment in history where we can get our house in order if we have the courage to stick to the job. I mean I helped balance the budget for four straight years. We did it by cutting taxes, and bringing the unemployment rate down below four percent. The number one job in America today is to get people back to work because America only works when Americans are working.
To wit: Gingrich “stuck to his job” until the early days of 1999 after only one year of of those “four straight.” Newt didn’t get to 4% unemployment by cutting taxes, Newt President Clinton got there by enforcing fiscal discipline against reckless Republican tax cut schemes, the ones that Bush ultimately signed into law. That ten years into the Bush fiscal regime, we’ve never seen an unemployment number as healthy Clinton’s 4% does not seem to rise to the level of evidence for Newt. As far as his claim that the Republican Congress got a balanced budget by cutting taxes, that is just laughable. The only significant tax cut that Clinton signed was the Tax Relief Act of 1997, but it was only about $20 billion per year in the first five years. That was not nearly enough to counteract the effects of the 1993 tax increase and not nearly enough to have any meaningful effect on the economy.
It’s sporting for politicians to take credit where it is not due and rewrite history in the process. But we must not be blinded to the horrific fiscal damage the Republicans cause. They were up to the same tricks in the 1990′s except President Clinton fought back. If we had had someone “stick to the job” like President Clinton in the ’00′s, we might have halved the national debt instead of doubling it. Clinton proved taxes balance budgets. And Republicans prove it too with the oceans of red ink that follow their tax-cut fiscal policies. No fuzzy math there.
Oh No.
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I don’t have time for a proper post about this, but here’s the skinny from MSNBC:
In a landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down laws that banned corporations from using their own money to support or oppose candidates for public office.
By 5-4 vote, the court overturned federal laws, in effect for decades, that prevented corporations from using their profits to buy political campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.
It leaves in place a ban prohibiting corporations and unions from directly contributing funds to candidates for any use.
In a statement, President Barack Obama said that the decision gives ‘a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.’ The president pledged to work with Congress to ‘develop a forceful response’ to the court’s ruling.
What’s your take on the ruling?
