Jeb Bush - An Anti-Tea Party Republican?

I continue to believe that, if he wins the GOP presidential nomination for 2016, Jeb Bush will likely find it impossible to overcome "Bush fatigue" and a public revulsion to the nightmare legacy of his half-witted brother, George W. Bush.  True, we do not get to pick our parents or siblings, but despite how different one may be from a sibling, the shared last name can prove deadly.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the younger Bush - who may yet utterly prostitute himself to the Christofascist/Tea Party - and how he (at least at present) represents everything that much of the GOP base rejects.  Here are some article highlights:

As Mr. Bush, 61, weighs whether to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, he is dogged by fears of voter exhaustion with a family name indelibly linked to his older brother, a self-assured Texan who prized instinct over expertise and once acknowledged a lack of interest in slogging through long books.

But in ways big and small, deliberate or subconscious, the younger Mr. Bush seems to have defined himself as the anti-George W. Bush: an intellectual in search of new ideas, a serial consulter of outsiders who relishes animated debate and a probing manager who eagerly burrows into the bureaucratic details.

Allies said that reputation — as what the Republican strategist Karl Rove called the “deepest thinker on our side” — could prove vital in selling Mr. Bush as a presidential candidate to an electorate still scarred by George W. Bush’s legacy of costly wars abroad and economic meltdown at home.

But the bookishness and pragmatism that strike mainstream Republican leaders as virtues highlight the potential difficulty that Mr. Bush may face in igniting the passions of more conservative members of the party.

The questions he grapples with most frequently, and enthusiastically, revolve around improving the effectiveness of government in areas like education, immigration and criminal justice. It is a message unlikely to electrify Tea Party and libertarian wings of his party that are openly hostile to the very idea of government.

“There is skepticism that maybe Jeb Bush wants too much government in people’s lives,” said Greg Mueller, a Republican strategist who has advised the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes and Bob Dole. “I don’t know that he will ever win over the limited-government conservatives.”

Mr. Bush, who has cast himself as a party reformer, seems unfazed by such critiques: At times, he has appeared to deliberately fan them by publicly castigating the leaders of his own party for adhering to failed tactics and outdated messages.

After Mitt Romney’s resounding defeat in 2012 . . . . Mr. Bush was unsparing, warning that the Republican brand risked becoming a millstone, “associated with being anti-everything.” Much of the electorate, he said, believes that “Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker.”

Those who have hashed over policy and politics with Mr. Bush describe him as a conservative animated less by rigid ideology than a technocrat’s quest to identify which solutions work best.

Aubrey Jewett, who has studied Jeb Bush as a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida, said he “seems to go out of his way to make it clear that he’s different from his brother, by the way he talks about himself, his goals and the details of public policy.”

Can he overcome the GOP base's worship of ignorance and bigotry?  Likewise, can he overcome being the brother of one of the worse U.S. presidents in history?  Time will tell. 

Mitt Romney's Real Problem: Today's GOP

The critiques of Mitt Romney continue to analyze why his campaign and the man himself continue to appear so incompetent.  While the far right continue to attack Romney the man, a growing list of pundits are starting to focus on the real problem: the insanity of today's Republican Party which limits what any party nominee is allowed to say.  Anything that might depart from the party base's mantra of no taxes, no rights for gays, no contraception, no rights for racial and ethnic minorities, and the need to destroy government is deemed heresy.  Yet the issues and problems surrounding the nation require serious thought and innovative leadership.  Fareed Zakaria - whom I'm sure the GOP deems some sort of dangerous foreigner - looks at the situation in a Washington Post column.  Here are excepts:

[T]he problem is not Romney but the new Republican Party. Given the direction in which it has moved and the pressures from its most extreme — yet most powerful — elements, any nominee would face the same challenge: Can you be a serious candidate for the general election while not outraging the Republican base? 

