The GOP: Warriors of the Aristocracy

With Hillary Clinton having announced that bringing relief to the the plight of the working and middle classes will be a theme of her presidential campaign, we can expect lip service from GOP candidates that will show feigned concern for average Americans.  Talk, of course, is cheap and talk is all the GOP will actually bring to the table.  Since 1977 - the year I graduated from law school - inflation has been in the neighborhood of 287.3%.  Rest assured, that wages for average Americans has not kept pace.  Even in the legal realm, fees for things such as a real estate settlement have nowhere near kept up with the rate of inflation.  A piece in Salon looks at the true GOP agenda as being warriors for the "aristocracy."  Here are excepts that look at GOP policies rather than GOP lip service:

It’s been quite interesting to see Republicans embrace the notion that wealth inequality (or any inequality) is something to worry their pretty little heads about. Over the winter we heard numerous reports of various GOP luminaries expressing serious concern that average Americans were getting the short end of the stick while the wealthy few reaped all the rewards. Ted Cruz might as well have put on a blond wig and called himself “Elizabeth” when he railed against it after the State of the Union:

“We’re facing right now a divided America when it comes to the economy. It is true that the top 1 percent are doing great under Barack Obama. Today, the top 1 percent earn a higher share of our national income than any year since 1928,”

And here we thought that was supposed to be a good thing. Aren’t they the “job producers”? That’s how weird the GOP’s messaging has gotten lately. Mitt “47 Percent” Romney clutched his very expensive opera-length pearls, wailing that “under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before.” Rand Paul channeled his heretofore unknown inner Bernie Sanders, proclaiming that “income inequality has worsened under this administration. 

This certainly wasn’t something they lost any sleep over before now. . . . this sort of thing is called “issue-trespassing,” where one party attempts to co-opt an advantage of the other by pretending to care about something nobody thinks they care about. In this case, the GOP seemed to be admitting that their reputation as the party of the 1 percent wasn’t helpful to their cause, so they decided to try to shift the blame to President Obama.

[I]t’s hard to see how anyone can possibly believe that the Republican Party, which fetishizes low taxes for the rich above all other priorities, truly cares about wealth inequality; but perhaps this is one of those times when the mere pretense of caring signals that they understand how badly their reputation of callous disregard for everyday Americans’ economic security has hurt them.

[T]his shallow attempt at appearing to give a damn was short-lived. This week the GOP is voting, as they always do, to ensure that the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune won’t be faced with the terrible responsibility of having to pay taxes on their inheritances. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post pointed out just how successful these protectors of the progeny of the one percenters have been in recent years:

It had long been a conservative ideal, and the essence of the American Dream, to believe that everybody should have an equal shot at success. But in their current bid to end the estate tax, Republicans could create a permanent elite of trust-fund babies. The estate tax was a meaningful check on a permanent aristocracy as recently as 2001 . . . The current exemption of $5.4 million (the current estate tax has an effective rate averaging under 17 percent, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center) does little to prevent a permanent aristocracy from growing — and abolishing it entirely turns democracy into kleptocracy.

This is nothing new, of course. The conservative project has always been fundamentally about aristocracy. Sure, they love to wax on about freedom and liberty but the freedom and liberty they care about is the freedom to attain property and pass it on to their heirs. Everything else is secondary. What’s more interesting is the way they are able to make ordinary people who will never benefit from this scheme — in fact, they will suffer  – agitate for it as if it meant the bread on their own table and the roof over their own heads.

Paul Waldman tackled this phenomenon in a piece for the American Prospect a while back. He concluded that voters didn’t understand that the tax only kicks in for very high amounts, and that most people instinctively think it should be okay to bequeath your fortune to your kids — regardless that the consequences of vastly wealthy people doing this are fundamentally un-American.
Waldman mentioned this silly notion as well:

Americans tend to think that no matter what their current situation, eventually, they’re going to be rich. Most of us are wrong about that, but that’s what we think. It’s practically our patriotic duty to believe it. So most everyone thinks that this tax will apply to their estate upon their death, no matter how modest that estate might be at the moment.

This is one of the main keys to the perpetuation of the aristocratic project: Convincing average people to support “their betters” with the promise that they will themselves benefit. In the old aristocracy, this used to be a simple pledge of fealty to ones noble house, but American conservatives have “democratized” it to make the serfs and peasants believe that they too will be nobles one day if only they agree to allow the rich to keep every last penny of their wealth. It’s a very sweet scam.

Unfortunately for the conservatives, inequality is becoming impossible to ignore and the people are starting to wake up to what is happening. The confusion on the right about how to handle it is a sign that it’s verging out of their control.

 

[S]imply paying lip service to a democratic, egalitarian concern is probably not going to be enough to give them cover when the Republican stereotype of being servants of the rich is so deeply embedded in our political culture. (Thanks Mitt!) Voting for the Paris Hilton tax exemption bill certainly won’t help.

Chaos Would Follow If the GOP Actually Repealed Obamacare

Today the GOP controlled House of Representatives will again vote to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare.  Of course, the Congressional Republicans have no proposed alternative to Obamacare and no plan how to deal with the millions of Americans who would lose healthcare coverage.  Of course, they seemingly don't care about these individuals and families since they most likely view them as part of the 47% who are "takers."  Added to this indifference is the fact that in the minds of many in the GOP, these Americans are minorities, so they truly do not matter.  So much for adherence to the message of Christ.  Mother Jones looks at the chaos that would ensue if the GOP did succeed in its repeal efforts.  Here are article highlights:

On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives plans to vote once again to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It will be the 55th time House GOPers have voted to eliminate or impede the health care reform law, but the very first opportunity for freshman Republicans to register their opposition to Obamacare in the congressional record.

But with each repeal vote, the politics of rolling back the Affordable Care Act become more fraught. After all, the law is now enmeshed with the US health care system. "Talk of repealing the Affordable Care Act is like talk of repealing the interstate highway system," says Timothy Jost, a health care law expert at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. "I mean in theory you could do it. Nobody would want to live with it."

Since President Barack Obama will never sign legislation repealing his signature accomplishment, a vote to strike down the law is largely symbolic. But what if, in some parallel universe perhaps, repeal passed?

"If you with a stroke of a pen took the Affordable Care Act away and there was no transition period, there would essentially be havoc in the markets," says Linda Blumburg, a health care policy analyst.

[H]ealth care experts have been crunching the numbers to figure out what would happen if the Supreme Court dismantles Obamacare in states that rely on the federal government to run their healthcare marketplaces. Though the Supreme Court scenario, which would halt the subsidies to people purchasing insurance in the federally-run marketplaces, is not the same as full repeal, it helps paint the picture of what would happen. And the picture is not pretty. If the Supreme Court stopped subsidies from flowing to the 34 states that did not establish their own exchanges, 8.2 million fewer people would have coverage by 2016. . . Next year, the number of people insured through purchasing private plans would drop by 69 percent.

