Republican Preachers: Believing What You Know Ain’t True
In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain makes a stinging observation on the overtly religious. “Faith is when you believe something you know ain’t true.” This is a perfect description of the religious asylum that is now the Republican Party and the tortured gospel they are spreading all over the country. Virtually the entire barnyard of their presidential candidates are preaching a mix of born again religious revivalism and brutal 19th century industrial capitalism, that they “know ain’t even remotely true.”
By and large these are not genetically stupid people. But the political trash talking they feel obligated to serve up to the Tea Party Gods–Rush Limbaugh and the inquisitors at Fox–has degenerated into a competition of who can do the best impression of an absolute lunatic. Rick Perry is preaching virtual secession from the union, while holding prayer vigils for God to solve our problems. By what twisted logic does contempt for the federal government and even secession equate to patriotism? Someone please show me where the founding fathers advocated prayer as the vehicle for solving a national debt crisis?
Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty have flip flopped on virtually every position they ever espoused so that their insanity titers can match Michelle Bachmann’s. I’ve met with Jon Huntsman on more than one occasion regarding environmental issues in Utah. He was a reasonable moderate Republican as my state’s governor and appeared on TV ads three years ago exhorting the entire country to act on the climate crisis. He did that because he respected the warnings of our climate scientists. Now he says we can’t deal with global warming in a depressed economy. He knows perfectly well that those same scientists are warning that if we don’t act on it right now, we condemn our children to a brutal, dangerous and likely unlivable world. Newt Gingrich? He appeared on national TV ads with Nancy Pelosi saying that he agreed on the urgency to deal with the climate crisis. Now he looks like a Keystone Cop, tripping over his own feet in full speed reverse.
Sarah Palin? Oh, never mind. Rick Santorum? According to him the world’s scientists are all in on a conspiracy with Al Gore. Really Rick? That conspiracy would have to have started in 1824 when the greenhouse gas phenomenon was first described by the French scientist Joseph Fourier. It would have to have involved scores of scientists in the 1800s like John Tyndall of the Royal Institute of Great Britain, George Marsh, the founder of the Smithsonian Institute, and hundreds of scientists in the 1900s like 1903 Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius. The conspiracy would now have to involve virtually the entire world’s scientific community. That makes sense to you, Rick? Really?
Almost as irritating is the chorus sung over and over by Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and 99% of Republican Congressmen proudly declaring their Huckleberry Finn type faith that an unfettered free market is the only way to create to millions of new jobs. “Stop choking businesses with excessive regulations!” they chant. All businesses, all regulations. Really, Mitch? Never mind that it was precisely the elimination of, inadequacy of, or lack of enforcement of federal regulation that allowed Wall St. to drag the economy to the edge of the apocalypse and the very reason why there are no jobs. Never mind that it was poor regulation and free market cost cutting that brought us the Deep Water Horizon, Kalamazoo River, and now Yellowstone River oil spills. 1,800 oil spills have occurred in this country in the last five years totaling 16 million gallons of oil contaminating our land and water. And Mitt, you want regulators to get off the backs of the oil companies? Really?
Never mind that it was inadequate federal oversight and greedy, unfettered capitalism on steroids that allowed Massey Energy to commit manslaughter on 29 coal miners last year. Hey, Eric just what jobs are created by paring down our already bare bones federal food inspection? Will even more outbreaks of e-coli and salmonella in peanut butter, spinach, eggs, cantaloupe, sprouts and hamburger be counted as just collateral blessings from unleashing the free market? We certainly don’t want to pay for inspection of imported sea food from Japan because a little radioactivity in your tuna fish and scallops would probably just make it taste a little more crunchy.
Hey Newt, what jobs will be created by eviscerating the EPA and their enforcement of the Clean Air Act besides morticians and health care providers? Michelle, so you’re comfortable with eliminating money for bridge inspectors from the National Transportation Safety Board because the one that collapsed in your home state in 2007 only killed 13 people, and that’s a small price to pay for that warm, orgasmic tingle only the free market can give?
Lets certainly get regulators off the backs of the pharmaceutical industry because other than the millions of people who have been killed or injured by Phen-Fen, Vioxx, Avandia, Bextra, Cylert, Baycol, Palladone, Trasylol, Tylenol, Darvocet, Heparin and all the drugs now made with ingredients from China without any real standards or controls–i.e. most of them–there’s no reason to think an unregulated free market won’t work out just fine. Really, Sarah? So if defective and tainted drugs weed out the weak among us, that’s just the beauty of the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman world view?
