“A Collection Of Nutballs”: Republicans Still Can’t Grasp Why They Lost
One of the latest tidbits from Tiger Beat On The Potomac is that the Republican National Committee is going to convene a gathering of its wisest heads to try and determine what in the hell happened this year. This is my opinion — your party, in a perfect expression of everything that it has stood for over the past three decades, threw up a collection of nutballs, thereby making it inevitable that the guy with all the money whom nobody liked got to be the nominee. There. Can I have 150 large now?
The Growth and Opportunity Project is going to be chaired by RNC committee member Henry Barbour, longtime Jeb Bush adviser and political operative Sally Bradshaw, former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, Puerto Rico RNC committee member Zori Fonalledas, and South Carolina RNC member Glenn McCall. Priebus, who is running for a second term, is holding a call with committee members to roll out the plan this afternoon.
And there we have it, your Republican equivalent of the platoon in one of the old World War II movies — Haley Barbour’s nephew, C-Plus Augustus’s paid liar, a couple of ladies, one of them the lady from Puerto Rico at whom all the Ron Paul people yelled in Tampa, and a black guy from South Carolina. And all of them working (for the moment, at least) under the direction of obvious anagram Reince Priebus who, against all odds, has not yet been sent back to work the Notions counter at the five-and-dime in Mukwonago. And what will this group of super friends be about?
Still, the source insisted that “the GOP has problems but they are solvable. We have to look at what we are doing right and what we’re doing wrong and lay out our vision and plans for Americans so everyone knows what we stand for. 2010 was the biggest mid-term win for one party since the 1938 election. Our ideas still resonate, but we need to examine what’s working and what isn’t. We have 30 Governors right now, but we want to listen and learn so we do better in presidential years as well.”
It’s becoming increasingly clear to everyone, except this source, that the 2010 election now has all the historical aspects of the last-gasp of the old order. (The GOP seems to realize this, too, deep in its lizard brain. It is taking this whipping a helluva lot more seriously than it did 2006 or 2008. There seems to be no appetite for pure retrenchment this time around.) It seems still to have blinded the Republicans to the fact that, absent gerrymandering in the various state houses, their only chance in elections outside the deep South involving more than, say, 30,000 people is to do all they can to depress turnout, and this past election showed nothing if it didn’t show that the people are onto that particular game. Eventually, though, we get to the nub of their gist — the fact that those “ideas” that “still resonate” do so right now in echoes in which the country says almost as one, “Holy god, are you people kidding?”
Still, given the complaints about the party, the composition of the committee includes at least one Priebus ally – Barbour – and others with ties to Bush-world. It includes demographic diversity, but less so ideologically. Officials said the review will include a broad swath of people within the party, including donors and grassroots members, but it remains to be seen how conservative activists react.
I can tell you how they’re going to react. You’re seeing it now, as one generation of conservative grifters moves aside to make room for another, and as his caucus has John Boehner’s balls for breakfast. They’re going to go completely mad, and there’s nobody at the RNC, not even this new pet committee, that is going to be able to rein them in, because they are where all the party’s money and energy is right now. The party is all independent centers of power, many of them nutty, and all of them with their own agendas. That’s what’s going to happen. You can send my check along any time.
By: Charles P. Pierce, Esquire Politics Blog, December 11, 2012
“A Deeply Ironic Twist”: Conservative Media Ignore GOP Voter Registration Fraud
Republicans passed new voting restrictions in more than a dozen states since the 2010 election that were purportedly designed to stop voter fraud. Yet, in a deeply ironic twist, the most high-profile instances of election fraud this cycle have been committed by Republicans in states with new voting restrictions.
The RNC-funded Strategic Allied Consulting, run by checkered GOP operative Nathan Sproul, is under criminal investigation in Florida for submitting fraudulent voter registration forms to election officials. (Sproul is still running voter-canvassing operations for conservatives in thirty states.) Sproul’s associate Colin Small, who had worked for Strategic Allied Consulting and as “Grassroots Field Director at the Republican National Committee,” was charged last week with eight felony counts and five misdemeanors for trashing voter registration forms in Virginia.
