“Tea Party vs Establishment”: Who Won The GOP Beauty Pageant In Georgia?
You’ve probably heard that the GOP establishment won big in Tuesday’s Republican primaries, with Tea Party favorites losing out to candidates backed by business groups. Take Georgia, for example, where an 11-term congressman and a businessman worth at least $12 million will now embark on a nine-week runoff, while the two nuttiest candidates were easily weeded out, having secured less than 10 percent of the vote apiece.
What the establishment “won” in Georgia is a future nominee that will be easier to sell to voters in the general race against Michelle Nunn, the Democratic pick. The GOP’s first place finisher, David Perdue, is a telegenic management consultant and a former executive at Dollar General Reebok. He rose to the top of the heap via a campaign ad that depicted his opponents as crying babies. “Help me change the childish behavior up there,” Perdue said, while onscreen squalling infants crawled across on the grass in front of the Capitol. His opponent in the runoff will be Jack Kingston, a political veteran with support from the Chamber of Commerce and conservative figureheads like Sean Hannity.
What happened last night in Georgia was a beauty pageant, not a contest of meaningful political distinctions. Degrees of polish aside, there were few substantive differences between the establishment and the Tea Party candidates. Perdue sold himself as “the outsider” and a “hard-core conservative.” He doubts climate science, opposes gay marriage, wants to get rid of Obamacare, and has called raising the minimum wage “backward thinking.” He’s promised to oppose Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader. Herman Cain, the Tea Party choice in the 2012 presidential primary, said on his radio show that Perdue “looks like a mirror image of Herman Cain.”
Though his deep ties to Washington are fodder for attacks, Kingston is no moderate. He suggested that children should sweep floors in exchange for school lunch meals. He ran an ad—set it in some alternate America plastered in Help Wanted signs—bashing welfare recipients for “choosing a handout rather than a hand up.” He talked up his support for the Fair Tax, a regressive national sales tax scheme. He pledged never to stop fighting Obamacare. He’d like to repeal Dodd-Frank. He has a staunch conservative record in the House, voting for things like a “fetal pain” bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks.
One thing that did distinguish Kingston and Perdue from their competitors was the amount of money behind them. Perdue used more than $2 million of his own money ahead of the primary, and has said he doesn’t know if there’s a limit to how deep he’ll reach into his own funds. Kingston attracted the most outside funding, with the Chamber of Commerce spending some $1 million in ads to support him.
So who lost in Georgia? It wasn’t the Tea Party, which succeeded in turning the contest in Georgia—and many others across the country—into a race to the right. If the terms Tea Party and establishment mean anything now as features of a candidate, they are distinctions in marketability, financing, and rhetoric, not of ideology. As Matt Kibbe, president of the Tea Party group FreedomWorks, told The Washington Post, “Everybody is running against Obamacare and against overspending in Washington. It wasn’t always like that with the Republican establishment. I don’t even recognize [Kentucky Senator Mitch] McConnell from where he was a few years ago.” The establishment candidates beat the wingnuts by showing up at the same party, but in better suits.
In Georgia, it was the voters who lost. Turnout was anemic, down by tens of thousands from 2010 even among Republicans. The choices before them were narrow, the airwaves full of attack ads. Most of the money spent by outside groups—upwards of $4.6 million—went to advertising, dwarfing direct campaign contributions by a nearly four to one ratio. Now Georgians will get another nine-week dose of the same, as Kingston and Perdue duke it out.
By: Zoe Carpenter, The Nation, May 21, 2014
“The Anti-Science Party”: It’s Been A Rough Week For Republicans And Their Support For Science
A few years ago, during the race for the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) suggested climate science was an elaborate hoax cooked up by greedy scientists. John Weaver, the chief strategist for former Gov. John Huntsman’s campaign, responded with a sensible declaration: “We’re not going to win a national election if we become the anti-science party.”
Three years later, it’s probably too late to worry about whether the GOP is becoming the anti-science party.
In a little-noticed 2012 interview, Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the front-runner in Montana’s open 2014 Senate race, expressed support for teaching creationism in public schools.