Jost says. "Basically, you would have a lot of people die because they couldn't get health care."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. A roll back of the Medicaid expansion would cause millions more Americans to lose their coverage and create mayhem for state governments. Without the ACA to plug the so-called "donut-hole" for prescription drugs, seniors would see their drug bills go up.

A Supreme Court decision against Obamacare would cost millions of Americans their coverage, but full repeal by Congress would be even more devastating. Health care experts describe a state of complete chaos were the ACA to simply disappear from the books.

Repeal would be bad for insurers as well as customers by causing at least short-term turmoil for insurance companies. Without an individual mandate and without subsidies to make insurance affordable, younger, healthier people would likely drop their coverage, leaving insurers to cover older, sicker people with more health-care needs.

Republicans are starting to realize that—even for a symbolic vote of protest against Obamacare—the reality is that repeal alone is not an option.

And for the first time, the bill the House plans to vote on this week requires that the relevant House committees draft replacement legislation for the law. And, though not currently in the text of the bill, its sponsor, Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), plans to introduce an amendment to the bill that would delay repeal for 180 days to give Republicans time to craft a replacement, according to a Byrne aide.

Which Shape Shifter Will Romney Be This Time?

I don't like Mitt Romney for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that he's a rich, spoiled brat who suffers from an overweening sense of entitlement.   He thinks he's entitled to the presidency.  In addition, his ego drives him to be the first Mormon president.  He's in love with the idea of being president.  What he'd actually do if elected is a bigger question - a question that Romney himself doesn't seemed to have fleshed out even when he ran for the office in 2012.   Thus, the question becomes one of what version of Romney will we see/Romney seek to project?  The speculation on Romney's reasoning is all over the place.  Here are examples of the speculation.  First,  highlights from a piece in Time:

It is always wonderful to see a twice-failed politician suck it up and sort of announce he’s going to be running for President again. Mitt Romney’s allies say he will be different this time. There is talk of a new personal style that was really his old personal style—as seen in the Netflix documentary Mitt—but was brutally suppressed by his … political consultants, most of whom seem back on board.

There is talk of Romney emphasizing the eradication of poverty as one of his three campaign pillars. There is talk about his being less gaffe-prone this time. (Translation of last two sentences: he will try to act like a rich guy who cares for the 47%.) He will “position” himself just to the right of Jeb Bush.

What they don’t talk about is whether this iteration of Romney will come equipped with a backbone. The last two certainly didn’t, to the point of embarrassment. In neither campaign did Romney take a position that was even vaguely controversial with his party’s rabid base. He was disgraceful on immigration, “self-deporting” himself to Dantean circles of chicanery. He was craven on fiscal sanity, opposing in one debate—along with all his fellow candidates—a budget proposal that would include 90% cuts and 10% revenue increases.

Worst of all, he self-lobotomized on the subject of health care, dumbing himself down egregiously, denying that his (successful) universal-health-coverage program in Massachusetts was the exact same thing as Barack Obama’s (increasingly successful) national version. He never expressed a real emotion—not anger, not sadness, not unscripted laughter. His manner was as slick as his hair.

Ouch!  The there are these highlights from a piece in Reason.com:

It looks we’re in for a Romney trilogy: Since The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee and a 2008 primary contender, was considering another campaign, it’s become increasingly clear that Romney is aggressively scouting a route to 2016.

Getting real means changing his tune. His 2012 presidential campaign left a lot to be desired. This time, he says, things will be different. Different how, you ask?  You know…different.

So it’ll be more of the same, but with different packaging. This is the wrong lesson of the 2012 campaign. Romney had a number of communications foibles, but his big problem wasn’t communications. It was substance. The communications foibles arose in part because the messaging operation had so little to work with, and thus ended up distracted and unfocused, sucked into daily controversies that they couldn’t respond to.

Romney’s verbal flubs from last time will still be on the record. He’ll have to defend them or distance himself from them, repeatedly, and he’ll have to do so without contributing too much to the not-insane perception that he’s an ideologically unmoored flip-flopper.

And then there is this from the Washington Post:

Ever since the news broke last Friday that Mitt Romney is not only thinking about running for president again in 2016 but also making moves that suggest he is going to run, I've been trying to figure out why.  I've talked to Republicans who are close to Romney and Republicans who are only interested observers.

For people outside of Romney's direct orbit, there is bafflement about what Romney is doing. Closer allies explain, without their names attached, why Romney running again isn't as odd as it is being portrayed.
[I]n short those conversations -- and my own thinking -- have produced three basic reasons to explain why Romney is doing what he is doing. They are:

1. He doesn't believe Jeb Bush is a terribly strong candidate/frontrunner.
2. He doesn't think anyone in the current field can beat Hillary Clinton
3. He believes he has something more/new/different to offer the country at a critical moment in history.

I don't doubt Romney's sincerity. But I do think he and those close to him are fooling themselves that he can simply proclaim that he is running a new and different campaign -- one based on foreign policy and poverty, according to Politico -- and that will be that.

Does Romney think either his Republican opponents or, potentially Hillary Clinton in a general election, are going to just let the whole "47 percent" thing drop? Or that the car elevator, "severely conservative" and the picture of him with money coming out of his suit jacket are going to disappear?

The image of him as an out-of-touch plutocrat, which the Obama team so effectively painted, will linger no matter what Romney says or does as a candidate. And, unlike in 2012 when he was seen as the de facto frontrunner due to his close-but-no-cigar bid in 2008, the logic (or lack thereof) for why he would choose to run again in 2016 would make him a puzzle in the eyes of many Republican primary voters. People don't usually vote for puzzles.

As I have said before, the would be GOP candidate field is going to provide wonderful spectator sport.   Meanwhile, Hillary and would be Democrat candidates need only to carefully record the insanity and lunacy so that it can be trotted out in the general election.

Perhaps Republicans Should Move to Communist China

Pro-democracy protests continue in Hong Kong where particularly students and younger citizens want more say in electing government officials.  An interesting side note is that Hong Kong's Chief Executive, Leung Chun-ying, holds views that would thrill many in the Republican Party base - or at least those too stupid to realize that they'd ultimately be included in the ranks of those disenfranchised. Leung Chun-ying view in this instance?  That open elections are unacceptable because they could give the poor - and in the Republican's view, minorities - too much input into government. Andrew Sullivan has a post that looks at the Communist Chinese view as well as parallels with the GOP base.  Here are excerpts:

After a two-hour meeting between Hong Kong officials and protest leaders made no real progress toward resolving the standoff, the demonstrations continued yesterday, including some 200 protesters marching to the home of the territory’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. Many are reportedly outraged over comments Leung made to the foreign press on Monday insisting that open elections were unacceptable because they could give the poor too much of a voice:

In an interview with a small group of journalists from American and European news media organizations, [Leung's] first with foreign media since the city erupted in demonstrations, he acknowledged that many of the protesters are angry over the lack of social mobility and affordable housing in the city. But he argued that containing populist pressures was an important reason for resisting the protesters’ demands for fully open elections. Instead, he backed Beijing’s position that all candidates to succeed him as chief executive, the top post in the city, must be screened by a “broadly representative” nominating committee appointed by Beijing. That screening, he said, would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state, and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies to address economic inequality instead.