Republicans claim that the voter registration fraud was committed by a few bad apples and pales in comparison to the fraud committed by ACORN in 2008. But ACORN was never funded by the DNC. And the abuses committed by Sproul and Small were far worse than those attached to ACORN. Unlike Strategic Allied Consulting, ACORN never changed the party affiliations on fraudulent voter registration forms and self-reported suspicious materials to election officials. Nor did ACORN ever destroy valid voter registration forms, as Small is accused of doing. (Not to mention that none of the fictitious characters falsely registered by ACORN workers, like Mickey Mouse, ever voted.)
Despite the right’s preoccupation with voter fraud, Sproul and Small have received scant coverage from conservative media outlets. Fox News, which ran 122 stories on ACORN from 2007–08, mentioned Strategic Allied Consulting only three times since the scandal broke in late September and hasn’t aired a single report on voter registration fraud in Virginia. Nor have National Review or The Weekly Standard, the pre-eminent conservative magazines, run an article about either case.
ACORN was far from perfect, but it did not deserve the witch-hunt treatment it received. In 2009, Peter Dreier of Occidental College and Christopher Martin of Northern Iowa studied the media’s shameful coverage of ACORN during the 2008 election and found:
• 82.8% of the stories failed to mention that actual voter fraud is very rare
• 80.3% of the stories failed to mention that ACORN was reporting registration irregularities to authorities, as required by law
• 85.1% of the stories about ACORN failed to note that ACORN was acting to stop incidents of registration problems by its (mostly temporary) employees when it became aware of these problems
• 95.8% of the stories failed to provide deeper context, especially efforts by Republican Party officials to use allegations of “voter fraud” to dampen voting by low‐income and minority Americans, including the firing of U.S. Attorneys who refused to cooperate with the politicization of voter-fraud accusations—firings that ultimately led to the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Republicans, it turns out, have committed the very voter registration fraud they once accused ACORN of perpetrating. Nor did new voting restrictions in states like Florida and Virginia, which could collectively make it harder for 5 million Americans to cast a ballot in 2012, prevent the fraud they were supposedly meant to combat.
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, October 23, 2012
“The Arbiter For Women”: Todd Akin Just Can’t Seem To “Shut It Down”
Rep. Todd Akin, the controversial Missouri Republican running for the U.S. Senate this year, isn’t exactly a champion on the issue of women’s health. He is, after all, under the impression that women can magically “shut down” unwanted pregnancies caused by “legitimate” rapes.
One might think, then, that Akin would try to avoid women’s issues altogether, focusing his attention elsewhere. But it appears the right-wing congressman just can’t help himself.
Since Missouri GOP Senate nominee Todd Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape” rarely causing pregnancy, he has attempted to do damage control with women voters. he noted, in an apology ad, that he has two daughters and wants “tough justice for predators.” He trumpeted his women for Akin coalition.
But a new comment isn’t likely to help his efforts to appeal to women voters: Akin noted that his opponent, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, was more “ladylike” during the 2006 campaign.
Oh good, Todd Akin wants to present himself as the arbiter of whether women are, in his estimation, “ladylike” enough to meet his discerning standards.
In this case, Akin told the Kansas City Star that McCaskill, as far as he’s concerned, “had a confidence and was much more ladylike” six years ago.
And what do Akin’s new-found friends at the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee have to say about this. “Decline to comment.”
Imagine that.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 27, 2012
“Bain-Like Bonuses”: A Leveraged Romney Campaign With Nothing For The Troops
Mitt Romney’s campaign is in a bit of trouble. No, not poll numbers, or internal disputes, or the candidate himself, though those are all problems too. Rather, the Romney campaign, which outraised President Obama for four consecutive months this summer, is in money trouble. Campaign finance disclosures released yesterday show the campaign has only $35 million in the bank — a relatively low amount this close to the election — and is $15 million in debt. The campaign has been forced to scramble to find new big donors, something you don’t want to have to do this late in the game, because its other donors are maxed out.
The problem is not Romney’s fundraising abilities — he’s unquestionably adept at bringing in big checks — but rather with quirks in campaign finance law, his reliance on big donors, and perhaps some mismanagement. The loan was needed as a bridge before he could access his general election fund, which candidates can’t touch until after their nominating conventions. The low cash on hand is because much of the money he raised went to the Republican National Committee to help pay for other races and not to the Romney campaign (he redistributed the wealth, if you will). And the need for new contributors is a byproduct of relying on high-dollar donors, who max out after contributing $2,500 and thus can’t be returned to for a consistent money stream throughout the campaign like smaller donors (John McCain had the same problem in 2008).
