Tea Party Nation: “We Simply Will Not Accept Mitt Romney
What is it about southerners and Mitt Romney? As a life-long southerner, I can tell you a few things. First, we do not trust Mitt Romney. As one southernism goes, “He is as fake as a three dollar bill.”
Southerners believe in a number of things. First, we believe you are a man or a woman of your word. Want to make a southerner mad? Lie to us. We expect honesty in our dealings. It does not always happen, and southerners are not always paragons of virtue, but we do expect it. Mitt Romney has taken at least two positions on every issue, with the possible exception of how you spell his middle name.
In the South, we are self-reliant. We do not like the government, we do not trust the government, and we do not want the government running our lives. Two years ago, Nashville flooded. We took care of it ourselves. We did not wait for the federal government to come in and rescue us. In fact, Barack Obama has not visited Nashville since the flood. There must be more Democrats in New Jersey where he did visit during flooding last year. That’s OK. We did not need him, nor did we miss him.
In the South, we do cling to our religion and our guns. Romney backed gun control legislation in the past. In the South, gun control means being able to hit your target.
There is a reason why the South is called the Bible belt. Mitt Romney does not understand this. The establishment and the left laughed when tapes of Rick Santorum came out talking about Satan, “the father of lies.” They thought he was speaking another language. In the South, this is what we hear in church every Sunday morning.
The South is conservative. We know conservatives. We do not like Mitt Romney because he is not a conservative. There is simply no way Mitt Romney can win without the South and there is no way he can win the South.
Tennessee is a great example. Mitt Romney spent a lot of money in Tennessee and Rick Santorum spent very little and Santorum decisively defeated Romney. We simply will not accept Mitt Romney. He is not a conservative. And like John McCain in 2008, he will never carry the South.
By: Judson Phillips, Founder, Teaparty Nation; Published in U. S. News and World Report, Debate Club, March 7, 2012
“False Faith”: Did Justice Scalia Call All Non-Christians Irrational?
Last Sunday, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia addressed the Living the Catholic Faith Conference conference in Denver, Colorado. During his speech, however, the justice appeared to suggest that Jews, Muslims and other non-Christians are somehow less rationalthan people who share his faith:
In Washington, Scalia said, the pundits and media couldn’t believe in a miracle performed under their noses.
“My point is not that reason and intellect need to be laid aside,” Scalia said. “A faith without a rational basis should be laid aside as false. … What is irrational is to reject a priori the possibility of miracles in general and the resurrection of Jesus Christ in particular.”
“A priori” is a philosophical term which is usually used to refer to a claim that one has knowledge independent of experience, so it is unclear how anyone could reject the central Christian belief that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead under Scalia’s standard given that no living person was around to actually experience it. More importantly, though, the clear implication of Scalia’s statement appears to be than all non-Christians — or approximately two-thirds of the world’s population — are “irrational.”
If Scalia indeed holds this view, than it raises serious questions about whether he can set aside this belief when called upon to interpret a Constitution that requires all religious beliefs to be treated with equal dignity. Moreover, it could have profound implications for the burgeoning debate over whether the Obama Administration’s contraceptive access rules are upheld by the Supreme Court.
In 1990, Scalia wrote the seminal Supreme Court case interpreting the Constitution’s guarantee that all Americans can freely exercise their faith, Employment Div. v. Smith. In Smith, Scalia explained that a law does not suddenly become unconstitutional because someone raises a religious objection to it. Scalia explained that “the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a ‘valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).’” This is why a law ensuring access to contraception is constitutional even if several Catholic bishops object to it.
Smith, however, did not involve Christians — it involved members of a Native American faith that wanted to use the drug peyote in a sacred ritual even though that drug was banned. Hopefully, Scalia recognizes that the rule he announced in Smith must apply equally to faiths he views as “rational” and those he also may view as “irrational.”
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, March 7, 2012
“Who’s Sorry Now?”: The Republican Art Of The Non-Apology
Ralph Reed reached out to Rush Limbaugh via Twitter yesterday and accepted his apology. “Apology accepted. Let’s move on,” he said — a magnanimous gesture had Rush Limbaugh actually apologized to Ralph Reed. Too bad that, despite the too-quick headlines, Limbaugh not only hadn’t apologized to Reed — he hadn’t really apologized to anyone at all.