Fox News anchor Brit Hume got specific in his critique, saying this month that “Romney’s got the presidential bearing down. . . . What he [hasn’t done is] dwell at length on the economic policies that he would put in place.” Why won’t Romney, an intelligent man, fluent in economics, explain his economic policy? Because any sensible answer would cause a firestorm in his party.

It is obvious that, with a deficit at 8 percent of gross domestic product, any solution to our budgetary problems has to involve both spending cuts and tax increases. Ronald Reagan agreed to tax increases when the deficit hit 4 percent of GDP; George H.W. Bush did so when the deficit was 3 percent of GDP. But today’s Republican Party is organized around the proposition that, no matter the circumstances, there must never be a tax increase of any kind.

So Romney could present a serious economic plan with numbers that make sense — and then face a revolt within his own party. His solution: to be utterly vague about how he would deal with the deficit. 

This is not just a story of the rise of economic conservatives. The same pattern has emerged on immigration.  .  .  .  .  the Republican Party is now so strongly opposed to those proposals — which included a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants — that a co-sponsor of the bill, McCain, has renounced his own handiwork.
Romney has curried favor within the party by opposing the Dream Act, supporting Arizona’s harsh law under which police check people’s immigration status at will and proposing “self-deportation” as a way to get rid of undocumented immigrants.

The Republican Party has imposed a new kind of political correctness on its leaders. They cannot speak certain words (taxes) or speculate about certain ideas (immigration amnesty) because these are forbidden.  .  .   .  .   That’s a straitjacket that even Peggy Noonan’s eloquence cannot get him out of.

Zakaria doesn't even get into other social and societal issues, but the same extremism of the GOP base likewise hobbles Romney from adapting any policy or proposal that might outrageous the Bible beaters and gay haters who now predominate in the party.  American society is changing yet the GOP only wants to move backwards in time.  In my view, only continued electoral defeats can hopefully push the GOP to someday again embrace sanity.

How Did the GOP Get So Angry and White?

I've noted many times that in my opinion, the Republican Party has become something very ugly.  Like the Christianist base of the party, the GOP is now best defined by who they hate and the list includes virtually everyone but old, white, heterosexual men - and the repressed white women whom they dominate.  One of the striking things is the thinly veiled racism with permeates the GOP with blacks and other non-white minorities seemly the favor targets of hate and derision.  LGBT citizens are no less despised by the party base.  Anyone who looks different or believes in different This is NOT the Republican Party of its early years or the years following the Civil War when minorities were welcomed and held positions in the party,  A column in The Daily Beast looks at this transformation of the GOP and the likely long term suicide that will ensue if things do not change.  Here are highlights:

"Zero Percent of Blacks for Romney”—Oh, that headline hurts. And the WSJ/NBC poll can’t just be dismissed out of hand as the work of partisan hacks.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that no African-Americans will vote for the Romney-Ryan ticket, just that it will be within the margin of error and along the lines last time, when McCain-Palin somehow managed to score 4 percent of the black vote.

But ’twas not always thus for the GOP. Dust off your history books and you will see Republicans once had a virtual lock on the minority vote—and minority elected officials. The legacy of Lincoln was alive and well until not so long ago. Which makes the retreat of recent decades both unfortunate and ill-timed.

Consider that the first popularly elected African-American senator was a Republican, Ed Brooke from Massachusetts, in 1966. Likewise the first Asian-American senator, Hawaii’s Hiram Fong, who was first elected in the Eisenhower era. The first Native-American senator, Charles Curtis—who went on to be Herbert Hoover’s vice president. The first Hispanic senator, Octaviano Larrazolo, also was a Republican. Ditto the first woman popularly elected to the Senate, Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith.

“The Republican Party was the party that gave hope and inspiration to minorities—and there was a coalition at first,” says Ed Brooke, now 92 and living with his wife, Anne, in Miami. “My father was a Republican. My mother was a Republican. They wouldn't dare be a Democrat. The Democrats were a party opposed to civil rights. The South was all Democratic conservatives. And the African-American community considered them the enemy.”  

