“Looking For Mr. White-Guy”: Republican New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez Slams Romney’s Immigration Policy
Presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney has mentionedNew Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) as a potential vice presidential pick, and some conservatives think she’d help him win Hispanic voters, but even she is skeptical of Romney’s immigration policy.
In an interview with the Daily Beast’s Andrew Romano, Martinez acknowledged the problem. “I have no doubt Hispanics have been alienated during this campaign,” she said. Indeed, one recent poll found a startling 68 point gap between Romney and President Obama among Hispanics. “But now there’s an opportunity for Gov. Romney to have a sincere conversation about what we can do and why,” she added.
Part of that may be softening his immigration stance, which was among the harshest in the GOP primary. Romney said his immigration policy would be to make life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they would choose to “self-deport.” But Martinez balked at this. “‘Self-deport?’ What the heck does that mean?” Martinez “snap[ped] at Romano.
Martinez also called for he GOP to “outflank the president–on the left–by proposing its own comprehensive plan” — something that is highly unlikely for Romney to support considering that he’s vowed to veto the DREAM Act and his immigration adviser, the controversial activist behind Arizona’s anti-immigration law, said his candidate will not support any legislation that opens a path to citizenship for immigrants.
But perhaps Romney-Martinez 2012 is not meant to be anyway, as Martinez has repeatedly said she’s not interested in being vice president and Romney is supposedly looking for an “incredibly boring white guy” — criteria which excludes Martinez at least twice over.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Think Progress, May 14, 2012
“Obeying The Supreme Court Is Optional”: Rand Paul Suggests Congress Can Simply Ignore Roe v. Wade
Earlier today, the National Review’s mailing list distributed an email (which can also be found here) signed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), which called for Congress to pass a law effectively rendering a binding Supreme Court decision a nullity:
Working from what the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, pro-life lawmakers can pass a Life at Conception Act and end abortion using the Constitution instead of amending it. . . . Signing the Life at Conception Act petition will help break through the opposition clinging to abortion-on-demand and get a vote on this life-saving bill to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A Life at Conception Act declares unborn children “persons” as defined by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, entitled to legal protection.
It’s not entirely clear why Paul believes Congress has this power, and the email he signed does not provide a fully developed legal argument making the case for such an law. Instead, it appears to argue that Congress can simply grant full legal “personhood” status to fetuses under the 14th Amendment because Roe left open “the difficult question of when life begins.” This is not a correct reading of the Roe decision, however. The Roe opinion is unambiguous that “the word ‘person,’ as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.”
Whether one agrees with this opinion or not, Congress does not have the power to flout the Supreme Court’s constitutional decisions simply because it does not like them. As ThinkProgress explained when a similar proposal was floated last year by Princeton Professor Robert George, “[i]n City of Boerne v. Flores, the Court held that Congress is not allowed to simply declare that the 14th Amendment means whatever they want it to mean and then use that declaration to pass enforcement legislation — Congress can only pass laws enforcing existing 14th Amendment rights.”
Just as importantly, there is something very bizarre about a conservative stalwart like Rand Paul insisting that obeying the Supreme Court is optional at exactly the same time conservatives are trying to impose much of their policy agenda upon the nation by judicial decree. Presumably, Paul would be outraged if President Obama simply refused to obey a Supreme Court decision striking down part of the Affordable Care Act or if elections officials were to ban corporations from trying to buy elections despite the justices’ decision in Citizens United. Yet, if Roe v. Wade is as optional as Paul appears to think that it is, than there is no reason why Obama should feel obliged to obey conservatives’ pet decisions either.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, May 14, 2012
“A Disagreeable Human Being”: Mitt Romney, The Unlikable Presidential Candidate
It’s been a long time since the country elected a man as personally unappealing as Mitt Romney. Will Americans overlook their deeply held conviction that he’s a jerk?
Very few votes are going to be cast on the basis of what Mitt Romney did or didn’t do to John Lauber in 1965. So that, per se, isn’t Romney’s problem. But this is: The story lands as another brick on pile of evidence amassing that he’s just a disagreeable human being. A few days ago I wrote about Barack Obama’s biggest problem, which is that despite all the many areas in which Americans rate him higher than Romney, the one on which they give Romney the edge happens to be pretty important: handling the economy. Now we get to Romney’s biggest problem. The likability factor. He ain’t got it. And he ain’t got much of a way to get it.
Historical question: When is the last time the clearly less likeable candidate beat the clearly more likeable one for the White House? The answer is, a long time. I put the question to Gallup, which didn’t have historical numbers at hand. But doing some noodling around on my own suggests that you have to go back to 1968 to find such a result.