In an interview that aired on November 2, 2012, Sally Mauk, news director for Montana Public Radio, asked Daines, who was then running for Montana’s lone House seat, whether public schools should teach creationism. Daines responded, “What the schools should teach is, as it relates to biology and science is that they have, um, there’s evolution theory, there’s creation theory, and so forth. I think we should teach students to think critically, and teach students that there are evolutionary theories, there’s intelligent-design theories, and allow the students to make up their minds. But I think those kinds of decisions should be decided at the local school board level.” He added, “Personally I’d like to teach my kids both sides of the equation there and let them come up to their own conclusion on it.”
It’s been a rough week for Republicans and their support for science. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), for example, struggled badly to defend his opposition to climate science, only to make matters worse by saying odd things about reproductive science.
And away from Capitol Hill, two GOP Senate candidates said they too have a problem with climate science, while Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature are balking at new science standards because they treat climate change as true.
It’s against this backdrop that the Pew Forum found late last year that the number of self-identified Republican voters who believe in evolutionary biology has dropped considerably in the Obama era.
To reiterate a point we’ve discussed before, none of this is healthy. There are already so many political, policy, and cultural issues that divide partisans; scientific truths don’t have to be among them. And yet, we’re quickly approaching the point – if we haven’t arrived there already – at which science itself is broadly accepted and understood as a “Democratic issue.”
Is it any wonder the Pew Research Center found a few years ago that only 6% of scientists say they support Republican candidates?
Asked to explain the phenomenon, Brigham Young University scientist Barry Bickmore, a onetime Republican convention delegate, told the Salt Lake Tribune last fall, “Scientists just don’t get those people,” referencing Republicans who adhere to party orthodoxy on climate change, evolution, and other hot-button issues. “They [in the GOP] are driving us away, people like me.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 16, 2014
“No Matter Your Politics”: The Gross Hypocrisy Of Conservative Media’s Attack On ‘Hashtag Bring Back Our Girls’
With apparently little more to talk about this week—and stuck for an actual solution to bringing home the girls kidnapped in Nigeria by a terrorist group—the conservative media has decided to go with a campaign to denigrate those who posted photographs on Twitter, holding up signs reading “#BringBackOurGirls”.
The heart of the narrative being pushed is that those participating in the twitterverse effort are, somehow, formulating our national security policy through their participation.
Really?
When 2nd Amendment advocates mounted social media campaigns and legally rallied in front of government buildings holding their weapons high in the air, were they dictating domestic policy or seeking to influence domestic policy?
When the Tea Party began its protest of American tax policies by huge numbers of sympathizers taking to Twitter to express their feelings with the hashtag, “Don’t Tread On Me”, were these folks dictating domestic policy or seeking to influence domestic policy?
I think the answer if crystal clear to any thinking human being.
In both these instances, these were Americans exercising their critical right to express themselves in any legitimate and legal avenue available to them and to use that right of free expression to bring their feelings to the attention of the federal government in the hopes that they could have some influence over their government’s actions and policies.
I may not agree with all the thoughts the 2nd Amendment and Tea Party advocates and supporters have expressed through the same social media sites being utilized by those trying to impact on how we react to the heinous act of violence in Nigeria, but not for one second would I have considered making fun of these people for doing what is one of the most important things an American can do—express themselves to their government.
If you don’t believe this, I challenge anyone to find so much as one column, one television appearance or one radio interview where I belittled 2nd amendment or Tea Party advocates, members and sympathizers for taking to social media, rallies or any other legal means of protest and influence to make their feelings known. I may criticize their ideas but it simply would not occur to me to denigrate these people for speaking out and taking advantage of what our freedoms permit.
Indeed, the only time you will find that I criticized the actual gathering of such a group was when an armed group of 2nd Amendment supporters in Texas posted themselves outside a restaurant where a group of gun control advocates were meeting inside, unnecessarily intimidating and scaring the hell out of these folks.
Can anyone tell me how the situation of people tweeting their support, or participating in a rally, to influence their government on the subject of these horrendous kidnappings is any different than the examples I have given above?
