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“In The Process Of Unifying”: Republicans Are Just Not That Into Mitt Romney

Yeeesh, what does Mitt Romney have to do to drum up a bit of enthusiasm from his party? Sure, he’s got to be feeling pretty content as each day brings another Republican casting aside the somehow-still-going campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul to accept the inevitable proposition that Romney will be the party’s nominee. Yet few can seem to offer an explanation for why they like Romney beyond the fact that they’re stuck with him. Shortly after I noted John Boehner’s lackluster endorsement yesterday, reporters asked Mitch McConnell for his take on Romney and were given the same nod-and-sigh routine:

“Yeah, I support Governor Romney for president of the United States,” Mr. McConnell said. “And he is going to be the nominee. And as you have noticed, the party is in the process of unifying behind him. And I think it’s going to be an incredibly close, hard-fought race. Everybody is banding — bandying polls around, but just look at the Gallup tracking poll yesterday actually had Governor Romney with a two-point lead. I think it’s going to be a very, very competitive election. We’re all behind him and looking forward to the fall campaign, which is actually already under way.”

It’s not like Romney’s win has come as any surprise to Republicans; it’s a reality they’ve had months to come to terms with. You’d think a few of them would have spent that time writing a rousing argument for why they look forward to campaigning for him over the next six months. It seems particularly odd that McConnell and Boehner are both so blasé. They are about as Republican establishment as it comes, and throughout the primaries, I assumed they were all secretly rooting for Romney and dreading the very thought of a Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich candidacy. But as much as they want to see Barack Obama exit the White House, they seem to share the same enthusiasm for Romney as much of the country.

 

By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, April 18, 2012

April 19, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Progressive “Paper Tigers”: Religious Right Advocating Violence Against “Secularist Left Bullies”

Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel yesterday on his radio show seemed to advocate for violence by people of faith against “the secularist left” whom he called “bullies.” Barber likened progressive and secular left-wing groups to “paper tigers” and school yard bullies who attempt to intimidate people into silence.

“On yesterday’s episode of the ‘Faith and Freedom’ radio program, Matt Barber stated that groups such as ours and Americans United and the ACLU were nothing but ‘paper tigers’ to whom conservatives must stand up,” People for the American Way’s Kyle Mantyla writes today at their Right Wing Watch blog:

In fact, said Barber, the “secularist left” in general is nothing buy a bunch of bullies who intimidate the righteous and push “religious bigotry” on everyone else. And like all bullies, they just need to be punched in the mouth.

Barber is the Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action and an Associate Dean and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University School of Law, and also serves on the board of the SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, and is the Policy Director for Cultural Issues at Concerned Women for America.

Last month, in direct contradiction to FBI published statistics, Barber falsely claimed there is “no evidence” of mass anti-gay violence but the “specter” of violence against gay people has forced churches into the closet.

Last year, Barber said that “at the heart of modern Liberalism is rebellion toward God, is hatred for God,” and also claimed that gays know in their hearts that there is no such thing as two mothers or fathers and that all they really want is to destroy the American family.

Also last year, Barber said gays are terrorists and want to put conservatives in jail.

Unsurprisingly, Barber is one of several dozen anti-gay pundits tracked by GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project (CAP). See his entry here.

Transcript and video via Right Wing Watch:

They’re bullies. And we know that we people stand up to the bully on the playground – the bully on the playground intimidates, that’s what he does, intimidates people into silence, into fear, into avoiding the bully. And oftentimes the bully is the paper tiger and when the righteous individual who is being bullied defends his or herself and punches the bully in the mouth, guess what, the bully more times than not has a glass jaw, falls down and then everyone on the playground says “whoa, the bully was a weakling after all.”

That’s the secularist left. The secularist left are bullies. They try to bully and intimidate and push religious intolerance and religious bigotry on everyone else.

Of course, ironically, Barber and his ilk are the true bullies, and are responsible for contributing to an environment of homophobic hate that leads a great number of LGBT youth and teens to suicide.

 

By: David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement, April 18, 2012

April 19, 2012 Posted by | Civil Rights | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“They Do It Because We Don’t Stop Them”: Disrespect For The President And The Office Of The Presidency

My favorite song is “Respect” by Aretha Franklin. And many will tell you, respect is earned. But in some cases, it’s a given. Example? The office of the president of the United States of America. You might not like or respect the man, but you’ve got to respect the office. This is a concept many Americans agree on, even if they disagree ideologically.