Instead, Reed and Limbaugh, with the backing of Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, started up the ole vast right-wing fake apology machine — designed to temporarily quell a too-hot controversy while at the same time not giving an inch.
Unfortunately for them, after too much use of the fake apology, people are catching on.
Although considered by some in the GOP to be a little too rough around the edges, Rush Limbaugh has always been considered a net asset to Republicans. Like fellow right-wing shock-jocks Glenn Beck and Bryan Fischer, he reaches a wide audience with toxic sludge that is ultimately helpful to the Republican Party, saying all the things that fire up the right-wing base, but that the politicians wouldn’t want to be caught saying themselves. But Limbaugh has a peculiar kind of power — no matter how outrageous his comments, members of the establishment Right tiptoe around him, afraid that his toxic words might one day be directed at them. George Will said it best: “They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”
The latest boot-up of the right-wing apology machine began when Limbaugh called Georgetown University law student and contraception coverage advocate Sandra Fluke a “slut,” saying “She wants to be paid to have sex.” And, as if contraception was sold by the gallon or the pound, he added, “She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception.”
President Obama immediately stepped up, calling Fluke to check in and encourage her after she had been smeared on national radio.
Rick Santorum, in contrast, called Limbaugh’s comments “absurd,” but then reasoned that “an entertainer can be absurd… He’s in a very different business than I am.”
Mitt Romney’s response was flimsier and even more timid. Asked about it while shaking hands at a rally, he said that it was “not the language I would have used.” Apparently, he had no problem with Limbaugh saying that birth control advocates want the government to pay for them to have sex. He would just use different words.
Finally, Limbaugh himself fake-apologized. “I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke,” he said — before blaming the left and going on to repeat his accusation that she was “discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress.”
“I wouldn’t have use those words” is the new “I apologize if anyone was offended.”
Ms. Fluke did not accept Limbaugh’s fake-apology. Ralph Reed, however, accepted it on her behalf.
Republican leaders can’t be responsible for everything that comes out of the mouths of every right-wing blowhard. But if they want to be president they can be expected to provide clear responses when comments like Limbaugh’s are this outrageous, instead of hiding their heads in the sand hoping that the public exposure of these outrages will go away. How hard is it to say that women who advocate for insurance coverage for contraceptives should be heard and shouldn’t be called prostitutes for stating their position on the topic? Is it really worth compromising basic decency to stay in the good graces of Rush Limbaugh?
The Republican Party is increasingly buoyed by a small base whose values are antithetical to those of most other Americans. If they want to survive politically, they are going to have to stand up and no longer be fake apologists for the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post, March 6, 2012
Why Rising Gas Prices Could Backfire On The GOP In November
Eight months before the fall elections, Republican strategists are in a dour mood.
-The economy has begun to gain traction.
-Their leading candidate for president, Mitt Romney, is universally viewed as an uninspiring poster child for the one percent, with no core values anyone can point to except his own desire to be elected.
-Every time Romney tries to “identify” with ordinary people he says something entirely inappropriate about his wife’s “two Cadillacs,” how much he likes to fire people who provide him services, or how he is a buddy with the people who own NASCAR teams rather than the people who watch them.
-The polls show that the more people learn about Romney, the less they like him. The Republican primary road show doesn’t appear to be coming to a close any time soon.
-Together, Bob Kerrey’s announcement that he will get into the Senate contest in Nebraska and the news that Olympia Snowe is retiring from the Senate in Maine, massively increase Democratic odds of holding onto the control of the Senate.
-The Congress is viewed positively by fewer voters than at any time in modern history — and two-thirds think the Republicans are completely in charge.
-Worse yet, the polling in most presidential battleground states currently gives President Obama leads over Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.
The one thing Republican political pros are cheering right now is the rapidly increasing price of gas at the pump and the underlying cost of oil.
The conventional wisdom holds that if gas prices increase, it will inevitably chip away at support for President Obama — and there is a good case to be made. After all, increased gas prices could siphon billions out of the pockets of consumers that they would otherwise spend on the goods and services that could help continue the economic recovery — which is critical to the president’s re-election.