You may not agree with their position, although it is difficult to imagine why anyone would be against asking our government and the governments of the world to try and do something to help the kidnapped girls and their families; you may think that such a mass expression is waste of time on the part of those who are participating because you believe it won’t help bring the girls home; you may not like those who are participating because it involves a few celebrities that you enjoy picking on because their political beliefs may be different than your own; but how can you possibly argue that this effort is, in any way whatsoever, different from 2nd Amendment protesters or folks participating in a Tea Party rally and posting their support for their point of view via social media?
I truly do not understand how those who have made a living this week from making fun of Americans who choose to express themselves in a good cause can turn around and play their theme music recounting how wonderful America is when they clearly do not understand what it is that makes this nation wonderful. I truly do not understand how these people can participate in social media or make appearances at rallies designed to bring home their particular point of view but then make fun of others for doing precisely the same thing simply because they don’t like these people or don’t believe their expressions will have an effect.
No matter what your politics, how is this anything but spectacular hypocrisy?
And to imagine that the fact that Hillary Clinton or the First Lady chose to participate in the Twitter event somehow turns this into a foreign policy initiative of the U.S. government is so foolish as to offend the very listeners and viewers who take the conservative media so very seriously. Sorry, guys, but you’re audience is way smarter than that.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, May 15, 2014
“Paging Doctor Rove”: Cartoon Supervillain In All His Fading Glory
In a move reminiscent of the Terry Schiavo episode—in which Senator Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican, assumed the power to diagnose people via television—right-wing strategist Karl Rove is spending his time on the speaker circuit telling people Hillary Clinton might have brain damage.
Why, pray tell? After suffering from a blood clot in 2012 that delayed her congressional testimony about Benghazi, Clinton came back “after 30 days in the hospital … wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury.” “We need to know what’s up with that,” Rove said at a conference last week. (The New York Post reported his comments today.)
Except it was three days later. And as far as anyone knows, there are no special glasses for people who’ve had a brain injury.
Is this Rove, cartoon supervillain, at work? Former George W. Bush Communications Director Nicolle Wallace, who worked with Rove in the White House, says it was “a deliberate strategy on his part to raise [Clinton’s] health as an issue.”
Ann Althouse points out that the country is going to discuss Hillary’s age and health with or without Rove playing medical-mystery detective. “Bring up that subject now and you sound like an oily, unsavory Republican political operative.” In other words, “You sound like Karl Rove.”
Even Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says Clinton seems just fine.
At today’s White House briefing, Obama Spokesperson Jay Carney let Rove have it: “Dr. Rove might have been the last person in America on election night to acknowledge and recognize that the President won reelection, including the state of Ohio, so we’ll leave it at that.”
But, wait: You know when else she was wearing those same glasses? When she left Libya. You know what’s there, right? Benghazi! It’s all falling into place.
“Karl Rove has deceived the country for years, but there are no words for this level of lying,” responds a spokesperson for the Clintons. “She is 100 percent. Period.”
By: Gabriel Arana, The American Prospect, May 15, 2014
“Who Made Benghazi ‘Political’?”: Funny, Everyone Seems To Have Forgotten What Really Happened In 2012
If you’re outside that furious little circle of humans who believe Benghazi Is Worse Than Watergate, you may not fully understand why that circle is so furious. I didn’t for a long time, but I think I’ve cracked it. See, it’s not just that allegedly awful decisions were made on the ground. And it’s not even just that the administration supposedly lied in the aftermath to cover up its incompetence. No, the anger has a political end point, which is that this supposed cover-up sealed Barack Obama’s reelection over Mitt Romney and kept the rightful occupant from moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Summaries of the events on the right almost never fail to include language like this from a recent Wall Street Journal editorial: “The reasons Benghazi is important do not have to be rehearsed here. An American outpost, virtually undefended, was attacked by armed and organized al Qaeda-associated militants on the anniversary of 9/11 and four were left dead, including the U.S. ambassador. It happened eight weeks before the 2012 presidential election. From day one White House management and leadership focused on spin and an apparent fiction. Did they deliberately mislead and misdirect? Why was there no military response? Who is responsible?”