Beinart ties this in with the debate over voter ID laws and early voting in the US, arguing that “Leung’s views about the proper relationship between democracy and economic policy represent a more extreme version of the views supported by many in today’s GOP”: 

In 2010, Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips observed that “The Founding Fathers … put certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote … one of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community.”

In 2011, Iowa Representative Steve King made a similar observation, noting approvingly, “There was a time in American history when you had to be a male property owner in order to vote. The reason for that was, because [the Founding Fathers] wanted the people who voted—that set the public policy, that decided on the taxes and the spending—to have some skin in the game. Now we have data out there that shows that 47 percent of American households don’t pay taxes … But many of them are voting. And when they vote, they vote for more government benefits.”

Most prominent Republicans would never propose that poor people be denied the franchise. But they support policies that do just that.

My Republican fore bearers would be horrified to know that the political party they supported now holds views and supports policy derived from communist China and Putin's anti-gay Russia. 

Pro-Warner Super Pac Slams Sleazy Ed Gillespie

Things are heating up in the Mark Warner v. Ed Gillespie race for the U.S. Senate.  Gillespie has been running disingenuous ads and trying to deceive Virginians into believing that he's offering something new instead of the same failed GOP economics of the last 30 plus years (as well as the GOP's anti-woman, anti-gay, and anti-minority platform).  Of even more concern is his preference for speaking to elements of the GOP base in gatherings from which the press is barred, suggesting that Gillespie is spouting statements like Mitt Romney's 47% statement that helped immolate Romney's campaign.  In return Mark Warner has run fairly tame ads.  Thankfully, a super PAC is hitting Gillespie hard and underscoring his sleazy past.  The Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the ad war (it's noteworthy that Warner supporters are major players in the business community which Gillespie claims to represent and suggests that Gillespie, like Ken Cuccinelli, is too extreme on social issues).  Here are excerpts:

As Ed Gillespie, the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, teamed up with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to tap into wealthy Republican donors at a private fundraiser in McLean on Wednesday,
Sen. Mark R. Warner is getting outside help from prominent Democratic backers.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt; Janice Brandt, vice chair of America Online/Time Warner; and investment banker Mark J. Kington each have contributed $100,000 to Virginia Progress, an independent super PAC that had raised $1.7 million by June 30 to back Warner’s re-election bid.

Virginia Progress has spent $1.4 million in TV ads this election season to oppose Gillespie, according to the Federal Election Commission. 

Some political analysts interpret the super PAC’s spending as an indication that Virginia’s Senate race may be closer than the polls suggest — most have Warner up by a comfortable lead over Gillespie.

But Larry Sabato, head of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said there is no objective indication that the contest is especially close.

“I see no evidence that it is being treated as such by GOP groups,” Sabato said. Warner campaign spokesman David Turner said the campaign would not comment as Virginia Progress is an independent PAC.

As of June 30, the most recent reporting deadline, Warner’s campaign has raised $9.9 million and had $8.9 million cash on hand. Gillespie had raised$4.2 million with $3.1 million in cash.

What Does Ed Gillespie Not Want You To Hear?

Click image to enlarge

Even as Mark Warner publicly and unashamedly states his positions, Ed Gillespie is apparently reprising Mitt Romney's approach of saying some things in public - that is when he can be pressed to take a position - while displaying his pandering to extremists behind closed doors.  As recent events show, Gillespie seems fearful that he will suffer his own "47%" fiasco if the press hears him courting the ugliest elements of the Virginia GOP's know nothing, racist base.  Blue Virginia sums it up well:

From the Democratic Party of Virginia:

Last week, the Northern Shenandoah Valley Patriots Tea Party invited community members to an event billed as a town hall and forum with Ed Gillespie and Barbara Comstock. Oddly enough, just recently, the Northern Shenandoah Valley Patriots felt compelled to make the speaking engagement "more private" due to the possibility of "liberal press" and "supporters of the opponents" who could be in attendance.

But why is Ed Gillespie so afraid to speak with news reporters in the room? What is really being said behind closed doors in a room full of tea party supporters that can't be said in front of the media?

Looks like another case of Ed Gillespie trying to dodge, duck, dip, dive the Virginia press corps on the multitude of issues he has yet to address in his attempts to forge relationships with the extremist members of the GOP.

 

It seems to me that if something cannot be said in front of the press, perhaps it should not be said at all.

The G.O.P.’s Immigration Delusion

As previously noted, the GOP leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives has floated some supposed principles for immigration reform.  Like most GOP ideas nowadays, the principles have many serious defects, not the least of which is that it would create a permanent non-citizen underclass.  A column in the New York Times looks at other problems with the GOP principles as well as the continued civil war that any sort of so called amnesty would fan with the ever more white supremacist GOP base which views any member of a non-white racial minority as undeserving of citizenship and as not "real Americans."  Here are column excerpts:

THE debate over immigration reform, rekindled last week by House Republican leaders, bears a superficial resemblance to last fall’s debate over the government shutdown.

Again, you have establishment Republicans transparently eager to cut a deal with the White House and a populist wing that doesn’t want to let them do it. Again, you have Republican business groups and donors wringing their hands over the intransigence of the base, while talk-radio hosts and right-wing bloggers warn against an imminent inside-the-Beltway sellout. 

A reasonable compromise, for instance, would condition amnesty for illegal immigrants on substantial new enforcement measures, to ensure that this mass legalization would be the last. But the bills under discussion almost always offer some form of legal status before enforcement takes effect, which promises a replay of the Reagan-era amnesty’s failure to ever deliver the limits on future immigration that it promised.

A reasonable immigration compromise would also privilege high-skilled immigration over low-skilled immigration, given the unemployment crisis among low-skilled native workers and the larger social crisis that threatens to slow assimilation and upward mobility alike. But the House leadership seems to favor an approach that would create a permanent noncitizen class of low-wage workers and expand guest-worker programs — a recipe for looser labor markets, continued wage stagnation and fewer jobs for the existing unemployed.

  [A] big push for immigration reform would not be as straightforwardly idiotic as shutting down the government without clear goals or plausible demands. But it would probably have some of the same political effects: it would divide the G.O.P., perplex the public, and let the White House reap immediate political benefits no matter how the push turned out.

 

So why are Republican leaders flirting with the idea? In part for principled reasons — libertarianism, pro-business sentiment and “compassionate conservative” impulses all align to make comprehensive reform seem like an obvious good to many figures in the party, and to obscure its downsides and its risks.