The decline of centrist Republicans was one important reason for the decline in the GOP’s diversity over recent decades, according to Brooke. The shift of the party’s political base to the states of the former Confederacy coincided with the rise of social conservatism and states’ rights in what had been the progressive party in the era of Lincoln.

Demographics are destiny, and looking like the party of old white men is not a recipe for Republican success in the future. That’s why this forgotten legacy of diversity should be respected and celebrated, even as the Party of Lincoln has turned into the Party of Reagan. Because these forgotten figures deserve to be remembered by Republicans and all Americans as the pioneers they were.

• Sen. Charles Curtis of Kansas served in the Capitol for most of the first three decades of the 20thCentury. Native-American on his mother’s side, Curtis spent much of his childhood growing up on the Kaw reservation with his grandparents, descendants of Chief White Plume. His presence on the 1928 ticket alongside Herbert Hoover made him the first non-white on a major-party presidential ticket and the first to serve as vice president.

As Republicans gather in Tampa—Florida is a must-win swing state with a sizable minority population—the opportunity and obligation for the party to reach out beyond their white base should be clear. 

Don't hold your breath waiting for today's GOP to reach out for anyone other than white heterosexual males. most of whom will  be over 50 years of age.  The party of Lincoln has become the de facto party of the KKK and other white supremacy groups.  And in my view, it's not a coincidence that this horrific transformation of the GOP has coincided with its take over by the Christianists,

The Real Cause of America's Decline

Click on chart to enlarge

The GOP and the far right lament what they describe as America's decline in terms of its place in the world and in terms of economic dominance.  What they fail to recognize is that it is their open embrace of ignorance and religious based idiocy that are perhaps one of the biggest threats to the nation.  While most of the rest of the world is embracing science and knowledge, the GOP and the Christianists want America guided by the writings of ignorant wandering herders from 2000+ years ago.  Here are highlights from a new Gallup survey that show the frightening level of ignorance that is far too widespread in this country:

Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God's guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.

What's equally frightening is that Republicans in states around the nation want creationism taught in schools as if it were a form of science.  Sometimes I feel that we are engaged in a form of national suicide.   We might as well have government mandated lobotomies for all if creationism and its Neanderthal like advocates aren't pushed back to the religious nutcase fringe in our country.

Newt Gingrich Ends His Campaign

Yesterday, thrice married serial adulterer Newt Gingrich ended his ill advised campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.  But for Gingrich's overpowering ego and tempestuous love affair with himself, he would likely never have entered into the contest.  The man simply has too much baggage and is greatly disliked by those who served with him in Congress.  From my perspective, it's a case of good riddance, although it did provide an opportunity show the hypocrisy of "family values" conservatives who supported a man who cares nothing about the "sanctity of marriage."  His campaign also did much to expose the lunacy of today's GOP.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on Gingrich's exit:

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Tuesday preempted his own campaign suspension, announcing in a video to supporters that he will pull out of the presidential race on Wednesday.

“I want to take this opportunity to give you an insider advance notice that on Wednesday, I’ll be officially suspending the campaign as part of a press event,” Gingrich says in the pre-announcement announcement. “I wanted you to know first because your help was vital.”  Gingrich is expected to formally end his campaign at an event in Northern Virginia.

In his farewell video, Gingrich tells supporters reelecting the president “would be a genuine disaster.”  “All of us have an obligation, I think, to do everything we can to defeat Barack Obama,”he says.  And he pledges that both he and his wife, Callista, will be “talking, campaigning, making speeches – doing everything we can to help defeat Barack Obama.”

One person Gingrich doesn’t mention in the video is Romney. Gingrich, like former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who also pulled out of his GOP primary campaign, has yet to formally pledge his support to Obama’s challenger.

If the nation is lucky, Gingrich will fade into the sunset and remain only a legend in his own mind.