Although I’m not that old a broad yet, I am seeing a growing number of Americans disrespect not only the man in the Oval Office, but the office of the president. It seems the older I get, the less respect Americans have for our commander in chief. And I wonder why that is.

One possibility is we as a nation do not hold persons who are disrespectful toward a president accountable for their actions.

This week alone we have seen two examples of great disrespect for our president and the office he holds. And where is the outrage?

1. Secret Service agents allegedly being “serviced’ by prostitutes: On a flight from New York to Los Angeles, I recently read a story by a former Secret Service agent for the late President John F. Kennedy. He never forgave himself for being close to the president, yet not close enough to stop the shooting of the president (to take a bullet for him) when JFK was shot in Dallas. Still, to this day, it haunts him. He respected both the president and the first lady. He took his job seriously, and his job was to protect the president. He not only respected the man and the office, he respected his own position, his duty, and his country. The recent reported behavior by the 11 Secret Service agents makes me wonder, if they could be so disrespectful to those women, to another country, and to our own country and the positions they hold, how could they protect our president? And what disrespect to that man, the office, and our country. How times have changed. 

2. Ted Nugent and his violent rhetoric: At a recent National Rifle Association convention, these words were uttered by Ted Nugent: “I’ll tell you this right now: If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” And: “We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November. Any questions?” And further, Nugent warned listeners that if they did not “get everybody in your lives to clean house in this vile, evil, America-hating administration, I don’t even know what you’re made out of.” He added: “If the coyote’s in your living room, pissing on your couch, it’s not the coyote’s fault. It’s your fault for not shooting him.” He also denounced the administration as “criminals” and said a Democratic victory in November would mean “we’ll be a suburb of Indonesia next year”—an apparent reference to President Obama’s boyhood time there.

Now the Secret Service is speaking to him about “what he meant” when he said he would be dead or in jail; I’m more concerned with what he meant when he said he wanted the National Rifle Association members to “chop their heads off in November.”

Some will say this is just Nugent being a loudmouth, he isn’t really threatening the president. Perhaps that is true, but what about the idiot who will follow Nugent’s words and make a true threat or attempt to carry out such violent rhetoric? Have we learned nothing from the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords?! When will the use of such language stop?! And the disrespect!

Why is it OK to speak so disrespectfully about a Democratic president, but if the same were said about a Republican, it would be consider unpatriotic or perhaps even treason?

Although I might anger many of you with what I’m about to write, I truly, truly believe it in my heart. I feel that the Secret Service and Ted Nugent, consciously or otherwise, feel it is OK to disrespect the president because of his skin color.

No other president’s birth right has been questioned. No other president has been portrayed as a monkey on a porch, mimicking a terrible, terrible racial slur. No other president has been portrayed physically on a billboard as Hitler—more than once. Shall I go on?

The bottom line? Threatening anyone’s life is wrong, whether Democrat or Republican, and especially our commander in chief. Respect the office. Hold those accountable who use such violent rhetoric; they do it because we don’t’ stop them. And if you disagree with someone, don’t threaten to shoot them. I disagree with my husband all the time, and he is very, very much alive.

 

By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, April 18, 2012

April 19, 2012 Posted by | Democracy | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“It’s Mitt’s Time”: The Romney’s Display A Remarkable Sense Of Entitlement

I found Ann Romney calling the Hilary Rosen controversy “a birthday present” a little odd. The outrage machine ginned up the culture war to defend Ann’s “choice” to stay at home, but she’s telling us she enjoyed it? She wasn’t really hurt and offended? If the president had declared a “war on moms,” as Republicans claimed, could she really experience that as “a birthday present”? Is it really all about Ann?

On “The Ed Show” last night I said it revealed Ann Romney’s sense of entitlement, that she would call such apoplexy “a birthday present.” But I hadn’t even heard the most entitled part of her interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, in which she exclaims, “It’s Mitt’s time. It’s our turn now.” In the same interview, her husband told Obama to “start packing,” rather presumptuously (who orders around the president?), but Ann Romney declaring “It’s our turn now” is even worse. Ann, the voters will decide that. Don’t order the car elevator for the White House quite yet.