But it’s also hard for G.O.P. elites to let go of the idea that there’s a simple, one-fell-swoop solution to their electoral difficulties. The entire post-2012 immigration reform push was born out of this hope — that a single policy shift could deliver the Hispanic vote, save the party from its demographic crisis, and (perhaps most important) make other reforms and innovations unnecessary.

This conceit was always a fond delusion, not least because most Hispanics are not single-issue voters, and their leftward tilt has always been related to broader socioeconomic concerns. So with them, as with most Americans, the problem for Republicans in 2008 and 2012 was much bigger than the immigration issue: it was a platform designed for the challenges of 1980, and rhetoric that seemed to write off half the country as layabouts and moochers. And any solution for the party, in 2016 and beyond, would have to offer much more than the same old Reagan-era script with an amnesty stapled at the bottom.

Obviously, the GOP effort at rebranding itself isn't working - especially since other big issues are off the table given the insanity of the GOP base.

Heritage Foundation Does Damage Control

As noted in a recent post, the Heritage Foundation - which seems to be dumbing itself down in parallel with the GOP base - released an anti-immigration reform report that was supposed to win high praise among the right.  Instead, it has blown up in Heritage's face - especially now that the racist, anti-Hispanic views of one of its authors have been widely publicized.  Indeed, the organization may be on the verge of hiring an outside PR firm to try to minimize the longer term damage.  Candidly, the type of batshitery that was contained in the report should come as no surprise seeing that the Heritage Foundation hired extremist, racist, homophobe Jim DeMint as its new leader. As with Mitt Romney's "the 47%" statement, when people truly discover what the right really believes, the blow back can be powerful.   Politico looks at the efforts to manage the shit storm the report has triggered.  Here are highlights:

The Heritage Foundation has gone into damage-control mode in the last few days, after coming under fire from Republicans and conservative outside groups over a report it published that puts the price tag of immigration reform at $6.3 trillion.

The conservative think tank is considering hiring a high-profile public relations firm to help deal with the fallout of the report that was supposed to be their big play in the immigration debate, according to two sources familiar with Heritage.

The group has also come under scrutiny after it was reported that one of the authors of the report asserted previously that white Americans have higher IQs than immigrants.

The rollout was supposed to be a coming out party of sorts for Jim DeMint, who took the helm of the organization last month, after giving up his Senate seat to take the job. While DeMint was expected to give the group a higher profile, the backlash and controversy are not the kind of attention the group was hoping to garner.

One Republican operative who works on immigration reform said that hiring a crisis communications firm could help stop the bleeding with donors or other supporters. Heritage’s efforts to get traction for its immigration report could be hampered, the operative said, if it gets lumped in with groups like FAIR, NumbersUSA or CIS, which are considered pure opposition to the immigration reform effort.

Heritage has stood by its findings that an immigration overhaul would cost $6.3 trillion despite many conservative groups and lawmakers, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), calling the findings inaccurate.

The group has also been fending off attacks over one of the report’s coauthors, Jason Richwine. As part of his Harvard dissertation, Richwine, who is now a senior policy analyst at the think tank, argued that there was a long-standing difference between the IQ of white Americans and immigrants.  .   .   .  

Heritage’s Gonzalez wrote in a blog post that the Harvard paper does not represent Heritage’s position.    “It’s findings do not reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation or the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to U.S. taxpayers, as race and ethnicity are not part of Heritage immigration policy recommendations,” Gonzalez wrote, adding that Richwine provided quantitative support to the lead author Robert Rector.

All in all, it is fun to watch the far right self destruct when it slips up and lets the world see its real racism and bigotry.   So much for wooing the Hispanic vote.

GOP Meltdown: Paul Ryan Budget Attacks GOP's Last Stronghold

With the Republican Party's base increasingly made up of angry, aging white voters, one would think that the last thing that the GOP would seek to do is attack programs that cater to this demographic.  Yet Paul "Modern Day Pharisee" Ryan's budget proposals do precisely that and could drive older voters towards the Democrats, leaving the GOP only with younger Christofascists (a diminishing breed) and younger white supremacists in the GOP base.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this potentially suicidal policy that with luck will hasten the demise of the GOP in its current incarnation.  Here are highlights:

After years of drifting apart, the jobs report and the stock market aligned this week, at least momentarily, as unemployment fell to the lowest level in over four years while the Dow and the S&P 500 continued to climb. We’re hardly out of the woods— the workforce participation rate remains stuck in neutral, overall growth remains sluggish, and worker income is still lagging behind the stock market gains—but there are signs of hope.

Yet some things don’t change. As the sputtering economy tries to get into gear, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan keeps talking about depriving hard working-taxpaying Americans of their retirement benefits, while offering nothing in return. This is the strategy that failed Mitt Romney and Ryan in November, and that alienates not just senior citizens, but voters over 45 — one of the few groups that’s so far remained reliably right-leaning as Asians, Hispanics, upscale Episcopalians, graduate degree holders and others have abandoned the shrinking GOP tent.

If the President’s electoral playbook called for uniting the rich and poor and treating the middle class as an afterthought, the Congressman has a more direct, if less palatable, approach: he simply attacks the middle class, by trying to gut their earned entitlement programs.

Apparently, the failed vice presidential candidate has not internalized these lessons. Instead, Ryan & Co. seems to be doubling down on 2012’s failed bet, and treating working Americans as little more than moochers. A year ago, Candidate Ryan called for voucher care instead of Medicare for Americans who were then 55 and under. Now, he is pressing the idea of setting the cut-off at 56 in an effort to force more Americans off of Medicare.


Single women now rival white evangelicals as a voting bloc, and the former – which preferred Obama to Romney by a staggering two-to-one margin—is just not cottoning to the Republicans’ message on personal autonomy or anything else. With childrearing and marriage increasingly distinct and recent studies showing that the life expectancies of subgroups of women are declining regionally, even as life expectancy on the whole is rising, a call to replace a long-established safety net with faux personal responsibility is not a winning message.

Religion also has lost traction at the lower end of the income spectrum, particularly outside of the South. .  .  .  . 
The question for the Republican Party is whether it has the will to change. After losing five straight elections to FDR's New Deal Coalition, the Republicans got their act together. Will history repeat itself? One thing is for sure: Alienating your base when you need every vote that you can get is not smart politics.