The entire middle class is struggling with unemployment, under employment, mounting debt, lost pensions, mortgages foreclosed or underwater, and you want to undo even the pathetic protections of the 2010 Consumer Protection Act and put Elizabeth Warren’s head on a platter? Really, Speaker Boehner? That’s the job elixir the middle class so desperately need?
As with most religions the Church of Unfettered Capitalism doesn’t have to make sense in order to thrive. But it does need preachers at the pulpit exhorting us to “believe in things that we know ain’t true” and the Republican Party can’t get enough of them. Huckleberry Finn would be so proud.
By: Brian Moench, CommonDreams.org, July 9, 2011
We Deceive, You Believe: A New Reality Show For Sarah Palin And Fox
I have a great idea for a new show on Fox. It would be a reality comedy show with Sarah Palin as the host. It’s what Hollywood calls “high concept.” The idea would be that all the Republican presidential candidates would travel across America in Sarah’s RV. Hilarity follows.
Late night comic Jimmy Fallon put it best: “Obama was in Ireland. He thought about buying a four-leaf clover for good luck, and then he looked at the field of Republican candidates and decided it wasn’t necessary.”
Dramatis personae include:
Gary Johnson—Ex-governor of New Mexico who favors the legalization of pot. He didn’t get an invite to the next GOP debate, but his hopes are high and he has grassroots support.
Herman Cain—Multi-millionaire and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. He’s rolling in dough.
Newt Gingrich—Former speaker of the House. If he really is a fiscal conservative, he would use his $500,000 revolving charge account at Tiffany’s to make a payment on the federal debt. He is clearly the jewel in the GOP crown. The former speaker is currently on a cruise with his wife in the Mediterranean. He will return to the campaign trail after he decides whether he supports or opposes the Ryan plan to gut Medicare. It might be a long trip.
Palin—Can the former half-term and half-baked governor of Alaska see Russia from her magic bus? This trip is her magical mystery tour because we have no idea where it will lead. She rained on Mitt Romney’s parade by showing up in New Hampshire on the day of Romney’s formal announcement and popping him for his support of a state run healthcare program in Massachusetts with a personal mandate. National surveys indicate that twice as many voters dislike her as like her. So, I don’t think she will get a mandate from Americans.
Michele Bachmann—Tea Party favorite and conservative congresswoman from Minnesota. When baseball players have a short stay in the majors, it’s a cup of coffee. She will have a cup of tea in the presidential race. Last week, Representative Bachmann said she and former half-governor Palin were friends. That didn’t last long. This week, Bachmann’s campaign manager said Palin wasn’t a “serious” candidate. At least the Minnesotan and I agree on something.
Chris Christie—Governor of New Jersey. Teddy Roosevelt described the presidency as a bully pulpit. Christie is just a bully. Don’t be surprised if he helicopters into the race.
Rudy Giuliani—The former mayor of New York City. Why not? He did so well last time. If he runs, he should borrow Donald Trump’s toupee and MapQuest Iowa so he can find it this time.
Jon Huntsman—Ex-governor of Utah who served two years as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to China. He will charge Obama with incompetence. Just look at the clown the president made ambassador to China.
Bobby Jindal—The governor of Louisiana who is not ready for prime time TV. But that hardly disqualifies him in this field.
Mitt Romney—Former governor of Massachusetts and the father of Obamacare. This would be the grudge match of all time. Healthcare reform 1.0 vs. 2.0. A Romney position is like the New England weather. Don’t like it, just wait, because it changes every 15 minutes.
Ron Paul—Paul is the anti-Romney because the Texas congressman sticks to his positions for more than 15 minutes. Actually, he still holds Herbert Hoover’s positions. But will socially conservative voters buy his opposition to drug laws and will the neocons accept his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? I don’t think so.
Tim Pawlenty—The former two-term governor of Minnesota is as bland as his fellow charismatically challenged Minnesotan, Walter Mondale. Jay Leno described T-Paw to a t when he joked, “You know, I don’t want to say Tim Pawlenty is boring, but his Secret Service codename is Al Gore.” Bland is good, though, because the other GOP candidates have enough baggage to fill a Boeing 727 headed for LAX.
Rick Perry—In 2009, the governor of Texas threatened to secede from the union. The question is whether he wants to lead or to secede. Too bad Jeff Davis isn’t still around to be his running mate.
