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Entries for the 'National Republicans ' Category
Gary Pearce posted on August 25, 2010 09:08
One thing is clear from Tuesday’s primaries: the lunatics are running the Republican asylum.
Rick Scott, a key figure in the biggest health-care fraud scandal ever, won the Republican nomination for governor of Florida. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski trails a Sarah Palin-endorsed Tea Partier. And John McCain, who gave America Sarah Palin, survived in Arizona by turning his back on everything he ever stood for.
This is excellent news for the Democratic Party.
Republicans still may win big this year. But, if they do, the Tea Party will claim credit. It will grab the GOP steering wheel and steer the car over the cliff.
Democrats will then be poised for a big comeback in 2012, with Barack Obama winning reelection.
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Gary Pearce posted on August 13, 2010 09:17
Some people must have superpowers.
How else can they divine “the will of the people” all by themselves?
Frequently, people comment here that Obama and the Democrats are defying “the will of the people” or “the majority.”
I hate to break it to you, but under our beloved Constitution the only way to definitively determine the will of the people is by an election.
And Obama won. Overwhelmingly. Including in states that Democrats hadn’t won in decades. Like North Carolina.
Now, he may lose in 2012. That would be the will of the people. Or he may win another four years. Again, will of the people.
And Republicans may win this year. Will of the people.
But the will of the people is not necessarily what you or I think it is, especially when it always happens to jibe with our personal opinions. It’s not necessarily what the latest poll said. Especially when another poll might say exactly the opposite.
And it’s not necessarily whatever some cable TV blabbermouth – left or right – is saying.
Individuals’ opinions are always interesting - whether idiotic or insightful. But they aren’t necessarily “the will of the people.”
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Carter Wrenn posted on August 13, 2010 09:00
Federal judges have turned out to be President Obama’s worst nightmare; first a Clinton judge in Phoenix threw out Arizona’s immigration law and landed Obama in the middle of a political war over the next to last issue he wanted to fight over; then a judge in California landed him in an even worse fight – one over gay marriage.
How much trouble could this cause Obama?
Even Democrats (or, at least, a lot of Democrats) disagree with him over giving amnesty to illegal immigrants, and even California – which is running nose to nose with Massachusetts for the crown of most liberated and open-minded state – voted almost two to one against gay marriage.
President Obama spent a trillion dollars, the recession deepened, and he lost the support of Independents. In the Democratic primaries he ran to Hillary’s left as a peace candidate, then after the election you couldn’t slip a sheet of paper between his policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and George Bush’s – which has made the peace wing of his own party restless. Now, when he least needs bad news, he now has to fight battles on two issues that will send conservatives to the polls in droves.
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Gary Pearce posted on August 09, 2010 09:01
Under the Dome reports that Republicans “had a field day” with Elaine Marshall’s stumble over whether she wants President Obama to campaign in North Carolina.
In the end, she said: “I would welcome President Obama to North Carolina.”
So here’s the question for Senator Burr:
Does he welcome Sarah Palin to North Carolina?
Like Obama, Palin polarizes voters. She fires up the base on both sides, and she scares voters in the middle.
Again, Marshall should ask Burr: where do you stand, Richard?
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Gary Pearce posted on August 05, 2010 10:47
Senator Richard Burr is a proud graduate of Wake Forest University. He played football there.
Today, in the Senate, he is a proud opponent of wasteful federal spending.
Apparently, he must choose between the two.
John Murawski reports in the N&O that two of Burr’s Senate Republican colleagues, John McCain and Tom Coburn, have judged three research projects at Wake Forest to be “among the 100 most wasteful stimulus-funded projects in the country.” Murawski adds:
“Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem got the dubious honor of three citations on the list. The university is using a $144,541 grant to test the effect of cocaine on monkeys, a $294,958 grant to measure the benefits of yoga to control hot flashes in post-menopausal women, and a $266,505 grant to put on science education workshops for journalists.”
Personally, I strongly support monkeys getting high, women doing yoga and journalists learning about science.
Where do you stand, Richard?
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Carter Wrenn posted on August 03, 2010 17:35
An odd thing happened on the way to the post-racial era. Mrs. Shirley Sherrod a black Department of Agriculture employee in rural Georgia gave a speech to the NAACP, admitted twenty years ago she discriminated against a poor white farmer, explained how she’d realized she was wrong and turned around and helped the farmer – then got denounced by the NAACP and fired by President Obama.
How’s that?
Well, a conservative blogger opened his email one morning and a video floated in out of the ether of Mrs. Sherrod – only it had been edited by someone on devilment. They’d left in Mrs. Sherrod saying she’d discriminated against the white farmer but cut out her talking about the moral lesson she learned.