The G.O.P.’s "Black People" Platform

Gays aren't the only citizens that the Christianist/Tea Party base hates and despises. There are Hispanics who the GOP likes to depict as menacing illegal immigrants who all recently stole across the Rio Grande under the cover of darkness. There are Muslims who are collectively depicted as would be Al Qaeda assassins. And then there are blacks. Here in the South (in places as close as 25 miles or less from where I sent typing this post) the mind set among the good ole boy crowd can be easily summed up: "I'm not against blacks- every white man ought to own at least one." Despite the claim - heard less and less of late - that the GOP is a "big tent," in truth the GOP is best defined as a party of hate and anger. And the hate and anger is aimed at everyone who isn't white and a conservative Christian. Charles Blow has a column in the New York Times that looks at the GOP platform for blacks. Here are some highlights:

As we’ve gotten around to casting votes to select a Republican presidential nominee, the antiblack rhetoric has taken center stage. You just have to love (and despise) this kind of predictability.

On Sunday, Rick “The Rooster” Santorum, campaigning in Iowa, said what sounded like “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

Newton Leroy Gingrich has been calling President Obama “the best food stamp president” for months, but after plummeting in the polls and finishing fourth in Iowa, he must have decided that this approach was too subtle. So, on Thursday in New Hampshire, he sharpened the shiv and dug it in deeper, saying, “I’m prepared, if the N.A.A.C.P. invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” On Friday, Gingrich defended himself, as usual, by insisting that exactly what he said wasn’t exactly what he said.

The comments from Santorum and Gingrich came after a renewed exploration of Ron Paul’s controversial newsletters, one of which said in June 1992 about the Los Angeles riots: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.”

Now to the singling out of blacks. The largest group of SNAP beneficiaries is by far non-Hispanic whites. However, it is true that the rate of participation is much higher among blacks than whites. Put the emphasis where you wish.

Finally, as to the false dichotomy of “food stamps” versus “paychecks.” First, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, most SNAP participants are either too old or too young to work. Forty-seven percent were under age 18, and 8 percent were 60 or older. Second, “nearly 30 percent of SNAP households had earnings in 2010, and 41 percent of all SNAP participants lived in a household with earnings.”

But race is usually less about facts than historical mythology, which evokes the black bogyman, who saps the money from the whites who earn it. Ever since blacks first arrived on these shores in chains, they have been perceived as lazy and dependent on whites — first as slaves, and then as “entitled” citizens.

Folklore or fact, this is the way many have viewed blacks in this country throughout history and even now: with scolding disdain and shocking blindness. In 1935, W.E.B. DuBois’s “Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880” pointed out that one of the major themes that American children were being taught in textbooks about that period was that “all Negroes were lazy, dishonest and extravagant.” The themes are eerily resonant of today’s Republican talking points on welfare.

Racial politics play well for Republicans. Santorum and Paul finished second and third in Iowa. Time will tell if Gingrich rebounds. Playing to racial anxiety and fear isn’t a fluke; it’s a strategy that energizes the Republican base.

Kevin Phillips, who popularized the right’s “Southern Strategy,” was quoted in The New York Times Magazine in May 1970 as saying that “the more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.”

The GOP attitude toward minorities of all kinds is disgusting. The inability to see any common humanity with others unless they are exactly like the Christianists/Tea Party members in looks, religion, and race is extremely disturbing. It's little wonder why this crowd is so anxious to go to war against Iran. Racism and religious extremism are the twin pillars of today's GOP.

And as for those who might claim that I'm anti-South, rest assured that I'm not. I have my own Confederate ancestors. I do believe, however, that after 150+ years we need to move own. Better yet, that we'd have learned something.

How Do We Describe Hypocrites? It's Called GOP

The headline of the screen shoot above via America Blog pretty much says all that needs to be said. The hypocrites of the GOP claim to "support our troops" but the truth is its all about them and their wealthy buddies. To Hell with everyone else.