Romney and GOP Still Don't Get It: Blame Lost on "Obamacare Attractiveness" To The "Lower Incomes"

As this blog has noted numerous times, the United States is the ONLY advanced developed nation that does not have a plan for national health insurance of some kind for all of its citizens.  This despite the fact that supposedly the most religious of this same grouping of citizens.  Something that one would think would translate into a belief that the sick and uninsured should have health care coverage - at least if self-proclaimed Christians in the GOP base truly believed in and valued the Gospel message of Christ.  Of course, they don't and stand as a remarkable example of the modern day Pharisees that seem everywhere within conservative Christianity.  And this hypocrisy and cluelessness extends to the party of the Christofascists and modern day Pharisees, the Republican Party.  In a recent interview Mitt Romney revealed that he still doesn't grasp why he and the GOP lost last November.  They view countless Americans as disposable trash and still seek to gut Medicare and other programs that benefit the less fortunate and, I would argue are consistent with the Gospel that these falsely pious hypocrites pretend to worship.  A piece in The New Civil Rights Movement looks at Romney and the sickness within the GOP:

Mitt Romney appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and said he lost the 2012 campaign for the presidency because of “the Obamacare attractiveness” to “lower incomes.”  “We did very well with the majority population, but not with minority populations, and that was a failing, that was a real mistake,” Romney told Fox News host Chris Wallace.

“I think the Obamacare attractiveness and feature was something we underestimated, particularly among lower incomes. And, uh, just didn’t do as good a job in connecting with that audience as we should have.”

Aan Millhiser at Think Progress adds:

During the course of the interview, Romney agreed with Wallace that his “47 percent” comment — his claim that 47 percent of the country will vote for Obama because they are “dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims” — hurt his campaign by leaving the impression that he did not like many voters. Nevertheless, this explanation of his loss is reminiscent of the explanation he gave his donors for his defeat shortly after the election — Obama won because of “the gifts” he gave to African-Americans, Latinos and young voters.

Note that Romney doesn’t use the word “people” in his comments. They are not even “voters,” but, “populations.”  Romney had no moral right to be president of the American people because he never saw them as people.

It goes without saying that since Romney has never had to worry about money or access to health care for his family, he doesn't understand why Obamacare is such a pressing issue for many of us.  As for folks like Paul Ryan, they simply don't give a damn about the less fortunate no matter how hard he tries to wrap himself in his Catholicism.

Are Taxpayers Paying for Cuccinelli's Campaign Driver?

In his soon to be released book, uncrowned GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli reiterates the mindset of Mitt Romney which views 47% of citizens as mooching leaches and echos failed VP candidate Paul Ryan remarks about "takers."  But if there's anyone who is a taker, it is Cuccinelli himself who has refused to resign from his position as Attorney General even as he campaigns full time.   He wants every Virginian to help pay for his campaign by paying his a salary for a job his isn't doing.  He wants us to support all those children he's fathered trying to convince himself of his heterosexuality.  But now we find out that it isn't just Kookinelli himself that taxpayers are being forced to pay while performing campaign activities.  Even his campaign driver is on the Commonwealth's payroll as revealed by The Richmonder.  Kookinelli is both a hypocrite and a "taker" of the first order.  It is long past time that he and all of his campaign workers of the state payroll resign.  Here are highlights from The Richmonder:

Last week the Richmond Times Dispatch breathlessly reported how Ken Cuccinelli helped a trucker who wasn't aware her rig had caught fire. In their eagerness to do a puff piece on Cuccinelli, the Richmond Times Dispatch missed a few small details, like who exactly is Cuccinelli's driver and who pays for his salary and benefits?

The RTD helpfully provides the young man's name--Cory Chenard--but no other details. Thankfully there is this thing called Google, and when I googled "Cory Chenard," Google took me straight to Mr. Chenard's Linked In profile. It's an interesting profile for a driver, so much so I've saved a copy of it and I'm placing the images in this blog post  [see image above].

Take a moment and read over the profile and ask yourself the following question: is this the profile of a professional driver or chauffeur, or is this the profile of an experienced campaign operative?

Here's some things that leap out at me:

1. Mr. Chenard describes himself as a "Political Entrepreneur," not as a driver or chauffeur.

2. He lists a wide variety of political job experiences, but no driving experience.

3. He does not list driving or having a chauffeur's license--maybe he has one, but he doesn't list one.

If you ask me, this is the profile of a political campaign worker serving as the candidate's "body guy," a kind of on-the-road assistant. Ken Cuccinelli's day job (which he shamelessly neglects in order to campaign) is being the Attorney General of Virginia. Is there anything in Mr. Chenard's profile that suggests he is competent to offer Cuccinelli advice on complex legal matters? No, there isn't, so what kind of advice and assistance does it appear that Mr. Chenard is there to provide?

He looks to me like an experienced and pretty well-qualified campaign worker, which begs the central question of this post: why is the State of Virginia paying one of Ken Cuccinelli's campaign workers a salary and benefits?

Some may ask why Cuccinelli needs a driver to chauffeur him around; allow me to clue those of you who have never worked on a campaign in. Cuccinelli needs a driver so he can convert drive time into "call time," time set aside to call and solicit potential donors. Cuccinelli is almost certainly using a state employee to transport himself to campaign events and to help with political fundraising, all on the taxpayer's dime.

Is it any wonder that some people are calling him "Moochinelli"?

It is also telling that Kookinelli - or Moochinelli - co-wrote his soon to be released book with another individual on the state payroll:

Brian J. Gottstein
Director of Communication
bgottstein@oag.state.va.us
(804) 786-5874

Yes, Kookinelli knows all about moochers and leaches.  He's blazing a new trail in ways to f*ck over Virginia taxpayers.  He must think the rest of us are ignorant cretins as he laughs driving down the highway campaigning on the taxpayers' dime.  He needs to be brought up on ethics charges.

Romney "Rented" Mormon Church’s Exemption to Defer Taxes for 15 Years

Mitt Romney may profess to be a devout Mormon, but once again information has come out that suggests that money is his real god.  It also suggests that he must view most tax paying Americans as dolts to be played as suckers.  They pay their taxes while he makes millions yet pays a lower tax rate than most in the middle class.  Worse yet, Romney apparently entered into some sweet deals with the Mormon Church to help screw over Uncle Sam.  It's unbelievable and further proof that Romney sees himself as above the rules that most of us live by.  I seriously do not like the man.  Raw Story has details on Romney's deal with the Mormon Church to avoid paying taxes.  Here are excepts:

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney used a loophole to “rent” the Mormon church’s tax exemption status and defer paying taxes for 15 years, according to a new report. 

Tax returns obtained by Bloomberg News through a Freedom of Information Act request indicated that Romney set up a charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) in June 1996 just before Congress cracked down on the loophole in 1997.

“In this instance, Romney used the tax-exempt status of a charity — the Mormon Church, according to a 2007 filing — to defer taxes for more than 15 years,” Bloomberg’s Jesse Drucker explained. “At the same time he is benefitting, the trust will probably leave the church with less than what current law requires.”

Estates lawyer Jonathan Blattmachr told Bloomberg that Romney’s trust benefits from the Mormon church’s exempt status because charities don’t pay capital gains taxes when they make a profit from the sale of assets.

“The main benefit from a charitable remainder trust is the renting from your favorite charity of its exemption from taxation,” Blattmachr said, adding that the charitable contribution “is just a throwaway” and the church would receive little if any financial benefit from the trust.  “I used to structure them so the value dedicated to charity was as close to zero as possible without being zero,” he pointed out.