In 2004, George W. Bush generally led the likeable category. Pew emailed me some numbers—they had Bush leading John Kerry on likeability by 47 to 36 percent in September 2004. Interestingly, Kerry caught up and even went ahead after the first debate. But even so, voters judged both very likeable—70 percent for Kerry, and 65 percent for Bush. In 2000, Bush usually topped Al Gore, but not by massive margins. An October 2000 poll gave Bush an 11-point margin. Pew had a nine-point margin for Bush around the same time.
Before then, numbers get a little harder to come by. But crusty old Bob Dole was surely not considered more likeable than Bill Clinton in 1996. The 1992 Clinton-George H.W. Bush matchup was probably close. But just think back over the elections. The “wooden” Michael Dukakis in 1988 wasn’t exactly radiating intense bonhomie. Ronald Reagan was extremely likeable on a personal level to most people. Jimmy Carter had that big smile in 1976. Et cetera. As I say, I would imagine that it’s 1968, when the surly Dick beat the Happy Warrior, although by just a half million votes out of more than 70 million cast. But even Nixon was probably not clearly less likeable than Humphrey. After all, he’d been the vice president, he’d been on the national stage for nearly 20 years; the man definitely had his backers.
Romney, though? This is the biggest washout of modern times, folks. Gallup just this week put the likeability ratings at Obama 60, Romney 31. It’s not that Obama’s number is unusually high. Look back at those Kerry-Bush numbers. Americans are an open-hearted lot, at least presumptively, so they want to like the guy who’s going be the president. But they Do. Not. Like. Mitt. Romney.
It would be more interesting for all of us if there were some great mystery here, but there isn’t. He reeks of privilege. Every time he says something off the cuff he says something obnoxious. Corporations are people, pal. I like firing people. Where on earth did you get those Godforsaken cookies?
He also—and this actually is interesting, because it’s something our normal public discourse does not like to admit or allow for—is way too rich. We’re constantly told that Americans don’t have any class envy, and compared to some European nations they don’t. But even Americans have limits. A few million, even $50 million; okay. But a quarter billion dollars? A house with an elevator . . . for the cars? It also matters to people how the money was made. It’s okay to be worth a gajillion dollars if you’re Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and have made everyone’s lives more interesting and cooler. But what’s Mitt Romney done? Helped give us Domino’s Pizza.
Even so, Romney might still pass muster, but he has no grasp of the one crucial reality of class in America: you can be filthy rich as long as you don’t look or act like it. Gates doesn’t comb his hair, much. Jobs wore sneakers. Romney just looks too pressed. Even when he’s wearing those jeans. You can look at Romney on television and practically sense how he smells—of costly ablutions whose brand names the rest of us probably don’t even know. And he acts relentlessly rich.
And this brings us back to the Cranbrook School incident. We might have learned from The Washington Post this week that Romney gallantly interceded on poor Lauber’s behalf. Or even, maybe, that he did the awful deed, but a few years later he got in touch with Lauber to say, “Gee, old scout, went a bit overboard there.” Or even that he acknowledged to one of his confederates that he regretted the incident. In other words, we might have learned something that showed he knows he behaved like an asshole. But all we learned is that he behaved like an asshole and is now pretending to forget it. A jerk is one thing. But a jerk who takes no responsibility for his jerkitude is pretty much the definition of an unlikeable person.
No human being is one dimensional. I’m sure there are plenty of people in the world for whom Mitt has performed kindnesses. I expect we’ll be getting to know every single one of them in these next few months, too, in heavily filtered television ads in which the men wear proletarian flannel and the women’s St. John blazers are kept safely in the closet. All I can say is they’d better be more likeable than their candidate—for his sake. In the meantime, there’s something very reassuring about this country reposing in those numbers, that the black guy with the weird name who’s been called everything under the sun is twice as likeable as the rich white guy. This is the America that drives the wingers crazy, but that the rest of us—the majority—live in, and love.
BY: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 13, 2012
Ed Klein’s “Bio-Porn”: Author Of New Book Smearing Obama Devoid Of Skills And Credibility
The New York Post yesterday published the first excerpts from an upcoming biography on President Obama by Edward Klein, “The Amateur.”
In the Post’s excerpt, Klein alleges that former President Clinton called President Obama an “amateur” and desperately tried to convince Hillary to resign as Secretary of State and challenge Obama in the Democratic primaries this year. (The Clintons swiftly and forcefully denied the claims.) The article was prominently featured on the Drudge Report.
Although you wouldn’t know it from reading the New York Post, the Drudge Report or other popular right-wing outlets, Klein is a discredited author with a history of presenting falsehoods as fact. Here’s what you need to know about Edward Klein:
1. Klein’s last book, which was self-published, suggests Obama was born on foreign soil and is a practicing Mulism. In his 2010 work The Obama Identity: A Novel (Or Is It?), Klein co-authored along with a former Republican congressman is a compendium of Obama conspiracy theories. He had to self-publish the book.
