Tag Archives: Republican

Quote of the day

Channeling the spirit of the psychoanalytic Marxist Wilhelm Reich, David Rosen wrote:

Are hypocrites born or made? Is false consciousness a social disease? These are among the unasked questions haunting the 2012 Republican presidential race.

The four surviving candidates are hypocrites. Mitt Romney is the guy-next-door everyman with a quarter-billion-dollars in his pocket; Rick Santorum is the blue-collar everyman who has learned to work the corporate con for self-serving ends; Ron Paul is the white everyman standing before a giant Confederate flag proclaiming that the South was right seceding from the Union; and then there is Newt Gingrich, the shameless everyman who sheds his past like a snake loses its old skin.

Gingrich is the most hypocritical presidential candidate in modern history. But the significance of his hypocrisy can only be fully appreciated in terms of his surprising Jan. 21st primary victory in South Carolina. Approximately 40 percent of registered Republicans willingly accepting his fiction. This is the politics of false consciousness.

What happens in Florida on Jan. 31st will be illuminating. It may well cut the Republican primary field being cut to two plus one; Santorum may exit while Paul hangs on like Ralph Nader did in 2000.

Rodney Howard-Browne blesses Newt’s campaign

The logo of Revival Ministries International; ...

Sarah Posner reported that:

Today Newt Gingrich made an appearance at River Church in Tampa, Florida, pastored by Rodney Howard Browne. Slate’s Dave Weigel tweeted that in introducing Gingrich, Browne prayed that America “will not allow the killing of unborn babies, and the takeover of Islam” and “the Constitution that we have, and your word, and Jesus is the only way we can be delivered from this plight.”

Howard-Browne is a charismatic revivalist who preaches the Prosperity Gospel. His sect is called Revival Ministries International.

Gingrich, on the other hand, belongs to a well-known church to which many Republican politicians belong, the Opportunistic Pettifoging Mudslingers. I’m sure Howard-Browne and Gingrich have found common ground on which to stand.

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Democrats on the Super Committee offer to cut Medicare benefits

It was big money, too. They did it before, and they’ll do it again till they make cuts the Republicans will accept. As Jon Walker noted, “No wonder young people upset about income inequality are occupying the streets instead of rallying to elect Democrats. Americans need something better than just austerity lite.”

Idle hands are the devil's workshop

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A bad day for the Republican Party…

…is a good day for democracy in America! Attaturk summarized the carnage at FireDogLake:

  • Ohio voters reject Issue 2, thus conserving collective bargaining rights of public sector unions in Ohio and thereby embarrassing Governor Kasich.
  • Mississippi’s voters soundly defeated Amendment 26, the so-called the personhood initiative.
  • Maine voters voted overwhelmingly for Question 1, thus restoring same-day election registration in Maine.
  • Arizona voters opted to recall State Senator Russell Pearce, a Republican and the author of Arizona SB 1070, the notorious Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.
  • Iowa voters elected Democrat Liz Mathis to the State Senate, a result which retained a 26-24 pro Democrat split in the Senate and which undermined Iowa’s Republican Governor’s ability to pursue his arch-conservative agenda.

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Do they have any shame?

No, not at all! ThinkProgress found that:

As states continue to cope with budget shortfalls, the same pattern repeats itself over and over again. Republicans refuse to raise revenues — opposing tax hikes on the ultra-wealthy or ending wasteful tax loopholes for corporations — thus forcing budgets to be closed by targeting the most vulnerable: students, middle class families, the elderly, the unemployed, etc.

California is no different, as GOP legislators in Sacramento refused to budge on tax increases, which forced savings in Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D-CA) new budget to be found solely through draconian cuts. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, cuts to higher education alone will force a nearly 18 percent bump in tuition for UC students. Yearly budget cuts have more than doubled the price of public college in California since 2005.

But as California Republicans rail against “welfare” and wasteful government spending, an investigation by ThinkProgress has found that many of the state’s leading GOP legislators are themselves millionaire recipients of taxpayer money….

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Orrin Hatch — clown

Orrin Hatch, Utah's longest serving senator, i...

Orrin Hatch

As Michael McAuliff reports:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) voted against beginning debate on a measure that would have the Senate declare the rich should share the pain of debt reduction Thursday, a day after arguing that it’s the poor and middle class who need to do more.

“I hear how they’re so caring for the poor and so forth,” Hatch said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, in reference to Democrats. “‘The poor need jobs!’ And they also need to share some of the responsibility.”

Quote of the day

Michael Lind writes:

In contradiction to the hostility to Darwinism shared by many of its constituents, the American right is evolving rapidly before our eyes. The project of creating an American version of Burkean conservatism has collapsed. What has replaced it is best described as triple fundamentalism — a synthesis of Biblical fundamentalism, constitutional fundamentalism and market fundamentalism.

Quote of the day

Mike Whitney wrote:

When the recovery began 2 years ago, the rate of unemployment was 9.5 percent. Today it’s 9.1 percent. Think about that for a minute. Doesn’t that prove that the market isn’t really self-correcting after all? I mean, if the market was self-correcting then unemployment would have gone down by now, right? But, it hasn’t. Why?

There’s a long answer for that, and a short answer. The short answer is that unemployment can stay high forever if the wrong policies are in place. If you don’t believe that, then vote Republican in 2012 and watch what happens when they start hacking away at public spending. Unemployment will soar to 15 or 20 percent in the blink of an eye.

Whitney’s preferred solution to the high-unemployment of the day: Revive the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment bill!

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Well, if you put it that way….

Blue Texan states the obvious:

Why is Donald Trump leading the GOP 2012 contenders in polls? Because Republicans are batshit.

Donald Trump in February 2009
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Will the government shut down in March?

It seems like it will, according to David Dayen:

The Senate is now off for a week. When they come back it’ll be February 28. The continuing resolution to fund the government expires on March 4. So naturally, the Senate will next take up — a patent reform bill. And in the meantime, Reid is raising the pressure on John Boehner’s statement yesterday that he would not go for a short-term continuing resolution, which means a government shutdown, essentially.

Dayen continues:

As for what will happen in the next two weeks, it’s completely unclear. Boehner has said there will be no short-term CR; he may offer something with across-the-board cuts or some one-off cuts to cherished accounts. Reid could just offer a short-term CR after he gets the bill that will get a final vote today Saturday. Senate Republicans would then have to decide whether to block it, putting them on the hook for the government shutdown. There’s a ton of brinksmanship going on.

Obviously, any shutting of the government would be extremely irresponsible. Those individuals most dependent on the Federal government would take the hardest blow. It has happened before, though, with the obvious forerunner being the 1995 budget battle between President Clinton and the Contract with America Congressional class. The nadir of that episode arrived when House Speaker Newt Gingrich complained about being assigned a seat in the rear of Air Force One, a complaint that allegedly motivated his hardline position in the budget fight. Gingrich’s outburst and his leadership in general destroyed his Congressional career and the budget battle he led contributed into Clinton’s 1996 reelection.

But the fact that a budget battle between a divided Federal government once produced a political catastrophe for the Republicans has not deterred the current House from adopting the same tactic. Nor has the harm to the “lesser people” caused by their politicking. Although they are the minority party, the Republicans always govern as though they were a strong majority party that had overwhelming popular support. They govern in this way because of their hatred of these “lesser people” and because the Democratic Party lacks the kind of principles needed to oppose the Republican Party.