But Republicans shouldn’t be so quick to lick their chops at the prospect of rising gas prices.
Here’s why:
1). What you see, everybody sees.
The sight of Republicans rooting against America and hoping that rising gas prices will derail the economic recovery is not pretty.
The fact is that Republicans have done everything in their power to block President Obama’s job-creating proposals in Congress, and they were dragged kicking and screaming to support the extension of the president’s payroll tax holiday that was critical to continuing economic momentum.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell actually announced that his caucus’ number one priority this term was the defeat of President Obama. The sight of Republicans salivating at the prospect of $4-plus per gallon gasoline will not sit well with ordinary voters.
2). Democrats have shown that they are more than willing to make the case about who is actually responsible for rising gas prices — and the culprits’ footprints lead right back to the GOP’s front door.
Who is really to blame for higher gas prices?
-The big oil companies that are doing everything they can to keep oil scarce and the price high;
-Speculators that drive up the price in the short run;
-Foreign conflicts, dictators and cartels — that have been important in driving up prices particularly in the last two months;
-The Republicans who prevent the development of the clean, domestic sources of energy that are necessary to allow America to free itself from the stranglehold of foreign oil — all in order to benefit speculators and oil companies.
The fact is that the world will inevitably experience increasing oil prices over the long run because this finite, non-renewable resource is getting scarcer and scarcer at the same time that demand for energy from the emerging economies like China and India is sky rocketing.
Every voter with a modicum of experience in real-world economics gets that central economic fact.
That would make Republican opposition to the development of renewable energy sources bad enough. But over the last few months the factor chiefly responsible for short-term oil price hikes have been the Arab Spring and Israel’s growing tensions with Iran — all of which are well beyond direct American control.
But with only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, any idiot knows we can’t make ourselves materially more energy independent solely by drilling for more domestic oil. In fact, it is obvious that to have any hope of controlling the prices we pay for energy in the future, we must free ourselves from the dependence on oil in general and foreign oil in particular.
We need an emergency “all of the above” energy independence program that accesses all of the domestic sources of oil that can be developed in an environmentally safe way – plus a major investment in renewable, clean energy sources that free us from dependence on oil – and especially foreign oil.
President Obama has proposed a big first step in exactly that direction, and the Republicans have answered: “Hell no — drill baby drill.”
If they are forcefully challenged by Democrats this year — as I believe they will — that Republican position is simply laughable.
Domestic drilling has increased substantially under President Obama’s administration. And our dependence on foreign oil imports has gone down every year of his presidency. The president has put in place new mileage standards for cars that will save massive amounts of potential oil imports — standards that Republicans have opposed for decades.
But that fact remains, that for all his administration can do on its own to increase energy independence, it is impossible to free America from the stranglehold of foreign oil dependency without the kind of massive national commitment to domestic, renewable energy that must be passed by Congress. The Republicans have said “no” because their biggest energy patrons — the oil companies — oppose a crash program to create renewable energy sources for one simple reason. Every day that we fail to act, the value of their oil goes up — it’s that simple.
If you doubt that Mitt Romney and the Republicans are bought and paid for by Big Oil — just ask the infamous Koch brothers — who finance major Republican “super Pacs” — how much they stand to make personally every time the long-term price of a barrel of oil increases by another dollar.
Simply put, the Republicans have put the profits of their patrons in Big Oil well above the economic and national security interests of the United States of America.
The Republicans even continue to do everything in their power to block the elimination of the astonishing taxpayer subsidy of the oil industry, that continues notwithstanding the fact that big oil companies are more profitable today than any other companies in the history of humanity. And the Republicans do it all the while they blather on about how if we once again install them in the White House, they will bring us $2 a gallon gasoline.
Whoever is pushing those kinds of lines must be studying the techniques of the late, famous circus impresario, P.T. Barnum, who famously said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
But in fact, polling shows that American voters simply are not so gullible that they buy either of these preposterous positions.
3). Speculators.
A final contributing factor that has recently amplified increases in gas and oil prices is the role of speculators.
In a purely competitive market, oil prices should settle in the long run at the marginal cost of producing the next barrel of oil — currently between $60 and $70 a barrel. Oil closed last week at about $106 per barrel and ran up to twice the marginal cost of production during the Bush era 2008 oil spike.
