“Perry Gets Winnowed”: He Had No Distinct Identity In A Huge Field Dominated By People Who Were Going Medieval
The “winnowing” of the vast GOP presidential field proceeded apace this weekend, with Rick Perry “suspending” his campaign. Officially, that means there are 16 “real” candidates left. Unofficially, CNN excluded Jim Gilmore from even its Kiddie Table debate this week, so there are a mere 15 left.
Perry’s withdrawal has been widely predicted since he stopped paying his campaign staff last month. Even as Team Perry argued that his Super-PAC was flush and the not-paying-campaign- people thing was an accounting problem, he lost his prize Iowa backer Sam Clovis, and in general began to emit the aroma of political death. The rest has been denouement.
The thing is: Perry was running a significantly deeper campaign than he did in 2012, when he alternated between pointing at Texas’ jobs numbers as a self-validating argument for a give-corporations-everything-they-want “economic development strategy,” and raging right-wing gestures aimed at everybody in the GOP who wanted to go medieval on the godless liberals.
This time around Perry impressed even me by making a speech reminding Republicans they were the party of the Fourteenth Amendment. It didn’t catch on. Nor did his regular reminders that he was (along with Lindsey Graham) the rare candidate in a field of war-mongerers who had actually worn a uniform. The CW will suggest that Perry never overcame his 2012 missteps. I’d say he had no distinct identity in a huge field dominated by people who were going medieval just as he was trying to move along to the Renaissance.
His withdrawal rebuts the idea that anybody with a Super-PAC can stay in the race right up until the convention, and will provide an interesting test of what happens to leftover Super-PAC money, as the New York Times‘ Jonathan Martin notes:
The super PACs backing Mr. Perry, collectively known as Freedom and Opportunity, had a raised more than $17 million as of earlier this summer, mostly from a handful of wealthy Texas families, dwarfing the amount raised by his campaign, which was limited by law to raising only $2,700 from each donor. Mr. Perry’s advisers were uncertain what would happen with the super PAC money, but noted that much of it came from a pair of Dallas executives, Kelcy Warren and Darwin Deason, and that they would be consulted.
Presumably, since Super-PACs are supposed to be “independent,” this one can do any damn thing it wants, other than covering the back pay Perry staffers are owed. They, of course, will be scrambling for a new gig, and despite this tiny “winnowing,” it remains a seller’s market for GOP political talent.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, September 14, 2015
“GOP Junior-Varsity Debate”: Welcome, Losers. I’m Your Moderator, Donald Trump
Welcome to the Fox News junior-varsity debate, featuring these losers to my right and my left. They’re all horrible.
I’m Donald Trump, which you already know. I develop the world’s best buildings, I have $10 billion, and I’ll be your next president, which these dummies don’t seem to understand.
Because I had a hit show, “The Apprentice,” which was huge, just huge, Fox thought this lineup of losers might get some actual ratings if I were to be the moderator. Though even I can’t work miracles at 5 p.m. Seriously, Fox—5 p.m.?
First let’s hear from Rick Perry.
Rick, c’mon, you wear glasses so people think you’re smart. It just doesn’t work—people can see through the glasses. You did a lousy job at the border, so now we have all these Mexican rapists. Anything to say? Not interested.
Next, Carly Fiorina. Once was a CEO, like me. But Carly, look—you got fired from HP. Then you lost in a landslide to Barbara Boxer. I mean, clobbered. If Americans want a CEO to be president, why would they choose a two-time loser instead of Donald Trump?
George Pataki, where are you? Oh, down there. A fellow New Yorker. Hello, George.
Listen, you were a terrible governor of New York, one of the worst. Here’s my question for you: I said you couldn’t be elected dog catcher in New York, so why would you run for president? You’re so far behind in the polls, you’re literally invisible. A nobody. Fox News probably shouldn’t have let you into the lobby. A lobby that could use some work, I might add. It’s horrible. So are you, George.
This says Jim Gilmore. Never heard of him. Who is Jim Gilmore? Is that you? Hello Jim, I’m Donald. You’re horrible.
Bobby Jindal. Interesting life story, very interesting—born in Louisiana just months after your parents emigrated here from India. Real name, Piyush Jindal. First Indian-American governor. Very good. Here’s the question: Can you show me your birth certificate right now?
Let’s turn to Rick Santorum. Rick, hello. Question for you: Do you have a plane yet? I don’t know if you’ve seen, but I have a really, really big plane. Listen, if you ever want to get out of Iowa and see the rest of the country, give me a call and maybe I’ll give you a ride. Maybe.