Given all that, not to mention the other problems the campaign is facing, this is a bit unexpected. The Washington Post’s Dan Eggen:
Mitt Romney’s campaign handed out more than $200,000 in bonuses last month to senior staffers, according to new disclosure records filed Thursday. Richard Beeson, Romney’s national political director, received a $37,500 payment on Aug. 31 in addition to his salary, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission. In addition, records show at least six other top staffers each received $25,000 bonuses on the same date: campaign manager Matt Rhoades, general counsel Kathryn Biber, policy advisor Lanhee Chen, communications director Gail Gitcho, digital director Zach Moffatt and advisor Gabriel Schoenfeld. Two other employees received $10,000 bonuses.
“Win bonuses” are pretty common on political campaigns, though President Obama’s campaign did not hand out any after its convention this year. And $200,000 isn’t a ton of money for a campaign that will spend close to a billion dollars. But one has to wonder if it’s really a good idea for a struggling campaign that’s already in debt to hand out cash to its top executives while the candidate is fighting a perception of being a corporate raider .
The comparison to Bain Capital, though imperfect, is almost too obvious to make. Bain often bought companies, leveraged them with massive debt, and then paid the executives big bonuses regardless of whether the company succeeded. Something not entirely dissimilar happened to Bain & Co., the consulting firm that Bain Capital spun off of, when Romney went to rescue it.
And while the very top echelon of his campaign got bonuses, there was nothing for the ground troops. The field staffers who work too many hours manning lonely remote offices for the reward of meager pay and doors getting slammed in their faces didn’t get a bonus. Neither did drivers or clerks or janitors or opposition researchers forced to cable news 24 hours a day.
Again, this isn’t entirely unusual for any political campaign. People sign up knowing they’ll be worked hard for no money because they believe in their candidate and maybe hope they have a shot at a job if their guy or gal wins. But one can’t help wondering if the bonus model sheds some light on Romney’s view of the world and how businesses are run. It’s the people at the top who make it happen and deserve the bonuses, not the ones down below who are actually doing the work.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, September 21, 2012
“Civic Engagement”: Will Mitt Romney Condemn Voter Suppression At NAACP Convention?
Mitt Romney is going to address the 103rd convention of the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People Wednesday.
Good. In recent years, Republican politicians have tended to criticize the NAACP, when they should be reaching out to the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. Romney’s acceptance of the group’s invitation is the right response and he gets credit for showing up at the convention in Houston.
The Republican presidential contender’s topic Wednesday will be “civic engagement.”
Very good. In the United States, a republic that bends toward democracy, the highest form of civic engagement has historically taken the form of voting. Americans have suffered and struggled and died for the right to vote.
As NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous wisely notes: “If you let someone diminish the power of your vote you will already have lost a battle.”
Unfortunately, the NAACP and allied groups have been forced to re-fight too many old battles on behalf of voting rights in recent years.
Republican legislators in states across the country, working in conjunction with the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council — and, it was recently learned, the Republican National Committee — have sought to enact and implement so-called “Voted ID” laws. These laws have been condemned by good government groups, including the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, as assaults on voting rights.
The Voter ID laws, new restrictions on same-day registration and early-voting, purges of voting lists and other voter suppression schemes pose particular threats to civic engagement by African American voters and others who have historically faced discrimination based on their race, ethnicity or national origin.
“Our democracy is literally under attack from within. We have wealthy interests seeking to buy elections and when that ain’t enough, suppress the vote,” says Jealous. “There is no battle that is more important or urgent to the NAACP right now than the battle to preserve democracy itself. Let me be very clear, our right to vote is the right upon which our ability to defend every other right is leveraged.”
At the convention in Houston, Jealous and other NAACP activists have made the defense of voting rights a central focus. They are right to do so, especially in Texas, where local Republicans have been calling for the elimination of the Voting Rights Act — and where a newly-passed Voter ID law has been described by Attorney General Eric Holder as a 21st-century variation on the “poll tax.”
The question that Romney must answer Wednesday is a simple one: Which side is he on?
Is Romney on the side of the NAACP and campaigners for voting rights — including Republicans like his father, George Romney — or is he on the side of those who would suppress the vote?
If the prospective Republican nominee for president is really interested in “civic engagement,” he will call out those in his own party who seek to suppress voting rights.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, July 10, 2012
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