Next the Obama Administration saw the video, heard Glenn Beck was going to put it on Fox News, panicked and fired Ms. Sherrod – so nobody could say they approved of discriminating against white Georgia farmers.
Next the white Georgia farmer went on CNN and said Mrs. Sherrod was as fine a woman as he’d ever met and she’d helped him save his farm and Obama had got it all wrong and that firing her was “a bunch of hogwash.”
That really got the White House’s attention. President Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibb went on TV and apologized to Mrs. Sherrod and Obama offered her a new job; about the same time the conservative blogger went on TV and said he wasn’t attacking Sherrod at all, he was attacking the NAACP for attacking the Tea Party and why on earth wouldn’t CNN investigate that and leave him alone.
So in a panic over a Glenn Beck story our first black President fired a black woman for discriminating against a white farmer, then the white farmer praised the black woman and the black President hired her back and, I reckon, all that is proof the post-racial era is over.
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Gary Pearce posted on August 03, 2010 12:20
There was a nice little contrast this weekend under the category of News About Politicians’ Children.
There was the nice, simple little wedding of Chelsea Clinton.
(I can already see my conservative commentators’ blood pressure rising as they prepare to lace into the cost and glitz of the ceremony. Give the girl a break. She deserves it after growing up in the White House hothouse.)
Then there are the bewildering stories about Bristol Palin. As best I can decipher, she reconciled with bad-boy Levi Johnson. At least until it turned out Levi had been otherwise, shall we say, occupied in the interim.
Here’s my point. All you conservatives who ripped Bill Clinton’s morals and now see Sarah Palin as America’s moral savior need to explain how he (and Hillary) raised such a fine girl and Palin, such a – what’s the word I’m looking for?
Help me here.
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Carter Wrenn posted on August 02, 2010 16:16
I expect Andrew Breitbart was telling the unvarnished truth when he told CNN he did not mean to smear Shirley Sherrod on his blog – that he meant to blast the NAACP because it had blasted the Tea Party and Mrs. Sherrod’s wounding was the political equivalent of what’s euphemistically called ‘collateral damage’ over in Afghanistan.
But now Mr. Breitbart’s got a bigger problem. Mrs. Sherrod has hired a lawyer and in all likelihood Mr. Breitbart’s about to learn about a legal oddity first hand.
When it comes to ‘free speech’ he – and every other American – has the right to call a politician just about anything he wants and not get sued – even lying is perfectly legal. But it doesn’t work that way with a ‘civilian’ like Mrs. Sherrod. If Mr. Breitbart calls Mrs. Sherrod a racist he had better be able to prove it.
The fine old democratic theory at work here is peculiar.
If an American can get hauled into court in the midst of a political campaign and a Judge (say one appointed by President Obama) gets to decide whether he smeared Obama it creates a real problems – like giving Obama judges the power to dictate what Tea Partiers like Mr. Breitbart can say about Obama. So we don’t let judges do that. Which means if Mr. Breitbart calls Obama a racist Obama’s recourse is to get a megaphone and holler back – which Obama’s at least as good at as Mr. Breitbart.
On the other hand Mrs. Sherrod didn’t appoint any judges, hasn’t been elected to anything, doesn’t have political allies who appoint judges and giving her the right to sue Mr. Breitbart’s chops off isn’t likely to give any judge the right to muzzle folks attacking politicians.
It’s kind of a strange law but in a way it makes a kind of common sense – though that might be hard for Mr. Breitbart to fathom right now.
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Gary Pearce posted on August 02, 2010 09:43
Sometimes a candidate comes along who is so compelling that, even though he’s running for office in another state, I am compelled to bring him to your attention.
He could be the next Alvin Green.
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Gary Pearce posted on July 01, 2010 08:32
President Obama rolled out his best 2010 message yesterday at a town hall in Wisconsin. Click here to see one clip that captures it.
The message is simple: The Republicans gave us a mess, and they refuse to help clean it up.
Maybe Obama’s team has learned a lesson: They haven’t played the Blame Game well enough.
Ronald Reagan played it for eight years. Obama can play it at least four.
In The Promise, his book about Obama’s first year, Jonathan Alter quotes a great analogy Obama used – one that Democrats could ride all year.
It’s the mop analogy.
Obama is trying to mop up Bush’s mess: starting a war that didn’t attack the people who attacked us, squandering a budget surplus and turning it into a deficit, and nearly running the economy into a depression.
But Republicans won’t help mop up. They complain about how Obama’s holding the mop. Or they say it looks like a socialist mop.
Coincidentally, congressional Republicans reinforced the message yesterday – not once, but twice. They blocked the financial regulation bill AND extended unemployment benefits.
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