Finally, my good friend, Lindsey Graham. I see you’re doing great in the polls, really great.
Lindsey, you’ve said that your sister could act as first lady if you become president, since you’re not married, which is something I’ve accomplished three times. Since you made your sister part of the campaign, I’d like to give out her phone number, her e-mail address and her Facebook profile. Fox, can we put up that information? There it is. Make sure to contact Lindsey’s sister today and ask her why her brother is such a loser.
That’s it, time’s up. I’d like to thank Fox News, which is so much better than Univision, it’s not even funny.
Tune in on Jan. 20, 2016, when Sharon Osbourne, Gilbert Gottfried, Gary Busey and other former “Celebrity Apprentice” contestants join me for my presidential inauguration. Rick, make sure to wear your glasses. Other Rick, I’ll try to send a plane for you. And which one is Jim Gilmore, again?
By: Laurence Arnold, John McCorry and Patrick Oster; Opening line Column, Bloomberg Politics, August 6, 2015
“Owning The Monstrosities Of Our Past”: Obama Was Right To Compare Christianity’s Violent Past To The Islamic State
Conservative critics are in hysterics thanks to a few short remarks made by President Barack Obama on the subject of Christian history during Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast. Addressing religiously motivated conflict abroad, Obama said, “Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Naturally, conservatives were displeased with the suggestion that Christianity might be in some sense comparable to contemporary religious terrorism. At RedState, a contributor adduced Obama’s comments as further evidence of the president’s alleged fondness for Islam, while Rush Limbaugh interpreted the remarks as an insult to Christianity and a defense of radical Islam. Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore said, “The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” adding that Obama “has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”
Critics who viewed Obama’s speech as a bold defense of Islam seem to have missed the segment wherein he labeled the Islamic State a “vicious death cult,” and offered its horrific acts of terrorism as evidence of the evil that can be done in the name of (admittedly distorted) faith. The example of past Christian atrocities was given only to counterbalance the reproach aimed at religiously motivated violence committed outside the Christian world; it was not a stand-alone condemnation, and further, it did not go nearly as far as it could have.
By limiting his criticism of Christian violence to the Crusades and Inquisition, Obama kept his critique of Christian horrors to centuries past. But one need not look back so far to find more recent Christians behaving terribly in the name of Christ. The atrocities of the Bosnian War, including the systematic rape of women and girls, was perpetrated largely by Christians against Muslims; meanwhile, many of the Christian churches of Rwanda were intimately involved in the politicking that produced the genocide of 1994, with some clergy even reported to have participated in the violence.
The degree to which, in retrospect, we are willing to condemn violent perversions of faith often has to do with their proximity to us. Most will now admit, however grudgingly, that the Crusades and Inquisition were efforts to carry out some construal of God’s will, however mistaken and otherwise motivated. With more recent conflicts, such as Bosnia and Rwanda, we are more apt to see Christianity as a single thread in a web of ethnic and political tensions that was ultimately only one cause among the many that ultimately culminated in brutality. And this analysis is probably right.
But it is also probably true of the terrorism perpetrated by ISIS, which has been roundly denounced as contrary to the principles of Islam by a host of Muslim leaders and clerics, most recently after the murder of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh. Like war crimes and individual acts of brutality committed within the Christian world, the pattern of tensions that has produced ISIS, in all its unthinkable cruelty, seems to be broader and deeper than its self-proclaimed religious convictions. For those not searching for a source of personal offense, this is the only point Obama’s remarks on the religious violence enacted by Christians really conveys.
And it is, at last, a hopeful point: If we in the Christian world are capable of owning the monstrosities of our past, identifying their sources as multivalent and contrary to our faith, and holding one another accountable for the behavior we exhibit moving forward, then so are the members of the faiths we live alongside in the world. But accountability requires honesty, and pretending that Christians have never attributed violence to the cause of Christ is a disservice to modern peacemaking and to the victims of the past. Obama was right to take a clear-eyed view of the years that have come before, and to look hopefully to what we can do together as a multi-faith nation in the years to come.
By: Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig, The New Republic, February 6, 2015
Share This Blog
mykeystrokes.com- “The Unrelenting Hostility Of Washington’s Courtier Press”: The Media’s Crusade Of Scandals Against Hillary Clinton July 28, 2016
- “Endorsing This Philistine”: The Christian Right Has Surrendered To Trump July 24, 2016
- “Cop Killers Serve No Cause”: It’s Getting To The Point Where No Lives Matter July 24, 2016
mykeystrokes.com 