The CRUT allows individuals to “defer capital gains taxes on any profit from the sale of the assets, and receive a small upfront charitable deduction and a stream of yearly cash payments,” Drucker wrote. “Like an individual retirement account, the trust allows money to grow tax deferred, while like an annuity it also pays Romney a steady income. After the funder’s death, the trust’s remaining assets go to a designated charity.”

The trust represents a small fraction of Romney’s more than $250 million fortune and is only one of several methods the formal Bain Capital CEO has employed to avoid paying taxes.

Earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who is also a Mormon, had suggested that the Republican presidential nominee refused to release his tax returns because he had not paid any income taxes over a 10-year period.

“We know that Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than middle-class families, thanks to a number of things he’s done: Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Islands tax shelters. And we can only imagine what new secrets would be revealed if he showed the American people a dozen years of tax returns like his dad did.”

Reid noted that most of “those people” who Romney talked about “are not avoiding their tax bills using Cayman Islands tax shelters or Swiss Bank accounts like Mitt Romney. Millions of the 47 percent are seniors on Social Security, who don’t have Bain Capital retirement funds or inherited stock to fall back on.”

Lying: The Secret to Romney's Recent Success

While The Onion is a parody site, it often hits at the real truth.  A case in point is an imaginary interview where Romney tells the truth - a shocking concept, I realize - and admits that lying is the basis of his comeback to date:

"I’m lying a lot more, and my lies are far more egregious than they’ve ever been," a smiling Romney told reporters while sitting in the back of his campaign bus, adding that when faced with a choice to either lie or tell the truth, he will more than likely lie. “It’s a strategy that works because when I lie, I’m essentially telling people what they want to hear, and people really like hearing things they want to hear. Even if they sort of know that nothing I’m saying is true.”

“It’s a freeing strategy, really, because I don’t have to worry about facts or being accurate or having any concrete positions of any kind,” Romney added.

Romney said he is telling at least 80 percent more lies now than he was two months ago. Buoyed by his strong debate performance, which by his own admission included 40 or 50 instances of lying in one 90-minute period, the candidate said he will continue to “just openly lie [his] ass off” until the Nov. 6 election.

Whether it’s a senior citizen, military family, working mother, businessman, or middle-class American, Romney said, he will lie to every single one of them as often as he can if that’s what it takes to win the presidency.
 
The best part is, it’s really easy to lie," said Romney, who added that voicing whatever untruths come into his mind at any given moment is an easy thing to do because all it requires is opening his mouth and talking. "For example, if someone accuses me of having a tax plan that makes no discernable sense, I just lie and say that I do have a tax plan that makes sense. I also say there is a study that backs up my plan. See that? Simple.

We heard what Romney really believes when he was talking to his millionaire donors earlier in the year.  The big questions is whether or not voters realize that they are now being cynically played for fools or not before election day.  

Former GOP Senator Endorses Obama; Says Romney/Ryan Would Be A Disaster

I frequently cite how as a one time Republican I can not longer support a party that best represents the worse elements in American society and which is best defined by greed, an utter lack of compassion for the less fortunate, and a desire to subvert the concept of religious freedom for all citizens.  It is always encouraging to see that my views on what has happened to the GOP is not some lone aberration.  Proving that it's not is a column in Huffington Post by former U.S. Senator from South Dakota, Larry Pressler who is endorsing Barack Obama and who has some less than kind words for the Romney/Ryan ticket.  Here are some column excerpts:

As a combat veteran of two tours in Vietnam with twenty-two years of service as a Republican member of the U.S. House and Senate, I endorse President Barack Obama for a second term as our Commander-in-Chief.  

As a Vietnam vet, one of the reasons I support President Obama is because he has consistently shown he understands that our commitment to our servicemen and women may begin when they put on their uniform, but that it must never end.

This decision is not easy for any lifelong Republican. In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama, the first time I ever voted for a Democrat, because the Republican Party was drifting toward a dangerous path that put extreme party ideology above national interest. Mitt Romney heads a party remaining on that dangerous path . . . . 

What really set me off was Romney's reference to 47% of Americans to be written off -- including any veteran collecting disability like myself, as a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) veteran.

Behind closed doors with his donors, Romney made clear he'd write off half of America -- including service members and veterans -- because, as he said "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility for their lives." But there's no greater personal responsibility than to wear your country's uniform and defend the rights we all enjoy as Americans. We don't sow division between "us" versus "them." The Commander-in-Chief sets the bar for all to follow and fight for the entire country. Mitt Romney fails that test. As a veteran I feel written off.

Just as revealing is what Romney actually says publicly. As a former Foreign Service Officer, I find it offensive that Romney, Congressman Paul Ryan and their Republican Party are politicizing the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans who lost their lives in Libya. Being Commander-in-Chief requires a resolve and steadiness that's immune to politics and fear mongering. Mitt Romney fails that test.

Strategy should drive our military priorities, not party purity.  . . . . But today's Republican Party, including Ryan who voted for the deal that would trigger the cuts, is willing to bring our country's defenses to the fiscal cliff -- just so a multimillionaire doesn't have to pay a single extra penny in taxes. And the real lack of leadership? Failing to own up to your role in racking up a record debt from two unpaid wars and two massive unpaid for tax cuts. Mitt Romney leads the party that fails this leadership test.

[J]ust as our troops are returning home after a decade of war, Romney and Ryan might gut by up to 20 percent investments in the Department of Veterans Affairs -- and even suggest privatizing the veterans' health care. Again, they would short change our national security and the education, health care and employment benefits our veterans have earned and deserve just to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

As a life-long Republican, I stand by him [Barack Obama] as he stands by all of us, putting national allegiance ahead of party affiliation. I endorse President Obama for reelection in 2012.

Ouch!  I will say that Pressler's revulsion of Romney and his contempt for the 47% is not unique.  I have a friend who is a disabled military veteran who has typically voted Republican.  Thanks to Romney's comment on the 47% that he views as moochers, this person will not vote for the GOP at the presidential level.  They may not vote for Obama, but they assuredly will not vote for Romney/Ryan.

Why the Obama Campaign Should Not Let Go of the "47 Percent"

I will concede that I am a political junkie and, as the boyfriend claims, may go into withdrawal symptoms if I'm offline for too long and cannot get my news/politics "fix."   I grew up in a family where politics were dinner table conversation and I spent eight (8) years as a City Committee member for the GOP in Virginia Beach, typically a GOP bastion in Virginia.  Along the way, I also ran my own campaign for public office and narrowly lost only because I was hit with a smear campaign that labeled me as "Christian Right" - obviously, I've had the last laugh on that fictional storyline.  Now, I am technically an independent although I admittedly find it impossible to support today's Christofascist/Tea Party controlled GOP.  