2. Klein promoted a shameful conspiracy theory that Bill Clinton raped Hillary. In his 2005 book, Klein promoted an anonymous, hateful allegation supposedly made by two people who “claim” to have spoken with Bill Clinton about the circumstances surrounding the birth of the Clintons’ daughter Chelsea.
3. Klein repeatedly questioned Hillary Clinton’s sexual orientation. He has similarly disparaged Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy and Katie Couric in previous works, leading the Washington Post to comment that Klein “has made a second career of leaving knuckle prints on famous women.”
4. Klein has a history of publishing demonstrably false allegations about Obama as fact. In a 2010 entry in The Huffington Post, Klein detailed President Obama’s “humiliation” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu, claiming that sources told him of Obama leaving during a meeting with Netenyahu to have dinner with Michelle and their two daughters. One phone call would have revealed that to be impossible, since Michelle, Sasha and Malia were all in New York City at the time.
5. Klein’s book is being published by Regnery, a far-right imprint specializing in the promotion of conservative talking points. He was rejected by every respectable publishing house. In an interview, Klein claimed his difficulty locating a publisher was because Barack Obama was an “untouchable” subject. Yet several other books on the same subject, like Jodi Kantor’s The Obamas, set off a bidding war between the major New York publishers.
6. Even conservative critics view Klein as disreputable. Kathleen Parker, writing for the Tribune’s network of newspapers, described Klein’s 2005 book as “prurient tabloiding,” while New York Post columnist John Podhoretz said it was “one of the most sordid volumes I’ve ever waded through.” Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal review said it was “poorly written, poorly thought, poorly sourced and full of the kind of loaded language that is appropriate to a polemic but not an investigative work.”
The nation’s top book reviews have all panned Klein and his work. The Boston Globe called him “an author devoid of credibility,” the New York Times described him as “smarmy and sleazy,” the Los Angeles Times called his work “bio-porn,” and the Tucson Citizen referred to it as “the literary equivalent of a backed up-septic tank.” (It got a grade of “F”).
Nevertheless, The Washington Post and Fox are reporting Klein’s latest allegations as if they were news.
By: Adam Peck, Think Progress, May 12, 2012
“Look Out For Thunderbolts”: The President Dares To Defy Franklin Graham
We still don’t know for sure who if anyone is responsible for shoving 93-year-old Billy Graham back into the harness of right-wing politics after so many years of devoting himself to loftier causes, in order to marginally boost the numbers for North Carolina’s Amendment One. But this statement from his son in response to the president’s announcement of support for same-sex marriage is certainly a pretty big hint:
On Tuesday my state of North Carolina became the 31st state to approve a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. While the move to pass amendments defining marriage is relatively new, the definition of marriage is 8,000 years old and was defined not by man, but by God Himself.
In changing his position from that of Senator/candidate Obama, President Obama has, in my view, shaken his fist at the same God who created and defined marriage. It grieves me that our president would now affirm same-sex marriage, though I believe it grieves God even more.
The institution of marriage should not be defined by presidents or polls, governors or the media. The definition was set long ago and changing legislation or policy will never change God’s definition. This is a sad day for America. May God help us.”
A swift response to Franklin Graham from a fellow North Carolina minister, the Rev. Murdoch Smith, pastor of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte, said it all for me: “I am always suspect when someone says that they know the mind of God.”
I understand that many sincere Christians fundamentalists believe they are submitting themselves to God and subordinating their own egos and their own self-interest by simply following in their lives what they understand to be infallible divine revelation of the Bible. Many of them, indeed, are so humble it would not occur to them to impose their views on other people, much less force them to live as they do.
If there is anything humble or self-effacing or ego-immolating about Franklin Graham, I certainly don’t see it. As Rev. Smith says, he doesn’t follow God; he knows God and speaks for him, the God that not only fully reveals his Will to Franklin Graham via Franklin Graham’s infallible interpretation of scripture, but through God’s great and characteristic conservatism, his deep and manifest satisfaction with people like Franklin Graham who defend the ways things used to be before women and gay people and other lesser breeds got all uppity.
When people like Graham presume to accuse the President of the United States of “shaking his fist at God,” they are assuming the Prophetic Stance, the Hebrew tradition of calling down divine wrath on a depraved society. Ask yourselves: what kind of prophet would look at today’s world, with its poverty and violence and gross inequality, its environmental brinksmanship, its intolerance, its sheer wastefulness and lack of charity—and decide that what merits divine wrath is gay marriage? What sort of man of God could look at all the grievous occurrences on earth, and declare, with absolutely no indication of self-doubt, that God is grieving over gay people deciding to commit themselves to each other in love?
I’m sorry, I just do not get it. Graham has confused himself with God to an extent that when Barack Obama dares take a position he doesn’t like, he’s shaking his fist at God. I think Franklin Graham’s the one who’d better look out for thunderbolts.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 11, 2012
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