Rick Santorum—Why does he torture himself with the hope he could win? Is the GOP this desperate for a candidate? He lost his Senate seat in a presidential battleground state, Pennsylvania, by 16 percent.
This may be why four out of 10 Republicans in a new Pew Research Center poll say they are not impressed with the GOP presidential candidates. But I think the reality TV show would get good ratings hammocked between Family Guy and The Simpsons on Sunday nights.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, June 9, 2011
Even Without Donald Trump, Plenty Of Clowns In The 2012 GOP Field
Farewell Donald Trump. For a brief moment last month, his birther buffoonery powered him to the front of the Republican pack. What a difference a birth certificate, a death announcement, and serious treatment by the press make. Now The Donald has announced that as with his previous presidential flirtations he is not making this race. Suddenly he looks like one of the celebrity has-beens who gets fired on his television show—or worse, like a celebrity has-been who doesn’t actually get onto the show at all.
Trump peaked in mid-April when a survey from the Democratic group Public Policy Polling set him as the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, with 26 percent of the vote. Then reality intruded. The press went from treating him like a celebrity making silly noises about running to treating him like a genuine would-be candidate, checking out who he contributed to and fact-checking his weird claims. Then Obama’s long form birth certificate put an end to birtherism while Osama bin Laden’s violent end reminded us that there are monsters in the real world and that the presidency is for serious people, not reality TV blowhards.
Public Policy Polling’s survey last week had Trump at 8 percent, in a fifth place tie with Ron Paul.
But with Trump-mentum ended, where can we hope to find entertainment value in the GOP primary field? The answer is, where can’t you? Donald Trump, entertainer-turned-pol was never going to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan. But neither will the other maybes and might-want-tos.
Take Newt Gingrich, whose announcement video last week said we should “look reality in the face, [and] tell the truth.” The truth and the reality are that Gingrich is an abrasive bomb thrower who resigned his speakership after his colleagues, and most voters, had enough of him, not the profile swing voters usually latch onto. His disapproval rating when he left office was 70 percent and was still as high as 38 percent as recently as last summer. And Gingrich, a self-styled historian, is fighting history. Only once has a former speaker of the house made the transition to the White House. That, NBC’s Chuck Todd notes, was James Polk in 1844. And not since James Garfield in 1880 has a politician achieved the White House having only served in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Newt is not alone with this problem, of course. Sitting Rep. Michele Bachmann seems happy to conflate her fanatical Tea Party following with actual broad-based support. But again her lack of experience in winning even a statewide office in Minnesota makes one wonder whether she’s drinking tea or Kool-Aid. For sheer “what is he thinking” chutzpah, however, it’s hard to beat Rick Santorum, whose last act in American politics ended when the voters of his home state of Pennsylvania fired him from the U.S. Senate. I can think of one modern politician who won the White House after losing his last previous election, and Richard Nixon is not a figure whose mantel many GOPers lay claim to these days.
Sure Newt, Bachmann, and Santorum are members of the GOP presidential B Team, but is the A Team much more impressive? You could have made an argument for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, before he announced this weekend that he would not run. The best that can be said of Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, is that he is inoffensive (read: bland), while the worst that can be said of 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is that she’s . . . Sarah Palin.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels commented last week that “the chances [of his beating Obama] would actually be quite good.” Apparently channeling some Trump-ian bombast, he added that, “The quality and the number of people who have said they’d like to be associated is really quite awesome to me.” Also awesome is the idea of someone running as a gimlet-eyed spending hawk whose previous job before governor was as George W. Bush’s budget chief. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, “By themselves, in fact, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for almost half of the $20 trillion in debt that, under current policies, the nation will owe by 2019.”
Then there’s Mitt Romney, who Thursday made his highest profile attempt to explain why the healthcare law he passed while governor of Massachusetts, with an individual mandate, is good, but the national-level version of it, signed by Barack Obama, is bad. Romney’s dilemma: He can’t embrace the individual mandate because conservatives don’t like it any more at the state level than they do at the federal one. But he also can’t repudiate it lest he feed the political chameleon image that led the Democratic National Committee to tout “Mitt Romney, Version 5.0.”
The most damning illustration of the state of the GOP field may have come in a Politico report noting that virtually the only issue the contenders agree on is that “Sharia law is a continuing threat to the United States.”
One can’t help but look forward to the GOP nominee explaining that urgent threat in a general election debate while standing next to the president who got bin Laden.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, May 16, 2011
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