More Republican Lies About Health Care

Maybe it's a function of the party now being controlled by its far right Christian base - a base that seems to see itself as exempt from the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness - but whatever the cause the growing flat out untruthfulness of Republican members of Congress is beyond disgusting. They sing a false song of wanting to cut government spending, yet only want to reduce spending that helps the less fortunate while giving more tax breaks and privileges to the wealthiest citizens and huge corporations. Just like with lying, this take from the poor and give to the rich mentality would seem to fly directly in the face of the allegedly Christian principles that the GOP demagogues claim to worship. Hypocrisy doesn't even begin to describe the level of deceit and disingenuousness that is the principal hallmark of today's GOP. The New York Times looks at this deliberate lying and deceit in it's main editorial today in the context of GOP efforts to kill health care reform cut cutting provisions. The message of the editorial needs to be disseminated far and wide because it shows just how despicable leading Republicans have come to be. Here are some highlights:
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Republicans claim to be deeply worried about the deficit — their favorite political target, followed closely by President Obama’s relentlessly demonized health care reform. So why are they so determined to overturn one of the central cost-control mechanisms of the new reform law?
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Republicans in both the Senate and the House have introduced bills that would eliminate the new Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is supposed to come up with ways to rein in excessive Medicare spending — and stiffen Congress’s spine.fy">
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If anything, we fear that the board’s power will be too limited. But its power to curb payments to other providers is projected to save $15.5 billion to $24 billion between 2015 and 2019.
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That has not stopped Senator John Cornyn of Texas from trying to kill off the board. In July, he introduced the ever so cutely named “Health Care Bureaucrats Elimination Act.” It currently has 11 co-sponsors, and a similar version, introduced earlier in the House by the Republican Phil Roe of Tennessee, has 54 co-sponsors.
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Neither bill will go anywhere so long as the Democrats run Congress, but expect to hear a lot of hype about bureaucrats hijacking health care — and nothing about the needed savings — in this fall’s campaign.
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Republicans are also eagerly, and shamefully, pillorying Dr. Donald Berwick, the new head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. . . . Dr. Berwick has praised the socialized British health care system, especially for its emphasis on primary care. This country certainly needs to do more to develop its primary care system. And he has, rightly, called for an open discussion of the health care rationing that is already widespread in our system. When insurers decline to cover procedures, or high prices screen out low-income people, that is rationing.
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Democrats have to counter the Republicans’ demagoguery with facts. Americans need to understand that if Senator Cornyn and others get their way, runaway health care costs will only get worse. Democrats should not be shy about touting reform’s benefits — for improving Americans’ lives or its potential for reducing the deficit.

Bradlee Dean - the Face of "Christianist" and GOP Hate

It never ceases to amaze me how hateful and down right vile self-congratulatory "Christians" can be. Other than tempestuous love affairs with themselves, the seem to hate just about everyone else - especially if that everyone else is gay. Or, black. Or, Hispanic. Or an immigrant. Or Jewish. The list truly goes on and on. Yet another example of this is phenomenon is Bradlee Dean, drummer for the Christianist rock group, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide. Dean (pictured above), who looks pretty damn effeminate if you ask me, has close ties with GOP wing nuts - including GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, one of the nuttiest of them all, has recently condoned the execution of gays. Applying the rule of thumb that the most strident homophobes are usually self-loathing closet cases, Dean must have some serious issues of his own. The Minnesota Independent recently looked at how Dean's rock group has become a quasi-fixture at Minnesota GOP events as well as Dean's kill the gays statements. Here are some highlights:
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You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit ministry that brings its hard rock gospel into public schools, has been deepening its long-running ties to the Republican Party of Minnesota. Long a cause célèbre for Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has twice lent her name to the group’s fundraising efforts, You Can Run (YCR) had a booth at the GOP convention in April, and the group’s frontman, Bradlee Dean, reports that gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer recently accepted an invitation to visit with him at Dean’s home. But recent controversial statements by Dean — that Muslim countries calling for the execution of gays and lesbians are “more moral than even the American Christians” — have drawn the ire of some both within and outside the party.
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“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’s May 15 radio show on AM 1280 the Patriot. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”
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“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean continued. “That is what you are seeing in America.”
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“The bottom line is this… they [homosexuals] play the victim when they are, in fact, the predator,” Dean said, before going on to make a claim that has no basis in fact: “On average, they molest 117 people before they’re found out. How many kids have been destroyed, how many adults have been destroyed because of crimes against nature?”
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GOP chair Sutton did not respond to the Minnesota Independent’s request for comment on Dean’s rhetoric about executing gays and lesbians, but Emmer’s press secretary, Chris Van Guilder, passed along this statement from Emmer: . . . Tom did meet Bradlee Dean while campaigning, and may have doorknocked his house. Tom has also appeared on AM1280 and KKMS, including on Bradlee Dean’s radio show. Tom has appeared on many other radio stations and shows as well.Tom’s position on social issues has been very clear and consistent. He is a supporter of traditional marriage, and he strongly opposes any kind of violence or unfair discrimination against any group. . . .
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Emmer’s campaign acknowledges that Emmer’s Minnesota House campaign donated $250 to You Can Run in 2008; the campaign has alerted the Campaign Finance Board because the donation exceeds the legal limit by $150.