Currently about 80% of positions on oil commodity markets are held by “pure speculators” — who bet on changes in oil prices — rather than “end users” who actually consume oil and use the markets to hedge against price increases.
Academic studies have demonstrated that there is a big speculative premium in oil prices, above and beyond any “risk premium” that might normally develop from fear of some immediate, short-term shortage. That speculative premium could be materially dampened if steps were taken to limit the market’s domination by pure speculators.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill — which was opposed by most Republicans in Congress and all of their presidential candidates — allows the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to limit the percentage of market positions held by pure speculators as opposed to end users.
Already the CTFC has position limits on the percentage of positions that can be held by individual companies or investors to prevent one from cornering the market. Many economists have proposed imposing similar position limits on pure speculators as a class.
Ordinary voters don’t like speculators. But far from supporting limits on speculation, Mitt Romney wants to go back to the “good old days of yesteryear” where wild, unbridled speculation led to the worst economic collapse in 60 years and costs eight million Americans their jobs.
None of this is good politics for Republicans.
Voters don’t want to be held hostage by the big oil companies or foreign oil. They don’t want to have their pockets picked by oil market speculators. They understand that when world oil prices go up, it benefits oil-state dictators: it’s like allowing Iran’s Ahmadinejad to levy a tax on American consumers. And voters sure as hell don’t want to pay a taxpayer subsidy to oil companies like Exxon that made more in profits in one minute last year (about $85,000) than the average American worker earns all year long.
If Republican strategists think they can reverse their fortunes by focusing on the gas price debate, the odds are good they will be wrong.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post, March 6, 2012
“Crazy Idea”: Laws To Encourage Voting
Connecticut has taken the lead in proposing measures to increase voter turnout by—get this—making it easier to vote.
Voter ID laws have been all the rage around the country, with conservative lawmakers pushing to make it harder to vote, often by requiring some form of government-issued photo identification. The goal, at least according to rhetoric, is to keep the process safe from fraud—despite there being no real evidence of in-person voter fraud, the only kind such laws would actually prevent. In the meantime, states struggle with low-turnout rates and sometimes low registration rates. In Texas, which recently passed one of the more stringent ID requirements, residents vote at among the lowest rates in the country.
All of which makes Connecticut’s current voting debate somewhat shocking by comparison. The secretary of state has taken the lead in proposing measures to increase voter turnout by—get this—making it easier to vote. Two proposals make it easier to register by offering same-day registration for those who show up on Election Day and creating an online voter registration system so people can do it from home. Another measure would increase penalties for voter intimidation. According to officials, the efforts are much-needed to increase turnout. As the Hartford Courant reports:
“It’s long past time that we move our elections into the 21st century in Connecticut,” Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said during a press briefing Friday prior to a legislative hearing on the proposals. “We are not on the cutting edge and our system is old, costly and inconvenient.”
As a result, Merrill said, one out of three state residents who are eligible to vote aren’t even registered.
Voting, most of us can all agree, is a good thing to do. But legislation around voting has become largely about partisan advantage—voter ID laws are seen to give Republicans an advantage because the impact would be particularly felt in poor and minority communities, both largely Democratic constituencies. Not shockingly, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that the American Legislative Exchange Council, a meeting place for corporate interests and conservative lawmakers, has helped bolster the efforts to pass voter ID laws around the country—presumably because ALEC hopes to see more conservatives get into office. Meanwhile Democrats argue voter ID laws decrease access and function like a poll tax, as a way of making it harder for certain communities to vote.
The Courant article shows the same cynicism comes at efforts to increase voting—since those efforts will likely benefit Democrats. One Republican asks why there’s a need for these laws and worries about devaluing the ballot box if access is too easy. Politicians are rarely angels, and it’s likely both sides take an interest at least in part because they hope for political gain.
But that’s largely beside the point. American citizens, regardless of political affiliation, have the right to vote. Increasing access to that right is important; in the secular religion of democracy, voting is practically a holy act. While the efforts to increase turnout in Connecticut may benefit Democrats, that doesn’t change that it benefits the democratic process as well.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, March 6, 2012
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