On CNBC Tuesday night, the candidate himself sat down with former Reagan staffer Larry Kudlow for a mostly admiring interview. Although it was interesting that after Romney got through slamming the Obama administration for “scaring” American businesses and generally wrecking the economy, Kudlow asked him to explain why the stock market is soaring. “Right now what you’re seeing in stock prices is the fact that businesses are profitable,” Romney acknowledged. Despite Obama, of course.

But Romney had one of his great Romney moments when Kudlow asked him if he thought the gains would continue. He tried to quote Yogi Berra, you know, like a regular Joe. Here’s how it came out:

I’m not going to predict the direction of the stock market. I–you know, I always like to quote the Yogi Berra line or as close to it as I can, which is that Yogi Berra said, in effect, that he doesn’t like making predictions, particularly if the future’s involved.

“Yogi Berra said, in effect” is a perfect example of how not to quote Yogi Berra. That’s old Mitt winging it.

 

By; Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, April 17, 2012

April 18, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Re-investing Resources”: ALEC Gives In, But There’s No Reason To Celebrate

After weeks of pressure, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) appears to be backing away from long-term efforts at creating barriers to voting (voter-ID laws) and pushing “Stand Your Ground” legislation. The latter allows those who feel threatened in public places to use force; Florida’s version is currently at the center of the Trayvon Martin case. Giving in to public pressure, ALEC announced Tuesday that it was disbanding its Public Safety and Elections task force, which promoted such legislation and helped see it proliferate. The organization is now “reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy.” ALEC’s spokesperson did not respond to interview requests nor did Public Safety Task Force Chair Jerry Madden, a Texas state representative.

ALEC, which proudly calls itself “the nation’s largest, non-partisan, individual public-private membership association of state legislators,” has operated as a largely secret arena in which corporate sponsors and conservative legislators share ideas. The group offers model legislation to its members, which has in the past simply been introduced in legislatures unchanged. While the group says its goals are job growth and economic development, it has actively promoted voter-ID legislation to make it harder to vote as well as anti-union measures and those to limit lawsuits. The group also pushes for law taxes and decreased regulation.

As controversy grew around the slaying of Trayvon Martin and Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws, ALEC found itself on the ropes. The Martin shooting sparked widespread public outcry. Civil-rights group Color of Change helped lead public campaigns against ALEC and its affiliated companies for its support of such laws. In the face of growing grassroots pressure over the last few weeks, major ALEC corporate members like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have dropped membership, as have McDonald’s, Kraft Food, Mars and others. Just Monday, a New York Times editorial slammed ALEC for its role in promoting Stand Your Ground legislation.

In the statement announcing the end of the Public Safety and Elections task force, the organization shifted its focus to “free-market, limited government, pro-growth policies.”

But this hardly constitutes a victory. ALEC still has a variety of task forces: There’s the Civil Justice Task Force, Education Task Force, and Health and Human Safety Task Force, all of which seem a bit removed from the group’s ostensible goals. The Civil Justice Task Force’s efforts appear largely focused on tort reform, as evidenced by the latest initiative “Expanding the Law Under New Restatement of Torts” and its latest publication, “The State Legislator’s Guide: Tort Reform Boot Camp.”

Then there’s the disturbing impact on health care and education. As The Nation showed in its “ALEC Exposed” series, the group has lobbied all out against health-care reform, while its education task force, headed partially by an executive for the for-profit online education company Connections Academy, has pushed hard for vouchers and increased privatization in American public schools. Its latest publication, a report card on education, begins with by comparing the battle over education reform to the World War II, with teacher unions being—you guessed it—Germany and Japan.

In the end, the Public Safety and Elections task force has already had its success. Voter-ID laws have proliferated around the country, making voting harder for poor and minority Americans. And according to the Times, Stand Your Ground is already law in 24 states.

Color of Change and its boycott isn’t likely to stop the pressure any time soon. In a statement responding to the news, executive director Rashad Robinson didn’t mince words: “To simply say they are stopping non-economic work does not provide justice to the millions of Americas [sic] whose lives are impacted by these dangerous and discriminatory laws courtesy of ALEC and its corporate backers.

 

By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, April 17, 2012

April 18, 2012 Posted by | Corporations, State Legislatures | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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