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For a generally progressive state, Minnesota seems to have some really scary whack jobs. Personally, I find it frightening that someone as blatantly untethered from reality as Michelle Bachmann ever got elected to Congress.

Rush Limbaugh: GOP Court Jester

The Washington Post has a great op-ed that looks at the sorry state of the GOP led now for all practical purposes by its court jester, Rush Limbaugh. True, El Rushbo as he calls himself at times, still has a loyal, bigoted, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-woman, anti-immigrant following and continues to rake in the money. But that is something very different from leading a collapsing political party back from the wilderness. In politics, the goal should be to assembly a working majority of voters not drinking a lace Kool-Aid potion to appeal to a delusional minority. Yet that seems to be where the GOP is headed and at an ever increasing pace as moderates and those able to engage in critical thinking skills flee the GOP ship as if it were the Titanic or Lusitania. As I have comment before, historically, most of my family were Republicans - before the party became the party of religious extremists and the intolerant and the brain dead. Here are some column highlights:

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As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I used to find Limbaugh to be an obnoxious but entertaining companion, his eruptions more reliable than Old Faithful. But now that Limbaugh has become something else — the face of the Republican Party, by a White House that has played him brilliantly — he has been transformed into car-wreck-quality spectacle, at once scary and sad.

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Behold: The sweaty, swollen man in the black, half-buttoned shirt who ranted for nearly 90 minutes Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He reiterated his desire to see the president of his country fail. He misstated the Constitution’s intent while accusing President Obama of “bastardizing” the document. He made fun of one man’s service in Vietnam, to laughter.

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Smarter Republicans know he is not good for them. As the conservative writer David Frum said recently, “If you’re a talk radio host and you have five million who listen and there are 50 million who hate you, you make a nice living. If you’re a Republican party, you’re marginalized.”

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Race is an obsession with Limbaugh, one of the threads I noticed on those long drives on country roads. When Colin Powell endorsed Obama during the campaign, Limbaugh said it was entirely because of race. After the election, Powell said the way for the party, which has been his home, to regain its footing was to say the Republican Party must stop “shouting at the world.”

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It’s little wonder that the thrice-married Limbaugh, who uses “femi-Nazi,” “info-babe” and “PMSNBC” (Get it? The network is full of women suffering pre-menstrual cramps, ha-ha), among his monikers for women, can’t get a date with that demographic. For Democrats, this is all going to plan.

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Limbaugh played his role, ever the fool. A brave Republican could have challenged him, could have had a “have you no shame” moment with him, giving the party some other identity, some spine. Instead, they caved — from Steele, to the leaders in the House, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence, to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who would be ridiculed by Limbaugh for his real first name, Piyush, were he a Democrat.

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But Limbaugh has a fear of his own. If people see him purely as an “entertainer,” as Steele suggested, he will be exposed for what he is: a clown with a very large audience.