These questions are worth exploring. (Even I agree with that—and they have been, eight times by eight separate bodies.) But they have no real political punch without that one sentence in the middle there. Conservatives seem absolutely convinced that if not for the Obama “cover-up” on Benghazi, Romney would have won the election.
There’s one problem with that view: It’s ridiculous. Totally ahistorical. In fact, if you look back closely at how things unfolded in September and October 2012—and everyone seems to have forgotten—it was Romney, not Obama, who bungled Benghazi. It was clear at the time to a broad range of observers, not just liberals, that Romney really screwed the pooch on Benghazi, both when it first happened and then later in a debate.
Any memory of Romney’s initial reaction? He was in such a hurry to blame Ambassador Chris Stevens’s death on Obama that he rushed out a statement blaming the Obama administration for sympathizing “with those who waged the attacks” rather than the “American consulate worker” who died in Benghazi. You read that right—worker, singular. Romney was in such a hurry to get out a statement feeding right-wing paranoia about Obama’s anti-Americanism that it went out even before it was known that four Americans had died.
Romney was referring to a statement released by the American Embassy in Cairo, where the region’s rioting started that night, that criticized the now-famous video for fanning the flames. The statement wasn’t vetted in Washington, and so didn’t represent administration policy, but Romney jumped into the deep end and used it.
The next day, he was torn to pieces. In the old United States—yes, even during a presidential election—a tragedy like Benghazi would have halted campaigning for a day, and certainly, certainly everyone would have agreed that it would have been terribly unseemly for the challenger to politicize the event. But here came Romney: He didn’t even know how many bodies there were before he started trying to score political points off the deaths.
And most every news outlet took him to task. Read here for yourself a roundup of how his statement was playing in real time on September 13, 2012. Here’s the opening of a Bloomberg piece headlined “Romney Criticized for Handling of Libya Protests, Death”: “The attacks that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya became a flashpoint in the American presidential race, as Republican nominee Mitt Romney drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans for chastising President Barack Obama and his administration on their response.” Democrats and Republicans.
Romney policy director Lahnee Chen didn’t make things any better for his boss by saying the campaign went with the criticism because it fit the “narrative”: “We’ve had this consistent critique and narrative on Obama’s foreign policy, and we felt this was a situation that met our critique, that Obama really has been pretty weak in a number of ways on foreign policy.” A situation that met our critique. Before they really knew much of anything. Priceless.
At that point, Romney started backtracking a bit. But on the right the issue kept a-boiling, through Susan Rice’s appearance on the chat shows, until the second presidential debate, the foreign-policy debate. Romney was presented with a chance to re-handle Benghazi, and he screwed it up even worse. That was when Obama said, accurately, that he called the attack “an act of terror” the day after in the Rose Garden, and Romney countered, “I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.” The transcript showed that Obama was right and Romney was wrong.
So Romney had a second shot at winning the Benghazi argument in real time, but all he managed to do was make it worse. It was crystal clear at the time that of all the issues of the campaign, he mishandled Benghazi the worst. (I’m not counting the 47 percent business here because that was a different kind of thing. It wasn’t a public policy “issue” that arose during the race.)
So let’s review. A tragic attack occurs. Before it’s even known how many people died or what on the earth are the reasons for the attack, the Republican standard-bearer breaks with all standards of decency and precedent and turns it into a political attack on the president—a presumptive and false one, just based on the paranoid right-wing idea that Obama is weak and somehow wants to cripple America. Then as now, most Americans weren’t buying it, and so Benghazi’s effect on the election, if any, was merely to show voters in the middle that the right was rabid about trying to “prove” that Obama refused to defend America, and it turned them off.
And now here we are, two years and eight investigations later, with Republicans acting shocked, shocked that there might have been anything political in the way the administration dealt with the attack and still carrying on in the same rabid vein. I obviously don’t know to a certainty that the new hearing won’t turn up something genuinely damaging, but unless it does, most Americans will react as they did then: Oh, Republicans doing more crazy shit.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 14, 2014
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 