My point in relating this?   During all of this political involvement over the course of several decades, I've come to have a pretty good gut read on politicians and can see through their bullshit and disingenuous apologies.  I also have always been good with facts and figures - even Taliban Bob McDonnell recognized this fact roughly 20 years ago when I was active in the GOP and we knew each other well.  So what's my read on Mitt Romney?  His infamous statements on the "47%" of Americans that he views as parasites and moochers while speaking to his millionaire donors were his real view.  Yes, he's apologized and otherwise tried to disavow his remarks, but those remarks were an unusual glimpse at Romney speaking the truth as he sees it.   During an interview over the weekend Obama adviser, David Axelrod, made statements that indicate that the Obama campaign likewise believes that Romney's comments on the "47%" provide a rare glimpse of Romney's core beliefs.  Politico looks at Axelrod's interview.  Here are excerpts:

[O]n Sunday, the Obama campaign made it clear they’re not dropping their “47 percent” attack just because Romney’s ready to move on from it, now referring to the comments made at a Florida fundraiser in May as “completely wrong.”

David Axelrod, senior adviser to the Obama campaign, called Romney’s fresh attempt to wash his hands of the comments “unconvincing,” demonstrating that the campaign is not ready to let go of one of their major lines of attack against Romney.

“That was astonishing for a whole number of reasons,” Axelrod said of Romney’s response. “The first was, three weeks ago, he was asked this same question and he stood by the essence of what he said.”
Secondly, Axelrod argued, the ‘47 percent’ remarks were a thought-out argument, not a stray word.

“But when you look at that tape that was behind closed doors, it wasn’t just a comment. It wasn’t just a word. It was a whole exposition, it was an essay on how 47 percent of the country were shiftless people who wouldn’t take personal responsibility for themselves and so on. I mean, he slandered half the country. To say, ‘whoops, I misspoke,’ is a little unconvincing.”

On Thursday, Mitt Romney completely disavowed his 47 percent comments — changing his tune after largely defending their substance since the footage was made public in mid-September. “Well, clearly in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of question and answer sessions, now and then you’re going to say something that doesn’t come out right,” Romney said on Fox News

Axelrod’s take echoes what White House adviser David Plouffe told reporters on Friday: “I would take with a huge grain of salt trying to clean something up five months after you’ve said it for the first time and after you doubled down on it.”

“47%” Was Bad for Romney; Ryan Has Been Deadly

In previous posts I've noted that the selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's VP running mate has not transformed the presidential race as contemplated by Romney and his Kool-Aid drinking cheering section of the GOP base.  In fact, some now believe that Ryan has been devastating to Romney's election prospects.  The New Republic looks at Ryan's toxicity.  Here are excerpts:

The conventional wisdom on Obama’s recent surge is that it’s due largely to Mitt Romney’s 47% disaster, and there’s clearly something to this. If nothing else, it’s given Team Obama grist for an absolutely devastating ad.

But it’s worth pointing out another dynamic that’s been overlooked here: The escalating disaster that is Paul Ryan. At the time of his selection, a number of pundits argued Ryan’s strategic benefits, suggesting he would boost Romney by energizing conservatives, or by allowing Romney to run as the candidate of big ideas, or that he would at least be the party’s best defender of the Medicare plan Romney was going to have to defend whether he wanted to or not. This seemed like a stretch at the time—after all, Ryan’s Medicare plan proved to be a massive liability the one time voters weighed in on it. But who could say for sure?

Well, fast forward a month-and-a-half and the numbers look pretty persuasive. This week the New York Times released a set of polls, conducted by Quinnipiac, assessing the state of the race in Ohio and Florida. The top-line numbers were jaw-dropping enough: Obama’s lead in Ohio grew from six to ten over the last month, and from three to nine in Florida. .  .  .  .  Obama up 19 over Romney on Medicare in Ohio, 15 in Florida, 13 in Virginia, and 17 nationally (his largest lead on the question all year). As the Post write-up puts it: “[T]he more voters focus on Medicare, the more likely they are to support the president’s bid for reelection.”


[T]he Dems have relentlessly attacked the Ryan plan, both at their convention and on the campaign trail, and the numbers have followed suit. It’s hard to believe Obama would have had the success he’s had here without Ryan himself on the ticket.

So, yes, the “47 percent” is a big deal. But the likely upshot is to prevent Romney from getting up off the mat, not to knock him down in the first place. It’s Ryan who deserves credit for that.

I find it truly ironic that the GOP base loves Ryan.  Meanwhile, the rest of the country seemingly has a growing view that is the exact opposite.  Should Romney/Ryan be defeated will the GOP base grasp this reality?  I doubted it.  A firm rejection of objective reality is now a mandatory behavior if one wishes to remain active n the Republican Party.

Today's Republicans And Their Antipathy Towards Democracy

Mixed throughout much of the hate and vitriol disseminated by today's Republican Party against those who are not whites, straight, conservative Christians - and according to Mitt Romney the 47% of Americans who are parasites - is a mindset that all others are not "real Americans."  So what does one do if you are a member in today's Republican Party?   You try to disenfranchise "those people" who do not look like you, think like you or subscribe to a fear and hate based version of Christianity.  In short, you try to distort democracy so that those you don't like cannot vote.  The GOP backed voter ID laws are a prime example.  Laws that seek to address a problem that doesn't exist and the real goals of which are to disenfranchise blacks, Hispanics, the poor, etc.  The people that per the GOP aren't "real Americans" and who I suspect Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and their "family values" Christofascist view as something less than fully human. Ana Marie Cox has a piece that looks at the GOP antipathy towards democracy where all citizens get to vote.  Here are excerpts:

The Drudge Report, which I've always considered more mischievous than malicious, gave "Unskewedpolls.com" some link love earlier this week. The site tinkers with the poll results of major firms by re-weighting them  . . . .

At their heart, Unskewed Polls express a pseudoscientific rationalization for a pre-existing belief: the mathematical equivalent of intelligent design. But the site represents more than just modern conservatism's skepticism about science; it underscores what has become a more animating and alarming concern – conservatives' distrust of democracy as a process.

This is nothing new, of course. . . . .  Anti-Federalists. . . . pushed successfully for the US constitution to mandate election of senators by state legislatures and not voters – a quaint affectation that was superseded by the 17th amendment in 1913.  There is a growing movement among Republican elected officials to repeal that amendment; among those advocates are five Republican Senate nominees.

However, it is one thing to wonder if the mass electorate can make good decisions and quite another to back-engineer the exclusion of a specific class of voters for the sake of a specific outcome. That, of course, is what voter ID laws do.

But voter ID laws are just a specific, particularly obvious example of a generalized contempt for voters. A better reflection of the mood: Romney's careless dismissal of 47% of America. The comment wasn't just callous and strategically idiotic (Karl Rove, who masterminded the GOP's outreach to "ungettable" voters, must have hurt his head banging it against the wall when he heard); it reflected also the apparently widespread presumption among GOP supporters that democracy is a zero-sum game – and that voters are motivated out of greed.

Republicans' assault on democracy (the voter ID laws, the repeal of the 17th amendment, the creeping disempowerment of women) is probably designed to scare those exact voters they want to disenfranchise as much as it is to legally disenfranchise them. Anti-voter ID activists often say that making someone believe their vote won't count is as effective as actually barring the vote.

So, you know, bring it on. It's not the 47% that needs to worry; it's Romney.

Mitt Romney's Unfavorables Are Growing

Click image to enlarge

As the eve of the presidential debates nears, Mitt Romney's unfavorables are increasing to new heights (red in the chart above is unfavorable versus favorable views in black) putting even more pressure on Romney to somehow work a miracle in the debates.  Candidly, since Romney rarely comes across as genuine and may be faced with questions on his comments of the 47% of Americans he deems parasites and moochers, I'm betting he cannot pull it off. Especially, if he's asked about paying a lower rate in taxes than most secretaries.   Yes, I'm among the near 50% of American who have a negative view of the man.

GOP’s Self-Delusion Syndrome

The newest meme of the far right is that all of the polls which show Barack Obama ahead of Mitt Romney are a ploy of the liberal media and liberal elite designed, if you will, to demoralize the Christofascists and Tea Party gang enough so that they will simply stay home believing the election is already lost.  It seems that accepting the reality that the vision of America being marketed by today's GOP simply is not selling well with a majority of the country is beyond their contemplation.  Leading the charge against polls and reality are demagogues like Rush Limbaugh.  Even some Republicans from my former GOP days seem to be slipping into this reality denying bubble.  A column in The Daily Beast looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

What a fantastic last two weeks these have been. I don’t even mean Barack Obama solidifying his lead over Mitt Romney, although that’s perfectly fine. No, I mean the near-mathematically perfect joy of watching these smug and contemptible creatures of the right dodge and swerve and make excuses and, most of all, whine. There is no joy in the kingdom of man so great as the joy of seeing bullies and hucksters laid low, and watching people who have arrogantly spent years assuming they were right about the world living to see all those haughty assumptions die before their eyes. Watching them squirm is more fun than watching Romney and Paul Ryan flail away.

Well, the polls have started to come, and they portend total disaster. Americans don’t turn out to like a heartlessly cruel Social Darwinian articulation of the national condition that by the by calls half the population worthless. Huh. Go figure.

But is this a problem? Of course not! There is an explanation for this too: The polls are wrong! All of them. Except of course Rasmussen, that rock of right-minded methodological certitude jutting out from the ocean of relativist corruption.

[T]he gold medalist of this event by far is Dick Morris, who sits there on the Fox set like a betumored walrus on an ice floe assuring his viewers not to worry. His riff to Sean Hannity Monday night, a night when everyone else saw that Obama’s lead was getting comfortable-to-the-point-of-insurmountable, is worth quoting at some length: “[Romney] is at the moment in a very strong position. I believe if the election were held today Romney would win by four or five points. I believe he would carry Florida, Ohio, Virginia. I believe he would carry Nevada. I believe he would carry Pennsylvania.” Even Hannity at this point interjected, “Oh, come on.” 

[I]t’s not lies with which Limbaugh and Morris and their ilk are now coming face-to-face. It’s the truth. Americans like Barack Obama. They don’t like Mitt Romney. They really don’t like Paul Ryan. And they don’t want any part of the ideology of callousness and make-believe facts and pigheaded warmongering—and economic crisis and big deficits and all of that—that the Republicans are peddling. Of course these people will never come to terms with all that. But right now, boys, you’re running out of targets, and excuses.

I remain cautiously optimistic that the polls are accurate and that Obama is building an unassailable lead.  Nothing in my view will be better for the cause of gay rights - and the future of the country at large - than a resounding GOP defeat.   Will it be enough to cause the GOP to shake loose from the control of the Christofascists (the GOP platform is after all the wet dream of haters like Tiny Perkins and James Dobson)?  Probably not, but it could at least be the beginning of the end of the Christian Rights dominance in the GOP.

Jim Webb Verbally Eviscerates Romney During Virginia Beach Remarks

AP Photo

I haven't always been a happy supporter of Jim Webb even though I did vote for him six years ago when he ran against my former law school roommate, George "Macaca" Allen.  A case in point is when Webb was waffling on DADT repeal and I was contacted by his communications director after slamming Webb in a blog post.  Webb went a long way to wipe out any displeasure I might have had with him when he eviscerated - or perhaps castrates is a better term - Mitt Romney while speaking at Barack Obama's campaign stop in Virginia Beach today.  The thrust of Webb's remarks: castigating Romney for lobbying in support of the Vietnam War and then using a special exemption from service for Mormon missionaries and spending critical war years in Europe. I understand where Webb is coming from.  I'm 60 years old and only missed the draft because I had a high lottery number (269 as I recall).  Unlike Romney, I never sought an exemption.  And I never agitated in support of the Vietnam fiasco.  And, yes, I lost childhood friends in that fool's errand that is similar in so many ways to the ongoing disaster in the Middle East.    Politico has details on Webb's statements.  Here are highlights:

Webb’s bladework today on Mitt Romney was as unexpected as it was memorable.  From Webb’s introductory remarks before Obama’s Virginia Beach appearance:

Governor Romney and I are about the same age. Like millions of others in our generation, we came to adulthood facing the harsh realities of the Vietnam War. 2.7 million in our age group went to Vietnam, a war which eventually took the lives of 58,000 young Americans and cost another 300,000 wounded. The Marine Corps lost 100,000 killed or wounded in that war. During the year I was in Vietnam, 1969, our country lost twice as many dead as we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the past 10 years of war. 1968 was worse. 1967 was about the same. Not a day goes by when I do not think about the young Marines I was privileged to lead.

This was a time of conscription, where every American male was eligible to be drafted. People made choices about how to deal with the draft, and about military service. I have never envied or resented any of the choices that were made as long as they were done within the law. But those among us who stepped forward to face the harsh unknowns and the lifelong changes that can come from combat did so with the belief that their service would be honored, and that our leaders would, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, care for those who had borne the battle, and for their widows and their children.

Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They’ve lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: “All gave some, some gave all.” This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.

And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be commander-in-chief. And they are owed much more than that — a guarantee that we will never betray the commitment that we made to them and to their loved ones.

[C]oming from Webb — a voice for the white working class, a former Navy secretary and decorated Vietnam veteran whose son left college to enlist as an infantry private in the Marine Corps and fought in the Iraq War — his words carry a punch that few other Democratic surrogates can muster.

 That's right.  Military veterans receiving benefits and those on active duty do not pay income taxes on their benefits.  These individuals are part of the 47% that Mitt Romney holds in thinly veiled contempt.  The man is despicable.  

Mitt Romney in 1968 - while thousands of young Americans were dying in Vietnam